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Chapter Text

The mist lay thick across the surface of the ocean, swirling with ghostly shadows and shades in the murky half-light of morning. A sweet young voice sounded through the mists, singing softly; “Drink up me hearties, yo-ho…! Yo-ho, yo-ho, a pirate’s life for me…!” The voice belonged to a small boy, leaning over the railings of a proud warship making it’s slow and steady way across the sea. “We extort, we pilfer, we filch, we sack, drink u-”

One of the crew members grabbed the boy by the shoulder, and tugged him back away from the side. “Hush now, laddie,” the weathered, white-haired, old sailor chided with grandfatherly exasperation. “This is hardly the place to be singing a song like that.” He cast a wary eye across what little could be seen of the ocean’s surface, almost as though he expected to see something looming out of the mists.

“Why not?” the boy asked, breathless with a mixture of fear and anticipation.

The old sailor eyed him critically for a moment, then sighed into his rather impressive white beard. “These aren’t the tame seas around England, lad, and there’s worse than your ordinary brigands on these waters.” Sensing that he had a captive audience, the sailor continued in a tone of voice perfectly suited to the telling of ghost-stories, his eyes glazed as he stared off into the distance, as though lost in memory. “Mortal men are bad enough, they can kill you in any manner of unpleasant ways, they’ll slit your throat or run you through without hesitating. But that’s a quick, clean death, lad, and that’s nothing to what the other sorts of monsters, spirits, and cursed men out here can do to you.” He paused, and glanced at the young boy with a mischievous twinkle in his eyes. “You wouldn’t want them to hear your singing, would you, lad, and come sailing this way thinking they’ll find a friend?”

The boy looked both terrified and enthralled as he shook his head. “Would-”

“That’s enough, Mr Balin!” a crisp, clear, cold voice called across the deck. The old sailor straightened and turned to face the Lieutenant of the ship as she strode over to them, a hard look in her young eyes. She couldn’t have been more than a dozen years the senior of the little boy, but by the orders of the crown – and the support of her patron – she had been placed as second-in-command of a crew of men all of whom had to be twice her age, at least. Balin, certainly, was more like thrice her age.

“Ach, a ghost story or two never hurt anyone,” Balin replied with a cheery smile. He glanced around them, then returned his gaze to the Lieutenant, still smiling. “We’ve the weather for it, after all.” When this didn’t soften the Lieutenant at all, his smile drooped, and he gave her a more solemn look. “They’re a good warning for young ones to heed on these waters, ah… sir.”

“Ghost-stories?” the Lieutenant repeated, disdainful and disbelieving.

Balin’s expression froze for a moment, before he shrugged and mustered a smile that didn’t match his previous ones for sincerity. “There’s a grain of truth in every legend, sir, and there’s lessons to be learned in even the most unlikely of places.”

The Lieutenant evidently did not appreciate the potential condescension of Balin’s words, because she fixed him with a fierce glare. “Move along!” she ordered sharply, and Balin went, muttering into his beard about lasses as young as her not belonging on ships.

“Well, I think it’s all very exciting!” the boy enthused brightly. “Pirates and monsters and curses. Do you think we’ll see any pirates? I’d love to meet a pirate.”

When the Lieutenant looked at him, her gaze softened, and she looked more pained than angry. “You wouldn’t say such things if you had, Master Greenwood, I assure you,” she stated, moving to stand beside the boy at the railing. Her hands were clasped behind her and her shoulders were pulled back in a picture of understated pride and confidence, but her eyes were haunted. “They are vile, cruel, greedy things, the lot of them.” Anger began to seep into her voice again. “They have no care for any save themselves, and delight in the pain and torment of others. They are a scourge upon our oceans, and I will hang, draw, and quarter every last one of them myself if I must!” The boy gasped at the Lieutenant’s proclamation, staring at her in a mixture of horror and awe.

“That is quite enough.” The new voice came from a tall, stately man who held himself like a king. His long blonde hair – a perfect match for the young boy’s – was pulled back into a neat, sleek tail at the nape of his neck, and his long silver and red coat was expensive enough to mark him as an extremely important person. “Thank you, Lieutenant Tauriel, but these are not stories fit for children, neither the fanciful, nor the truthful,” he added, in a tone that made it clear that his words were not a request.

“My apologies, Lord Greenwood,” Lieutenant Tauriel replied at once, turning and bowing to the Lord. He flicked a hand at her in a graceful gesture, and she took the cue and respectfully left father and son to their privacy.

“Father, I’m thirteen years old now!” the boy protested. “And I’ve never been out to sea like this before, and it’s such a grand adventure. I want to know everything! Why does Lieutenant Tauriel hate pirates so much? Are Mr Balin’s stories really only make-believe? I don’t see why there couldn’t be monsters and curses and such, the ocean is such a very big place, after all. Have you ever met a pirate, Father?” He turned back to the railing and leaned out over it again, rumpling the gold brocade of his jacket. “What are they like? Why are they pirates? How did they become pirates? Do they ever fight themselves? I just have so many questions, Father!”

Lord Greenwood gave his son a dryly exasperated look that didn’t fully hide the affection that shone through in his eyes when he looked upon his son. “Yes, that’s what I’m afraid of,” he murmured, raising his eyes to the heavens. Then he turned to his son and laid a hand on the boy’s shoulder. “Do be careful, Legolas, else you’ll fall in and catch cold.”

“I won’t fall in!” Legolas protested.

“Here’s to hoping,” Thranduil sighed as he turned away, leaving his son to his daydreaming.

Legolas barely noticed that he was alone, watching the way the wind made ripples on the water and straining to see further through the fog. An incongruity caught his eye and he shuffled along the railing for a better look. It was a lady’s parasol, floating wrong-way up in the water, and Legolas nearly lost his balance when he leaned even further forward at his unexpected discovery. “What’s that doing there?” He murmured to himself, watching it bob on the waves for a moment before he cast his gaze further afield, searching for something that might explain the parasol’s presence.

There were several dark shapes in the water that might have been planks, chunks of driftwood too regular to be natural, and a larger piece with- That was a child, lying deathly still and pale on top of the broken boards. Legolas’s heart leapt into his throat. “Look!” he called, half turning to see who was near enough to hear him. “There’s a boy! A boy in the water!”

Everyone who heard him immediately rushed to the side of the boat, including Legolas’s father and the Lieutenant. “Man overboard!” Lieutenant Tauriel hollered, prompting an immediate explosion of activity from the sailors. More orders were shouted, and Legolas hung back, wary of getting in the way as they hurried to bring the boy aboard. He was young, younger than Legolas by a few years, and stout with dark skin and a tangled mop of unruly red curls about his head. The sailor that had brought him up laid him down upon the deck, and Lieutenant Tauriel knelt over him at once. “He’s still breathing,” she declared a moment later, and there was a collective huff of relief from the crew.

Legolas was distracted from that, however, when he spotted the sudden look of horror on Balin’s face. “By the Maker…!” the old sailor breathed as he moved to the rigging to lean out for a better look, and Legolas whipped around to see what was wrong.

A burning ship loomed out of the fog, broken into pieces and surrounded by a cluster of flotsam and jetsam, some of which was burning despite the water. The smoke mingled with the fog to make everything hazy and indistinct, but that did nothing to hide the horror of such a sight. “What happened?” Legolas asked, unable to tear his eyes away.

“I suspect the powder magazine exploded. Merchant vessels run heavily armed in this part of the world,” Lieutenant Tauriel stated, loud enough for most of the crew to hear as well as Legolas.

“Though it hardly did them any good,” Balin sighed. Legolas tore his eyes away from the sight to look at Balin, and saw this his father, too, was giving the man a cool, challenging stare. Balin held up his hands in a sign of surrender. “Everyone’s thinking it, m’lord, I’m just saying it; pirates.”

Legolas perked up. Immediately, his attention turned to the young boy they’d rescued, wondering what might have happened to him. He felt a surge of vaguely protective worry. The boy was younger than him, and to suddenly be – as far as Legolas knew – the sole survivor of a pirate attack was nothing he would wish on anyone. He tried to imagine what it might be like, to wake up on a strange ship full of strange people and be told that everyone he knew, his father and Lieutenant Tauriel and even old Balin, had been killed by pirates. Without noticing what he was doing, he drifted across the deck to hover over the boy, while behind him, conversation continued.

“It would be best to avoid jumping to conclusions,” Lord Greenwood declared archly. He shot a chiding look in Balin’s direction, which had surprisingly little effect on the old sailor. “There is every possibility there was an accident, or the crew was simply careless.”

“Either way, we have a duty,” Lieutenant Tauriel declared sternly. Despite the strength and conviction in her voice, there was a depth of emotion, of sorrow and pity and grief, that caused one or two of the sailors to give her sideways looks. This did not go unnoticed by Lieutenant Tauriel, and ire flared in her eyes. “Heave to! And take in sail! Launch the boats!” she barked at them. For all their scepticism, they were well trained men, and they leapt to obey without hesitation. “And someone rouse the Captain!” she added as an afterthought, something that had Lord Greenwood’s lips twitching with amused approval.

In all the flurry of activity, someone helpfully came to move the boy off the deck, and Legolas watched them carry him off with concern. “Legolas,” his father called sternly. Legolas turned at once and found his father standing almost at his shoulder. “I would have you accompany our new charge, keep an eye on him, see to it that he is comfortable and cared for until he wakes and we can speak to him of what happened, yes?” he instructed.

Legolas pulled a face. He knew he was being sent out of the way so that he wouldn’t be underfoot or see anything exciting, but he wasn’t disgruntled enough to protest, because at least he would get to be there when the boy woke. “Yes, father.”

Lord Greenwood smiled, and it melted the ice in his gaze. “Thank you, son.” He touched his hand briefly to Legolas’s shoulder and the gesture, small though it was, meant a lot coming from the usually reserved and restrained lord. It made Legolas smile somewhat bashfully before he scampered off to do as his father had bid.

The boy was laid out on a blanket in the open air, and Legolas’s first thought on seeing him was that he must be freezing in his wet clothes and naught else. Without knowing how else to help, Legolas reached over to pull up the corner of the blanket and lay it over the boy. It wouldn’t help a lot, but it was better than nothing. Legolas patted down the edge of the blanket to make sure there were no gaps for cruel little fingers of wind to reach in through, and he was just retracting his hand when a smaller, darker one shot out of the blanket and caught his wrist.

He gasped and startled, eyes darting from the hand on his arm up to the boy’s face. The boy’s eyes were open, but half-lidded and slightly glazed, little crescents of warm, dark brown showing under his drooping lids. His heart still racing, but slowing steadily, Legolas reached out and laid his other hand on the boy’s shoulder. “It’s okay. You’re safe now,” he said gently. After a few more heaving, panicked breaths the boy started to relax, his hand loosening from it’s grip around Legolas’s arm.

Legolas flexed his wrist and hid a wince. The boy had a very strong grip, and he was fairly sure that was going to bruise later. “I’m Legolas Greenwood. Who’re you?” he asked with a hopeful smile.

“G-Gimli,” the boy replied, his teeth chattering around the odd name. “Dur-rinson.”

“Nice to meet you, Gimli.” Legolas replied with a hint of cheek. Gimli stared at him dazedly, then snorted with reluctant humour. Beaming, Legolas watched as Gimli’s eyelids fluttered, and his hand fell away from Legolas’s wrist completely as he sank back into unconsciousness.

The boy’s waking and subsequent panic had jostled the blanket and his collar, revealing a sturdy golden chain that was rather at odds with Gimli’s rough, homespun clothes. Curiosity piqued, Legolas leaned over and carefully tugged at the chain until the pendant was revealed. It was a locket, he saw, and an expertly crafted one at that. The detail was exquisite, and the latch mechanism was subtle, yet also solid, and yet still not too difficult to open if you knew what you were doing. Legolas flicked it open and saw inside two portraits. One of a stunningly beautiful woman with a smile that was both kind and sad, and the other of a large, craggy-faced and red-bearded man, who would have looked terrifying if it weren’t for the utterly besotted grin he was sporting.

“Your parents?” Legolas wondered, staring at the sketches a moment longer before flipping the locket closed and going to replace it. He paused, however, when he spotted a maker’s mark on the back, nestled into the curve of the bottom of the locket. It was a raven, depicted rising with it’s wings addorsed and elevated, as if it were just about to leap into flight. Legolas was no scholar, no expert in heraldic crests – much to his father’s dismay – but he knew that symbol very well indeed. It was a pirate’s mark.

Legolas’s head snapped up to stare at Gimli. He had been found in the water at the scene of a battle between merchants and pirates, and there was absolutely no evidence that he’d come from the merchant ship. He could just as easily have been lost over the side of the pirate ship. Pirates, after all, might not care if one small boy got thrown overboard. Surely, if Legolas’s father or Lieutenant Tauriel saw the locket and realised what it was, they would come to the same conclusion as Legolas. If that happened, what would they do? He’d like to think that they would stay their hand from harming a child, but a hint of doubt crept in, as he remembered the coldness on his father’s face, and the hatred on Tauriel’s.

No, Legolas wasn’t going to risk it. He carefully tugged the locket off and went to slip it into the inner breast pocket of his jacket. He’d give it back to Gimli later, when he was awake and capable of hiding it himself.

“Has he said anything?”

Legolas startled, hand flashing away from his pocket, the locket still clenched in his fist. He tucked both hands behind his back and held them there as he turned to face Lieutenant Tauriel. “Um…!” Legolas scrambled to comprehend the question, and then hurried to answer. “Just that his name is Gimli Durinson, then he passed out again.”

Lieutenant Tauriel nodded, then turned her head towards the sailors standing behind her, waiting for orders. “Take him below,” she instructed, and the sailors hastened to obey. Legolas watched them carry Gimli off with worry clouding his heart and mind.

When Gimli and those carrying him vanished below decks, Legolas turned and saw that Lieutenant Tauriel had gone. The area was still bustling with sailors, so Legolas moved to the side of the ship, bringing his hands to his front and cupping them around the locket. It really was beautiful, but knowing who it was made by, where it was made – the Lost Isle of Erebor – made it seem ominous and too heavy even for the precious metals it was made of.

Shivering, Legolas finally tucked it into his pocket, eyes lifting towards the horizon as he did so. Just for a moment, the mists before him parted, and he caught a glimpse of ragged black sails above a tar-black hull. There was no way a ship with sails in that state should be able to sail at all, but even as Legolas watched, agog, it turned and sped off into the fog, as nimble and speedy a ship as Legolas had ever seen. Certainly the Dauntless had never, in all his time aboard, displayed such ability. It seemed lumbering and awkward compared to this ghost ship.

One final detail caught Legolas’s eye. There, above the sails, fluttering in a non-existent breeze, was a black flag, bearing a shining white standard of a boar’s skull over two crossed bones, and crowned with seven shimmering stars. A pirate flag.

Chapter Text

Legolas woke with a gasp.

His room was dark, the curtains drawn against the dawn and only a single lamp on his bedside table offering any illumination. He lay still for several seconds, staring up at the canopy of his grand four-poster bed, wondering why he would be dreaming about that of all things. It left a restless feeling in his limbs, and with a disgruntled huff, he flung the duvet off himself and swung his legs off the bed. Indecision froze him there, perched on the edge of the bed, but after a beat of hesitation, he nodded to himself and scooped up the lamp to light his way as he crossed the room to his desk.

It was old, large, and very expensive, made of mahogany with polished silver handles and hinges on all the drawers and cupboards. That was all that had been needed to convince Thranduil to buy it, but it wasn’t why Legolas liked it. He liked it because there were several secret compartments; false-bottoms on drawers and cupboards within cupboards. It appealed to his sense of adventure.

Now, Legolas opened the lid of the desk and pulled out the bottom drawer on the left, removing the journal and small collection of letters he kept within. Pressing a hidden switch at the back of the now empty drawer caused the apparent bottom of the drawer to flip up, revealing a narrow hidden compartment, in which lay a lonely and rather dusty locket.

Setting down the lamp with one hand, Legolas reached out with the other and lifted the locket out of it’s nest of dust. It lay cold in his palm, not warming from the heat of his skin, with the chain dangling from his fingers, the links clinking softly against each other. He ran his thumb over the angular knotwork etched on the front, clearing away the dust that had settled there, although it still sat stubbornly in the grooves and gaps between the complicated patterns.

Legolas knew he shouldn’t have kept it, but there had never been a good moment to return it to Gimli on the ship, and afterwards… Sighing, Legolas closed his hand around the locket and cursed himself. Afterwards, Legolas had been too cowardly to admit what he’d done. The longer he’d left it, the harder it became, until he’d stopped thinking about it. Perhaps that was why he’d dreamed of that day; a guilty conscience reminding him that he’d stolen this, from someone he now counted a friend, one of the very few friends he had.

His friend. Because all friends looked at each other the way Legolas looked at Gimli. He rolled his eyes at himself, and abruptly, anger at his own cowardice, in the matter of the locket and the other matter he couldn’t even think of without shying away from it, washed over him. He would return the locket to Gimli today, and if – it was a big if – Gimli didn’t hate him for his betrayal, then maybe, someday soon, Legolas would muster the courage to speak his heart.

A knock at the door made him startle, so badly that he nearly dropped the locket. Automatically, he made to tuck the locket away back where he’d kept it these last eight years, and stopped. If he did that, he might very well not have a chance to collect it again before the day began and he would be dragged hither and thither at his father’s heel. Legolas went to tuck the locket away in a pocket, only to remember that he was in his nightshirt, which had no pockets. “Legolas?” his father called from the other side of the door. Panic washed over Legolas, and he scrambled to close the open and incriminating drawer of his desk – never mind about the letters and the journal, let his father think he was getting an early start on the day – and for lack of anywhere else to hide it, hung the locket around his neck. “Legolas? What was that noise? Are you well?”

Legolas fumbled with the ties at the neck of his nightshirt, tightening them to hide the locket from sight before he called back. “Yes! Sorry, yes!”

The door opened, and his father strode in, looking as impeccably put together as always, and dressed in a coat far more ornate and complex than his usual, which was saying something. He was trailed by a couple of servants who immediately set about opening curtains and remaking Legolas’s rumpled bed. Thranduil eyed Legolas’s attire, or lack thereof, and raised an eyebrow at him. “Still abed at this hour?” he asked, somehow managing to convey worlds of weary exasperation with that one question. Legolas stuck his tongue out in response, because if his father was going to accuse him of being irresponsible, he was going to own it.

Thranduil gave a soft little huff of amusement. “I would have expected you to be up and about already, given how lovely the weather is today.” He nodded towards the window. Now that the curtains had been thrown wide, and the windows opened to air the room, Legolas could see that it was indeed beautiful out today. The sky was almost clear, a brilliant blue only matched by the excellent view of the ocean from Legolas’s window, and the crisp sea breeze promised not to let the day become too sweltering. “It’s not like you to lounge about when you could be running amok and threatening to make me prematurely grey.”

“I do not ‘run amok’,” Legolas protested, although even he had to admit it was weak. “You just have no sense of adventure.” It was a challenge, and they both knew it. Sometimes, on very rare occasions, it actually worked, and Thranduil’s eyes would narrow, and he’d begin to smirk, and before Legolas knew it, they’d be racing yachts around the island or dusting off Thranduil’s old navy sabres and sparring through the living room.

This time, however, Thranduil only smiled placidly, unmoved by Legolas’s goading. “Not today, son. Today, we have other matters to attend to.” He gestured another servant – his personal manservant Galion, as it happened – forward, and Legolas finally noticed that he was carrying a large box.

“What’s this?” he asked, starting forwards. Belatedly, he glanced at his father to check that it was for him, and Thranduil waved him on indulgently. Bouncing a little on the balls of his feet, Legolas lifted the lid off the box and set it aside. Inside were folds beyond folds of fabric. The colours were lovely – a pale green embroidered with gold, soft cream, dusky and shimmering gold, crisp white, warm leaf green edged in gold – but beyond that he could make no sense of it. “…What is this?” Legolas repeated, less curious and more baffled this time.

“The latest fashion from London.”

Legolas turned slowly towards his father. “Please tell me you simply want my opinion on the new drapes you picked for the drawing room?” he pleaded without shame.

“No. They’re clothes, and they’re yours,” Thranduil stated, blandly ignoring his son’s increasing desperation. “I ordered them for you especially for today, so you will be wearing them.” The look he turned on his son was one Legolas knew meant that any further protest would be futile.

He slumped, shoulders drooping, and began pulling the multiple layers of fabric out of the box. He laid them out on his newly remade bed in an attempt to figure out which piece was supposed to go where. Eventually, he decided that the plain white trousers and cream tunic – although why it was that long Legolas could not understand, it looked more like a very shapeless dress, and it would be unnecessarily tight about his thighs – were supposed to go on underneath, and scooped them up before retreating behind the changing screen. “What’s the occassion?” he asked grumpily as he stripped out of his nightshirt and began to get dressed.

“Captain Tauriel is being promoted to Commodore.” Thranduil informed him with a note of pride in his voice.

Legolas beamed. “Really? I had no idea! She never said anything, the sneaky weasel!” he complained cheerfully. Just as he managed to get his head out of the top of the strange undertunic, the rest of the outfit was slung over the top of the divider for him, presumably by Galion. “Thanks,” he murmured as he collected the pale green layer and began trying to figure out all the buttons and ties. Before he could make a total mess of it, Galion appeared around the edge of the screen and took the strange coat-robe amalgamation out of Legolas’s hands. The long-suffering manservant worked the clasps with expert hands, and soon Legolas found himself being manhandled into the outfit.

“She is far more nervous than she would ever admit,” Thranduil agreed mildly, “which is why I believe she avoided speaking of it. Regardless, as the son of her patron you must appear respectable. Hence I purchased this, instead of leaving you to dress yourself, since undoubtedly you would have turned up in leathers and salt-encrusted hemp if left to your own devices.”

Legolas felt a little dizzy by the time the pale green robe had been buttoned up, the soft gold jacket-cloak oddity arranged over his shoulders, and the large green sash belted around his waist with a complicated knot that left a wide tail in the front, hanging all the way down to the floor. He tried to walk over to the chair in the corner so that he could pull his boots on; took one step, and caught his toes in the tail of the sash. He yelped and stumbled, Galion steadied him, and he tried again, more carefully this time.

“Tauriel deserves your respect, and every honour we can accord her,” Thranduil went on, perhaps misinterpreting the reason for Legolas’s yelp. “She has come a long way from the girl who first petitioned me to allow her into the navy, and I daresay I have even come to view her as something of a daughter.”

Legolas grinned. “Have you told her that?” he asked cheekily. His moment of distraction cost him, and he tripped over the uneven hem of his robes again. Muttering a curse he had learned from sailors down at the docks, he simply hiked the whole ensemble up around his knees before striding over to the chair and flopping down into it with graceful melodrama.

“Not in so many words, but the subject has been discussed.” There was something strange in his father’s tone, but before Legolas could question it, his tone had changed to one of concern and mild suspicion as he asked, “Legolas, is everything going alright back there?”

Legolas snorted. “Galion seems to think I’m dressed, at least,” he remarked sourly, pulling on his boots with more force than was strictly necessary, “but I hope you don’t expect me to do anything more than stand around looking pretty today, because if I try to walk, I’ll embarrass us all by falling flat on my face.”

“Don’t be so dramatic, Legolas,” Thranduil chided. Legolas knew his father had just rolled his eyes at him, and pulled a face back. “And don’t pull faces at me. It’s undignified,” he added, even though there was no possible way he could have seen Legolas’s face.

“M’lord?” a new voice called from the door. “You have a visitor.”

“About time. Legolas, do come down once you’re ready,” Thranduil instructed, and then left the room without giving Legolas the option to reply. Just because he could, Legolas pulled another face in the direction of the door, and grinned when he heard Galion attempt to muffle a snicker.

In the foyer downstairs, Gimli Durinson waited as patiently as he was able for Lord Greenwood to grace him with his presence. It was not that he had no patience, but the hall – and the door and the drive and the whole bloody house – were so grand that he felt quite out of place with his faded and hard-worn clothing, and any long periods of time spent idling there were awkward in the extreme. The ticking of the ridiculously fancy clock was loud in the silence, and Gimli wandered over to study it just to have something to do for a few minutes. The carvings were very fine and detailed, but it wasn’t enough to hold his attention for long.

Instead, he turned his attention to one of the candle scones bolted to the wall. The wrought metal was more interesting to his eye, being a metalworker himself, and he got so caught up in studying the workmanship that he forgot his discomfort at touching anything. So, of course, the arm of the bloody thing came right off in his hand. He stared at it for a moment, incredulous. “That’s some shoddy work, right there,” he grumbled, too shocked at the poor craftsmanship to be embarrassed. At least, he was until he heard footsteps approaching, and suddenly realised what a picture he must make.

Hastily, he cast about for a place to put the broken piece, and eventually settled for dropping it into the cane bucket sitting by the door. He dusted off his hand, and turned to face the room again, just in time to see Lord Greenwood come sweeping down the stairs. “Mr Durinson. Good morning,” he said coolly, dipping his head in greeting.

“And to you, m’lord.” Gimli replied, bowing more fully, as was appropriate for his station. “I have your order here.” He stepped forward to set the box in his arms down on the hallway table, and flipped the lid open to reveal the sword within. Wordlessly, he lifted it carefully from it’s bed and presented it to Lord Greenwood, who took it and drew the sword from it’s sheath to examine it. “The blade is folded steel,” Gimli explained, no small amount of pride in his voice as he spoke, “and that’s gold filigree laid into the handle.”

Lord Greenwood’s eyes slid down the length of the blade to examine the fine decoration on the hilt. A hint of a smile curled his lips, and his eyes were bright with approval. “If I may?” Gimli requested, holding his hands out. Lord Greenwood’s eyebrows rose, but after a stiflingly tense moment, he did return the sword to Gimli’s hands. Gimli rested it against one finger, a little below the hilt. “Perfectly balanced,” he declared. “The tang is nearly the full width of the blade.”

Then, because he couldn’t quite help himself, he flipped the sword into the air, caught it just below the hilt in one hand, and offered the hilt to Lord Greenwood. The Lord seemed quite unruffled, but his smile was a little more pronounced now. “Impressive,” he complimented, taking the sword to admire it one more time before returning it to it’s sheath. “Very impressive. Commodore Tauriel is going to be very pleased,” He decided with an air of great satisfaction. The sword was returned to it’s box, and Gimli closed the lid on it feeling proud of his work and the reaction it had garnered. “Do pass my compliments on to your master.”

Gimli froze. Slowly, he turned his head to look at Lord Greenwood, trying to parse that. It could simply have been as it appeared, an attempt to compliment a craftsman on his work, but Gimli rather thought the Lord Greenwood was shrewder than that. At Gimli’s look, he raised an eyebrow, apparently confused by Gimli’s silence. “I shall,” Gimli agreed through a very insincere smile. It was better to stay in the Lord’s good books, for his custom if nothing else. “A craftsman is always pleased to hear his work is appreciated.”

“Indeed,” Lord Greenwood agreed. There was a sly glint in his eyes that Gimli wished he could interpret better. Either the Lord was insulting him by redirecting his compliments even though he knew full well Gimli was the one who’d made the sword, or he was attempting, in a rather backhanded way, to indicate appreciation for Gimli’s subterfuge as well as his skill. He was fairly sure it was the former, but he couldn’t take offence without revealing the charade in the first place.

He was distracted from his desire to punch the Lord in his smug face when a muttered curse drew his attention to the top of the stairs. Legolas was stood there, brushing down the fascinatingly complex coat he was wearing. Then he looked up, met Gimli’s gaze, and beamed. Gimli could do nothing but stare, all the air leaving his lungs.

Legolas looked… amazing didn’t even begin to cover it. The pale greens and rich golds of the coat – robe? It was far too complicated to be called a coat, really – suited him well, making him appear ethereal, and the cut of the fabric, the sash and the drape of the strange overcoat, all served to bring attention to his trim waist and broad shoulders and lean arms. His hair was pulled away from his face in a collection of braids more elaborate than his usual, but they still left most of it to fall down his back in a sheet of brilliant white-gold.

“Legolas,” Lord Greenwood greeted, pleased and proud both. “You look very handsome.”

Legolas all but ignored him. “Gimli!” He called, hiking up his robes most inelegantly to hurry down the stairs to join his father and Gimli. “I was hoping I’d get a chance to see you today. I had a dream about you last night,” he said, completely oblivious to Lord Greenwood’s disapproval and Gimli’s rising embarrassment.

“About… me?” Gimli echoed, all his words vanishing off his tongue.

“Legolas, this is not an appropriate conversation to be having,” Lord Greenwood interjected.

Once again, Legolas blithely ignored him. It seemed as though he had eyes only for Gimli, and that was enough to make Gimli’s mouth dry and his tongue turn to lead. It wasn’t appropriate, it wasn’t proper at all, and Legolas deserved far, far better than the scorn that would be heaped upon him if there was any real proof of anything between them. Lord Greenwood’s reputation squashed most of the mutterings that arose from Legolas’s close friendship with Gimli, but not all of them. Legolas didn’t seem to care that he was on the edge of making himself a social pariah, but Gimli did.

“About the day we met, do you remember?” Legolas went on.

“How could I forget, Master Greenwood?” Gimli returned, trying for a teasing smile, and falling more than a little short.

Legolas jerked back, hurt and confusion flashing across his face. “Gimli… There are naught here but family and friends, you’re free to call me whatever you like. You know that,” he said, frowning at Gimli. It wasn’t true, there were servants in the room next door, and coming down the stairs, and all of them would gossip and giggle about the young Master’s unnatural fondness for the blacksmith’s apprentice. “And besides, I would still rather you call me Legolas, even in polite society.”

Gimli grimaced. “I’m fairly sure that wouldn’t be very appropriate, either, Master Greenwood.”

“Precisely.” Lord Greenwood interjected sternly, as Legolas deflated and then hardened. He pulled some of his father’s airs around himself to hide his hurt, and Gimli fairly ached with guilt and remorse at the look Legolas shot him. The coldness in his eyes didn’t fully mask the pained betrayal lurking beneath. “Now, we must be going, if we are not to be late, which I will not abide.” Lord Greenwood waved for one of the servants to collect the sword box, and then swept towards the door.

“Good day, Mr Durinson,” Legolas said dispassionately, before following after his father.

Gimli’s heart went with him, dragging him in Legolas’s wake until he paused in the doorway, oblivious to the servants and footmen shoving past his shoulder. “Ach… good day, Legolas.” He wasn’t sure if Legolas heard him over the sound of the carriage beginning to move and the grand doors of the manor being shut at Gimli’s back, but he looked back at Gimli either way. Their eyes met and stayed locked, although Gimli couldn’t read Legolas’s expression for the life of him, until the carriage turned with the sweeping driveway, and they could no longer see each other.

Chapter Text

The wind was brisk, the sea was lively, and Captain Thorin Oakenshield stood aloft, his boots braced wide on the yardarm and his long dark hair whipping in the breeze beneath his tricorn hat. The sun was rising behind him, setting the various steel buckles and clasps about his person glinting and winking under it’s rays, and highlighting the colour of his steel blue coat and the warm brown fur that lined it. His face was still in shadow, but his short beard and hawk-like nose were still visible beneath the shadow of his hat.

With the sun behind him, the view of Port Royal spread out before him was picked out in exquisite detail by it’s rays. The ships in the harbour, the tree covered hills above, and the array of buildings of all kinds spread out along the curve of the shore. It was a beautiful place, even if it was not, perhaps, Thorin’s preferred place to make port. A glance down at his current ship reminded him why he was planning to dock here, and with a resigned sigh, he caught up a rope and slid down it to the deck below.

His boots landed in four inches of water. Four inches of water rapidly becoming five in the bottom of a very small boat. He grimaced, and searched about for a bucket, because all the frustration in the world at the indignity of his situation wouldn’t get rid of the water in his boat. And he had, he reminded himself as he found the bucket and began bailing out the boat, been in far worse situations than a slightly wet boat not too far from shore.

A glance up as he tossed another bucketful of water over the side of the boat revealed a sight that cause a sharp ache in his chest. Under a naturally formed arch of rock out in the middle of the bay, three corpses were hung from nooses tied to a beam. They’d been defiled by crows and the elements until they were little more than skeletons and rags. Beside them was one more noose, and a sign that read ‘Pirates Ye Be Warned’. A banked rage threatened to howl through Thorin at the sight, at the sheer arrogant disrespect of the spectacle, but he pushed it back, refusing to be overcome by it.

He did rise up and take off his hat to bow his head to the pirates that had lost their lives to the tyranny of the Royal Navy and the foul East India Trading Company. He didn’t know who they were, and may well have tried to kill them himself, had they lived to cross paths with him, but that, at least, would have been an honourable death. This was so far from honourable it was obscene.

After that gruesome display, the port itself was jarring with it’s liveliness and bustle. People were everywhere, loading and unloading boats, preparing fishing vessels and untangling nets, coiling ropes, and carting livestock hither and thither. As one, all of those people paused what they were doing to stare as Thorin sailed into port, once again standing aloft, this time balanced on the crows nest as his little boat sank further and further below the waves.

By the time he reached the dock, Thorin could step clear from the crows nest to the dock without fuss, and he didn’t even pause to readjust his coat before striding down the pier, his head held high and his steps almost a swagger. He didn’t even glance at the official and his little helper that he passed, until that man suddenly called out “Hold up there, you!”

Thorin stopped, raising his eyes to the heavens. Then he turned and fixed his most unimpressed stare on the pompous man. “Yes?”

“It’s a shilling to tie up your boat at the dock,” the man informed him. Thorin glanced back the way he’d come, and gritted his teeth on a curse when he saw that his little boat had failed to do him the final service of sinking properly. No boat wanted to sink, of course, but surely a watery grave would be preferable to retirement in a Navy port. “And I shall need to know your name.”

Thorin tore his attention away from the forlorn little boat to study the official. He did not, as it happened, look much like a man of great virtue and honour. His clothes were too expensive, but not well chosen, and both his manner of speech and his expression spoke of delusions of authority. Thorin reached into his pocket and drew out not one but three coins. “What do you say to three shillings, and we forget the name?” he asked, splaying the coins across the man’s open book.

The young assistant tailing the man looked incredulous, but a greedy light had entered the official’s eyes. Thorin’s hand twitched towards his sword out of instinct, but he halted the movement almost as soon as it began. He had been relying on this man’s greed, after all. Sure enough, after a moment of painful hesitation, the official snapped his book closed on the coins and smiled sickeningly at Thorin. “Welcome to Port Royal, Mr Smith.”

Thorin bowed his head in thanks as the man turned away, not out of any sincerity, but to distract from the hand that reached out and snatched the coin-purse clean off the man’s belt. The man himself didn’t see a thing, but his young helper did. The boy’s eyes, round as saucers, darted up to Thorin’s. Thorin offered him a hint of a smile and a challenging rise of his eyebrows as he flipped a coin from the purse at the boy. He caught it on reflex and stared at it. Then, slowly, he grinned. Sketching an entertainingly deep bow to Thorin, he turned to scamper after his master, and Thorin went on his way, feeling remarkably good about how everything had worked out.

Port Royal was everything he had expected it to be, full and bustling just like any port, but stiflingly restrained in ways that left a sour taste on Thorin’s tongue. Despite that, there was less of a naval presence about the place than he expected, and it wasn’t until he heard the faint strains of music coming from the fort that he realised there must be some kind of event or parade going on. A stroke of luck for Thorin, which put a little more spring in his step.

He explored the docks with casual purpose that made him all but invisible among the crowds of people bustling about with exactly the same attitude. It was enough to carry him all the way to the pier nearest the fort, slightly separate from the rest of the docks, although that didn’t seem to stop people using the nearby stretch of beach as a convenient place to launch their row-boats.

The ship docked at the pier was a beautiful craft, sleek and elegant and, to Thorin’s experienced eye, evidently a speedy vessel. A hint of a smile curled his lips as he considered it, and he nodded to himself as he strode forwards onto the pier. He was a little surprised that he managed to get within a stone’s throw of the ship before he was stopped by two marines, but given they way they’d been lounging about on the piles of cargo waiting to be loaded, perhaps he shouldn’t have been surprised.

They raced to block his way, thunking the butts of their muskets down on the dock with some force once they were standing shoulder to shoulder in his path. They were similar enough in looks to be brothers, both with the slightly weather-worn complexion common among sailors, scruffs of beard on their chins shorter even than Thorin’s, and shoulder-length brown hair tied back into short tails, though one was more golden-brown than the other. “This dock is off limits to civilians,” the fairer of the two declared.

“I didn’t know that,” Thorin replied dryly, “but if I see any, I shall inform you immediately.” With that said, he attempted to side step them. They followed his move, presenting a fairly impenetrable barrier unless he wanted to resort to force. He wasn’t interested in causing a scene just yet, so he tried a different tack instead. He crossed his arms and studied the pair. “What was it?” he asked.

“Excuse me?” the darker-haired one demanded, baffled.

“What did you do that got you relegated to guard duty when there’s such an important event being held up at the fort?” Thorin wondered with a hint of a smirk, jerking his head towards said building.

“We didn’t do anything!” the darker-haired one protested, riled. “It’s a duty to be proud of, not a punishment.”

The fairer one nodded his agreement. “Someone has to make sure this dock stays off limits to civilians.”

“True,” Thorin acknowledged, “but it seems to me that a ship like that-” He gestured over at another grand warship sitting further out in the water, which was definitely larger than the one currently at the dock, and therefore carried several more guns. Then he turned a critical eye on the smaller – but much faster – ship before him. “-makes this one here a bit superfluous.”

“Oh, the Dauntless is the power in these waters, sure enough,” the darker one agreed proudly.

“But there’s no ship that can match the Interceptor for speed,” the fairer one finished with a smile.

Thorin raised his eyebrows, biting back the temptation to scoff. His Pearl could outstrip either of these ships easily. “I’ve heard of one,” he countered, keeping the pride out of his voice only with supreme effort. He wasn’t sure he was completely successful. “Said to be nigh uncatchable; The Black Pearl.”

The darker-haired one scoffed. “There’s no real ship that can match the Interceptor.”

His companion turned to him with a frown on his face. “The Black Pearl is a real ship.”

“No, it’s not. It’s a ghost story, Faramir.”

“There have been multiple sightings, several different accounts-”

“And how many of those men were rum-sodden when they thought they saw something that might have been tattered black sails somewhere off in the distance?”

“Good, reliable men have seen the Black Pearl, Boromir, you can’t discount their reports just because you don’t want to believe something like that might be possible.”

“It’s not possible! I love those sorts of stories just as much as you do, little brother, but-”

At that point, Thorin was feeling rather exasperated by the whole argument, and was heartily amused when he managed to slip around the pair of bickering sibling and simply stroll up the gangplank and onto the Interceptor. He paused for just a moment, closing his eyes to feel the rise and fall of the deck, to listen to the creaking of wood and the wind through the rigging. She was a young ship, he was certain, and she would be very fast indeed at full sail with a light load. He approached the wheel, running his hand along the railing until he reached it, and then he gripped the handles, testing the ease of the steering and the willingness of the ship.

She was an eager thing, and wilful. There was a bright, trembling sort of excitement in the air for anyone bothering to pay enough attention to feel it. An inexperienced Captain at the helm of this ship would have a good deal of trouble, Thorin decided, a hint of a smile playing at his lips. “You must be bored, sitting here at dock like this,” he murmured into the empty air.

“You have no idea.”

“I believe I have some. I’m not happy on shore, either,” Thorin replied, turning his head towards the source of the new voice.

A small figure was sitting perched on the railing, with the height of a child despite being proportioned like a fully grown adult, all tanned and weathered skin and wind-tossed tawny curls, both on her head and on her large bare feet. As Thorin had predicted, she had a young, impish face, and she was dressed in a simple loose white shirt, a green jacket, and short dark brown trousers. “You can hear me?” the little spirit asked in surprise.

“I can,” Thorin confirmed, dipping his head in both acknowledgement and respect. “Has no one been able to before?” There was a hint of judgement in his tone as he asked that.

“Nope, not ever,” the spirit confirmed cheerfully enough.

“Then you have a poor crew indeed.” Thorin had little enough patience for the navy, but for those of them that didn’t even care for their ships he reserved a special kind of scorn.

The spirit shrugged, evidently unbothered by her crew’s lack of perception. “They’re not bad, just a bit dim. Big Folk,” she announced as if that explained everything, giving another small philosophical shrug as if to say ‘what can you do about them?’ She paused, then gave Thorin a long, curious look. “Who’re you, then?” she wondered.

“I’m Captain Thorin Oakenshield, at your service,” Thorin replied, bowing his head respectfully.

“At my service. I like the sound of that,” the spirit declared, sitting straighter and lifting her head with a proud grin. “I’m Pippin, but all the Big Folk call me The Interceptor.” There was a distinct flair of drama in her tone as she announced her epithet, and it put a melancholy smile on Thorin’s face, reminiscent as it was of his youngest nephew.

He shook the mood off before Pippin could notice. “With good reason, I hear.”

“I am the fastest ship in the fleet,” Pippin confirmed, hopping down off the railing and bouncing over to stand by Thorin’s side. She came up to Thorin’s ribs, the top of her head only a little higher than his elbow. “Are you going to be my new Captain?”

Thorin opened his mouth to respond, but before he could, the two guards came charging onto the ship, brandishing their muskets with clear aggression. “Hey! You!” The darker-haired one, Boromir, yelled angrily. “You don’t have permission to be aboard this ship!”

At Thorin’s elbow, Pippin snickered. “I suppose that answers that question, then.”

Thorin had to bite his cheek to keep from smiling. “I’m terribly sorry, it’s just such a pretty boat-”

“Oi!” Pippin protested.

“Ship,” Thorin corrected himself, to which Pippin nodded smugly.

“I am, aren’t I?” she asked the air, clearly not requiring a response.

The two marines shared a long look of exasperation and wariness, before they turned back to Thorin with suspicion written all over their faces. “What’s your name?” The fairer one, Faramir, demanded, gesturing at Thorin with his musket.

“Smith,” Thorin informed him blandly, “or Smithy, if you prefer.”

It was obvious from the looks on their faces that they didn’t believe him for one second, but perhaps they sensed that Thorin was not one to easily be bullied, because they dropped the issue. “What’s your business in Port Royal, ‘Mr Smith’?” Boromir asked, scepticism lacing his voice.

“And lets skip the lies, this time?” Faramir added dryly.

Thorin considered that, then shrugged. “Alright, I confess. It’s my intention to commandeer one of these ships; pick up a crew in Tortuga; raid, pillage, plunder, and otherwise pilfer my weasely black guts out.” This little tirade had Pippin doubled over with laughter, or perhaps it was the incredulous and slightly disturbed looks on the marines’ faces that had provoked her mirth.

“I said no lies,” Faramir declared irritably.

Boromir, on the other hand, was looking at Thorin with eyes narrowed in suspicion. He tipped his head a little closer to Faramir as he said, slowly, “I think he’s telling the truth, brother…” Thorin raised his eyebrows at that, disconcerted and a little impressed despite himself.

“If he was telling the truth, he wouldn’t have told us.” Faramir pointed out, disbelieving.

“Unless I knew you wouldn’t believe the truth, even if I told it to you.” Thorin pointed out, too amused by this conversation to bite his tongue, even if it might have been more helpful to stay quiet. There was a momentary pause, and then both marines readjusted their muskets to aim them more securely at Thorin.

The rows of navy sailors and the small crowd of dignified nobility watched on as red-coated officers marched about with muskets slung over the shoulders and drums and pipes playing keeping time for them. Legolas was less than impressed with the display of military posturing, but he did his best to appear engaged and impressed, for his father’s sake, if nothing else.

It did get slightly more interesting for Legolas when Tauriel finally appeared, looking very proud and dignified in her pristine blue and gold coat, her impressively long red hair tied back into practical braids to keep it out of her face in the wind. It was good to see his friend achieve something he knew she’d wanted for longer than he’d known her, and he smiled for her where she couldn’t, bound by all the solemn ritual of the ceremony as she was. Although the light in her eyes did give her away as she began the slow procession down the corridor made by her subordinates.

She stopped once she reached the steps where Thranduil was waiting and bowed shallowly to him. Thranduil bowed back, showing equal deference, which wasn’t something he usually granted people unless propriety strictly demanded it. Then Thranduil turned and retrieved the sword he’d commissioned. Legolas had examined it in the carriage on the way to the fort, and though he knew little enough of metalwork, he’d spent enough time with Gimli that he knew a masterpiece when he saw one. But thoughts of Gimli woke a storm of emotion in Legolas that he didn’t have the time or inclination to try and untangle just then, so he pushed them aside to focus on his friend.

Thranduil presented the sword to Tauriel, and there were some words exchanged, bits and pieces of script so standard that Legolas didn’t bother to listen to them. Then, finally, everyone was allowed to break ranks and mingle as the ceremony ended and the celebration began. A string quartet set up off to the side, and Legolas immediately went to join his father and Tauriel, paying very careful attention to where he put his feet, especially on his way up the stairs, so that he didn’t trip over the hem of his stupid clothes.

“Congratulations, Tauriel,” he said upon reaching them.

Tauriel smiled brightly in response, but somehow, it didn’t quite reach her eyes. “Thank you. It’s a great honour.”

“One you’re well worthy of, I’m sure,” Legolas replied, to which Tauriel blushed and refused to meet his eyes, oddly enough. “Is everything alright, Tauriel?” he asked. “Only, you seem…”

“Excuse me,” Thranduil interjected, gracefully removing himself from the conversation and turning to leave. Before he did, however, he laid a hand on Tauriel’s shoulder, and murmured “do remember what we discussed,” so quietly Legolas suspected he wasn’t meant to hear. Then he was gone, and Legolas was left staring at Tauriel in confusion.

“Walk with me?” Tauriel requested stiffly, gesturing towards the battlements, and away from the crowds of people.

“If I must,” Legolas sighed. He was fairly sure his father would reappear just to scold him if he did anything as undignified as hiking his clothes up like a woman might lift her skirts, but it was the only way he could move around with any confidence. Still, he only stumbled a couple of times, and Tauriel didn’t seem to notice at all, lost in her own thoughts as she was. “What’s all this about, Tauriel?” Legolas pressed as he followed her up the steps that led right to the edge of the battlements.

Tauriel sighed heavily. “There’s no point in beating around the bush,” she declared, coming to a stop looking out over the impressive view of the bay. Legolas went to join her, minding his step carefully, so close to such a precipitous drop. “Your father has requested that I… that is-… Oh, fuck it. He’s told me in no uncertain terms that he will cease supporting my career if I don’t marry you by the end of the year.”

“He WHAT?!” Legolas yelped, head jerking up to stare at her in abject horror.

That, it turned out, was a mistake. With his attention on his friend and not on his feet, his toes caught once again in the hem of his robes, and this time, he had nothing to catch himself on. “Shit-!” he swore, heart in his throat, as he lost his balance and toppled forwards. Instead of stone rushing up to meet him, he found himself staring into open space and the bright sapphire blue of the ocean glittering in the sunlight far below him. He had a bare second or two in which to panic, the wind tearing away his breath as the water rushed up alarmingly quickly, until it swallowed up his vision completely. Then he hit the water, and everything went black.

Chapter Text

A loud splash broke the stand off between Thorin and the two marines. They all – Pippin included – turned towards the sound. The disturbance was clearly at the base of the cliff that supported the fort, and from the top, sounding small with the distance, came a shout; “Legolas!” Looking up, Thorin saw a figure in a blue coat with long red hair being held back from the edge by another person in navy blue.

Thorin looked at the two marines, who had rushed, pale-faced, to the edge of the ship when they heard the shout, then glanced at Pippin with raised eyebrows, silently asking her to explain this strange behaviour. Pippin looked just as worried as the two marines, twisting her fingers together and bouncing on the balls of her feet in agitation. “Legolas is the Lord Greenwood’s son,” she explained. “Do you think he’s alright? Only, that’s a great big height to fall from…!”

The marines were still dithering about by the railing. “Won’t you be saving him, then?” Thorin asked them, unimpressed.

“Never learnt to swim,” Boromir admitted, shame-faced.

Faramir’s own expression darkened. “Father insisted it was bad luck.”

Thorin snorted in derision, and began shrugging out of his coat and kicking off his boots. “Pride of the King’s Navy you are,” he scoffed, and the two of them at least had the grace to look properly abashed. He tossed his coat to Boromir, then deposited hat and weapons belt in Faramir’s arms. “Do not loose these,” he instructed in a growl. Both of them nodded at once, and held onto their new burdens more securely.

Hauling himself up onto the railings, Thorin barely paused before pushing off into dive. Cool, clear, infinitely blue water closed around him, white bubbles streaming past his face and tickling at his skin. As they faded, escaping to the surface, Thorin looked around, and spotted a flash of gold and green, incongruous in the blue and beige of the water and sandy seabed. He swam towards it, and the shape resolved itself into a person, a young man with long blonde hair and a mess of green and gold fabric swirling about him and weighing him down.

Thorin caught Legolas about the waist and pushed off the seabed to propel them towards the surface. It didn’t work as well as he’d hoped. Whatever the lordling was wearing was stupidly heavy when waterlogged, and Thorin had no patience for any of it. He paused just long enough to rip the offending outer layers off the idiot boy, and then resumed his push for the surface. It was much easier now that he wasn’t carrying all of that useless symbol of wealth.

Legolas began to stir before they reached the surface, and for a moment, Thorin worried that his panicked thrashing would do one or both of them serious injury. But then their heads broke the surface and Legolas began to cough and gasp. Thorin himself was sucking in lungfuls of air with a touch more dignity. He didn’t wait for Legolas to finish hacking up whatever water he might have breathed in before swimming for the pier, where Boromir and Faramir helpfully reached down to catch the lordling’s arms and haul him up, leaving Thorin to his own devices.

Legolas allowed the two marines to support him only long enough to get his feet under him, still breathing raggedly and coughing on every other breath. Thorin followed him up under his own power and sat against one of the supports to wring out his socks and get his boots back on. He felt vulnerable enough without them that he’d put up with the feeling of damp socks squishing in dry boots. He had just finished that, and set about trying to wring out some of the water in his hair, when he became aware that he was being watched by Legolas. He looked up and raised an eyebrow.

“Thank you,” Legolas said, with painful sincerity. Thorin barely heard him, his attention caught by a flash of gold and silver on the lordling’s chest. There was a pendant lying against his breast, a locket that seemed to shine despite the lack of direct sunlight, and the glimmer and gleam of it was so sweet and pure Thorin felt he could almost hear it singing.

Heart thundering in his chest, Thorin wrenched his eyes away from the locket to stare in confused horror at Legolas. For his part, Legolas looked more like a child caught in wrong-doing than the adult he evidently was, guilt showing clearly on his face. “Where did you get that?” Thorin demanded, and it came out low and angry with the fear and acute remorse that was pounding through him in time with his pulse.

Before Legolas could answer, a stream of navy soldiers were pouring onto the dock, lead by a woman with long red hair and a very fancy coat. She spared Legolas a glance full of concern, but on seeing that he was okay, if pale and shaken, she immediately focused her attention on Thorin. She put herself quite deliberately between Thorin and Legolas, her sword held at the ready.

“Legolas!” The sharp, desperate call had said man turning, just in time to be caught up in the arms of someone who could only be his father, the Lord Greenwood. They had the same long blond hair, the same cheekbones and jaw-line and surprisingly dark eyebrows. “Legolas, are you well?” the Lord asked, fretting in the most dignified manner Thorin had ever seen.

“I’m fine, father, really.” Legolas assured him, gripping Lord Greenwood’s arm and squeezing comfortingly. “Thanks to this man. Tauriel, don’t threaten my rescuer, please,” he added with cheerfulness that was only slightly forced.

The woman lowered her sword. “My apologies,” she said to Thorin, although her gaze was still mistrustful.

“You have my thanks, Mr…?” Lord Greenwood said, stepping forwards to face Thorin, although he kept one arm around his son’s shoulders all the while.

“Smith,” Thorin replied stiffly. “I only did what anyone would do.”

Lord Greenwood smiled, and held out his hand to Thorin. “Still, you saved my son’s life, and thus you have my deepest gratitude.” A little disarmed, and even more wary in his confusion, Thorin shook the man’s hand. Still smiling, Lord Greenwood yanked him forwards and pushed up the sleeve of Thorin’s cotton shirt. The newly bared skin revealed the tattoo of a crescent shaped shield decorated with the crest of an acorn framed by two oak leaves, and the shiny white brand scar in the shape of the letter ‘P’.

Tauriel’s sword was immediately pointed at him again. “Pirate,” she hissed through gritted teeth, her eyes blazing with righteous wrath.

“Had a brush with the East India Trading Company, did we?” Lord Greenwood asked coldly, no longer smiling. Thorin yanked his hand back with a snarl, which only resulted in the other marines pointing their muskets at him. “We all know what fate awaits pirates, don’t we?”

“No! Don’t you dare!” Pippin yelled down from above, where she was leaning over the railings of the Interceptor, shaking her fist at Lord Greenwood.

Of course, no one but Thorin could hear her, so things down on the dock proceeded without interruption. “Keep your guns on him, men. Melpomaen, fetch some irons,” Tauriel instructed briskly. Then she cast a disdainful look at the tattoo on Thorin’s arm. “Thorin Oakenshield, isn’t it?” She asked with a hint of a sneer.

“Captain Thorin Oakenshield,” Thorin corrected with a snarl of his own.

“To be a captain, you first need a ship to be captain of,” Tauriel replied, looking around with deliberate and false curiosity. “I don’t see any ship of yours here, Captain.” The last word was bitten out with a deep anger underneath the mocking that in any other circumstance, Thorin might have been curious about. This seemed strangely personal for a woman he was certain he’d never met before.

“I’d rather be his ship than yours!” Pippin hollered in the background.

That might have made Thorin smile, except Tauriel’s words were a sharp ache in his chest; a reminder of the fact that the Black Pearl wasn’t here, and it was his own damned fault he hadn’t stepped foot on his beloved ship in nigh on a decade. Not that he was going to say any of that aloud, of course. “I’m in the market,” he said with straight-faced challenge.

“He said he’d come to commandeer one, Commodore, sir.” Faramir spoke up hesitantly.

Beside him, his brother elbowed him. “Told you he was telling the truth,” he muttered under his breath. Faramir rolled his eyes and elbowed him back, which had Boromir biting back a smile. When the Lord Greenwood turned his icy stare on them, Boromir abruptly sobered, and reached down to pick up Thorin’s hat and weapons belt. “These are his, m’lord,” he said crisply.

Lord Greenwood looked over Thorin’s only remaining possessions with a disregard that made Thorin want to punch him. That feeling doubled in strength when he reached out and lifted Thorin’s pistol, handling it with a surprisingly expert touch. “No additional shot, nor powder…” he drawled, amused and unimpressed in equal measure.

He replaced the gun in Boromir’s hold and moved on to the next item attached to Thorin’s belt; his compass. This time, Thorin did jerk forward with the intent to harm the arrogant bastard, but before he could get close, Tauriel’s sword was at his throat and biting into the soft skin above his collarbone. He froze. “Give me an excuse,” she dared him, and Thorin leaned back slowly. The sword was not retracted.

Lord Greenwood continued in his examination of Thorin’s belongings as if he had absolutely no reason to worry about Thorin’s desire to cause him serious pain. “A compass that doesn’t point north…” he mused derisively, dropping the compass back among Thorin’s things with a disregard that set Thorin’s blood boiling with rage. His hands drifted over to the hilt of Thorin’s sword, and he drew it half way out of it’s scabbard. “And I half expected it to be made of wood,” he scoffed. “Hardly the most inspiring pirate legend.”

Thorin’s lip curled in a victorious parody of a smile. “By your own words, I am a legend,” he riposted smugly, and enjoyed the flicker of genuine anger that flashed across the Lord’s face.

“Take him away,” Lord Greenwood instructed sharply.

Tauriel obeyed at once, reaching forward to grab Thorin by the arm and manhandle him towards the shore. Thorin dug his heels in, refusing to go willingly, but the blade of someone’s musket prodding him in the back convinced him to move. His eyes flickered from side to side, searching for an escape, but there was nothing. Nothing except the Lord’s son, who shrugged out from under his father’s arm to hurry after Tauriel, not a care for his waterlogged underclothes being his only attire. “Tauriel! Tauriel, you cannot mean to go along with this!”

“Cuff him,” Tauriel instructed. The marine who’d been sent to fetch cuffs yanked Thorin’s arms in front of him, and applied the cuffs without much care for how the edges of the metal cuffs scratched Thorin’s skin. Thorin endured this with ill grace, but endure it he did, because an idea was beginning to come together in his mind.

Legolas placed himself very deliberately between Thorin and Tauriel. “Pirate or not, this man saved my life!” he cried, reaching towards Tauriel in a silent plea for her to listen. She only pressed her lips together and refused to meet Legolas’s gaze.

“One good deed is not enough to redeem a man of a lifetime of wickedness, Legolas, which is a lesson I thought I had taught you long ago,” Lord Greenwood declared icily, glaring at his son.

Legolas glared right back. “And yet a greater lesson I learned is to give chances to those whom society otherwise deems undeserving,” he retorted. Tauriel jerked back at that, drawing in a sharp breath as all the anger in her eyes turned to uncertainty.

“That is hardly the same,” Lord Greenwood snapped.

The cuffs snapped closed on Thorin’s wrists, and any further argument the Lord might have had was cut off as Thorin swung around and looped the chain of his cuffs around Legolas’s throat. The lordling gasped, and tensed in a manner that told Thorin he was preparing to struggle. Thorin pulled the chain taut against his neck, hard enough to bruise and make breathing difficult. Reluctantly, Legolas let his shoulders drop, although he remained as tense as a bowstring.

“Hold your fire!” Tauriel barked immediately.

“I thought this might be the only language you’d understand,” Thorin said darkly. He met the searing glare of the Lord Greenwood with challenge in his own gaze, daring the man to test him. Lord Greenwood’s hands curled into fists at his sides, white-knuckled and trembling, but that was the only move he made. Satisfied, Thorin turned his eyes to Tauriel. “My affects, Commodore, if you please.” Though his words were polite, his tone made it very clear it wasn’t a request.

Tauriel waved Boromir forwards, and he came, carrying Thorin’s things in his arms. “Legolas- It is Legolas, isn’t it?” Thorin asked, and Legolas nodded stiffly. “If you’d be so kind.” Boromir hesitated, Thorin growled, and Legolas reached out to take the things from him. Reluctantly, Boromir passed them over. Thorin immediately took up his gun and aimed it at Legolas’s head as he turned, eyes blazing, to begin reattaching Thorin’s things to his person. Surprisingly, although Thorin saw plenty of frustration and bitterness and even a hint of fear, there was less anger than he’d expected.

Less than he’d expected, but not none. “You have no honour,” Legolas hissed at him as he pulled the weapon’s belt a little too tight.

Thorin gave him a dryly unimpressed look and shrugged. “I saved your life, now you’ve saved mine. We’re square,” he said with an air of magnanimous condescension that was ruined somewhat by the clipped, bitter edge to his tone.

Legolas did not have a rebuttal for that. He simply gritted his teeth and pressed Thorin’s hat back on his head with a little more force than was necessary. Once Thorin was satisfied that at least most of his things had been returned to him – he did want his coat back, but even he knew demanding that would be impractical – he spun Legolas around again to face his father and the Commodore.

“Gentlemen,” Thorin began, then nodded his head to Tauriel in acknowledgement, “m’lady.” She only gritted her teeth and snarled at him. “You will always remember this as the day that you almost caught Captain Thorin Oakenshield.” With that said, Thorin lifted his arms, freeing Legolas, and shoved him towards his father and the Commodore, who predictably moved to catch him when he stumbled, giving Thorin time to turn and flee.

He darted around the corner, caught the rope of one of the loading cranes, and kicked out at the mechanism that controlled it. With the winch unlatched, the canon that had been hauled aloft came plummeting down towards the docks, yanking Thorin upwards and out of the grasp of the pursuing marines.

On reaching the top, he reached out and caught hold of another rope, which pulled taut under his weight and set the crane to swinging in a wide ponderous arc that nevertheless felt far too fast to Thorin, swinging wildly on the rope as he was. Things got infinitely worse when he heard the Lord Greenwood’s voice below him, faint with distance and the wind in his ears, but still audible; “Well? Shoot him!” The Commodore responded by ordering her men to open fire on him.

Amidst the hail of bullets, and on his third circuit around the crane, Thorin managed to find purchase on another, smaller crane. He wobbled alarmingly as he released his hold on the rope, but managed just barely to keep his balance. A long securing rope caught his eye and he grinned savagely. Slinging the chain of his cuffs over the rope and catching hold of it in the opposite hand, Thorin muttered a quick prayer to the Maker, then launched himself off the top of the crane.

It was exhilarating, and terrifying, careening wildly down the rope while the marines raced along the pier below him. They weren’t fast enough, and Thorin’s boots hit the wood well ahead of them, at a speed that almost had him tripping over himself as he tried to force his feet to keep up. Another round of bullets were fired in his direction as he left the pier and ran along cobblestone roads, but most of those that didn’t go wide were deflected by the stacks of cargo and other obstructions that Thorin took full advantage of. He ducked under those few that might otherwise have hit him, and vanished into the bustling streets of Port Royal proper.

Behind him, Tauriel cursed under her breath before barking orders at the clusters of marines that were milling about, uncertain how to proceed now that their quarry had vanished. “After him, men!” she snapped. “I won’t have a pirate loose in this port, not under my watch! Find him.”

“Tighten security on the docks; I won’t have this pirate slipping away again,” Thranduil instructed. “Captain Oakenshield has a dawn appointment with the gallows. I would hate for him to miss it.” Tauriel straightened and snapped a salute. Most of the marines would have missed it, but she and Legolas both heard the threat veiled behind those words. If Oakenshield wasn’t found before the day was out, someone – most likely Tauriel – was going to suffer the Lord’s wrath.

“You heard him, men! I want Oakenshield in custody before the sun goes down!” Tauriel ordered, and the rest of her men leapt to obey in something of a panic. She herself started off down the docks, but she was still close enough to hear the conversation between Thranduil and his son.

“Legolas, you should see a physician about your neck, and everything else that’s happened today. I would hate for you to get sick on top of everything else you’ve been through.” His tone was so much softer than he ever usually let it get in public, genuine concern for his son shining through.

Legolas, it seemed, wasn’t in the mood to accept that. “I’m fine, father,” he dismissed sharply, though his tone sounded oddly fragile. “I think… I think I just want to go home,” he admitted.

“Then we shall go straight home,” Thranduil agreed at once, although Tauriel knew him well enough to know that the physician would be paying a house call to the Greenwood Manor before the day was out. Tauriel went to join her men, doing her best not to dwell on the fact that she had not done as Thranduil doubtlessly wished, and seduced Legolas into marrying her, but had bluntly told him the truth, which he would no doubt rail against on principle alone.

She would be in trouble for that, and for all that she had made a name for herself as an exemplary officer in His Majesty’s Royal Navy, if Thranduil withdrew his support, she didn’t doubt that her career would be over in a heartbeat. She would have to catch Oakenshield, and hope that that success was enough to distract from her other failure.

Chapter Text

As evening drew on, it became harder and harder for Thorin to avoid the marines. They were everywhere, and getting more and more determined to catch him the longer he evaded them. There were patrols jogging through the streets, marines posted at every dock and checking every ship, more officers questioning residents and putting up wanted posters. Thorin was reduced to less and less dignified hiding places as he made his careful way through the city, looking for somewhere to lie low for the night or somewhere to get the cuffs off his wrists.

Thankfully, he was so far only reduced to hiding behind barrels, rather than in them, but even that indignity was enough to grate. The current wave of patrols stomped past, not even bothering to check behind the stack of barrels, and Thorin straightened, eyeing their retreating backs warily. Tugging his tunic straight, he kept his head down and rounded a corner, trying to blend in with the crowd. To his great relief, he spotted a blacksmith’s only a few stores away, and quickened his steps. A group of marines appeared at the far corner just as Thorin pushed into the workshop and shut the door firmly behind him.

He paused just inside to catch his breath and assess his new surroundings. The workshop appeared, at first glance to be empty. A wagon sat in a clear space, away from the large machinery that, while well cared for and surprisingly good quality, were old and obviously very worn. The workbench was a typical organised mess, and the forge was lit but obviously hadn’t been stoked in a while. Thorin approached, scanning the tools for pliers or cutters large enough to deal with the thick chain between his manacles.

Before he could spy anything, a clatter came from deeper within the store. Thorin whirled about on his heel, heart in his throat, and saw a man in a blacksmith’s apron snoozing in a very uncomfortable position across a couple of barrels, surrounded by empty liquor bottles. Approaching warily, Thorin watched him snore for a few moments, then picked up the half-full bottle that had slipped from the man’s hand. One sniff of the contents had him wrinkling his nose and setting the stuff aside.

After contemplating the man for a moment, Thorin turned away in disgust. If he woke the man with his work, well, it shouldn’t be too hard to overpower him, even in shackles. That left him with the rest of the workshop to contemplate, and the impressive array of tools and finished swords lying about. It had been a long time since Thorin had last worked a forge, but his memories didn’t abandon him.

The first thing he tried was a saw, but the angle was awkward, and it would take far too long. Then his eye caught on the machinery, and he started to smile as an idea formed in his mind. The donkey that turned the great wheels was a docile and obedient beast, and it didn’t take much encouragement to get it moving. Thorin then reached up on tiptoe to loop his chains over one of the teeth of the largest horizontal cog and let the power of the machine do the work for him.

The plan worked beautifully, and he landed back on his heels feeling particularly smug.

His moment of triumph was ruined when he heard the stomp and clatter of someone approaching and unlocking the back door. A quick assessment told him he wouldn’t reach the front door in time, so instead he hid behind the towering bulk of the forge and spied on the newcomer as best he could.

The man that stepped inside was broad shouldered, board-chested, and stocky, powerful and solid in both appearance and presence. His skin was a dark tan and slightly freckled, and his hair and beard were red and wild. The resemblance to a man Thorin had once wronged was like a punch in the gut, and he remained frozen as the young man – definitely young, despite the impressive beard he was sporting – strode into the workshop and set about halting the donkey and thus the machines.

Once the donkey was still, and all the gears had ground to a halt, the young man looked up and about himself with confusion. His first suspicious glance was reserved for the only other – obvious – occupant of the room, the drunken man. The red-head snorted when he spotted him, and grumbled “right where I left you,” in a tone of such wry exasperation that Thorin could only assume it was a daily occurrence. Then the young man scanned his workspace, and Thorin winced even before the red-head narrowed his eyes and honed in on the misplaced saw sitting incriminatingly next to Thorin’s hat. “Not where I left you.” The man concluded.

Stupid, Thorin cursed himself, as the lad’s eyes drifted from the saw to the hat, his eyes narrowing in thought. There was really only one way out of this now, and though Thorin was loathe to draw attention to himself, he was not one to baulk at a fight, even an unfair one. As the red-head’s fingers brushed his hat, he stepped out of the shadows, drawing his sword and tapping the flat of it against the back of the boy’s hand in a single motion.

The red-head flinched away from the cold metal, head snapping up to stare at Thorin in alarm. He looked painfully young to Thorin in that moment, but that didn’t last long. In the next second, his expression had hardened into a scowl, and the resemblance to old Glóin Fireforged was more pronounced than ever. The idea that there was a connection rooted itself in Thorin’s brain, despite his attempts to dismiss it – Glóin’s family were still in England, last Thorin knew, and far too poor to afford the crossing – and he resigned himself to at least attempting not to harm the boy.

Gimli spared a moment to ask the Maker what he had done to offend, because surely having a day this bad could only be the result of cosmic interference. First, in his clumsy attempt to save Legolas from harm, he’d only ended up causing it himself, then he’d heard news that Legolas had nearly drowned, only to be promptly held hostage by a pirate. Of course, there’d been no way for him to ascertain Legolas’s health for himself, so he’d been left to fret for the rest of the day.

And now he had a pirate in his workshop. A pirate that by all accounts, he realised, matched the description of Legolas’s assailant. He set his jaw, a slow building rage starting to burn in his chest, and planted his feet, refusing to back down in front of the man that had threatened Legolas’s life. “You’re the pirate they’re looking for,” he declared roughly, challengingly.

“That I am,” the pirate agreed nonchalantly. Then he tiled his head, considering Gimli with evident confusion. “Have I threatened you before, or are you one of those people that hates pirates on principle?” The last word came out a mocking sneer, but Gimli didn’t pay that much heed.

“Not me,” Gimli corrected through gritted teeth. Despite the steel hovering near his throat, he took the risk of moving, darting sideways away from the pirate’s blade and towards one of his own. Once he had the battleaxe in hand, he swung it up, just in time to block the sword’s descent towards his throat again. “You threatened Master Greenwood.”

The pirate rolled his eyes.

Gimli was going to kill him. He exploded into movement, swinging his axe – not his favourite but one of the better ones he’d made – fast and hard for the pirate’s neck. The pirate defended himself admirably, and struck back with equal fervour, a hard, assessing light in his eyes. He was skilled, Gimli would give him that, and carried his cutlass with the long familiarity of a veteran of many battles. Gimli, in turn, was a self-taught blacksmith, skilled but by no means experienced.

The clashed back and forth across the open space of the workshop, which was not all that much, but it served their purposes well enough. “You know what you’re doing with that thing,” the pirate remarked in a momentary lull. “Self-taught?” He wondered, and Gimli bristled.

“Yes,” he growled, and attacked again, driving the pirate onto the defensive.

To Gimli’s eternal frustration, it didn’t appear to unsettle the pirate, and he recovered well, using Gimli’s anger to turn the tables and push Gimli back again. “Mind that hot head of yours. Anger only makes you sloppy,” he warned, which was good advice, and only served to annoy Gimli further.

He lunged, the pirate sidestepped, spun around him, and whapped him on the back of the head with the flat of his blade, sending Gimli stumbling. He turned, all his anger turning inward at his own foolish, rookie mistake. He let his enemy goad him, and he paid for it. The pirate, however, didn’t seem inclined to gloat. He just studied Gimli for a moment, then bowed his head in an oddly respectful gesture. Gimli was left a little dumbfounded as the pirate sheathed his sword and turned towards the door. Gimli drew in breath, reminded himself to remain calm, to remain focused, then threw his axe.

It spun, hilt over blade, flashing past the pirate’s ear to thud into the door above the wooden bar holding it closed. An inch and a half of the blade disappeared into the wood, biting deep. The pirate whipped around to stare at him, and Gimli tried not to look too smug. It was an effort not to chuckle when the pirate grabbed the handle and tried to wrench the axe free. Gimli had a blacksmith’s arms, which wasn’t even to mention all the hair-raising adventures Legolas had gotten him into over the years that had turned his raw strength into hard-won muscle. There was no way that axe was coming free without some serious strength, and probably a lot of patience, too.

“Impressive,” the pirate complimented, turning on his heel to face Gimli again. His voice wasn’t any different from before, when he’d been coaching Gimli on his fighting, but there was something about the way he held himself now that made Gimli think he was more angry than he let on. “Except now you’re once again standing between me and freedom, and now you have no weapon,” he explained, prowling back the way he’d come, towards Gimli and the workshop’s back door.

Gimli responded by repeating the move he’d pulled before. Dodging backwards this time, he snatched up a shortsword and another axe, this one with a shorter handle and larger blade. Not so good for throwing, but much better for cutting through tough leather, or even bone. The pirate raised an eyebrow, and the fight resumed.

“You can fight with a sword as well,” the pirate remarked, sounding impressed, “but surely even in a marine port, there’s no call for quite so many weapons.” He glanced around, at the pieces Gimli had poured his soul into not because anyone had paid him, but because he wanted to. “Certainly not for axes.” The pirate fended off Gimli’s next attack, but paused instead of pushing his advantage. “That’s a weapon much more fit for a pirate.”

Gimli refused to rise to the bait again, and fought with his temper. “The axe is an honest, versatile weapon. That hardly sounds like something a pirate could make use of,” he shot back, and saw that his own barb had hit home. He followed it up with a much more physical attack.

“You make them just to hang them on the wall, then?” the pirate demanded scathingly. “An unused weapon is no weapon at all.”

Gimli bared his teeth in an expression caught half way between a grin and a snarl. “Who says they haven’t been used?” he demanded, spinning out of the way of another attack and finding himself alarmingly close to his machinery. The next clash of steel on steel startled the donkey, and it leapt into motion, pulling at it’s harness even as it trotted the circle it was bound to. As if the fight hadn’t been perilous enough already, Gimli was suddenly hyper-aware of just how many moving parts his rig had, and how many places he could loose a limb if he were careless.

“You can’t have used all of them.” The pirate seemed unconcerned at the sudden new dangers, and pushed Gimli backwards until they were among the turning axles and grinding gears.

“Every last one,” Gimli confirmed. “I practice with them three hours a day.”

The pirate gave him a dubious, almost pitying look. “You need to get out more,” he decided, “find a new hobby, or perhaps a lass.” Gimli bristled at that, disliking both the words and the patronising tone the pirate was using, as though Gimli was somehow unworthy of his skill. He redoubled his attack, holding tight to the reigns of his temper and refusing to let the pirate goad him into being reckless.

“I’d expect nothing less from a pirate,” he growled. The pirate rolled his eyes in disgust, which Gimli thought was pretty damn rich, coming from him. “Women are more than just a source of entertainment when you’re bored, but I wouldn’t expect a pirate to have any respect for another person, man or woman,” he scathed.

The pirate didn’t respond. At least, he didn’t until after he’d stepped forward, got his blade under Gimli’s guard, and twisted his blade around Gimli’s until Gimli was forced to let go of it or injure himself. “Oh, I see,” the pirate mocked as Gimli forced him to back off with a swing of his axe. “You’re feeling defensive because you’ve already found yourself a lass, but you’ve no idea how to woo her.”

Gimli wasn’t sure if that taunt made him want to laugh or rage. Legolas was certainly no lass, and the comparison was very amusing, but he couldn’t deny that even if he’d wanted to – which he did, but only when he wasn’t worrying about what the rest of the world would do to them for it – he wouldn’t have any idea how to woo him. It wasn’t as if Gimli, a poor blacksmith’s apprentice with no family, no past, and very little future, had anything to offer the son of a Lord. He settled for saying, “you’re wrong,” and snatching up another sword to replace the one he’d lost so that he could push the pirate back.

The fight had lasted too long already, and Gimli was tiring. The pirate was flagging too, and Gimli knew that sooner or later, one of them would make a mistake, would move too slowly, and the fight would be over. He gritted his teeth and stubbornly ignored the growing weariness in his muscles, determined not to loose to a pirate.

Of course, all the determination in the world didn’t help him when the pirate, obviously recognising the same thing Gimli had, tossed a bag of sand in Gimli’s face. He screwed his eyes shut and threw up his arms to defend his face, but some still got in his mouth and up his nose, causing him to cough and splutter. He blinked his eyes open as soon as he could, skin prickling at the danger of being blind around an enemy, but found it was too late.

The pirate had a gun levelled at Gimli’s face. “Cheat,” Gimli accused in a growl.

He got a sardonic look in response. “There’s no such thing as cheating in a fight for your life,” the pirate informed him solemnly. Then he twitched the gun sideways for a moment. “Move.” It was only then that Gimli realised that, despite all the leaping about they’d been doing, he was still between the pirate and the door.

“No.” Gimli lifted his chin and planted his feet, glaring defiance at the pirate.

This almost seemed to amuse the pirate, until someone knocked on the front door and called out in an officious voice that they were the navy, and needed to search the property for the fugitive pirate. Said pirate grimaced and cocked his gun. “Get out of the way,” he ordered.

“I’ll not stand aside and let you escape,” Gimli declared.

Bitterly desperate frustration twisted the pirate’s face and his finger tightened on the trigger, but he didn’t pull it. The marines outside started banging on the door, clearly trying to force entry, and by the fury he could see in the pirate’s eyes, Gimli was pretty sure he was about to die.

Instead, to his complete surprise, the pirate lowered his weapon, eyes closed as if the action caused him physical pain. “Damn you,” he muttered. Gimli just blinked, too bewildered to manage anything else. There was an almighty crash as the marines finally broke through the door, but the pirate didn’t react beyond a sneer twisting his lips. Somewhere behind Gimli, his master woke with a grunt and flailed his way upright, demanding to know what was going on.

Within seconds, the marines had the pirate surrounded, muskets all pointed directly at him. One of them snapped a new pair of shackles around his wrists, above the broken old ones, and Legolas’s friend, Tauriel, strode into the shop. She swept her eyes over the scene, then offered the pirate a sweetly sharp smile. “It seems you’ll always remember this as the day that Captain Thorin Oakenshield almost escaped,” she said to him.

The pirate, Thorin Oakenshield apparently, glowered at her, but otherwise offered no response. After a miniature stand-off, Tauriel gestured for the marines to take him away, and Thorin only gave token resistance as they dragged him out of the smithy. Gimli watched him go, frowning, still mightily confused by his behaviour before the marines arrived.

“What was that pirate doing here, Mr Durinson?” Tauriel asked crisply, startling Gimli.

Gimli turned to her, still frowning. “Don’t know. I got back and found him here.”

“Why was the door barred?” Tauriel demanded.

Gimli narrowed his eyes. “He was trying to escape, so I stopped him.”

“And that’s why we found the two of you standing here having a conversation?” Tauriel pressed.

Had this been the pirates plan, Gimli wondered bitterly; if he couldn’t escape capture, to at least take Gimli down with him? He would believe it of a pirate, but it didn’t fit with the way Thorin had been behaving as he lowered his gun. “Oh, aye, I make a habit of standing around chatting with weapons in my hands.” Gimli growled sarcastically.

“Why weren’t you using them?” Tauriel asked.

“Because the bastard pulled a gun on me!” Gimli exclaimed, exasperated beyond measure. Tauriel raised an eyebrow at him, but Gimli only set his jaw and glared, refusing to back down an inch. Eventually, Tauriel nodded acceptingly, then turned on her heel and strode out of the smithy. Gimli watched her go, vibrating with frustration.

He wasn’t given long to indulge his temper, though, because within moments, his master was demanding he clean up the forge and get back to work. Gimli obeyed, because that was what apprentices did, and by the time the place had been put to rights, his temper had cooled. He was left only with his confusion. Why had the pirate lowered his gun, when he’d been one shot away from freedom?

Chapter Text

Legolas’s bedroom was lit by the warm glow of the fire in the hearth, but the room’s occupant was in no mood to be soothed by the gentle ambiance. He paced up and down over the plush carpet in his nightshirt, turning the day over and over in his mind. It had been far more eventful than he’d expected when he woke that morning, and even though he suspected he should be bothered about the pirate, that man’s contradictory behaviour seemed insignificant compared to the actions of his father.

“Master Greenwood?” Galion called as he poked his head around the door. “Do you require any assistance?”

Startled, Legolas stared at him for a moment, then shook his head at himself and waved the manservant inside. “Just bank the fire, please,” he sighed. Galion did as asked, and then went on to fluff Legolas’s pillows and turn down his sheets. Legolas paid him no heed, assuming that his father had asked Galion to make absolutely sure that Legolas was comfortable, until Galion went from refreshing the glass of water Legolas kept by his bedside to straightening his wardrobe. “What are you doing?”

“Neatening up,” Galion replied, in such bland monotone that it was obvious he wanted Legolas to know that he was only saying what he’d been told to say.

“Does my father think I need someone to sit at my bedside like I’m a child?” Legolas demanded.

Galion stopped his fiddling to turn and consider Legolas with a frown. It made Legolas feel like the child he was protesting being treated like. “He’s worried about you, Young Master. He might not show it well, but you are your father’s entire world, and you nearly died twice today. I think he’s allowed to fret over your well-being, at least for an evening.”

“It’s not his worrying I have a problem with!” Legolas burst out, then turned his back on Galion in frustration.

There was a long-suffering sigh from behind him. “What has his Lordship done now?”

That made Legolas feel a little better, and his shoulders slumped. His tone still snapped in the air with his anger when he spoke, however. “He’s trying to set me up with Tauriel! He threatened her to make her propose to me!”

“His Lordship can be a bit heavy handed-” Galion began, but Legolas spoke over him, not interested in hearing about how his father was only thinking of his best interests. Despite Galion’s long service granting him more liberties with his employers than most servants boasted, he still knew not to speak over Legolas, even when he was interrupting, and pressed his lips together in silent disapproval.

“He knows I’d never agree to a loveless marriage, I thought that was why he hadn’t arranged something for me. And to Tauriel. He’s supported her career for over a decade, but he’d waste all that investment just to punish her if she doesn’t marry me? I don’t understand what he’s thinking! It’s not as though it’s a particularly advantageous marriage, anyway. I’m not good enough at politics to continue supporting her career like father does, and it will only cement my reputation as a wild, irresponsible boy not worthy of my father’s title, marrying a woman like her. And don’t even say he’s doing it to make me happy! Tauriel is like a sister to me, she’s been like a sister to me since I was ten, and that’s not going to change. So even if I were even half way interested in marrying some woman, it certainly wouldn’t-”

Legolas froze. His voice got stuck in his throat as he realised what he’d just said, and he closed his eyes as resigned embarrassment and a strange urge to laugh warred through him. After a long pause, he dared to open his eyes and look over at Galion.

The manservant was calmly folding a blanket and tucking it away. When he was done, he looked up and found Legolas watching him. He met Legolas’s gaze steadily for a heartbeat, then he reached out and began folding up one of the dressing gowns Legolas had left strewn about. “Have you thought, perhaps, that that might be why your father wants you to marry Tauriel?” he asked gently.

Legolas gaped at him. “I- No.” His voice was strangled, with outrage and hurt and a touch of alarm.

“It is something to consider, then,” Galion informed him mildly.

Legolas barely heard him. All his attention was turned inwards, to the rolling mess of emotion that had replaced his vital organs. He had only just managed to confront his feelings for Gimli, and his father was already making plans to destroy that bond before it had even truly formed. Despite all his knowledge that his father loved him, the fact that he would wilfully hurt Legolas in such a way cut deep. As if Legolas valued society’s opinion over people he…

People he loved.

Without conscious thought, Legolas’s hand leapt to his throat, to the chain that hung there, that had been hanging there all day. The weight was uncomfortable. He’d thought he’d get used to it if he wore it long enough, but even now, it still felt more like a noose about his neck than the jewellery that it was. He supposed it was his mind playing tricks, because he had stolen it and it was really only his guilt at having done Gimli that hurt that made it feel so heavy.

Unnoticed by Legolas, as his fingers ran over the heavy metal, down to the pendant to trace the designs etched there, a light fog began to roll over Port Royal.

The cold night air was damp and smelling strongly of seaweed and driftwood, but Thranduil did not wrinkle his nose at it, like his son might have. He had more composure than that. He walked the battlements with Tauriel at his side, straight-backed and blank-faced, because there was one last matter he needed to settle before he could retire for the night. “You did good work, capturing Oakenshield so expediently,” he commented, and Tauriel’s countenance became a little brighter, her posture displaying a little more confidence.

“Thank you, my lord,” she replied, almost as neutral as his own words had been.

“The execution has been arranged?” Thranduil went on to ask.

Tauriel dipped her head in a small nod. “At dawn, just as you requested,” she stated, lips quirked with humour, and Thranduil allowed himself to share in her small joke. “Do you think Legolas will wish to attend?” Tauriel asked suddenly, and Thranduil’s moment of humour faded.

“I do not expect so.” In truth, Thranduil thought it was far more likely that Legolas would attempt to stage some kind of protest against it than anything else. He had been angry and withdrawn that evening, which, although better than shaken and alarmed, still worried Thranduil a great deal. When Thranduil had tried to draw him into confiding what it was about the days experience that had him so out of sorts, Legolas had snapped at him to leave him be, so Thranduil had obliged.

“How is he faring?” Tauriel inquired, worry crumpling her attempt at a blank and professional mask.

“He is angry, and will not speak to me of what is troubling him. I believe he feels he owes the pirate a debt for saving his life, and is discontent with my decision to have the criminal hanged anyway.”

At that, Tauriel pursed her lips, a dark expression flickering across her features. “I won’t deny that the pirate saved Legolas’s life, but I cannot believe it was for unselfish reasons. According to Boromir and Faramir – the men that were present – he seemed very interested in a locket Legolas was wearing at the time,” she reported, “and when we apprehended him, he was in Durinson’s workshop.”

“Yes, I saw that report,” Thranduil agreed silkily, casting his eyes out over the ocean. That little fact was causing him a lot of worry. He’d never really approved of Legolas’s infatuation with the boy, but it had seemed harmless when they were children, and only mildly exasperating as they grew. Legolas didn’t have many friends at all, isolated by Thranduil’s position as he was, and seeing him lonely was worse than seeing him cavorting through the streets with a blacksmith’s apprentice.

That Durinson was associating with pirates, however, was concerning. Especially when it was a pirate that had just that day dared to lay hands on Legolas, had injured him, had threatened to kill him. Thranduil didn’t want to think that Legolas’s friend was capable of such treachery, but he had long ago stopped believing the best of people. He would rather be over-cautious and insult the blacksmith’s apprentice than let his son be betrayed like that.

“I don’t know what the pirate’s game is, but I’ll feel better when he’s hanging from a gibbet,” Tauriel snarled under her breath.

Thranduil smiled. This was why he had hung his reputation on Tauriel’s career. When he’d first encountered her, barely a teenager and trying to pass herself off as a boy to get work in the navy, he’d seen that slow-burning rage in her and known that she would be able to make a name for herself, if only she was given the opportunity. So he’d done so, and reaped the political rewards of backing such an unusual and yet undeniably successful naval officer with restrained glee.

“As will I,” he agreed solemnly. They walked in silence for a few minutes, pacing the battlements. Every so often they would pass a guard, who would salute Tauriel, who would nod back. Their route took them along the outermost battlements, where they would have had a lovely view of the open sea if it hadn’t been for the light of the torches making the darkness seem blacker than black. “As to the other matter I asked you to consider; has any progress been made?” Thranduil asked, carefully mild.

Tauriel stiffened. “I mentioned it to Legolas, but our conversation was interrupted,” she informed him, a touch of bite to her tone.

Thranduil grimaced a little. “Yes, I do understand,” he assured her, and some of the tension left her. He sighed. “Do not misunderstand me, Tauriel. I do not want this to punish either one of you, I only seek to ensure my son’s continued happiness.”

Tauriel shook her head. “My lord, Legolas is like a brother to me, and I a sister to him. This will not make him happy.”

“The two of you are friends, and you have long proved you can share living space comfortably. Your unique career means the two of you may even be able to avoid trying for children, if you truly do not wish it. A marriage of companionship and comfort is far, far better than the alternative that is before Legolas, Tauriel,” Thranduil explained, clipped and harsh. “As for yourself, you can hardly expect to find a man more understanding of your choices than Legolas. Any other husband you might take would undoubtedly attempt to dissuade you from your career.”

“As you’ve said before, my lord,” Tauriel interjected, her voice shaking slightly with anger, despite how tightly she tried to reign it in. Thranduil nodded a graceful concession, and didn’t belabour the point. “I have agreed, and I will do what I can, but I cannot guarantee Legolas will agree,” Tauriel stated.

Thranduil considered that, but as much as she doubtless would use it as an excuse for not putting in her best effort to secure his son, he could not fault her logic. Legolas was wilful and stubborn, always had been, and Thranduil had known from the moment he’d thought of this plan that it would not go over well with his son. “Of course n-”

A sharp cracking sound interrupted him, and even before he could register that it was the sound of cannonfire, Tauriel was already shoving him down and throwing herself over him. It was a good thing she had, because the stones only a few paces behind them exploded, and shards of rock and mortar rained down on them. Thranduil closed his eyes for a brief second, wondering why the gods seemed intent on making today the worst he’d had in a very long time.

Tauriel had already lurched back to her feet, and was yelling orders to the men on night duty. “WE’RE UNDER ATTACK! RETURN FIRE!”

Thranduil hauled himself upright and took stock of the situation. If he focused, he could just see a single ship in the middle of the bay, a dark looming shape amongst the mist lying silver and grey against the dark of the water. Then the canons around him were being loaded and the flash of the ignition made seeing any details impossible.

“My lord! Barricade yourself in my office!” Tauriel called, in between shouting orders at her men. Thranduil glanced over at her, and a small part of him chaffed at being treated like a civilian. He had served the navy for several years, and knew his way around a battle. However, he conceded the point, because that wasn’t his job anymore. He turned and fled the battlements with as much dignity as he could muster. Behind him, the dark ship sailed into a patch of moonlight, revealing tattered black sails somehow still billowing full with a non-existent wind.

Work had always been a respite for Gimli. The focus and control he needed to shape the metal to his will drew him out of his mind and soothed his tumultuous emotions. It was peaceful, and even the burning of his muscles after long hours was soothing, satisfying. He brought the hammer down again, precise and controlled, and watched the red hot metal spread under the force. A little more, just a little more, and it would be right.

Unlike the events of today. Gimli still couldn’t make sense of the fact that the pirate had lowered his weapon. Pirates were vicious, ruthless, and unmoved by pity. Even the most romanticised stories – the ones Legolas loved to read – painted pirates as ruthless, albeit ruthless in their unswerving loyalty to their crews and fellows. Even if those stories were true, which Gimli doubted, Oakenshield had no reason to extend that loyalty to Gimli of all people.

He shook his head, frustrated with his distraction. Lifting his arm to wipe the sweat off his brow, Gimli surveyed his work, and cursed under his breath when he noticed he’d been trying to shape the metal even though it had grown too cool. He thrust it back into the forge and leaned over to pump the bellows, bringing the heat back up to the proper temperature.

A pirate had no reason to save Legolas’s life, either, he thought as he watched the heat infuse his latest piece. Then to turn around and threaten him moments later made even less sense. And that was yet another thing praying on Gimli’s mind. Legolas had nearly drowned, nearly been killed by a pirate, and then been whisked off home before Gimli had even heard what happened. He wasn’t ashamed to admit he was worried about his friend.

He drew the half-shaped sword out of the forge and laid it on the anvil. He raised the hammer, and brought it down, but stopped inches above the metal. He’d known as he began the swing that he was putting too much force into it. He was too agitated, too frustrated, too confused. Placing the hammer aside, and setting the unfinished sword into the water to cool, he closed his eyes and braced his hands on his anvil, trying to find some semblance of calm.

The sudden quiet within the workshop left Gimli suddenly hyper-aware of the sounds outside. It was late, nearing midnight if he wasn’t much mistake, and yet he could hear distant voices. He cocked his head to listen, and nearly jumped out of his skin when a bang echoed across the town, followed not long after by another.

Gimli strode to the door, pausing only long enough to grab up a weapon, before flinging it open. Wisps of fog danced around his ankles, swirling in the eddies created by the motion of the door, and Gimli shuddered, a terrible superstitious foreboding running icy fingers up his spine. The sounds that had been faint and muffled became a little clearer to his ears now that the door was open. The distant voices were shouting, and there was the clash of steel on steel under the raised voices and the cannon-fire.

Without wasting a second on hesitation, Gimli adjusted his grip on his axe and jogged towards the source of the noise. Two streets later, he turned a corner and was confronted with a riot. Men were breaking windows and doors, dragging people out of their homes, laughing raucously as they filled their arms with jewellery and valuables.

Well, Gimli thought dryly, at least this might be a good way to vent his temper. He hurled his little throwing axe at the back of a man trying to pin a screaming woman against a wall. It sank in deep, and the man choked, gurgled, and collapsed. The woman sank to the ground next to the twitching, dying pirate and started sobbing. Gimli walked over, but kept his distance when she flinched. “Here, lass, get yourself up to the fort, where it’s safe,” he encouraged.

She nodded, and allowed him to offer her a hand up. She even managed a tremulous smile of gratitude. “Thank you,” she murmured, then darted past Gimli, up towards the fort. Gimli continued on down the street, axe in one hand, sword in the other, a fierce battle cry on his lips. He didn’t see the dying pirate twitch, reaching out with a trembling hand to grasp at a fallen coin, glittering in the light of the fires beginning to consume the houses. Even as his last breath left his body, his fist remained clenched around the gold.

The prison, like all prisons, was dark and dank and uncomfortable. Thorin found the most comfortable place to sit and tucked himself into the corner, hat pulled low over his eyes so that he could feign sleep. The men in the cell next to his were loud and extremely annoying, grating on Thorin’s last nerve. He kept turning over and over in his mind how he could possibly get out of this mess he was in, but no solutions were presenting themselves just yet. Of course, he’d been in worse situations, although not many, and he knew that patience and a willingness to grab any opportunity that came by was the best way to survive. So he waited.

“Why didn’t you mention you had that pin? We could use it to pick the lock!”

Thorin peeked an eye open. “You can’t pick these locks,” he informed the small cluster of four men in the next cell. To a one, they looked over at him, and Thorin rolled his eyes. “They’re weighted to prevent lockpicks from getting loose.”

“Well, s’cuse us if we haven’t resigned ourselves to the gallows just yet,” the one attempting to pick the lock sneered, before going back to his work.

It wasn’t Thorin’s business, so he settled back against the wall and let his mind wander. He thought he might have dozed off, because the sound of cannon-fire made him startle, and for a moment he didn’t know where he was. He registered the prison cell, felt bitter resignation settle heavy in his chest, and shook off the lingering remnants of his daydream.

Then the rapport of multiple cannons firing echoed across the water again, and Thorin’s heart leapt into this throat. “I know those guns,” he breathed, launching himself up to peer out of the tiny barred window. There, floating in the middle of the bay, her sides flashing as her cannons made short work of Port Royal’s defences, was the Black Pearl. “It’s the Pearl.”

“The Black Pearl…” one of the other men announced, a quiver in his voice. Thorin looked over at him sharply, and saw the four of them once again all clustered together, this time vying for a view out of their own tiny window. “I’ve heard stories. She’s been praying on ships and settlements for near ten years. Never leaves any survivors.”

“If there were no survivors, where do the stories come from?” Thorin asked impatiently, and then had to look away from the confused looks that flickered over the men’s faces in disgust. Instead, he turned his gaze back to his beloved ship. He ached to be so near, and yet utterly incapable of reaching her. He wondered what had happened to her, what adventures she’d been on, in the ten years since he’d last stood at her helm. He wondered if all his old crew were still alive, if they were still aboard.

He saw the row boats being deployed, full to the brim with pirates, too many to be just the crew he had first sailed with. They had recruited more, then. Thorin wondered why. Of course, on an ordinary ship of that size, with your average captain, you’d need a much larger crew than the one Thorin had kept. Thorin had never needed more than a few hands on the Black Pearl, not when so much of the work was done with little more than a thought and a twitch of Bilbo’s nose.

The thought ached. He wondered if any of them could forgive him for what he’d done, for the harm he’d caused. He didn’t think so, but that didn’t stop the burning need to apologise that had carried him through the last decade. And there was a tiny kernel of hope, one he barely dared to recognise at all, that his ship and his crew, his family, had missed him as much as he missed them.

Thorin rested his forehead against the bars of his window, staring longingly at what was once his ship. Perhaps it still was, despite sailing under a different captain for so long. “Bilbo…”

Chapter Text

Too agitated to sleep, Legolas had been pacing his room when a pass by the window showed him that Port Royal was on fire. Alarmed, he flung the window open and leaned out into the night. Faintly, he could hear explosions, and screams made thin and reedy by the distance. After a breathless moment of shock, Legolas turned away from his window and scrambled to get dressed and find a weapon.

He hadn’t gotten very far when he heard a crash that was far too close to be coming from the port itself, and he scrambled to his window with only trousers on under his nightshirt, and a small dagger in one hand. Half a dozen torches outlined the small mob charging up the drive in orange light. Cursing the fact that the only weapons in the house besides a few daggers were downstairs, Legolas darted for the stairs, even though he wasn’t sure he’d be able to arm himself before the mob broke down the door.

He was almost to the stairs when he heard a knock at the door. It threw him off balance for a moment, but then he saw through the railings that the doorman was going to open it. Obviously the man hadn’t noticed they were being attacked. “Don’t open the door!” Legolas shouted, but too late.

The doorman was looking over his shoulder at Legolas in surprise as the door swung open, so he didn’t see the group of men gathered on the doorstep. He didn’t see the identical mischievous grins light up the faces of the two in front, nor the gun that the blond one aimed right at the back of his head. Legolas had barely drawn breath to shout a warning when the pirate pulled the trigger, and the doorman collapsed onto the rug.

His eyes met the pirate’s, and for a moment everything was still, as they waited to see who would move first. Legolas knew he needed a better weapon, but there was no way he was getting down the stairs without being shot. The servants’ stairs, however, should still be accessible. He turned and sprinted down the corridor, towards the hidden door that would take him down to the kitchens and servants quarters. Behind him, he heard the thumps and crashes and shouts of the pirates beginning their raid on the mansion, and he ran faster.

On reaching the hidden door, he found could hear heavy footsteps coming his way, so he shoved the servants’ door shut behind him to hopefully conceal his passage. He skittered pell-mell down the narrow, steep stairs, slipped when he was nearly at the bottom, and skidded down the last few steps on his heels, landing miraculously on his feet at the bottom. Shaking off the sudden burst of adrenaline flooding his system, Legolas turned down the narrow corridor that should take him to the kitchen.

Before he’d gone more than half a dozen steps, someone behind him called out “Young Master!” and he whipped around. Galion was hurrying towards him, a slightly wild look in his eye. “Thank goodness you’re alright. We have to get you out of here!”

“I’m not leaving,” Legolas replied, too baffled to put much emphasis on the words. “I just needed to get a proper weapon.”

“You’re not safe here, Master Greenwood, you need to get to the fort. Your father will skin me alive if I allow any harm to come to you,” Galion protested.

Legolas rolled his eyes, then fixed the manservant with a cold look he’d learned from his father. Galion instinctively straightened, before catching on and giving Legolas a reproving look that Legolas paid no attention to whatsoever. “You go to the fort, and tell my father what’s happening,” he suggested archly. “I am staying here, and fighting.”

With that said, he turned and continued down the corridor until he reached the door to the dining room. Pushing through it, he realised his mistake a fraction too late. There were already pirates there, raiding the cupboards for the good silver. The one nearest Legolas got a dagger in his throat before he could react, but the other was quicker, and threw a knife – one of the wickedly sharp bone-handled knives his father kept, if Legolas wasn’t much mistaken – that he only barely managed to dodge. It still caught his hair, and sent several strands drifting to the floor.

“If it isn’t the little Lordling,” the pirate taunted, starting to grin, slow and malicious. Legolas was momentarily distracted by the man’s hair. It was auburn, and styled into three points, like a star, and Legolas was at a loss to explain how on earth he got it to stay that way. The pirate raised an eyebrow at Legolas’s non-reaction to his taunting, then launched himself over the large dining table, flying feet-first towards Legolas.

Instinct had Legolas ducking and rolling sideways, but the pirate was nimble, and seemed to bounce right back up off the floor, heading towards Legolas. He darted away, around the table, pulling out the chairs behind him to trip up the pirate. His father’s old navy sabres were gone from their usual place displayed above the mantel – looted, Legolas presumed – and he cursed, searching the room for a weapon that might do him any good at all.

The pirate caught up with him, and tried to grab him. Legolas twisted out of his grip, curling down just enough to ram his shoulder into the other man’s chest and send him stumbling backwards. He recovered quickly, and caught a fist-full of Legolas’s hair to yank. Legolas yelped, but went with the momentum to smash into the pirate and send him crashing back into the side of the fireplace. His head met the marble with a very painful sounding crack, and he slumped, blinking dazedly.

Legolas didn’t stick around to watch him recover, or not.

Out in the hall, there was chaos. Everything was in disarray, and even as Legolas stood there, a pirate ran past, arms full of loot, crashing into the wall and knocking one of the last whole paintings clean off the wall. Shaking his head, Legolas decided to try one of the drawing rooms. Several of them had old weapons displayed on the walls, and one of them had to still be usable.

He managed to reach the foyer without attracting too much undue attention from the pillaging pirates, but then his luck run out. He was half way across the wide open space when a pair of pirates appeared in his path. It wasn’t until one of them grinned brightly and gave a mocking, courtly bow that Legolas recognised them as the mischievous ones from the door; one brunet and one blond, both young and surprisingly handsome under their layers of grime. “Good evening,” the brunet said as he straightened with a flourish.

“If you hand over what’s ours without a fuss, we won’t have to hurt you,” the other one, the blond that had shot the doorman, offered insouciantly. To punctuate his point, he spun his sword through the air, the blade whistling faintly.

Legolas weighed his options, hesitating to make a move because he was still unarmed, and these two looked armed to the teeth. He wouldn’t just go quietly, though, because he was fairly sure that death would be the best of the unpleasant fates he could suffer aboard a pirate ship. Which meant that he needed a weapon, or an advantage of some kind. He didn’t dare take his eyes off the pirates, but he scanned what he could see in his peripheral vision, and filled in the rest with his memory, searching for anything he could use to get out of this.

A sudden explosion shook the room as a cannonball tore through the wall, sending bricks and dust flying everywhere, and then smashed into the door across from the new hole. Screams told Legolas that there had been more looters in that room, but he didn’t stick around to see the results of the chaos. Instead, he lunged forward while the pirates were distracted by flying debris. He kicked one in the knee as he darted past, and sent him sprawling, but the other one snapped out a hand and grabbed a fistful of Legolas’ hair.

He was jerked backwards with a yelp, but he managed to twist so that his fall didn’t take him directly onto the pirate’s blade. He still wound up on his knees, with his head wrenched at an awkward angle by the pirate’s grip on his hair. “Give it back!” the brunet pirate demanded, with a snarl in his voice that was so unlike his previous demeanour that it actually took Legolas a moment to realise who had spoken. He was limping slightly as he closed the distance between himself and Legolas to loom over him threateningly.

“Give what-?” Legolas began, but then he realised, with a shock like being submerged in icy water, just what they were talking about.

“The locket,” the blond one snapped, shaking him by his hair. “We know you have it.” A nasty smile curled his lips, and he leaned down a little to meet Legolas’s gaze with terrifyingly cold blue eyes. “We know you have it,” he repeated, more smug than angry now. “It’s ours , so we’ll always be able to find it, no matter how well hidden you thought it was.” His eyes darted down to Legolas’s throat, where the chain of the locket still lay heavy against his skin.

The brunet reached out, and grabbed at the neck Legolas’s nightshirt, yanking it down and tearing the ties open so that the locket swung free, gleaming in the firelight. Legolas flinched, panic surging through him. Irrationally, he wasn’t frightened of what the pirates might do to him, that thought came a distant second to the defensive, angry fear that not only would Legolas be responsible for stealing Gimli’s heirloom, but also for losing it to pirates.

“Parley!” he demanded, before he could think better of it. A heartbeat later, and he cursed himself. This was not one of his adventure novels, and he could almost hear Gimli berating him for living with his head in the clouds.

To his surprise – and relief – however, both pirates froze. “…What?” the brunet asked, squinting at him as if Legolas had just started speaking a foreign language.

“Parley,” Legolas repeated, heart in his throat and breath frozen in his lungs. There was no way this could work, but it seemed that it was, regardless of all logic. “I invoke the right of parley,” he clarified, just in case the context helped the pirates catch up. Blue eyes narrowed, but brown ones were still wide with bewilderment, so Legolas pressed on. “According to the code of the brethren set down by the pirates Morgan and Bartholomew, you have to take me to your Captain.” If Gimli ever tried to mock his love of pirate stories and legends again, Legolas was going to tell him this story and laugh in his face, Legolas decided, with a faint note of hysteria in his thoughts.

Indignation flashed across the blond’s face, and he snarled “I know the code,” at Legolas.

“If an adversary demands parley you can do them no harm until the parley is complete,” Legolas reminded him, because the look in his eyes suggested he really needed the reminder.

The brunet scoffed, “Blazes to the code!” His grip shifted from cloth to metal, and he yanked at the chain around Legolas’s neck. Legolas gasped at the sudden twist and burn of pain as the chain pulled taut around his throat.

“Kili!” the blond snapped, a sharp reprimand that cracked the air like a whip. The brunet froze, eyes wide and startled. Even the blond looked faintly surprised at his own vehemence, but he shook it off, considering Legolas with a scarily intent look. “If he wants to be taken to the Captain, who are we to tell him no?” he asked after a moment. “As long as he comes quiet-like, there’s no harm in it.” He shot Legolas a look that turned the statement into something like a question, so Legolas nodded.

Slowly, the blond loosened his grip on Legolas’s hair, then withdrew altogether. He took a step back, and nudged the other, who made a wounded, disgruntled noise. “But, Fíli-!” he protested, not releasing the white-knuckled grip he still had on the chain around Legolas’s neck.

“We must honour the code,” Fíli retorted, but he sounded distant, like he was repeating something he’d been told but didn’t understand. He shook his head, and smirked down at Legolas. “Besides, if he comes to the ship, the locket comes to the ship, and that’s good enough for me. Let him go, Kíli.”

Kíli gave the locket a deeply mournful look, but eventually released the chain and took a step back. Warily, Legolas rose to his feet. The pirates were still giving the locket deeply covetous looks, but they made no move to grab him again, so Legolas straightened his nightshirt and nodded again, gesturing to the door in an imperious gesture he’d learned from his father. “Nobles,” Kíli muttered, in a tone of mixed disbelief and exasperation, as he turned to go. Legolas followed, ignoring the prickling feeling of foreboding that ran down his spine as Fíli fell into step at his back.

The streets were in chaos. The navy were gathering at the fort, and focusing their efforts on the ship sitting in the harbour, leaving the smallfolk to fend for themselves. Gimli, in the thick of the fighting, wished they’d thought to spare a few men to at least corral civilians away from the raiding pirates. In the dart, with everyone yelling and screaming and running about in a panic, it was hard to tell who he was supposed to be killing, and who he was supposed to be protecting.

It was disconcerting to realise that the man that looked like someone’s stuffy old grandfather was, in fact, not the shop owner defending his window display, but a pirate, filling a sack with anything out of the shop that gleamed in the light of the fire blazing further inside. Gimli shook off the disorientation, and swung his axe at the man’s back. He must have seen Gimli’s reflection in the shards of the window that weren’t broken, because he spun to block Gimli’s swing with a sword.

It was like swinging an axe at a brick wall, and his axe was knocked aside before he could recover. The sword whipped around to swing at his head, and Gimli deflected it with his own. The parry left his arm jarred, however, and he was too slow to react to the flail that was brought up to lash at his arm. The spikes tore through cotton and skin, leaving bloody furrows, and the force of the blow left him staggering.

“Hold still!” the pirate demanded. Gimli’s snort was lost under the sound of tortured metal above them, and Gimli threw himself away from it on instinct. The iron brace holding the walls of the shop together gave way under the heat of the fire ravaging the inside of the building, and the entire front wall toppled over onto the pirate.

Gimli stared at the body pinned under several large chunks of stone. “Don’t go anywhere.” He instructed dryly, smirking when the pirate glared daggers at him and strained uselessly at the masonry trapping him on the ground.

A scream behind him caught Gimli’s attention, and he turned to find the source of it. He grinned to see several young women thrashing the hell out of an overwhelmed pirate with brooms, and searched for a fight where he was actually needed.

His eye caught instead on a flash of pale gold hair whipping through the smoke-clogged air. He stumbled where he stood, heart suddenly in his throat. That was Legolas, in naught more than his night clothes, hair unbound and feet bare, being hauled through the melee by pirates. “Legolas!” Gimli roared in desperation, seeing red.

Legolas’s head whipped around, mouth parting around Gimli’s name, although Gimli couldn’t hear a damned thing over the chaos in the street. Their eyes met, and there was matching desperation written all over Legolas’s face. Then the brunet pirate grabbed at something hanging at Legolas’s neck and yanked him forwards, causing him to bend and stumble.

Gimli charged, oblivious to anything around him save for the dead men who dared to manhandle Legolas like that. The blonde pirate gave Legolas a shove between his shoulder blades, then turned to face Gimli, smirking as he drew knives from the Maker only knew where. Gimli’s pulse was pounding so loudly in his ears it blocked out the sounds of battle, and the sight of that lowlife pirate standing between him and Legolas lit an inferno under his breastbone where his heart should have been.

Teeth bared and eyes wild, Gimli put every ounce of his blacksmith’s strength behind the swing of his axe. The pirate jerked backwards, the blade of Gimli’s axe singing mere inches under his nose, but missing flesh. Where a moment before he’d been cocky, now the pirate looked stunned, staring at Gimli as though alarmed by him.

Gimli didn’t pay him any heed, too caught up by the fact that Legolas had been dragged out of sight through the smog by the brunet, and every second he spent dallying with the blond was another second between himself and Legolas. That was not to be borne. He spun his axe and readied it for another swing, because while he might not care to wonder at the pirate’s preoccupation, he was certainly not above taking advantage of it.

This time, the pirate ducked under the swing, and lunged in close, bring one of his knives to bear. Gimli blocked with his sword, sending the stab wide. The other knife whipped up, and Gimli backed up a step to avoid being gutted by it, then slammed the hilt of his axe into the pirate’s wrist, forcing him to drop his weapon.

A crash behind him had Gimli flinching. He dodged sideways, so that he could turn to look without putting an enemy to his back. Another crash followed the first, and Gimli saw a huge chunk of masonry go flying several feet, crashing into the cobbles and sending shards of brick and stone alike flying. Gimli was momentarily stunned when he realised that somehow the pinned pirate had found the strength to free himself.

That moment was his undoing.

Another chunk of collapsed wall was flung away with a heave, and it smashed to pieces against the road, shrapnel flying everywhere, including right at Gimli’s face. The last thing he saw was a chunk of stone as large as a fist before everything went black.

Chapter Text

Cannon fire shook the prison, and Thorin found himself torn between dismay that it wasn’t enough to win him his freedom, and pride at how effective his lovely ship could be. He lingered at his tiny window, watching the shape of the Black Pearl in the scant light with longing in his heart. She was so close, he could almost pretend he could reach out and touch her, and yet the bars on the window kept him securely locked inside, with no hope of reaching the Pearl.

A clang from behind him made him turn, and his knees almost went out from under him when he saw who, exactly, had just forced their way through the door to the prisons. “I told you the armoury was the other way!” Óin Sawbones declared, well above conversational volume, turning his back on the cells to face the doorway. Thorin knew he ought to call out, to reveal himself, but guilt clogged his throat and stilled his tongue.

“But the map shows- Oh!” Ori Greatmace blinked around the prison in consternation. “Making faulty documents, how dare they! I have half a mind to go back up there and-” The young lad’s furious mutterings came to a sudden halt as his eyes caught on Thorin’s shadowed form. He stepped forwards, straight past Óin, wide-eyed and stunned.

“I just said this isn’t the armoury, lad! Are you deaf or something?!” Óin demanded hypocritically, wheeling around to keep Ori in his sights. “Don’t dawdle, we’ve work to-” Óin spotted him, too, jaw dropping open. Now that he was seen, Thorin found he couldn’t help but approach the bars of his cells. He wasn’t sure if he resented them, for keeping him from a proper reunion with some of his crew, or was thankful for them, because surely, if they weren’t there, he would not escape this meeting alive.

“Thorin?” Ori asked quietly.

“Aye, ‘tis me, Ori,” Thorin confirmed, meeting the boy’s gaze and finding he couldn’t hold it. He lowered his eyes to the floor. “Óin,” he added in greeting, swallowing hard.

“How’d you get off that island, then?!” Óin demanded, rough and angry. “We didn’t leave you there so you could just wander off on your merry way after betraying us like that!”

“I know,” Thorin acknowledged.

“You rowed?!”

If Thorin hadn’t been nearly sick with guilt, he might have laughed. “I know,” he repeated, louder. “And if you wish to kill me for what I did, I would not raise a blade against you. I only ask that you hear me out before you pass judgement.”

Óin harrumphed, crossing his arms and glowering. Thorin knew he would have to look the man in the eye when he spoke, but he thought he might try working up to that, so he looked at Ori first. The disgusted resentment on the boy’s face wasn’t encouraging. “Get on with it, then,” Óin demanded, and Thorin forced himself to meet the old doctor’s gaze.

“I am sorry. I know no apology can make up for my actions, but I want you to know that I… have never regretted anything in my life more,” Thorin began, voice thick and tongue heavy. “I… I was not in my right mind, at the time.”

“Oh, pull the other one,” Ori scoffed. “You knew exactly what you were doing!”

Thorin staggered, and it was only his hold on the bars that kept him from sinking to his knees. “No, Ori, I swear, if I had had my wits about me, I would never have killed one of my own crew. It was the Arkenstone, it-”

“Hold up!” Óin interrupted, squinting at Thorin as though his eyesight was as bad as his hearing. “Are my ears going again? What’s anything got to do with my fool of a brother?” He turned to Ori. “He was talking about Glóin, wasn’t he?”

“...Yes,” Ori replied, also looking more baffled than angry. Thorin gaped at them, confused beyond words by their reaction. A terrible fear began to sink icy tendrils into his bones. “Why would we be mad about that, Thorin?” Ori asked.

“Why aren’t you?” Thorin riposted, leaning away from the bars as if by distancing himself from his old crew, he could distance himself from the realisation that was beginning to take shape in his mind. He didn’t quite dare let go of the bars, though, and remained standing there in limbo.

“He stole from us!” Ori exclaimed, all wide-eyed indignation. “Sending that locket away who knew where! Ooh, if you hadn’t thrown him off the ship, I’d have smacked him overboard myself!” he declared, hand going to the handle of the massive, bulky war-hammer strapped to his back that had given him his epithet.

Óin, to Thorin’s horror, was nodding along. “Aye, bastard deserved what he got, and no mistake,” he growled darkly. Then his eyes snapped up to give Thorin a hard look. “As did you! Keeping all that treasure to yourself like that, you greedy bastard!”

“No…” Thorin breathed, unable to find any other word. “No. No, Óin, that’s your brother you’re speaking of. Your little brother.”

“He’s no brother of mine!” Óin snarled. “I won’t call a thief kin! Nor Captain!”

Ori scoffed, and laid a hand on Óin’s arm. “Come on, Óin. We’ve an armoury to find, and it’s not like he’s going anywhere. They’ll hang him for us soon enough, and there’s no point listening to the words of a liar and a thief.” Óin hesitated a moment, then nodded, spat at Thorin, and followed the younger man out of the prison cell.

Behind them, Thorin sank to his knees, still grasping the bars of his cell, and staring with blank horror at the empty doorway.

The Black Pearl loomed out of the fog, her sails tattered and her hull black with scorch marks. Wreathed in fog like she was, the ship looked every inch a ghost ship of nightmares. Legolas swallowed hard as the little row boat he’d been shoved into bobbed ever closer. There was something terrible about the ship beyond its ominous appearance, something that made the hairs on the back of Legolas’s neck stand on end, and every nerve sing with fight or flight instinct.

As they came up alongside the Black Pearl, someone above threw down a rope ladder, and Kíli scampered up it. Fíli prodded Legolas in the back, an unnecessary prompting, as he was already getting to his feet carefully and reaching for the ladder, but that hadn’t stopped either of the pirates before, and it wouldn’t in future, Legolas wagered.

He was glad that he had some little experience with ships, and that he didn’t embarrass himself too horribly on the climb up. The moment his head and shoulders were above the railing, however, Kíli grabbed him by his nightshirt and bodily hauled him the rest of the way over, as if he were helpless. He landed ungracefully, and became acutely aware of the crowd of pirates aboard the deck that were now staring at him and sniggering openly.

The sniggering stopped abruptly as a tall figure stepped forward, the other pirates making way for him. Legolas could understand why. With the stark tattoos standing out against his bald head, and the sheer number of weapons he was carrying, he made almost as intimidating a figure as the ship itself. “I don’t remember telling you to take on captives!” He barked at Kíli.

“It wasn’t my idea!” Kíli protested, and looked pointedly at the blond head that appeared over the edge of the railing.

Fíli swung himself onto the deck with ease, and met and matched the bald pirate’s glare with one of his own. “He invoked the right of parley,” he stated, crisp with the sort of authority Legolas hadn’t expected, given that he had to be one of the youngest on the ship, “so we brought him to see Captain Ironfoot.”

Legolas drew himself up, drawing some of his father’s airs about himself to draw strength from. He had little enough of his own to spare, standing on a ship that had quite literally been haunting his nightmares. “I am here to negotiate-” he began, but got no further.

“I wasn’t talking to you!” the bald pirate roared, his fist flying for Legolas’s face faster than he would have expected from such a large man.

“Dwalin!”

The barked name halted bald pirate in his tracks, his furious gaze locked on Legolas and his fist mere inches from Legolas’s nose. “We’ll do no harm to those under the protection of parley,” the voice continued, lighter and more cheerful now that there was no immediate threat of violence.

Resentfully, Dwalin lowered his fist and stepped backwards. “Aye, sir,” he gritted out.

Legolas finally dared to take his eyes off Dwalin and look for the source of the new voice. It took him a moment to identify the Captain, because his dress was no different from all the other men on the deck. But when he limped forwards, everyone made way for him with the same alacrity they had for Dwalin, which surprised Legolas. He wasn’t nearly as intimidating as Dwalin. He was shorter for one, and his ginger hair and beard were streaked with white, and the lines on his face looked to be more from worry and laughter than a permanent scowl. His limp was caused by the fact that from below the knee, his right leg was gone, replaced with a sturdy iron peg.

“Captain Ironfoot?” Legolas hazarded a guess.

The Captain snorted. “What gave it away, laddie?” he asked, with every appearance of good humour. Legolas was bewildered. He had expected… well, someone more like Dwalin, or Oakenshield. Someone angry and intense and ferocious. Captain Ironfoot was all wry humour and a mellow sort of weariness, as though he’d much rather take a nap than raid a port.

“The hat,” Legolas replied, straight-faced as he nodded to the battered old thing perched at a jaunty angle atop the pirate’s wild ginger hair.

Captain Ironfoot blinked at him once, then roared with laughter. “It is a fine one, isn’t it?” he asked through a grin, but didn’t wait for an answer. “Well, you’re here, I’m here. Let’s get on with this parley, eh? Before I get any more white in my beard.”

Legolas nodded. “I wish to negotiate the cessation of hostilities against Port Royal,” he informed the Captain, with as much surety and dignity as he could muster. Being his father’s son, that was quite a lot.

“Come again, laddie?” Captain Ironfoot requested, eyebrows quirking in bemusement. “I can tell you’re a well-to-do sort, but not all of us were blessed with your degree o’ learning. Perhaps use shorter words for us less fortunate folk?” he suggested.

Embarrassment rushed through Legolas, setting the tips of his ears aflame. “I want you to leave Port Royal and never return,” he stated boldly.

Captain Ironfoot met his gaze with a bemusedly unimpressed stare. “Oh, is that all?” he drawled.

“Well, I could demand weregild for the lives you’ve taken, but I didn’t think that would get me very far,” Legolas retorted.

That earned him a laugh. Legolas was not at all sure it was a good thing. Captain Ironfoot considered him for a long moment, then sighed. “Mm… I’m disinclined to acquiesce to your request,” he decided eventually, a bright twinkle in his eyes.

It took Legolas a moment to parse that, before outrage began to overcome his shock. “Very well,” he said coldly, flipping the chain of the locket over his head. Holding Captain Ironfoot’s gaze, he held the trinket out over the water. Every pirate on deck went tense, eyes riveted on the golden locket swaying gently over the sea. “I suppose you don’t want this, then?”

Only Captain Ironfoot wasn’t looking at the locket, his gaze lingering on Legolas. “It’s a pretty piece of shine, sure enough,” the Captain said with an air of nonchalance so convincing Legolas almost believed it. “But it’s still just one small locket. Why should I care if you drop it?”

Legolas knew he couldn’t answer that question in any way that would get him what he wanted. He struggled for a moment, frustration building as he saw the triumph beginning to gleam in the eyes of the pirates. He tried to remember how his father handled deals going sour like this, but he barely paid attention to the minutiae of statecraft that Thranduil tried to teach him, and his mind was blank. The faces around him were turning smug, smirks and unkind grins stretching across their faces, even as not a one of them managed to look away from the locket.

The sudden realisation came to Legolas, and it sounded almost like Gimli’s voice. Don’t let ‘em distract you, you fool. You know they’re desperate for the damned thing, you can see it plain as day. Call their bluff, so they can’t deny you the proper payment anymore. And if they won’t admit it, well, honest dealings or no dealings at all are better than getting paid a pittance anyway.

“I’m sure I can’t say,” Legolas pretended to capitulate, feigning disappointment, “and maybe it is worthless. I guess it doesn’t matter if I-” He loosened his hold on the chain, letting a few inches slip through his fingers.

The roar of jumbled and furious denials from the pirates almost bowled him right over the edge. If the sound wouldn’t, he was almost sure the sudden violent lurch the mob gave towards him would have, if Captain Ironfoot hadn’t bellowed for them to hold. Most of them stopped, but Fíli and Kíli didn’t stop. Legolas held the Captain’s gaze, but his words were directed at them. “Touch me, and I drop it.”

That halted them in their tracks, hands still outstretched as if to grab him and haul him away from the edge. Slowly, they backed off, bitter resentment in every line of their features. “Alright, you’ve quite made your point,” Captain Ironfoot remarked, less annoyed at having his bluff called than Legolas would have expected. He cocked his head to study Legolas, eyes narrowing. “Just out of curiosity, how did the son of Lord Greenwood come to own an Ereborian pirate’s locket?” he asked out of the blue.

Legolas gaped at him, completely thrown. “Why do you want to know?” he asked to buy time.

Captain Ironfoot shrugged casually, but Legolas no longer trusted his show of nonchalance. “Last I knew, it was in the possession of Glóin Fireforged, and he would’ve sooner eaten his boot than trade with nobles. An idle curiosity, is all.” A mutter rippled through the pirates at the name, and Legolas eyed them mistrustfully, but he couldn’t get a good read on the mood of the crowd.

“I’ve had it since I was a child,” Legolas hedged, because he wasn’t about to admit to these pirates that he’d stolen it from one he called a friend.

“Indeed,” Captain Ironfoot remarked, clearly not believing him. He didn’t push the issue, however, just nodded. “Alright then, laddie. You hand over the locket, and I swear on my honour, we’ll put your lovely port to our rudder, and ne’er return.”

Legolas prayed that he wasn’t making a mistake as he passed the locket to Captain Ironfoot. Some invisible tension left the pirates once the locket was in their Captain’s hand, and they all seemed to press a little closer, trying to get a good look at it. The Captain examined it intently for a long moment, something dark and fierce in his eyes when he looked at it, then turned and handed the locket off to a cabin boy who’d been hovering unobtrusively at his heels. “To the safebox in my cabin, lad,” he ordered.

The child – no more than eight or nine by Legolas’s guess – beamed up at the Captain and scampered off across the deck, darting between legs as often as around them. Several of the pirates he dodged around called out after him, near begging for one more look at the locket, but the boy ignored them all, determined to complete the task given to him by the Captain.

“Captain?” Dwalin asked in a low, malicious rumble.

“We’ll honour our bargain, Dwalin,” Captain Ironfoot ordered, though he didn’t sound happy about it at all, just extremely tired. Then he turned on his good foot and limped off.

“Aye, sir,” Dwalin agreed. “Stow the guns! Signal the men to return! Prepare to sail!” he barked out, sending the pirates scattering across the deck. He grinned nastily at Legolas. “And someone toss the trash overboard!”

Legolas gaped in outrage. “You can’t just-!” he began, looking between the burly pirate and the Captain, who had gone still in a way that told Legolas he was listening to the commotion happening behind him, even if he wasn’t watching.

“Oh, can’t I now?” Dwalin growled, and two pirates came forwards to grab at Legolas. He batted them aside, and when their efforts became more vicious, he lashed out with an elbow to one of their ribs, and a punch to the other’s nose. Dwalin growled, and stalked forwards, only to be halted from laying a hand on Legolas by the Captain once again.

“No, put him in the brig, Dwalin,” Captain Ironfoot ordered.

“Sir?” Dwalin blurted out, baffled.

“We might find a use for him, sooner or later,” the Captain remarked without feeling. The way some of the pirates nearby snickered and elbowed each other made Legolas suspect it ought to have come with a leer. The thought made him feel sick, and put a chill in his bones where even the damp night air hadn’t managed.

“Dori’s going to be livid at having another mouth to feed,” Dwalin pointed out gruffly.

“So we feed him on leftovers,” the Captain snapped, suddenly angry. “That wasn’t a request, Dwalin. Hop to!”

Dwalin straightened and nodded sharply. “Aye, sir!” he barked crisply.

Legolas began to think he should have let himself be thrown overboard. “Hold on, our bargain-!” he began indignantly, but he was cut off when Captain Ironfoot rounded on him, such a fiercely furious expression on his face that Legolas recoiled.

“Our bargain made no specifics as to where you were to be when we leave your precious port. Our parley is complete, and you no longer have a say,” he growled. “Your presumption to using the pirates code when you aren’t a pirate was amusing, but don’t try my patience. I have precious little enough left after the last ten years!” He reeled himself in with what appeared to be a massive effort, and turned to Dwalin again. “Take him to the brig. If he resists, shoot him somewhere non-vital.” And with that, he turned and disappeared into the bowls of the ship.

Legolas didn’t resist as Dwalin dragged him away, too confused by that sudden rage and too terrified by this new turn of events to muster any sort of will fight. A rational part of his mind told him that he probably wouldn’t get very far if he did, but most of his attention was caught on the door the Captain had disappeared through, and the puzzle of why on earth he’d suddenly come over so angry.

Dáin leaned back against the door to the Captain’s Cabin and closed his eyes, head thunking against the wood as he tried to settle his roiling emotions. Everything was coming to a head, and there were no good choices left, but that didn’t mean he had to be happy about it.

“You know I’m right.”

Dáin opened his eyes and lowered his head to look at the small figure perched on the edge of the desk. The little spirit was just as worn out as he was, but she looked far worse than mere tiredness would account for; her tawny curls were singed to a short, ragged mop about her ears and her patched and fraying clothes didn’t do all that much to hide the pale and shiny burn scars that scrawled vividly across her tanned skin. All that on top of the stress stealing her once-plump figure and putting lines on her face.

“Aye, I do,” Dáin agreed on a tired growl, “but that doesn’t mean I have to like it.”

The spirit’s temper flared, hazel eyes suddenly blazing with a rage that made the entire ship tremble and judder like it had caught on a shallow reef. The candles in the room guttered and flared, and outside, Dáin heard several crashes and heavy thumps, and more than one yelp of alarm. “Do you think I do?!” she demanded. With a flicker, she was no longer sitting on the desk, but standing right in front of Dáin and glaring up at him as if the one and a half feet he had on her meant nothing. “Do you think I want to use that poor boy as a sacrifice? He must be terrified!”

Dáin pressed a hand to his face, and tried not to remember the look on the lordling’s face when he’d given the order to keep him on board. Terrified was a good word for it. “This isn’t right,” he murmured, needing to say it out loud. He needed to remember to hold himself accountable when all was said and done. He might be stuck between a rock and a hard place, but that didn’t make any of it right.

“No, it’s not,” the spirit of the Black Pearl agreed, but where Dáin’s voice had been resigned and full of anguish, her voice was brisk and strong with resolve. “It’s not right, but I don’t care. I’ll do it anyway, and damn the consequences.” Dáin lowered his hand heavily to his side and met her gaze, and found to his surprise that her eyes were wet with unshed tears. “I would do so much worse than this, Dáin Ironfoot, to have my Captain back again.”

Chapter Text

Searingly bright sunlight shining directly onto his face dragged Gimli back into consciousness, and he groaned with feeling. His head was pounding, the light driving spikes into his eyes and painting his eyelids a fiery orange. He screwed up his face in preparation of opening his eyes, and felt dried blood crack against the side of his face. Dizzily, he remembered the shrapnel that had caught him in the forehead and clearly knocked him out, and wound the memory back to his fight with the blond pirate…

Eyes flying wide as he remembered Legolas, taken captive and calling out to Gimli in desperation, Gimli tried to sit upright. His head spun, pain exploding through his skull, and his stomach lurched, so violently he might have been sick if he been any less determined. His eyes had snapped shut after that first violent motion, and he only peeled them open a fraction as he clambered inelegantly to his feet. He found his axe in the dirt beside him, and used it as a prop to keep himself upright as he tried to take in his surroundings without provoking his headache any more.

Port Royal was a mess. People were just beginning the arduous task of cleaning up after the battle, civilians tentatively peeking out of their doors to assess the damage, and soldiers marching through the streets collecting bodies. There were wrecks of ships both sitting at the docks and limping across the bay, shattered masts and various other flotsam littering the otherwise crystalline water.

There was no sign of the Black Pearl, not that Gimli had expected the ship to linger. But it was a blow to his heart nevertheless, because it meant Legolas was gone. A tiny voice in the back of his mind reminded him that Legolas was no slouch in a fight, and may have managed to win his freedom, but he doubted it. Those pirates had been battle-hardened, almost unnaturally strong, and dirty fighters besides. Legolas might be skilled enough with a cutlass or a bit of friendly fisticuffs, but he was still a sheltered child of a noble lord, and had little experience with the sort of skills that might have facilitated an escape from the pirates.

There was only one way to find out, however. So Gimli steeled himself, and began to trudge his way through the wreckage of the streets towards the fort. If Legolas was here, that was where he would be, even if his father tried to send him home. If Legolas wasn’t, it was certainly where Lord Greenwood would be, overseeing the repair and rescue work, and harassing Commodore Tauriel about the search for his son, which would, of course, be of the highest priority.

The fort itself was a hive of activity, men in red coats dashing this way and that, carrying wounded men, corpses, or vital supplies here and there. The guards posted at the gates took one look at him, bloody and wounded and carrying a battle-axe, and directed him to the infirmary with brisk politeness. Gimli thanked them distractedly, and ignored their instructions completely.

He found who he was looking for on the first glance around the open parade ground. Commodore Tauriel was striking with her blue coat and vibrantly red hair, and that along with the startlingly pale blonde head of Lord Greenwood made the corner they had turned into their command centre stand out. Gimli wasted no time in striding across the parade ground.

One look at the Lord’s face, which could have been carved of ice for all the warmth it showed, told Gimli that he didn’t need to tell the man what had happened to his son. He did anyway, because the words were the only thing in his mind. “They took Legolas,” he announced, and the panic and fury that shredded his voice to raw growl seemed to startle the officers standing guard.

Lord Greenwood turned to him slowly and stared at him as if wondering why he felt the need to state the obvious, and willing him to just get to the point already. The Commodore, however, nodded briskly without bothering to look up from her maps. “We know,” she confirmed crisply. Then went on with an almost absent, “you should not be here. Faramir, escort this man out of the fort, if you please.”

Gimli bristled. “I’m no’ leaving!” he snarled, shrugging off the man that tried to catch hold of his arm. “We have to find him, an’ if you think I’m gonna let you shuffle me off and leave me in the dark, you’ve got another thing coming! Legolas is my friend, and I’ll do everything I can to help bring him home again!”

“And what, exactly, do you think you could do, Gimli Durinson?” Lord Greenwood drawled, his voice terrible in it’s hollow unfeeling. He stared out at the parade ground, his back to Gimli, and didn’t bother to look around when he addressed him. “A blacksmith’s apprentice will be more hindrance than help in a venture of this much import.”

“Aye, I’m only a lowly smith’s apprentice,” Gimli growled, forgetting all propriety in his worry for Legolas, “but I’m not some child with no knowledge of the world. I’d wager I know a damned sight more’n you, living as you do in your ivory tower.” Lord Greenwood stiffened, and several of the men around them sucked in sharp, horrified breaths. “What I don’t know, I am willing to learn, and if nothing else, I am not just willing but eager to take my blade to the necks of any pirate that dared to lay a finger on Legolas! If you have any care at all for him, you’d accept my offer of help in the spirit in which it was intended, instead of dismissing me out of petty spite!”

Lord Greenwood whirled and strode forwards to loom over Gimli. He glared with chilly fury at Gimli, but the young man was caught by the dampness that softened the rage in his eyes, and the way that, this close, he could see that the hard set of his jaw was to keep his lips from trembling. “You dare speak to me in such a manner?” Lord Greenwood hissed. “You have no right-”

“Perhaps not,” Gimli interrupted, to another round of scandalised gasps. His voice was quiet and flat as he continued, “but Legolas is not here to keep us civil to each other.” Lord Greenwood recoiled as if Gimli had hit him, and Gimli gave him a moment to recover his composure before pointing out, as gently as he could manage, given the topic at hand, “you know what he would say, though, were he here, and it would not be to chide me for my boldness.”

Lord Greenwood stared at him for a long moment, and then, whatever steel had been holding him up seemed to vanish. His straight spine bowed, his broad shoulders slumped, and he lowered his head into his palm. “Oh, do as you please. It is not as though you could make this situation any worse,” he huffed, waving a hand in clear dismissal as he turned away again.

Gimli felt rather guilty for his explosion of temper in that moment, seeing the full weight of the man’s care for his son clearly outlined in his every move. “We will find him, and we will bring him home.” He declared staunchly, because to think otherwise was simply unacceptable.

Tauriel finally looked up at him, and in her eyes, at least, Gimli found a sort of kinmanship, a deep well of empathy that only enhanced the rage and desperate fear in her eyes, because they were mirrors of Gimli’s own feelings. “How?” she demanded of him. “If you have any suggestions, Mr Durinson, please, share them.”

Gimli opened his mouth, and then shut it again. He was, after all, no sailor, no brilliant tactician. He could not track a ship across the sea, and he could not predict the movements of pirates nor understand their desires and motives. “Do we know where the Black Pearl makes berth?” he asked, even though he knew the answer before he asked.

Tauriel gave him a look of utter contempt. “If we did, do you think I would be standing here, pouring over these useless maps?” Gimli refused to be daunted by the situation, and cast about for something that could help.

“What do we know about the ship, and those that crew her?” he pressed.

“Naught but ghost stories and folk tales.” Tauriel replied blankly.

“Begging your pardon, sir?” the man who’d tried to grab Gimli earlier interjected. Faramir, Gimli recalled his name being. The marine’s already tentative expression became nervous as Tauriel turned to him with fierce eyes, silently demanding that the interruption had better be worth her time. “It’s just… that pirate we arrested yesterday? The one that saved Master Greenwood’s life?” he prompted.

“Thorin Oakenshield,” Tauriel interjected.

“Yes, him,” Faramir nodded quickly. “Before we knew he was a pirate, we spoke to him a little, and he talked about the Black Pearl. I thought, perhaps, he might be able to give us some information on it,” he explained, and despite his nerves his quiet voice didn’t tremble or waver in the slightest.

“He barely mentioned it,” one of the other marines interjected. He and Faramir looked alike enough that Gimli would lay money on their being related in some way. Brothers, or cousins at the very least.

Faramir tipped his head in acknowledgement. “He was very… proprietary about it, though. You could hear it in his voice. If I didn’t know better, I would have thought he was talking about his own ship, going by the pride in his voice when he mentioned it.”

Hope flared to life in Gimli’s heart, and he turned to Tauriel with urgency thrumming through him in time with his pulse. “Then we should talk him, ask him what he knows. He may be able to guide us to the Black Pearl!” Tauriel did not look convinced. “If we could make a deal with him-”

“No!” Tauriel barked, cutting Gimli off and giving him a hard look. “I will not deal with a pirate.”

“Not even to save Legolas?!” Gimli demanded furiously. Tauriel’s eyes widened. “Are you really going to let an opportunity go just for your pride-?”

Tauriel shot to her feet, sending her chair clattering across the stone of the courtyard. She strode around the table to grab Gimli by the arm and drag him away from the others. Gimli dug his heals in, but Tauriel was taller than he, and had better leverage. She propelled him across the courtyard with a rough shove. “You have clearly lost your senses, Mr Durinson,” she snapped with vicious disdain.

“I have?!” Gimli yelped.

The look Tauriel favoured him with was more than just angry, it was openly mistrustful and almost pitying. “Do not think it is something as cheap as pride that keeps me from making foolish decisions. Pirates are liars and cheats by trade, and not a single one of them has any honour. I will not allow a man who has already proven he has no regard for Legolas’s life within a hundred feet of him. He is already surrounded by enemies, and I will not be responsible for adding one more. If you’ve any wit left in that hard head of yours, you will go home and leave this to the professionals.”

She gave Gimli one more push towards the portcullis, then turned on her heel and strode back the way they’d come without sparing him another glance. Gimli glared at Tauriel’s back. It wasn’t that he couldn’t see that she had a point. He had never trusted pirates, not since that terrible day when his whole word shattered into splinters under a pirate ship’s cannonade. There was another memory dancing in his mind’s eye, though. One of Thorin Oakenshield holding him at gunpoint and, inexplicably, lowering his weapon. Gimli did not know why he had done so, but it suggested the man had some honour, that he valued something above saving his own skin no matter the means.

Nodding to himself, Gimli turned to go, but he did not make for the gate like Tauriel had undoubtedly intended. Instead, he ducked into the mess hall, and through and beyond, heading unerringly towards the prisons.

Thorin had barely been able to bring himself to move all night. He was no longer kneeling, at least, but he had slumped down to sit with his side against the bars. He had endured ten years of solitude on the single hope of a chance to apologise to his crew, but now… Now he saw in them the same madness that had taken everything from him, and he had no idea what to do. Not that there was anything he could do, stuck inside a cell in Port Royal while the Black Pearl sailed the oceans.

“Oakenshield?”

At the sound of his name, Thorin mustered the resolve to raise his head, and flinched to see the boy that so resembled Glóin Fireforged standing before his cell, fists planted on hips and stance wide, as though preparing for a fight. The thought almost made Thorin smile, if only in a twisted parody of humour, because he was certainly not up for a fight right now. “That’s me,” Thorin confirmed wearily, lowering his head again, because he simply couldn’t bear to look at the boy for very long at the moment.

“I heard tell that you have some passing familiarity with the ship that attacked last night; the Black Pearl?” the boy – Glóin’s boy? Thorin didn’t want to think so, but in this dark mood, he couldn’t help but entertain the possibility – asked.

“A passing familiarity,” Thorin echoed, half amusement, half agreement.

“Where does it make berth?” Glóin’s boy pressed, all intense ferocity as he leaned closer and wrapped a hand around the bars of the cell.

“Don’t you know your folklore, boy?” Thorin asked, though he couldn’t muster up anything near his usual scorn and temper. He didn’t want to talk about Erebor, not when he was feeling so hopeless and helpless, but he found the words spilling from his lips anyway. “Captain Ironfoot and the crew of the Black Pearl sail from the legendary Mount Erebor. It’s an island that cannot be found, except by those who already know where it is.”

The boy gritted his teeth, but after a moment, his ire faded. “A ghost ship attacked this port last night, I suppose I can believe in vanishing isles,” he grumbled, irritably. “Where can it be found?”

“What makes you think I know?” Thorin asked instead of answering.

“Because you’re the only one who might,” the boy growled.

Thorin considered that with narrowed eyes, tilting his head to watch the boy out of the corner of his eye. “And why do you want to know?” he wondered, interest sparked at last. A vaguely unkind smirk tugged at his lips. “After your scorn the other day, I would hardly expect you to be looking to join that cursed crew,” he remarked, trying to goad a response.

“I would never turn pirate!” the boy snapped, baring his teeth in an expression so reminiscent of Glóin that Thorin’s doubts began to crumble. He reined himself in, though, and dropped Thorin’s gaze, something frightened and wary coming over his features. “They took Master Greenwood,” he admitted, far more quietly than Thorin would have expected from him.

But Thorin knew that tone of voice. “Ah,” he breathed, finding a grin somewhere beyond the dark haze of his hopelessness, “a lad, not a lass. Forgive my assumption,” he drawled, and almost laughed at the sudden flush that flared on the boy’s cheeks. “You intend to rush to the rescue of your secret paramour, then?” he prompted.

“He’s not-” the poor boy stuttered, face still aflame, “we’re not- he-” He coughed, folded his arms across his chest, and glowered at Thorin. “Yes, essentially,” he capitulated gruffly.

“Well, I’d love to help you,” Thorin informed him, tone laced with sarcasm, even though the words were more sincere than he’d like to admit to, “but unfortunately, I’m stuck in this cell.” He pointed out with an angry gesture at his surroundings.

Glóin’s boy scoffed, and Thorin looked up to see him grinning, blush receding now that the topic of his not-yet-lover – if Thorin had interpreted that stuttered mess correctly – was being left behind. “Not for long,” the boy said, with a surprising lack of arrogance. There was mischief in his eyes, though. “I can get you out easily enough, if you agree to help me rescue Legolas.”

“How?” Thorin demanded. The boy just raised his eyebrows at him, waiting for an agreement before he shared any information with Thorin. He was a smart, canny lad, then, just like his father. Though Thorin would like to be sure, before he went risking his life for the boy. “What’s your name?” he asked, watching the boy closely.

“Gimli Durinson,” the boy – Glóin’s boy, and Thorin’s own kin – answered promptly, if a little confused.

Thorin swallowed hard, and tried to speak. The words settled heavy in the back of his throat and refused to move. He couldn’t even manage to begin with something as innocuous as admitting to knowing the boy’s father. There was no way to explain the debt he owed to the lad without getting into why, and he found that after last night, he couldn’t bring himself to face that conversation yet again.

Later, he promised himself, feeling like the worst sort of coward. Later, I will tell him the truth, and allow him the satisfaction of revenge, if that is his wish. For now, I can at least do him this small service in recompense. Duty managed to drag him to his feet where nothing else had, and he squared his shoulders and held out a hand to Gimli through the bars. “Thorin Oakenshield,” he replied dryly.

Gimli eyed his hand with a sceptical tilt to his brows. “I know,” he informed Thorin, in equally dry tones. “Do we have a deal then? I set you free, and you’ll take me to this Mount Erebor, and help me rescue Legolas?” he pressed.

“You have my word,” Thorin assured him. Gimli narrowed his eyes, and Thorin sighed heavily at his attitude. “Though the word of a pirate undoubtedly means little to you, I at least have enough honour that I do not break my word lightly. It has oft been the only thing I had left, and I have learned well it’s value for that,” Thorin explained, and something in Gimli’s expression shifted, going from disbelieving to intensely fascinated and curious to accepting.

“Alright then,” he agreed, and shook Thorin’s hand. He had a strong, firm grip, and the callouses on his hands were numerous. A hard-worker, then, and a strong lad, with a sharp mind and a fiery temper. Glóin would have been near to bursting with pride to see his son thus. The thought sent a fierce surge of guilt and grief through Thorin, and he wrestled it down with the skill of long practice.

Gimli, he was relieved to note, hadn’t noticed, busy as he was studying the door, and then, to Thorin’s bemusement, dragging over a wooden bench and fitting the legs between the bars. He caught Thorin’s curious look, and grinned. “Half pin-barrel hinges,” he explained simply.

Thorin gaped. “In a prison?!” he demanded in disbelief.

“I know,” Gimli chortled, applying his weight to the end of the bench, and lifting the door free of it’s hinges with apparent ease. It came free of the lock, too, with a horrible grating noise, and then clattered to the ground. “But that’s what they paid for, so that’s what they got. I tried to tell ‘em, mind, but no one listens to the blacksmith’s apprentice.”

“More fool them,” Thorin remarked, clambering over the cell door. With only a brief, but necessary, pause to collect his belongings, Thorin followed Gimli out of the prison, silently vowing to do everything in his power to aid the son of the man he’d killed in his madness.

Chapter Text

Port Royal was bustling, which was making their escape far harder than it needed to be. They had to stop and hide every few minutes, and the waiting grated on Gimli’s nerves, which were already shredded due to the fact that he was, in full knowledge of the consequences of his actions, breaking the law. It wasn’t going to stop him, of course, all he needed to do was remember his last glimpse of Legolas to bolster his resolve, but his resolve didn’t stop it being nerve-wracking.

Oakenshield, on the other hand, seemed perfectly composed. He went still as a striking snake every time they had to hide, and moved through the port at a brisk, purposeful clip when they could move that turned all but the most suspicious eyes away. It was a skill Gimli would envy, if he wasn’t so aware of what it meant about Oakenshield’s history.

They reached the shore by the navy docks, and Oakenshield stopped under the shadow of the bridge to survey the ships. Gimli watched him for a moment, then followed his gaze out to the Dauntless, which was anchored off shore in the calm waters of the bay. “Are we going to steal that ship?” he asked, with a hint of distaste.

Oakenshield cast him a rather judgemental look. “Commandeer,” he corrected, “that’s the nautical term. We’re going to commandeer…” He pointed at the Dauntless, only to swing his finger around until he was pointing at the Interceptor instead where she was sitting at the docks as the navy loaded her up with supplies. “...That ship.”

Gimli watched as marines scurried over the ship like ants, doubts bubbling up, before he turned to regard Oakenshield again, only to find the pirate eyeing up the Dauntless again. “Then why do you keep looking at that one?” he asked.

“Because,” Oakenshield began, a self-satisfied little smile curling the corners of his mouth, “while I might be able to sail a ship that big by myself, there’s a limit to how much you can expect the ship to help you. We won’t be able to get a ship ready to sail before they catch us, but if they think that’s what we’re trying, all the way out there in the middle of the bay…” Oakenshield trailed off pointedly, gesturing at the Interceptor and arching an eyebrow at Gimli.

There was a moment where Gimli considered questioning Oakenshield’s sanity. But in the end, he let that odd remark about ships helping you to sail them pass by as he considered the pirate’s plan. “They’ll come out to arrest us, and we can commandeer the ship that they’ve just got ready?” he ventured to guess, using the new word carefully.

“Exactly.”

“There’s just the problem of that ship being all the way out there in the middle of the bay,” Gimli pointed out. Oakenshield smiled grimly, and set off down towards the beach. Gaping at his back, Gimli took a second to gather himself, before he stomped after the pirate, muttering to himself about cryptic insane bastards and their infuriating attitudes.

Fifteen minutes later, he was creeping along the bottom of the bay, with an upside down row-boat full of air over his head, weighted down with bags of sand to keep the air from lifting them all the way back up to the surface. Oakenshield seemed perfectly at ease with the situation, but Gimli couldn’t help eyeing the row-boat, checking compulsively for leaks. It wasn’t that he couldn’t swim – he could, his mother had taught him when he was a wee lad – but he’d never been quite as comfortable on the water as Legolas was. The last time he’d been out at sea, after all, he’d nearly drowned despite that skill, and lost his last real connection to his family in the wreckage. Being back underwater and clinging to a fragile piece of flotsam was bring up some nasty memories.

“I still think you’re mad,” he grumbled at Oakenshield’s back, which tensed. “Brilliant, but mad.”

“I’ve been mad before,” Oakenshield said after a weighty pause, “and this is not madness.”

Gimli squinted at him. “How do you recover from being mad?”

Oakenshield sighed, like Gimli’s questions were trying his patience, or perhaps like the topic of conversation was a heavy weight on his back, draining his strength. “You watch your entire life fall over the edge of the horizon, and when there’s nothing left but you and that insidious voice in your head telling you that you’ve been wronged, and you deserved better, and how dare they take what was yours by right, you realise that the only reason you lost it was because you listened to that voice in the first place. And you stop listening.”

There wasn’t much Gimli could say to that. He chewed it over in his mind as they trudged through the hazy water, kicking up drifts of sand to cloud the crystalline blue. “That sounds… surprisingly easy.”

Oakenshield huffed a bitter, humourless laugh. “It was the hardest thing I’ve ever done in my life. It nearly killed me,” he stated with remarkable ease, as if this life-threatening decision had meant little, in the grand scheme of things. “Perhaps it should have killed me.” Gimli startled, opened his mouth to ask about that sudden turn to the maudlin and macabre, when Oakenshield abruptly changed the subject. “We must be about there by now. Come on,” he ordered, and then ducked out from under their upside down row-boat and kicked out for the surface.

Gimli rolled his eyes, and followed. There was, indeed, the hulking shadow of a large ship above them, and Gimli swam for it, following the much smaller shadow that was Oakenshield. The pirate skimmed up the stern of the ship like it was as easy as a midday stroll, leaving Gimli in the water, staring up at the climb ahead of him. Gritting his teeth, he refused to be left in the dust by a pirate, and hauled himself, arm over arm, up and over and onto the deck of the ship.

He was surprised to find Oakenshield waiting for him, eyes focused on the middle distance and one hand smoothing over the wood of the stern, talking to the ship. “You were well named the Dauntless, weren’t you?” he asked thin air, smiling like he was greeting an old friend. Gimli cleared his throat, and Oakenshield blinked back into the present. He grimaced at being caught, then turned sharply on his heel and led the way down off the bridge to confront the small crew aboard.

“Everyone stay calm; we are taking over this ship!” Oakenshield called, as he descended the stairs, blade in hand. Gimli reached for his own weapons as all the men turned to face them, and the Captain – Gimli assumed he was the Captain, as he seemed to be in charge – laughed.

One of the crew staggered and sat down hard on a crate. “Thorin?”

As one, everyone turned to the white-haired old sailor, and Gimli was startled to realise he recognised the man, although he couldn’t place him. “Balin?” Oakenshield echoed, sword-tip dropping in the air as his attention was taken. Gimli recognised the name, too, and there was some association with Legolas there, but he couldn’t recall it. He shook the annoying almost-memories off, and raised his own sword, since Oakenshield seemed distracted.

“You know this pirate?” the Captain demanded.

“Once, I did,” Balin agreed solemnly, never looking away from Oakenshield. “Now, I’m not so sure.” The admission seemed to pain him, but it also reassured the other marines, and they turned on Oakenshield, rallying against him. Gimli stepped out from behind Oakenshield, and readied himself for a fight, if it came.

“Would I really be here like this if I was not the man you knew?” Oakenshield asked Balin, and the old sailor beamed. In a heartbeat, his smile turned wicked.

The marines never saw it coming. Still smiling brightly, Balin neatly tripped their Captain into one of the support dinghies. “Terribly sorry, but when one’s Captain decides to commandeer a ship, one really has no choice but to help,” Balin explained to the gaping man as he attempted to regain his footing and was thwarted when Balin nudged the side of the dinghy and it rocked in its supports.

Oakenshield laughed, low and pleased, and raised his sword again. “Get on the boat, and I’ll let you row away with your lives,” he declared. Almost as one, the other sailors looked from his sword, to Balin’s deeply smug smile, to Gimli’s own blade, and then turned and clambered after their Captain.

“Even with three men, you’ll be hard pressed to sail a ship this size,” the Captain declared, nose in the air as he finally managed to climb to his feet.

Both Balin and Oakenshield snorted. “Haven’t you heard of Captain Thorin Oakenshield, laddie?” Balin asked, almost pityingly. The Captain frowned.

“Merry, if you wouldn’t mind?” Oakenshield called into the air.

Confusion permeated the marines, and Gimli had to admit he was with them on that one. Their confusion turned to shock, however, as the ropes attached to the dinghy pulled taut of their own accord, lifting the little boat up, marines and all, and swinging it out over the sea. Several of the marines shrieked and swore and clung to each other or the sides of the boat. It swayed gently in the air, rocked by their movement, but as they froze in superstitious fear, the dinghy settled into stillness as well. There was a breathless pause as they hung there, motionless, and then the dinghy dropped like a stone.

All of two feet, and then it stopped again, spilling the marines onto their backsides with startled yelps and breathless curses. When it resumed its descent, it was a smooth, gentle glide all the way down to the ocean’s surface. Then the ropes went limp, slithering down to coil placidly in the water beside the little boat, as perfectly inanimate as rope was ever supposed to be.

Gimli turned to gape at Oakenshield, who raised his eyebrows at him in a strangely arrogant yet prompting gesture. A wordless ‘Yes? And what do you want?’ expressed with nothing more than arched brows and cool blue eyes. Gimli swallowed to wet his dry throat, and asked, “how did you do that?”

“I didn’t,” Oakenshield replied, as though it ought to have been obvious. “The ship did.”

“The ship?” Gimli echoed, unable to bring himself to believe it, even as doubt began to gnaw away at everything his mind insisted was rational and sane. After all, no one had touched those ropes, not Thorin or Balin or Gimli or any of the marines, and yet, the dinghy had been lowered safely to the water all the same. If it wasn’t the ship, what could Gimli blame it on except another equally ludicrous explanation? Ghost ships and vanishing islands were one thing, but the Dauntless was a simple navy ship, not a thing of legend like the Black Pearl.

“Even with the lovely lady’s help, Thorin,” Balin began, completely ignoring Gimli’s confusion and disbelief, “it is a bit much to ask the four of us to make it out of the bay before they catch us. I’ve no doubt you could do with the Pearl, but very few ships have Bilbo’s speed or control.”

Oakenshield’s expression turned achingly wistful, but he rallied himself a heartbeat later, and managed a tight little smile in Balin’s direction. “Good thing we’re not going to commandeer this ship, then, isn’t it?” he asked wryly, tipping his head back towards the Interceptor.

Balin followed the motion with his gaze, blinked once, and then smiled like a proud uncle. “Ingenious, as always, Captain,” he complimented.

“Thank you, old friend,” Oakenshield replied solemnly.

There was a long look shared between them, then Balin clapped his hands together and looked around at the ship. “Well, if we’re going to make a good show of it, we’d best get started, hadn’t we?” he asked, although he didn’t seem to need an answer, as he immediately set out to begin readying the ship for a journey. Oakenshield was only a pace behind him. Gimli cast one last dubious look at the now empty supports where the dinghy had rested, then added his own hands to the task, all the while wondering just what sort of trouble he was getting himself into.

“Commodore!”

The distant, desperate cry caught Tauriel’s attention, and she looked up from supervising the loading of the Interceptor, searching for the source. She spotted the small row-boat instantly, given that Melpomaen was standing at the bow, waving his arms wildly. Alarmed, she strode to the end of the pier, snatching up a spyglass on her way. “They’ve taken the Dauntless!” she heard Melpomaen cry, so instead of focusing on the row-boat, she swung the spyglass towards the larger ship.

There on the deck, she spotted a very distinctive wild red mass of curls half way up the rigging, and below, an irritatingly familiar coat topped by a fall of dark hair. “Oakenshield,” she hissed in fury. “Durinson, you rash fool!” There was another figure not too far from Oakenshield, white-haired but not too old to be hauling on ropes in an attempt to raise the sails. Tauriel gaped, more shocked by that than by Gimli’s impetuous actions. Mr Balin had been in the navy almost as long as Tauriel herself had, and although he’d never distinguished himself, he had always struck her as a steady and utterly reliable sailor. To see him aiding that wild, vicious pirate was a betrayal she hadn’t even thought to expect.

“Hold the last of the supplies!” Tauriel called over her shoulder, taking one last look at the ragtag crew of idiots attempting to steal one of her ships, before she closed the spyglass with a snap and whirled about to stride up the gangplank. “Prepare to sail!” she declared, and her hand-picked crew leapt to obey without question.

They gained on the Dauntless with ease, since it hadn’t moved very far at all, and Tauriel ordered her men to board and search the ship from stem to stern. She went with them, because she wanted the personal pleasure of shaking some sense into Gimli’s stupid head when they found him. They were both Legolas’s friends, and she hadn’t lost her head over his kidnapping, so there was no excuse for Gimli to go haring off half-cocked and with the dubious aide of a pirate.

A sudden clattering and a couple of startled yells behind her as she climbed the stairs to the bridge made Tauriel freeze. She closed her eyes on a sudden feeling of dread, and turned to confirm her suspicions. The two gangplanks her men had laid down had fallen into the sea along because the Interceptor was pulling away from the Dauntless. The handful of sailors she’d left behind to man the ship were in the water too, waving and yelling for attention or swimming for the Dauntless if they could.

“Our thanks, Commodore!” Oakenshield called from his place at the wheel. “For getting our ship ready to make way.” He looked so smug, so insufferably pleased with himself, that Tauriel didn’t want to send him to the hangman’s noose, not when it would be much more satisfying to break his neck herself. He turned his back on them, despite the fact that her men were finally beginning to fire on him and the two men standing either side of him. “Raise the foresail!” Oakenshield called.

Neither Gimli nor Mr Balin moved to obey, and Tauriel held her breath, wondering if maybe one or both of them was going to come to his damned senses . But then the unbelievable happened. The foresail snapped into place, billowing in the wind, and the Interceptor picked up speed all by itself. The mainsail turned, the better to catch the wind, ropes unspooling and pulling taut to realign it as Oakenshield aimed them towards the open sea.

Somewhere among the crowd of sailors on the deck below Tauriel heard someone whisper, “witchcraft,” and she felt something turn to ice in her gut. She did not believe in ghost stories, she had seen too much human malice to accredit any special malevolence to some mystical force, but she would be a fool if she discredited the advice of older and wiser sailors than herself. And Mr Balin had always warned against dangers of the sea beyond what mere humans could do to each other.

Whether or not it was witchcraft, Tauriel was not going to take the risk. She would not see one of her ships in the hands of a pirate, whether he was mere mortal or nightmare incarnate. “Set topsails,” she snarled at the sailor nearest her. He turned to blink at her. “And clear up this mess!”

“But, sir…!” the man protested, alarmed. “We’d be hard pressed to catch the Interceptor with a favourable wind, and-”

“I don’t need to catch them!” Tauriel replied, bristling with fury at being reduced to this, but not hesitating. “Just get them in range of the long nines.” She paused, to breathe and compose herself. “I’d rather see her at the bottom of the ocean than in the hands of a pirate.”

The men around her hesitated, but they were good men, even in such a dubious situation, and they relayed her orders and hopped to, realigning the sails and rolling out the guns. A sudden chill raced through Tauriel, goosebumps raising on her arms even though the wind was warm and the day was balmy. The atmosphere up on the bridge suddenly seemed heavy and frigid, despite the sun.

Something snapped behind her. Tauriel turned, only to see the wheel spinning loose and wild in front of her startled navigator. Several thumps had her turning again, only to see several crates of cannonballs rolling wildly across the deck. Even as she watched, a new recruit tripped on a rope that simply should not have been there, and sent the bucket of gunpowder he’d been carrying flying over the side of the ship to scatter uselessly in the water. Another rope snapped, and sent a beam careening wildly across the deck, knocking over several of the gunmen.

In the end, not a single gun was ready to fire by the time the Interceptor sped out of their range. Tauriel gaped at the mess before her, unable to believe their fortune could be quite that terrible without outside interference. Slowly, she turned a scowl on the rapidly shrinking shape of the Interceptor. “Oakenshield!” she gritted out through her teeth.

Unseen and unheard, a little spirit with golden curls and a yellow waistcoat scoffed, hands on her hips and glaring at the red-haired Commodore from less than a foot away, not at all daunted by the height difference. “Please! As if I was going to let you fire on Pippin! You’re a good Captain, better than the last one for sure, and I like you, but not that much.” She rocked back on her heels, casting a thoughtful look in the direction Tauriel was staring in. “And Captain Oakenshield promised to take good care of her. He can see us, you know, so she’s in good hands. She’d better not do anything too stupid, though, not without me there to watch her back…”

Chapter Text

The sun glittered on the clear blue water as far as the eye could see, the horizon a clear line in the distance where cobalt met azure and the world appeared to end. Gimli tore his eyes away from the sight and focused back on honing the blade of his axe to a fine edge. He hadn’t had a chance to tend to it after the fight in Port Royal, and he had a feeling he was going to need it sharp in the near future, so he didn’t want to put the task off any longer. That, and it was a good distraction.

“You seem on edge, lad.”

Gimli looked up into the weathered, kindly face of Mr Balin, and tasted suspicion on the back of his tongue. He didn’t like how easily the man had turned on his fellows to help Oakenshield, and there were too many questions about Oakenshield for him to relax around either man. “Last time I was on a ship out at sea, I nearly drowned, and lost everything except the clothes on my back,” Gimli told him bluntly, going back to his axe. “I was nine.”

Mr Balin nodded gravely. “I remember, lad.”

Finally, Gimli realised where he knew the man from. They’d met on the Dauntless, on that fateful trip from England where Gimli had lost everything, including the only link he had to his father. The trip where he had met Legolas. It ached, to remember that now, with Legolas captured and far out of reach. They had been so young, and even though Gimli had been scared and alone, and had bristled and barked at everyone, and Legolas had been the only one to match him barb for barb, he still thought on those days with fondness. Legolas had seemed almost unreal to him then, but they’d been children, and Gimli had never hesitated to reach out to his first real friend. Not the way he’d learned to hesitate later, when he grew up and finally noticed the yawning chasm of the class difference stretched between them. When he realised what it meant that his heart always leapt and fluttered when Legolas was near, and just what society would do to him, to Legolas, if they ever realised.

“Ach, young love,” Mr Balin sighed, startling Gimli out of his memories. He shook the wisps of nostalgia off, and only then realised just what Mr Balin had said. He flushed a dull red, right to the tips of his ears, and tried to deny it. The words got all tangled up on his tongue, though, and Mr Balin only chuckled, and patted him on the shoulder. “Don’t bother, laddie. Most wouldn’t notice, because they’d never think to look, but any pirate worth their salt’d see it plain as day.”

Gimli swallowed down his embarrassment, and changed the subject. “A pirate?” he asked, fixing a scowl on Mr Balin.

That earned him a quizzical look. “Aye, a pirate.”

“How does a pirate come to be sailing in the King’s navy?” Gimli asked aggressively.

The good humour dropped off Mr Balin’s face for a moment, replaced by the sort of world-weary grief that could kill a man, if he let it. It made Gimli feel like a heel for asking, and he opened his mouth to try and steer the conversation onto a more productive track, but before he could, they were interrupted by Oakenshield. “His Captain fails him, and he wisely seeks better employment.”

Gimli turned to stare at him, because from Oakenshield’s attitude, he wouldn’t have thought he’d ever hear the man call the navy ‘better employment’. Mr Balin, too, seemed surprised, but then he smiled at Oakenshield. It was a twisted version of a smile, full of pain and sorrow and sympathy and hope. “I traded one mad Captain for one mad King. A slightly more distant evil, perhaps, but hardly what I’d call better circumstances, Captain.”

Oakenshield tipped his head in a way that wasn’t quite agreement, and his gaze drifted off into the middle distance. “I’m not mad anymore, thank my lucky stars,” he murmured wryly, as if to himself, which made Gimli doubt the content of his words.

“No,” Mr Balin agreed in a tone so mild it came right back around to being pointed. “Madness doesn’t leave room for quite that much guilt.”

Oakenshield’s gaze snapped back into focus as he levelled a hard, piercing look at Mr Balin. “Are you suggesting it is undeserved?” he demanded in a voice like thunder; an ominous growl that matched the lightning flare of temper in his eyes.

Mr Balin sighed heavily. “Self-flagellation serves no one but yourself, Thorin.”

For a moment, Gimli thought they might come to blows, but then Oakenshield reeled himself in, visibly tamping down his frustration. He offered Mr Balin a grim smile that hardly deserved the name, dragged down by the weight of emotion in his eyes. “Perhaps it is selfish, then, but I find I need the reminder, old friend.”

Gimli looked between the two of them, watching as expressions chased themselves across Mr Balin’s face too swiftly for him to read. In the end, he just sighed into his beard and shook his head, and Oakenshield turned and headed off towards the bridge to check their course. “What am I going to do with that boy?” Mr Balin muttered to himself once Oakenshield was out of earshot.

“Boy?” Gimli echoed dryly, although he made sure to keep his voice down so that Oakenshield wouldn’t hear him. “I thought he was your Captain.”

“Oh, that he is, lad, that he is. I’ve sailed under many a man, but there’s only one I’d follow to the edges of the world and beyond, and that’s Thorin Oakenshield,” Mr Balin informed him, all the apparent pain of the previous conversation washed away by a fiercely proud look. Then he glanced sideways at Gimli and winked. “But I’ve known him since he was a wee lad and that leaves an impression or three.”

That explained some of why Mr Balin was so willing to drop a career eight years or more in the making on Oakenshield’s say-so. He glanced back over at Oakenshield, who was stood at the helm of the ship. He made for a majestic sight like that, and Gimli couldn’t help but compare it to the sight of him in Port Royal’s prison cell, hollowed out and defeated until Gimli had offered him a deal. He’d been chewing on that moment ever since it had happened, and there was only one thing he could think of that could make that whole exchange make sense. He decided to test his suspicion with Mr Balin before he confronted Oakenshield on the subject.

“If you’ve known him for that long,” Gimli began idly, “you must have known my father, too.”

Mr Balin gave a full-body flinch, and stared at Gimli for a long moment before answering. “Aye, I did, lad,” he confirmed finally. Turning his eyes back to Oakenshield, he nodded. “Glóin was one of the most faithful, honourable men I’ve ever sailed with, and there’s no one better to have at your back in a fight.”

Gimli was distracted from the implied confirmation that Oakenshield had known his father by the other implication Mr Balin had made. He stared at the old sailor – old pirate – and willed it not to be true. “He was in the navy?” He asked mildly.

That got him a look that suggested Mr Balin was questioning his intelligence. “No, lad.”

“My father was a decent, law-abiding man.” Gimli insisted, hands balling into fists.

Mr Balin frowned. “That’s a bit of an oxymoron there,” he pointed out, and at Gimli’s expression of bewildered offence, he elaborated; “It’s hard to be a decent man and obey the law at the same time. Your father chose the harder path, and did what was right by him and his, even when society condemned and shunned him for it.” His tone was a gentle one, teacherly and kind, but Gimli found the words enraging.

“My father was not a pirate!” he insisted, loud in his anger.

Across the deck, Oakenshield’s head snapped around, attention drawn by the shout. Gimli bristled under the attention, suddenly very aware that he was in the middle of nowhere with two pirates who might take offence at his opinion of their profession. Mr Balin only looked disappointed, but when Oakenshield abandoned his post at the wheel to approach them, his glower was as dark as a thundercloud. “I’m afraid he was, lad,” Mr Balin corrected him patiently.

“No,” Gimli denied, shaking his head. He didn’t want to believe it, but he was desperately trying to recall what his mother had said about her husband, if at any point she’d called him something that could rule out pirate. She’d called him a sailor most often, but also sometimes a trader, or an explorer. All of which, he was beginning to suspect, had been euphemisms.

“Glóin Durinson, as he was on the official registers and to those fortunate enough to call him kin, was better known to the world as Glóin Fireforged.” Oakenshield announced, coming to a stop some several paces away from Gimli. Far enough that he would be able to evade an attack, should it come, Gimli realised, and he couldn’t deny that some part of him wanted to. “You may have heard the stories, though since you hadn’t heard of Erebor, I suspect you have not.”

In a flash, Gimli recalled that he had heard the epithet before. It had only been in passing, one of those few times Legolas’s starry-eyed wonder had overcome his respect for Gimli’s distaste for pirate stories. He’d been listing off various pirates of renown; Diamondheart and Ironfoot, Darkace and Oakenshield and Fireforged. Horror and denial surged up in Gimli’s throat like bile.

“You’re lying!” he spat, his temper getting the better of him.

“I am not,” Oakenshield denied coldly.

“My father was a good, honest man, not some scoundrel of a pirate!” Gimli burst out, as if saying it aloud might drive away the terrible fear lodged beneath his sternum. “He would never go around killing and stealing from other good, honest folk, and breaking the law and the peace! He would never destroy someone else’s life for his own greed-!”

The world lurched and twisted and tumbled around Gimli, and he yelped in alarm, the rest of his tirade lost. When the sudden blur of motion stopped, he realised he was hanging upside down, a coil of rope dangling from the mast looped and knotted clumsily about his ankle. Gimli gaped at the rope, and then at Mr Balin, who looked just as alarmed as he felt, and then at Oakenshield, who had his eyes closed in what looked like resignation.

Then his eyes snapped open, and he focused on Gimli. “You are quite correct,” he stated, and Gimli forgot all about the inexplicable thing that had just happened in favour of gaping at Oakenshield. “Glóin was a good, honest man, and I would scorn the man that dared to imply he was a scoundrel. That does not mean he didn’t ever kill, nor ever stole, nor sailed under a pirate flag.”

“But-” Gimli began, but he was interrupted when Oakenshield bent down to bring his face level with Gimli’s and met his gaze squarely.

“The laws of men mean little out here, Gimli Durinson. They were written by the rich, to protect their own interests, and they bear only a cheap facade of decency. The sea does not care for wealth, power, or even morality. The only rules that really matter are these; what a man can do, and what a man can’t do. Glóin found that he could not live within the laws of men when it meant his son might starve. I cannot go back on my word once I have given it. Can you, or can you not, accept that a man might be both good and a pirate?”

Gimli swallowed hard. “I suppose I must,” he capitulated, although there wasn’t much conviction behind it. His head was still spinning. For some reason, it had never occurred to him to wonder why a man might turn to piracy. Oakenshield had implied – as good as stated, really – that his father had turned pirate for him. He thought back to his childhood. He hadn’t thought they’d been particularly poor, for a working class family, but it certainly hadn’t been easy to make ends meet.

Oakenshield straightened, and called out; “Let him down!”

Gimli landed in a heap on the deck. He scrambled upright, watching the ropes above his head with a wary eye. “How did you do that?” he asked.

“I didn’t,” Oakenshield replied, giving Gimli a strong sense of deja vu. Suddenly, he knew exactly what was coming before Oakenshield said it. “The ship did.” Then the pirate’s expression lightened. It was nothing that could have been called a smile, but his scowl disappeared, at least. “Pippin is a little impulsive, but she was afraid you were going to strike me.”

“Pippin,” Gimli repeated.

“Aye, that is the name she chose herself, rather than the one humans gave her,” Oakenshield explained. The look he levelled at Gimli was patient, if a little weary, as though he was waiting for him to catch up, or perhaps to start with the obvious questions as to Oakenshield’s sanity. But if Oakenshield was mad, then Gimli must be too, because he had seen these impossible things that Oakenshield was attributing to the ship itself with his own eyes.

Perhaps Oakenshield had some sort of sorcery or witchcraft, but the man insisted it was the ship, not himself. And he had done it twice now, with two different ships. Gimli thought back to the Dauntless, and that moment when he first climbed aboard and Oakenshield had been speaking to the air, or perhaps, to the ship. He didn’t want to think it, the idea of supernatural forces working in the world unnerved him, but the only other logical explanation was that he was going mad, and that was an even more disturbing possibility.

“The ship is… sentient?” Gimli questioned carefully, looking about himself.

Oakenshield looked approving as he nodded. “All ships are. Anything that is big enough to house a man, to give him shelter and some small level of comfort, will grow a soul of its own, given time and enough care,” he explained. His gaze focused on a point a little way behind Gimli’s shoulder, but when Gimli looked, he saw nothing.

“Why can’t I see…” Gimli paused, uncertain how to continue. To call the ship ‘it’ now that he’d learned the ship was sentient seemed rude, but could a ship have a gender? Would it be more or less rude to call the ship a woman, given that most referred to ships as ‘she’ even when they didn’t know that ships apparently had souls? “...them?” Gimli concluded awkwardly.

“Her,” Oakenshield offered, without rancour, before he explained; “I do not know exactly how it works. Ever since I discovered that ships had their own souls, I have been able to see the soul of every ship I have sailed in, but for most, it takes a certain degree of affection and care before they begin to see the truth of things. For some it comes easily, some only ever catch glimpses out of the corner of their eye of a strange little sailor, and some are blind no matter how long they spend at sea.”

Gimli digested that, giving the notion serious thought. “Affection and care?” he checked.

“Aye,” Mr Balin confirmed, smiling like a proud grandfather at the pair of them. “I once had it explained to me that it takes a rather rare sort to be able to treat a ship like a person, a person that one cares for and respects and even cherishes, but once one can do so, why, then of course one would be able to perceive the ship’s soul. For that is what a soul is, is it not?” the old sailor asked rhetorically. “It is the sum total of the care we have been shown, the reflection of our interactions with the world, a record of our history and future formed by the touch of the people we love.”

Oakenshield drew in a sharp breath like something about Mr Balin’s speech had shocked him. He cleared his throat abruptly. “Yes, thank you, Balin,” he snapped, looking away from both of them. Mr Balin grinned, and then winked mischievously at Gimli, who just felt lost. “We will be coming into Tortuga in a few hours,” Oakenshield continued, very pointedly shutting down the previous conversation, “and we should ensure we are prepared to take on a proper crew.”

“Tortuga?” Gimli questioned, distracted.

“Yes,” Oakenshield confirmed in a tone that defied argument.

Gimli argued anyway. “Why do we need a crew? If the ship itself can aid us, surely the three- or rather, four of us can manage by ourselves?” he pressed, jaw set and brows lowered and the glare he fixed on Oakenshield entirely stubborn.

Oakenshield opened his mouth, and then paused, listening to a voice only he could hear. Finally, he dipped his head in acknowledgement, and turned to Gimli with a hard look. “For one thing, as Pippin so rightly pointed out,” he began, “she is not beholden to any of us, and if she chooses to aid us, it is only ever as much as she wishes, and we have no right to demand anything more from her than we can achieve by our own labour.”

Gimli flushed a little, realising that it probably was rude to presume upon someone he couldn’t even see, but Oakenshield wasn’t finished yet. “For another thing, Pippin is young, and not at all used to the sort of exertion that is required in order for her to act independently. It takes massive focus and incredible will for a ship to sail entirely under her own power, and both of those require many years of practice to master. She would exhaust herself if she tried to get us all the way to Erebor without a crew to assist her.”

“Right,” Gimli acknowledged. “Sorry,” he added. Then he flushed deeper, feeling the heat race all the way up to the tips of his ears, and he turned to address the empty air where Oakenshield kept looking whenever he was speaking to the ship. “My apologies, Miss Pippin. I spoke in ignorance, which is no excuse for the assumptions I made, and I hope you can forgive me.”

After a beat, where Gimli tried to decide if it was the embarrassment from his earlier comment or the embarrassment of apologising to thin air that was the reason for his blush, Oakenshield chuckled. “You are forgiven, it seems, Mr Durinson,” he remarked with wry amusement. “You have quite the silver tongue when you put your mind to it.”

“Legolas has accused me of such many times,” Gimli agreed absently.

“Indeed?” Mr Balin inquired, smiling like butter wouldn’t melt in his mouth. It took Gimli a moment to realise what the man was implying, and then he turned as red as his hair. Mr Balin chuckled at his spluttering, and patted him on the shoulder. “Best get used to that sort of talk, lad, or you’ll not last five minutes in Tortuga.”

Chapter Text

Tortuga was a dark and rowdy port. The sounds of shouting, fighting, and raucous laughter echoed over the waters of the bay even before they pulled the Interceptor up to the docks. Gimli was not impressed, but he noticed both Oakenshield and Mr Balin had faint smiles on their faces, like they were genuinely fond of the place. Then they walked into the town proper, and it only got worse. They couldn’t go five metres without having to duck a punch, a flying tankard, or an improvised club. Every street corner was populated by prostitutes who were not shy about draping themselves over anyone who made the mistake of getting within arms reach. Some of the prostitutes, Gimli was embarrassed to realise, were men, and not even men dressed up like women.

It wasn’t that Gimli disliked the rough camaraderie that came of a community built of the poor and hard-working, he’d run in that circle himself in Port Royal, and frequented the pubs and taverns where the few prostitutes that hadn’t been arrested dared to work. It was just that there was something utterly untamed about Tortuga. A man could easily lose his life here, if he didn’t keep his wits about him, and half the people didn’t seem to care. The other half looked fit to run you through if you so much as looked at them funny.

“What do you think of Tortuga, then, lad?” Mr Balin asked cheerfully as they wove through the brawls spilling out onto the streets, and the couples barely seconds away from going at it right there in the street.

Gimli eyed Mr Balin dubiously. “I think you’re taking your life into your own hands just stepping off your ship,” he mused, trying to make it sound diplomatic, rather than critical.

“Aye, there is something of that to it,” Mr Balin agreed philosophically, “but that’s just how life is, to a pirate. Your life is entirely your own to build, or lose, if you’re not careful with it. There’s a certain freedom in that, I think, that makes the risks well worth it.”

“You don’t wish for some form of security?” Gimli wondered, thinking rather longingly of the clean streets of Port Royal.

“At what price?” Oakenshield asked, making Gimli jump. He hadn’t realised the man had been listening in. Oakenshield looked over his shoulder with a sardonic look in his eye. “Security is all well and good, but at the cost of my autonomy? My freedom? I will take my chances with the scum of the earth before I rub shoulders with those who use a thin veneer of civility to rob decent folk of all their honour and pride.”

That declaration carried them to the doors of a surprisingly well-kept tavern. Where most of the other establishments had broken windows and doors that half hung off their hinges from having people thrown through them on the regular, this place, although dirty and worn and sporting more than a few gashes from sword-fights, was at least still in one piece. The sign hanging above the door declared it to be The Blue Mountains Tavern and Brothel.

People were spilling in and out of the wide doors, laughing and shouting and sloshing ale over the straw laid down for the express purpose of soaking up spills, but they made way for Oakenshield without a second thought. Gimli wondered at that, because it wasn’t as though Oakenshield looked anything like the sort who commanded deference, although he did carry himself with more confidence than half the people in Tortuga that Gimli had seen.

Inside was just as loud and rowdy as the street, but the tavern was far better lit than the street outside, and Gimli felt a little tension seep out of his shoulders. Even though there were fights springing up and dying out all over the place, no weapons were being drawn, and even though he was still catching glimpses of couples far more intimately entwined than was entirely appropriate in public, he wasn’t actually getting an eyeful of anything he really didn’t want to see. He realised, with a small grimace, that this was probably what passed for a class establishment in Tortuga.

“Thorin?!”

The shout rose above the clamour and din of the tavern, and some of the noise died away as several people paused in their arguments, conversations, and fights in order to watch their small group with the same air as a murder of carrion crows over a battlefield. Oakenshield stilled as the crowd ahead parted, making way for a woman who Gimli immediately pegged as his sister. They were remarkably alike, with the same silver-streaked dark hair, hawk-like nose, and stern brow. Oakenshield’s hair was a little darker than his sister’s, her cheeks were fuller, she didn’t have a beard, and she actually seemed bulkier than her brother, if not actually any broader, but otherwise they looked remarkably alike.

“Dís,” Oakenshield greeted.

His sister, Dís, pushed aside the few patrons of the tavern who weren’t getting out of her way fast enough, while her eyes flickered over Gimli, on to Mr Balin, and then back to Oakenshield as she finally reached him. Her eyes gleamed with unshed tears and her lips were pressed into a thin line as she studied Oakenshield’s face like she was trying to memorise it.

Then she hauled off and punched him square in the face.

There was no warning, no sign that she intended violence until her fist was already flying. Her entire torso shifted into the motion, her hips twisting to throw all the power she had packed in her sturdy frame into the punch. It was enough to send Oakenshield spinning, hair flying, and he staggered right into Mr Balin, which was the only reason he actually remained upright. Gimli wouldn’t have been surprised if he’d lost a tooth or two.

“Ten years!” Dís hollered at the top of her lungs, as Oakenshield regained his feet and turned to stare at her, one hand curled protectively over his jaw. “You swore to me, Thorin, that it would only be a year at most! Yet I haven’t seen hide nor hair of you or my boys in ten bloody years! I thought you were dead! And if you’ve gotten my sons killed on your foolhardy, thrice-cursed, ill-advised quest, Thorin Oakenshield, you will not live to see the dawn, I swear to the Lady!”

“They were not dead, last I saw them,” Oakenshield said, so quiet compared to his sister’s yelling that Gimli was surprised she heard him. But she did, and she stopped, frozen in place for several seconds, staring at Oakenshield like she was contemplating punching him again.

“Last you saw?” she demanded, voice low with warning.

Oakenshield didn’t answer for a long moment. Then he straightened, squaring his shoulders like he was bracing for another blow, and asked, “perhaps this conversation is better had in private?” with enough dignity that it didn’t quite sound plaintive, although Gimli thought he saw something more desperate in the man’s eyes.

Dís glared at him for several, drawn out seconds, and then turned on her heel with a huff. “Fine!” she snapped, and stormed towards the bar. Oakenshield sighed and, after shooting a pointed look at Mr Balin, followed her like a man heading to the gallows. Gimli was tempted to follow him, but before he could even seriously consider the thought, Mr Balin’s hand landed on his shoulder, and steered him towards a table under the stairs that was miraculously clear of patrons.

Dís stalked into the little apartment behind the tavern, right through her office and into the little family kitchen beyond. This was the main communal space of their home, the place her boys grew up in, the place she’d watched her brother piece himself back together after the disasters of their early life, the place she’d fallen in love with a lovable rogue. It was their home, and some part of her was glad to see Thorin back here again, but the larger part was only more enraged, that Thorin was back without her boys. Sick fear was curdled in her gut, but she refused to entertain any of the dark possibilities until she’d heard what Thorin had to say for himself.

“Well?!” she demanded, when Thorin merely stood in the doorway, expression unreadable. Dís knew him, though, and she knew that he only ever pulled on that mask of emotionless hauteur when he was blaming himself for something.

Thorin drew in a breath, then began; “We found Erebor.” Going by the flash of something ugly in his expression, it had not been the victorious homecoming, the reclamation of generations’ worth of Durinson treasure, that he had envisioned. Dís resisted the urge to point out that she had told him so ten bloody years ago. “We found it, and all the gold of our ancestors, in heaping piles taller than three men atop each other, and more besides.” His voice turned bitter and dark, viciously mocking of his past self as he added with deliberate emphasis; “We went quite mad.”

Dís suddenly found that she rather needed to sit down. She grabbed the back of one of the chairs and sank into it, weak-kneed. “So there is a curse,” she murmured, staring unseeing at her brother, who was still lingering on the threshold, like he doubted his welcome.

“Aye, there is a curse,” Thorin confirmed, bitterness in every syllable. He finally stepped into the kitchen, but hovered behind the chair opposite Dís, rather than sitting. “We all fell to it, every last one of us. And I…” Thorin stalled, swallowed, and closed his eyes. “Dís, I was affected worse than the others. I was monstrous in my insanity, and I turned on my own crew in my greed. They mutinied against me, stranded me, and it was only after I had cost myself everything that I came to my senses. That was nine years ago, and I have seen only Ori and Óin since then.”

“And Balin,” Dís pointed out, because she was in no mood for inaccuracies.

Thorin inclined his head. “Balin was no longer a part of my crew when they mutinied. He left some scant days before, preferring to risk a row-boat on the open sea than remain under my command a moment longer,” he admitted, with a sort of bitter admiration that took Dís entirely aback.

“What? Balin?” she echoed in disbelief.

“Yes.”

“But- But Balin has always been so loyal-” Dís protested. “He would never abandon you, especially not in the midst of such peril!”

Thorin looked away from her sharply, expression dark and made even more so by the shadow of his hat. “When I said was monstrous in my insanity, I was not exaggerating, Dís. Balin may be loyal to me – is loyal to me, to a fault – but the foul creature I became when I was in thrall to the treasure of Erebor? No. Balin was right to leave.”

Dís tried to imagine Thorin – stupid, noble, honourable, loyal Thorin – behaving badly enough to drive away Balin of all people, and couldn’t. Balin had been a father to them when their own had disappeared on his own quest for the treasure of Erebor, had helped raise them. For that matter, she tried to imagine her own boys, who idolised Thorin to a ridiculous degree, helping to mutiny against him, and couldn’t. “Thorin…” she began quietly, unable to quite keep the horror from her voice, and feeling guilty for it when Thorin flinched. “What did you do?”

For a moment, she thought Thorin wasn’t going to answer. His jaw worked, but he didn’t seem able to cough up an answer. Then he drew himself up and drew his dignity about himself like a shield. He met her gaze steadily, but he couldn’t quite hide the guilt swirling in his eyes. “I killed Glóin.”

Dís had to have misheard him. “You…” she croaked, hoarse with disbelief and horror. “No, that doesn’t- You- In the Lady’s name, why?”

“I couldn’t say,” Thorin informed her with a grimace, brows pulling together in something like pain. “At the time, my thoughts felt clear and rational, but looking back… I believe I thought he was stealing from me, but there was no logic to it, merely sound and fury.”

Dís struggled to pull comprehension out of the mire her thoughts had become. Grief was muddying everything, because Glóin had been a friend of hers since childhood, and to hear he was dead – had been dead for nine whole years – had struck her hard. Then there was the fact that Thorin, her beloved brother, had been the one to end his life. She felt betrayed; horribly, helplessly betrayed. “Glóin would never steal from someone he’d sworn loyalty to,” she breathed.

Thorin bowed his head. “I know, sister.” He huffed a short, sharp, and entirely humourless laugh. “I cannot explain it. I have no excuse and no justification. All I can offer is that I was not in my right mind, and I would take it back in a heartbeat if I could. However, I cannot, so I am left with paltry attempts to apologise and make amends.”

Silence settled over them as Dís absorbed that. “For the Lady’s sake, sit down,” she huffed into the quiet, suddenly uncomfortable with the way Thorin was standing behind the chair, as if he felt the need for some sort of shield. Hesitantly, Thorin did so. “Why- why did you not come home sooner, Thorin? What have you even been doing for the last nine years? Nine years!” she stressed, reaching across the table towards him. Thorin caught hold of her hand in both of his, so relieved it looked painful.

“I hadn’t realised the boys had not returned to you themselves and told you the story. I was- I was ashamed, and I thought the crew deserved my apologies first,” he explained.

“You were punishing yourself,” Dís concluded, unimpressed. Thorin winced. Dís thumped his hand against the table in reprimand. “So what changed, then? Why are you here now? I take it you haven’t managed to apologise to them all, yet.”

“Many reasons,” Thorin stated. “When I spoke to them a few days ago, Ori and Óin were still in thrall to the gold. I feared- I fear that Fíli and Kíli are likewise similarly afflicted, given that they haven’t so much as visited.” Dís sucked in a sharp breath, horror and fury curling through her. She squeezed Thorin’s hand, and he squeezed back apologetically. “I still intend to find them. Partly to see if there is aught I can do to help them, but also because they have taken prisoner a young lad that Glóin’s boy is hopelessly in love with, and he asked for my aid in retrieving him.”

“Glóin’s boy?” Dís echoed, seizing on the distraction from her terror for her sons to give herself time to process. She recalled the young red-head who’d been standing with Balin only hazily, having been so thoroughly distracted by her fury at Thorin. “That was Glóin’s wee lad, Gimli?”

“Aye, it was,” Thorin confirmed with a bittersweet little smile. “Glóin was right to be so obnoxiously proud of him.” He swallowed, and the smile turned into another grimace. “I owe him more than I can possibly repay. Aiding him in this mad quest is the least I can do.”

“Well, of course,” Dís agreed, leaning back in her chair and giving Thorin an arch look, releasing his hand to fold both of hers over her stomach. “Even if you didn’t owe him weregild for his father’s life, he’s family, Thorin. I would thrash you if you so much as considered leaving him to attempt this alone.” Annoyingly, that only made Thorin smile again, so Dís scowled at him. “And on that note, I hope you don’t think I’m going to be sitting this one out. You already got my boys into this mess, I’m not leaving it up to you to get them out again.”

The smile was gone again, and Dís almost felt guilty for that, even though it had been partly her intention, phrasing it that way. “I would be honoured to have you along, Diamondheart,” Thorin said formally, bowing his head half out of respect, and half in penance.

He always was a ridiculously over-dramatic twit, Dís thought, reluctantly fond. “Have you all you need for a voyage of this nature?” she checked.

“I still need a crew,” Thorin admitted. “Not many. She’s a small ship, young but eager to help, so we could probably manage just the four of us, but I’d prefer a handful more hands on deck.”

“That shouldn’t be too hard around here,” Dís pointed out, and Thorin just nodded. She rolled her eyes and clapped her hands down on her thighs as she stood. “Right, well, you’d best come introduce me to Gimli, and then Balin and I will pull together a crew for you.” That got her another nod, so she started towards the door. Before she could actually get through it, though, Thorin caught her arm. She turned to frown at him, and found him looking guilty and conflicted again. “Thorin?”

“Gimli-” Thorin stopped, cleared his throat, and started again. “I haven’t yet told him what happened to his father. I would… appreciate it if you could… allow me to do so in my own time,” he requested delicately.

Dís stared at him in horror. She felt like she’d been doing that a lot over this conversation. “You haven’t told him?!” she demanded, not sure if she was more aghast or furious.

Thorin huffed, irritated at having to explain himself, and Dís glared at him for it. “He is already near enough to killing me simply for being a pirate. And while taking my life would be his right, and I have no intention of stopping him if that is what he decides when I tell him, I would rather be able to aid him as I have promised before then.”

“You-” Dís began, but then stopped. There were too many things wrong with that explanation for her to be able to pick one to chastise him for first. “I can’t believe you,” was all she ended up saying. She yanked her arm out of Thorin’s hold, threw her hands in the air, and stormed back towards the bar. “Fine! Have it your way, you great, stupid-”

“Thank you, sister.”

“Argh!”

Chapter Text

The Black Pearl ghosted through the water, waves lapping quietly against her hull as she bent her will to speed their journey, disregarding both wind and the gaping holes in her tattered sails. It wasn’t as if she needed a favourable wind anymore. Ever since that fateful day over a decade ago, she’d been just a little bit untethered from the laws that bound every other soul. Now her intent often mattered more than what she was physically capable of.

Bilbo remembered very fondly the look on Thorin’s face the first time she’d sailed blithely through doldrums, setting the still fog behind her to swirling in her wake. A pang of heartache stole the grin off her face, and she turned her focus hastily to the Captain’s cabin, where Dáin was making nice with their sacrifice.

She didn’t understand why he felt the need to torture himself like this, really. Oh, Bilbo had been witness to more than a few tense, awkward, stifling dinner parties in her time, but there had always been a point to making nice with each other then. They were going to serve this boy up to the curse on a silver platter in the hopes of sparing their own people, in the hopes of saving Thorin, and it wasn’t like he was going to care what their reasons were for sacrificing him.

“No need to stand on ceremony, lad,” Dáin chided, gentle and amused, as the lordling sat stiffly opposite him, picking delicately at his food like a bird. “I know Dori won’t have parted with more than scraps to feed a prisoner. I’ve a rather stingy crew at the moment.”

“That’s a pretty way of dressing it up,” Bilbo snarked. Dáin’s eyes flicked over to her with a long-suffering expression, but that was all the response she got. Bilbo understood why, of course; Dáin was trying to put the boy at ease, trying to assuage his guilt by making his last sane days less miserable, but it still hurt. It still made her miss Thorin all over again. Oh, but she missed those precious two years where they’d sailed the seven seas together without master or commander.

The young lordling gave Dáin a dubious look, but then shrugged and apparently tossed any concern for manners out the porthole. Bilbo snickered as the lordling abandoned his utensils in favour of eating with his fingers. “A nobleman eating like a pirate. Will wonders never cease,” she mused.

Dáin chuckled, shaking his head at her. It caught the attention of the lordling, though, and he gave the Captain a wary look. “What’s funny?” he asked.

“I was just thinking you’d make a good pirate,” Dáin said, with that disarming grin of his. The lordling blinked, startled. “Demanding parley with pirates was a bold move, and not one any other noble I’ve met would have thought of.”

The lordling looked down at his food with a disconcerted expression, and Dáin sighed, turning to his own food with an air of resignation. Frustration bubbled up in Bilbo, and she resisted the urge to stamp her foot like a ship on her maiden voyage. “Oh, blast and botheration, Dáin! What’s the point?!” she demanded, refusing to look at the lordling.

“I don’t understand you.” The lordling said, talking right over the end of Bilbo’s loss of composure all unknowing. “You say that like you were impressed, but before you were furious about it. Are you just that mercurial?”

That startled a laugh out of Dáin, and he threw his head back, one arm clasped about his ribs as though afraid he might sprain something with his mirth. “That coming from the son of Lord Greenwood!” he chortled, and Bilbo had to snort, too. “Ach, lad,” Dáin sighed, wiping a tear from his eye. “No, I’m no fickle-minded fool, as much as I’m sure my family would like to say I’m the latter.”

“Then why are you being nice to me?” The lordling demanded.

Dáin sighed again, but this time it sounded a lot less cheerful. “It matters,” he said, turning his gaze to meet Bilbo’s. “I’ve no need to be unkind, save to preserve my own peace of mind, and I’ve never much thought that was a good enough reason for cruelty.”

Bilbo had to look away. “Damn you,” she hissed, feeling tears sting her eyes. Damn him for saying it, and damn him for being right.

“Then why not just take me home?!” Legolas demanded.

Silence swelled sharply in the wake of his desperate plea, and Bilbo slapped a hand over her mouth to keep from making a sound. It tore at her to hear the fear and confusion in his voice, and it was only made worse by the knowledge that she’d reached the point where it wouldn’t stop her. One young lordling was small potatoes compared to Thorin’s life and sanity.

“Do you know the tale of Mount Erebor, lad?” Dáin asked after a long pause.

Legolas frowned at him, but didn’t protest the apparent non-sequitur. “I’ve read about it,” he confirmed, nodding. At Dain’s amused, prompting look, he rolled his eyes and elaborated. “It’s an island that can only be found by those who already know where it is. It was the stronghold of the mad pirate-lord Dragoneye and his fleet, and he filled the caverns of the mountain with the treasure of a hundred empires before he was killed by his son over it.”

“You’re well informed,” Dáin said, eyebrows rising at just how accurate that summary was. There were a few rather crucial points missing, but on the whole, closer to the truth than most people got. “But do you know of the curse?”

Legolas’s frown deepened, but he answered obligingly. “Some of the stories liked to say that Dragoneye’s ghost still haunts the vaults of Erebor, furious over the injustice of his death and the theft of his gold,” he explained cautiously.

“Aye,” Dáin agreed on a sigh. “And I’m afraid we – that is, my crew and I – ignored the warnings. We thought we had a right to the treasures. That thieves might be struck down by the wrath of our ancestors, but we were beyond reproach. We were fools. Before we had even finished filling our hold with swag…” Dáin trailed off, and Bilbo found she couldn’t look at him. Not that the polite scepticism on Legolas’s face was any more palatable.

Bilbo had been sceptical, too, even in light of her own experiences with the otherworldly, she’d gotten caught up in Thorin’s fervour, his desperation, and she’d ignored all the warning signs until it was far, far too late. Then she sniffed. “Well, go on. If you’re going to tell him, do it properly, Dáin,” she chided, ignoring the ragged, wet edge of her words. If she ignored it, maybe Dáin would too.

“It came on slow.” Dáin murmured wryly. “So slow you’d barely notice anyone was acting all that odd, until one day you looked up, looked into the eyes of your best friend, and saw a dragon looking back.” Bilbo shuddered, and the ship shuddered with her.

“A dragon?” Legolas echoed dubiously.

“Well, perhaps I’m being a wee bit poetic,” Dáin acknowledged wryly. “But surely you noticed, lad, the way everyone on this ship has a dragon’s insatiable lust for gold? They were once more than this; better men. But Dragoneye didn’t earn his epithet because he was a sharing and charitable soul, and he laid his curse upon us all. We must retrieve every last piece of gold that we took from Erebor, or we shall never be sane again.”

After a long moment of disbelieving silence, Legolas decided to ignore everything Dáin had said and get back to the point. It made Bilbo snort in a tired attempt at humour. “And what exactly does any of this have to do with me?”

Dáin took a deep, bracing breath, and then came right at it without bothering to soften the blow at all. “The other condition for the freedom of my crew was a sacrifice, a host so that Thror may once again walk as a mortal man, and I’m afraid that’s you, lad.”

Of course, the lordling only laughed, before giving Dáin a deeply unimpressed, chiding look. “I’m not a child; I hardly believe in ghost stories anymore, Captain Ironfoot.”

Bilbo didn’t bother to contain the fury that roiled through her at that casual, patronising dismissal of the horror-show that Bilbo’s life had become this last decade. “Oh, he doesn’t, does he?” she muttered, fixing a glare on the lordling. Dáin cleared his throat, the closest he would get to telling her to back down while in company. Too bad for him; Bilbo was not some biddable maiden ship, obedient and deferential. She was the Black Pearl, the ship of Captain Thorin Oakenshield. She had burned, and drowned, and risen again to sail the seven seas, and she would not be commanded by anyone.

She was the ship. Every last nail and knot and trinket aboard was her flesh and blood. The hull and walls of the ship groaned and expanded in time with her breath, the ragged sails tossed against the wind as she tossed her head and sent her ragged ringlet-curls bouncing, and it was less effort than a thought to snuff out the candles in the Captain’s cabin, one by one. Legolas’s head whipped around, eyes darting from smoking wick to smoking wick, getting wider and wider as the cabin dimmed. And then the table legs shrieked across the floor as Bilbo’s indignation and fury set the great round thing to turning as easily as she rolled her eyes.

Legolas threw himself backwards away from the table with a startled oath that was quite unbecoming in a young lordling. Bilbo harrumphed, crossing her arms and nodding her head once to put a nice full stop on the point she’d just made. The table ground to a stop after having done a complete three-hundred-and-sixty degree turn, sliding Legolas’s plate back into place before him primly. The candles flared back to life.

“You’d best start believing in ghost-stories, Master Greenwood,” Dáin informed him, not unkindly, as Legolas turned his horrified, terrified stare on the Captain. “You’re in one.”

Tortuga was always the most peaceful in the early hours of the morning. Thorin braced his arms against the railing of the Interceptor and looked out over the port that had, for all intents and purposes, been his home for most of his life. “You know,” Pippin said from where she was sitting on the railing beside his elbow, feet kicking out into open air, and turning just a little translucent every time they swung too far from the ship, “I think I like it here.”

“Indeed?” Thorin prompted curious and a touch pleased. He was fond of the place, even if his affection was coloured with bitterness over what should have been.

“There’s always something happening here,” Pippin explained. “Things happened in Port Royal, too, I suppose, but it’s not the same. A couple of sailors came and admired me last night.” Thorin straightened abruptly in concern, but Pippin carried on, unaware or unconcerned. “I think they might’ve been planning to commandeer me, actually, but then someone mentioned your name and they scarpered. You’ve got quite the reputation, don’t you?”

Thorin relaxed back down again, half smiling even though his heart was squeezing in his chest. “My ship – my previous ship – had no patience for anyone pretending authority over her, and had no qualms at seeing off anyone who tried to take what didn’t belong to them. So, yes, I do have a reputation, but it doesn’t rightly belong to me.”

Pippin hummed curiously. “Your previous ship?”

Thorin closed his eyes, and let his smile unfurl despite the pain. “The Black Pearl,” he stated, and he knew his heart was in his words, no matter how he tried – not very hard – to keep it sounding neutral. “She was – is – truly magnificent.”

“She must be really lucky, to have a Captain who loves her so much,” Pippin commented blithely, not even noticing when Thorin winced, longing replaced by a sick surge of guilt. “But then why did you need to commandeer me? Why are you here instead of with her?”

“I did something terrible,” Thorin answered shortly, “and it cost me everything.” He straightened up, relief spooling through him when he spotted his sister marching through the crowds on the docks. He murmured a perfunctory “Excuse me,” to Pippin, and headed for the gangplank without answering her bewildered questions. He just couldn’t.

He met Dís on the dock, and cast his eye over the ragged bunch of men following in her wake like ducklings. Gimli was there, right on her heels, jaw set and expression fierce, and Thorin could see Balin’s white hair near the back of the group, corralling the volunteers. There were three of them, barely a handful, but along with Dís, Balin, and Gimli, it would be just enough to keep Pippin from straining herself too badly trying to pick up the slack. Thorin would have liked a few more, if he was honest, but beggars could not be choosers, and given the fate of every voyage to Erebor before them, he was not surprised Dís hadn’t been able to scrounge up more than three.

“Your crew, Captain,” Dís informed him, gesturing behind her. The three of them stood a little straighter under his scrutiny.

“You can vouch for them?” Thorin checked, although he doubted that Dís would have accepted anyone she didn’t think could be trusted, nor did he truly believe he had any room to be picky.

Sure enough, Dís gave him a deeply scathing look for his question. “Of course,” she insisted, and then half turned in order to do introductions. “Bofur Merrymaker has been a patron of The Blue Mountains for years, whenever he’s in port, and he’s always behaved himself in my establishment,” she informed him, which put a proud grin on the man’s face. He was a burly fellow, strong, if worn thin the way of most in Tortuga, with a long moustache and crow’s feet around his eyes deep enough to show that his grin was a common sight. “No grand stories of him save those he tells himself-” Dís went on with a mother’s chiding exasperation in her voice, which turned Bofur’s grin rueful, although it still did not lose its good humour. “-but those he sailed with have only good things to say, regardless.”

“Thank ye, m’lady,” Bofur said cheekily, sweeping his hat off his head and bowing to her with amateur flair. “I do me best.”

Thorin nodded once, in acceptance and respect, and Dís moved on. “Bifur Axehead.” It was no mystery why he had been granted that epithet, with the massive, jagged scar that slashed across his forehead and bisected his hairline, still glinting where shattered shards of metal had been left stuck in the wound as it healed. “He’s known well as a fierce and nigh-on unstoppable fighter, and though most who know him assume him to be dumb simply because he’s mute, I have never found him to be anything other than keenly intelligent.”

Bifur’s eyes lit up at the scorn in Dís’s voice, and he gestured in the air in a way that Thorin recognised from long ago lessons with Glóin. It was long enough ago that Thorin could not be certain he understood the man correctly, but he was sure it would come back to him, in time. The memory ached, but it was deserved, and so Thorin didn’t fight it, or show it, just let it roll through him as he nodded again.

“And Bombur Windchaser,” Dís concluded, motioning to the last of the three. He was a large, rotund man with a tidy queue of very ginger hair. Not the fiery red that Gimli had inherited from Glóin, but true ginger. “He’s an excellent cook,” Dís informed him, exceedingly smug about that fact.

Which was fair enough, in Thorin’s opinion. A decent cook was an invaluable thing to have aboard a ship, and to manage to find someone Dís would call ‘excellent’ for such a reckless and haphazard journey as theirs was a remarkable feat. The praise, however, made Bombur blush scarlet in embarrassment and duck his head in an attempt to hide the flattered smile pulling at his mouth. “Windchaser?” Thorin questioned, because he could understand the other two epithets, but this one’s meaning escaped him.

“He could coax a breeze from the doldrums,” Dís replied, “or so the stories go.”

“It was luck.” Bombur demurred, still blushing.

Thorin arched an eyebrow, but decided that while he did want to hear that story, now was not the time. “Welcome aboard the Interceptor,” he said, instead of asking, and stepped aside to allow the men to board. He followed them up the gangplank. “Pippin, your new crew. I trust you heard the introductions?” he asked the little spirit peering curiously up at Bifur.

Pippin hummed a confirmation, even as the three newcomers variously jumped, looked around for who he was talking to, or eyed him with the wary fascination of one who’d heard the tales they told of Captain Oakenshield. “And this,” Thorin went on, gesturing to Dís, “is my sister, Dís Diamondheart.” At that, Gimli was the one who startled, and turned wide eyes on Dís. It wasn’t quite betrayal in his eyes, but there was an uncomprehending sort of shock that suggested to Thorin that Gimli had probably heard some of the tales of Dís’s youth, back before she’d found things to love again and had well earned her reputation as one of the hardest-hearted pirates on the seven seas. Thorin could understand how he might struggle to match the stories to the woman who had mothered him lieu of her own sons all last evening.

“A pleasure to meet you. Pippin, was it?” Dís asked him, although the first part of her comment had been addressed to the air. Thorin nodded a confirmation, and Dís nodded her satisfaction.

“Ooh! Another lady! That’ll be nice,” Pippin enthused, scampering over to study Dís. “Can she see me like you can?” she asked, but answered her own question by waving a hand in front of Dís’s face. Dís did not react at all. Pippin pouted.

“No, she cannot see you, yet,” Thorin informed her anyway.

Dís snorted. “My brother is a lot more open-hearted than I am, I’m afraid.” Balin began coughing in a manner that was clearly only an attempt to cover his laughter, and Thorin shot him a glower of offence. Then he directed it at his sister, because he was more offended by the notion that he might be open-hearted than he was at Balin’s laughter. Dís smiled back, hard and sharp and entirely confident that she was right. “You’ll have to work very hard to win my affection, Miss Pippin.”

“Diamondheart, indeed,” Balin remarked fondly.

“Precisely.”

“An’ here I thought our destination was the only mad thing about this caper,” Bofur remarked, still cheerful despite what his words might suggest.

“Having second thoughts, Merrymaker?” Thorin challenged, crossing his arms and fixing the man with an intent stare.

“Nah,” Bofur returned at once, not even a second of hesitation. “I’ve always wanted to sail with the infamous Captain Oakenshield,” he admitted without shame, and Thorin felt inadequacy and shame curdle in his gut. “Besides,” he enthused, slinging a companionable arm around Gimli, who side-eyed him, but didn’t shrug him off, “I’ve always loved a love story, and this is looking to be a pretty epic one, don’t you think?” Gimli blanched and went scarlet.

“It’s not- You can’t just-” he spluttered, and then groaned and buried his face in his hands.

Bofur laughed and gave him an encouraging shake. “Relax, lad! I know your one true love is some high and fancy ponce-” Gimli spluttered some more in offence. “-but you’re among pirates now, and we don’t give a toss about that sort of thing. Why, last ship I was on-” Bofur continued to expound upon his story – about a series of hilarious misunderstandings between two of his old crewmates and an eventual shipboard wedding that was almost ruined by seagulls – as they all began loading up their supplies and preparing to set sail for a cursed island, chasing a ghost ship.