Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

There was nothing poetic about the way she woke. No slow drifting up through dreams. No gentle voices or dappled sunlight. Just the taste of cloth and salt, and the sting of something rough digging into the skin at her wrists.

Her first conscious breath caught on a rag stuffed between her teeth. Her second turned into a coughing fit that rattled her ribs. By the third, she’d realised her hands were wrenched behind her back, her ankles lashed tight, and a strip of coarse fabric pulled hard across her eyes. She was lying on something hard - planks, warped and splintered - and whatever she was on was moving. Rocking. Swaying. The way carriages did when the wheels hit a rut. Or ships, when they rolled at anchor.

A low male voice sliced through the dark. “Keep still.”

She froze. The words came from close by - opposite her, maybe. Same narrow space. The kind of voice that didn’t bother to raise itself, because it didn’t have to. Her stomach clenched. Her pulse hammered behind her ears like it was trying to break out.

Focus.

She shifted slightly, testing the ropes. The cords at her wrists bit deeper, and she hissed into the gag. Bruises were already blooming along her forearms and ankles. Whoever had tied her hadn’t been gentle - but not clever, either. Sloppy. Rushed. Her ankles were barely looped. As though someone had grown tired of her thrashing.

The cloth in her mouth tasted wrong. Bitter, sweet, chemical. Ether. That tracked. There were gaps in her memory, after all. She remembered the quiet of her room. The chill of night air. A footstep. And then- 

Then nothing.

Her gut heaved. She forced it still.

The carriage - cart? - jolted beneath her. The boards groaned. Her spine knocked against the wood and sent a shudder up her neck. She squeezed her eyes shut under the blindfold and focused on breathing through her nose. No way to keep dignity, tied up and gagged, but she’d try.

The voice again: “You scream or spit, I break your jaw. Understand?”

She nodded. Just once. Short and sharp.

The ride dragged on. Minutes, maybe more. Long enough for her nausea to settle. Long enough to count jolts in the road and match them to creaks in the frame. Long enough to start plotting - not escape. Not yet. Just survival.

The man didn’t speak again. Didn’t shift. Just breathed, slow and steady. She hated him more for that than for the threat.

Eventually, the motion changed. Slowed. Stopped.

Voices shouted outside. A door groaned open. Light filtered faintly through the blindfold. Boots clattered. Several. Close.

She was grabbed beneath the arms and dragged upright. The ropes at her ankles loosened just enough to let her stumble forward, one awkward foot after another. The night air hit her like cold water. She heard water slapping against something massive. Felt wind off the bay. Smelled tar, pitch, and the thick briny reek of seaweed and tide.

Deck boards creaked beneath her bare feet.

No.
No, no, no.
Ships meant leaving. Ships meant vanishing. Ships meant no one would find her.

She twisted once in resistance - just once - and earned herself a growled curse and a sharp shove between the shoulder blades. She nearly lost her footing but caught herself just before her knees buckled.

Then came the groan of stairs. A different sort of sway beneath her feet.

Below decks. Into the belly.

She was shoved through a doorway. Her shoulder smacked into a frame - too narrow to brace herself - and she tumbled hard onto her side. Her knees cracked against the wood, and her shoulder struck a support beam. The door slammed behind her, followed by the heavy finality of a bolt sliding home.

Silence. Still blindfolded. Still bound.

Maris Hillier - or at least, that’s who she’d been - lay panting on the floor of a strange ship, gagged and shaking. Her heart hadn’t slowed since she woke. Now it pulsed in her throat, her wrists, the hollow behind her eyes. She felt the drip of sweat or blood - she wasn’t sure - trickle from her temple to her jaw.

But she was awake. And she was thinking. That was something.

She lay still for a long moment, listening. Breathing. Counting to one hundred. Then again. When nothing came, she began to move - small, slow shifts of her shoulder, testing the ropes, finding friction. Her limbs were sore but not useless. The knots were tight, but not precise. Whoever tied her wasn’t expecting her to try anything.

Eventually, footsteps again. Just one pair this time.

Measured. Unhurried.

A key turned in the lock.

She froze.

The hinges creaked as the door opened. A moment of silence. Then: the scrape of boots over planks. A faint scrape of leather. The scent of starch and oil and candle wax.

Then a hand - gloved - at her face.

She flinched back, but the fingers moved with surgical precision. The gag slipped free. A cool draught hit her lips. She coughed, hard, as air rushed into her lungs.

Then the blindfold was loosened. Lifted.

Light struck her like a slap.

She squinted, blinking furiously. Blurred outlines sharpened. The man crouched in front of her was holding a lantern low, the glow casting warped shadows across the cramped cabin walls. His coat was dark, cut finely. His expression, neutral.

He had pale eyes. Still, unreadable.

He looked at her the way a banker looks at a faulty coin.

“Hmm,” he murmured. “You certainly have your brother’s eyes.”

The silence stretched like wire between them.

When her voice came, it was low, cracked, and full of dry fury. “My brother has his own.”

His mouth twitched. Not quite a smile.

“You do not deny you are Maris Teague?”

“I do.” She sat up straighter, spine rigid. “My name is Maris Hillier.”

He regarded her for a moment. Then, with quiet finality: “No. I think you’re Maris Teague.”

A cold prickle rippled across her skin.

He waited, clearly enjoying the quickened rhythm of her breath, the tightness in her jaw. She lifted her chin anyway.

“If you say so.”

“I do.”

He stood. He wasn’t tall, but his bearing filled the room. The kind of man who never needed to raise his voice to be obeyed.

“What do you want with me?” she asked.

He paused at the door. “That’s a question for another time.”

“I want to know who you are.”

He half-turned, and offered a shallow bow, all mockery. “Lord Cutler Beckett. East India Trading Company.”

Of course.

Of course.

Before she could retort, another man stepped into the doorway. Older. Narrow. Hair pulled back tightly. He looked at her with the flat interest of someone studying livestock.

“Sir,” he said. “They’re ready for you.”

“Good.” Beckett didn’t look at him. He looked at her. “Miss Teague - my apologies, Miss Hillier - you’ll be moved to my quarters shortly. Do be cooperative.”

He turned, walking out. Then paused and looked back over his shoulder at the other man.

“Mercer?”

“Yes, my lord?”

“Do it without bruising her this time.”

Maris stared after him, fists clenched behind her back. Her pulse thundered against the ropes at her wrists.

She had no idea what he wanted. Not yet.

But she knew one thing with painful clarity.

Cutler Beckett had just changed the course of her life.

She would not let him end it.

Chapter Text

The chair was too ornate to be comfortable. Curved legs. High back. Carved trim. Meant to impress, not support. It didn’t help that her wrists were tied tightly to the arms of it—each one lashed with a sailor’s knot and fixed down so tightly that she could barely move her fingers.

She sat in front of a massive desk cluttered with quills, documents, and a heavy wax seal that still glinted with fresh red. A single oil lamp lit the room. The rest was shadow.

Behind the desk, Lord Beckett didn’t even look up.

He was writing.

Maris watched him with narrow eyes, unwilling to blink first. Her arms were beginning to cramp, her fingers already half-numb, but she refused to let that show. She could still taste salt at the back of her throat from the rag they’d gagged her with. Her green dress—plain, too light for the cold—had been chosen without her consent. It felt like theatre. Like someone had dressed her as a prop.

He dipped the quill again, the scratch of it against parchment sharp in the quiet.

She shifted slightly.

Still, he didn’t acknowledge her.

Fine.

If he wanted to pretend she wasn’t there, so could she.

Her eyes roamed the room: tall shelves of leather-bound ledgers and maps in iron scroll racks; a single saber mounted on the wall above the fireplace; a decanter on the sideboard, half-full. Ornate. Expensive. Predictable.

Eventually, Beckett placed the quill down and leaned back, steepling his fingers beneath his chin.

“There is one thing that puzzles me about you,” he said lightly, as though resuming a pleasant conversation.

“Just one?”

His mouth twitched again. That not-smile she was beginning to resent.

“Why the false name?”

She didn’t answer right away. Let the question hang.

“I wasn’t hiding,” she said at last. “I was starting over.”

He hummed. Not disbelief, exactly. Just amusement.

“Come now, Miss Teague-”

“Hillier,” she corrected. She said it sharply, but not loudly. He raised an eyebrow, and she added, “I was done with that name. I left it behind.”

“I wonder,” he said, tilting his head, “why your father would allow that. A pirate lord, keeping his daughter out of sight? Out of Shipwreck? Curious.”

“You know of Shipwreck?” Her surprise was too quick to hide. She regretted it instantly.

Beckett’s eyes lit briefly with triumph. He had his answer.

“It might surprise you how much I know about your family,” he said, turning slightly to neaten the stack of papers on his desk. “But not everything, it seems.”

She cocked her head. “If you knew everything, you’d know my father believes I’m dead.”

His eyes lifted to hers. The amusement vanished.

A pause followed. 

“Why?” he asked.

She gave a small, bitter laugh. “Perhaps you could untie me, and I’ll show you.”

Beckett didn’t move. He considered her as if weighing a coin.

“I’ve learned not to bargain with your family,” he said at last.

Maris raised an eyebrow. “That’s wise. Jack taught me never to surrender without negotiation.”

“I’m not untying your hands.”

She exhaled through her nose. “Then you’ll have to take my word for it. I was sixteen. He lashed out. Sword to the throat. The doctor said I died.” She lifted her chin, exposing her neck. “I didn’t.”

He rose slowly, circling the desk. Maris followed his movement with her eyes, wary. He came to stand directly in front of her. For a moment, he simply stared. Then, without a word, he reached out and gently took her chin between thumb and forefinger.

His grip was firm, not cruel. He tilted her head slightly, and the lamplight caught the faint white crescent that curved from the base of her throat toward her collarbone.

Old. Faint. Real.

He let go.

“Jack stopped him,” she said quietly. “Before he could do worse.”

Beckett stepped back, folding his arms.

“That’s why you were hiding?”

She stared up at him. “I wasn’t hiding,” she repeated. “I was escaping .”

A beat. Then she added, voice sharper, “From men like him. From men like you.”

He said nothing. But something shifted in the line of his jaw.

“Your plan won’t work,” she said, softer now. “You think Teague will surrender his influence for me? You think Jack will bend?”

He didn’t answer.

“You’re going to get a lot of men killed,” she said.

Beckett leaned forward, resting his hands on the edge of the desk. He was only a few feet from her now. His voice, when it came, was soft - but lined with steel.

“Your father’s madness won’t stop me. Nor your brother’s theatrics. I command the seas, Miss Teague. The Flying Dutchman answers to me. I don’t need you to make them surrender.” He paused. “But you will make them hesitate .”

He stared at her, eyes unreadable. “And in war, hesitation is death.”

She didn’t flinch. “Then I hope you die waiting.”

Beckett’s gaze lingered on her for a long, loaded moment. Then he straightened.

He moved behind her. She heard the clink of a key in a drawer, then the sound of papers being gathered.

“Return her to my quarters when the officers have been briefed,” he said toward the door.

A beat later, it opened - Mercer again, cold as ever. He didn’t speak.

Beckett didn’t look at her as he passed. But just before the door closed behind him, she heard his voice again.

“You may have left Shipwreck, Miss Teague,” he said. “But you were never truly free of it.”

The door clicked shut and Maris exhaled slowly.

Her arms ached. Her throat burned. But her spine? Straight as ever.

She was not a pawn. And she would prove it.

Chapter Text

The quarters were too clean. Maris could tell the moment they pushed her inside.

 Not lived-in clean - performed clean. The sort of space kept spotless not for comfort, but for control. Everything in Lord Beckett’s cabin had a place, and nothing dared drift from it. The desk by the stern windows was bare save for a decanter, a ledger, and a silver compass whose lid had been left carefully ajar. Even the boots beside the chair were aligned. Perfectly.

She stood just inside the doorway, wrists loosely bound in front of her, long enough for Mercer to unclip a chain from a low wall bracket and fasten it to the loop of rope at her wrists. His movements were brisk, impersonal, precise.

She arched a brow. “I assume I’m not being offered a leash as a courtesy?”

He said nothing. Just tested the tension - firm, but not taut. She could sit. Stand. Pace in a tight radius. No more.

When he straightened, she met his gaze with cool disdain. “Very hospitable.”

Mercer didn’t bother replying. He exited without ceremony, the door clicking shut behind him.

Locked.

Maris exhaled slowly. Then turned, surveying her cage.

The room smelled of lamp oil, ink, and lemon polish. There was a basin tucked beside the bunk, a locked chest at the foot of the bed, and a wardrobe bolted shut with a brass pin. No visible weapons. No cutlery. Not even a stray quill. Everything was just so .

Her fingers worked at the rope binding her wrists. Loosely tied. Enough to appease protocol, not prevent action. She could slip free if she wanted to.

She didn’t. Not yet.

Instead, she crossed to the desk, the chain at her wrist clinking softly with each step. She crouched beside it. The lower drawer had been carelessly left ajar—probably overlooked, probably a mistake. She nudged it wider with her knee.

Papers. Charts. Standard shipping manifests.

And tucked between two ledgers: a folded letter, sealed but unposted. She tilted her head and squinted to read without touching.

Regarding the proposed fortification along the Windward Chain…

Her lips twitched. Interesting.

A noise outside made her freeze. Footsteps - then fading. Not Mercer.

Still crouched, she let her attention drift back to the desk itself. The compass sat half-open, as though paused mid-thought. She leaned in, watching as the needle wavered, then pointed - not north.

She frowned. Tapped the desk. It didn’t budge.

The temptation to reach for it was strong. Too strong.

Instead, she rose slowly and crossed to the porthole. It was bolted shut, rimmed with salt. Outside, nothing but sea. Endless blue-grey. No sign of land. No sign of a fleet. Just gulls wheeling high above the waves and the steady rhythm of a ship not yet in position .

They were still en route.

She could feel it in the air - too quiet, too measured. The crew was working, yes, but not in a frenzy. No shouted commands. No calls to arms.

This ship felt like a waiting room.

She turned back to the room. Her eyes drifted to the desk again, then to the chain at her wrist.

So. That was the rhythm of this play. Slow days. Careful steps. Measured threats.

Let them play their part.

She was already rehearsing hers.

The key turned in the lock with a quiet scrape. Maris didn’t look up. She’d learned early in life that stillness could be more unnerving than defiance. She sat with her back straight, wrists still bound and looped through a short length of chain fixed to the desk leg. The iron was cold against her skin, but the rope had loosened slightly with her earlier experiments. 

She kept her hands folded neatly in her lap. Let him wonder.

The door swung open, and Beckett stepped inside without pause, shedding the outside air like a cloak. His coat had been removed - hung somewhere else, of course - and the ivory stitching on his waistcoat caught the lantern light as he moved.

No greeting. No inspection. He crossed straight to the desk, pulling open a drawer with smooth efficiency and retrieving a slim folio of documents. His attention skimmed them, eyes flicking line to line with the same focus a surgeon might give to an incision.

“You’ve made yourself comfortable,” he said at last, tone dry.

“I’m chained to a desk,” Maris replied. “I’ve had worse lodgings.”

His glance flicked to the chain, then back to the page. “That’s not why I installed it.”

She let the silence stretch, then murmured, “Let me guess. Symbolism? A reminder that I’m part of the decor.”

He didn’t respond. But he didn’t correct her either.

Maris shifted slightly, the chain dragging softly across the floorboards. “You know, most people just hang paintings when they want something ornamental.”

Beckett didn’t rise to it. Instead, he signed one of the documents with a controlled flourish, then dusted the ink with a blotting cloth and folded the sheet precisely in thirds.

“This arrangement is temporary,” he said.

“Good to know,” she murmured. “I’d hate to think you were planning to redecorate around me.”

He met her gaze now, finally - full eye contact, level and unblinking. His pale blue irises caught the lantern light oddly, like glass over still water. He studied her not like a threat, but like a concept.

“You may find this strange,” he said, “but I prefer order. Even in uncertainty.”

She gave a small, joyless laugh. “You kidnapped the daughter of a Pirate Lord. Order’s not really in their language.”

Beckett’s expression didn’t change. He reached for the cabinet behind him and poured himself a short glass of something honey-colored. The clink of crystal was sharp in the quiet.

He didn’t offer her any.

She tracked the movement with her eyes. “You always drink on the job?”

“I always work while I drink,” he corrected.

He took the seat across from her, the chair made no sound as it settled. For a moment, neither of them spoke. The candle flame between them swayed slightly with the motion of the ship. Somewhere outside, a rope creaked in its pulley. Beckett sipped. Maris sat still.

“Do you think he’ll come for you?”

The question was soft. Deceptively casual.

Maris didn’t blink. “Jack?”

Beckett waited.

She shrugged, the movement slow, deliberate. “I think Jack does what suits Jack. Sometimes that includes saving people. Sometimes it doesn’t.”

“You don’t sound particularly wounded by that.”

“I’m not particularly naïve.”

There was a flicker of something there - interest, perhaps - but it passed too quickly to name.

“You’re not what I expected,” Beckett said.

She smiled faintly, baring none of her teeth. “Let me guess - less damsel, more liability?”

He tipped his head. “More leverage.”

He drained his glass and stood, the crystal catching the light as it tilted in his hand. Then he turned his back to her, drifting once again toward the desk with the same studied ease he brought to every movement.

Maris watched him, but her gaze drifted briefly to the glass he’d left on the desk.

Just a glance. One heartbeat. Then she looked away again.

Beckett didn’t miss it.

He paused at the desk, hand still on the page he’d been about to turn. Then - without a word - he picked up the empty glass and moved it aside. Not hastily. Not even coldly. Just… removed .

As though to clarify the rules of the room without having to say them.

Maris didn’t look back but she smiled to herself - just a little. A flash of teeth. Gone before he could turn.

He returned to his work, and she to her silence.

It wasn’t a cell, not technically, but she knew a cage when she saw one.

The chain bit against her wrist when she turned too sharply.

Maris had grown used to its pull - how far she could stray from Beckett’s desk, how to angle her body so it didn’t cut too hard across the bone. The length was long enough to let her pace. Not long enough to leave. Not that she’d had many chances.

Her world, for the last few days, had been this office: oil lamps, ink blotters, a tea set no one used, and the low hum of Beckett working while she sat like a tethered animal. So when he entered that afternoon, gloves already off, hat in his hand, she looked up without much ceremony.

“I’ve come to inform you that it is time for your role in our negotiations with the Brethren,” he said.

“I see,” she replied, too evenly. Her fingers brushed the padlock that linked her chain to the desk leg. A habit now - nothing useful, just motion.

He raised an eyebrow at her lack of reaction, and moved to pour himself a glass of water from the decanter. “Do you not care to know what’s to happen to you?”

“I only hope it won’t hurt,” she said, “and that it’ll be quick.”

That earned a smile - tight, knowing. “I can assure you it will be neither. You’re not being executed. You’re coming with me to parley with the Pirate King.”

Her hand stilled. “You’re bringing me ?”

“You are a valuable bargaining chip,” he said, crossing to the desk. “You’ll sit quietly. Look at your brother when I say his name. And when I say your father’s, you will not flinch.”

“But why would any Pirate King agree to spare me?” she asked. “I’m nothing to-”

“You’re something to Jack ,” he interrupted. “And Jack has always been very persuasive when motivated.”

“No King worth the title would surrender to you,” she said sharply. “Not for me. Not for anything.”

Beckett was uncoiling the chain from the desk leg now, testing the key against the lock. He didn’t look at her. “They won’t need to. They only need to hesitate . A battle can be won in the pause before it begins.”

She watched the key turn. The padlock clicked. The chain slipped free and dropped between them with a muted clatter.

“You’re mad,” she said.

“No,” he said calmly, “I’m prepared.”

“You’re cornering them. Backing them into desperation. You think they’ll surrender, but what you’ll get is a bloodbath.”

He looked up, eyes cool. “You know I’m right.”

“I know you’ve underestimated the wrong people.”

Beckett straightened, looping the chain neatly before stowing it. She thought he might walk to the door without another word.

Instead, he caught her arm before she could step away. Not harshly. But firmly. A gesture more of claim than care.

Her breath caught.

“When I release you,” he said quietly, “it would be unwise to run.”

Maris didn’t answer. Just stared at him, wary.

“We’re going to die,” she said eventually. “Why shouldn’t I jump into the ocean and be done with it?”

He let go. Not with a shove - just a release. “Because on deck at this moment is Davy Jones. And he knows who you are.”

Her spine went cold.

“Your brother owes him more than you know,” Beckett continued. “And while I have his cooperation for now, that agreement does not extend to unsupervised contact with you.”

“You think he’d hurt me,” she said flatly.

“I think he’d enjoy it.”

She said nothing. Beckett crossed to the far wall and lifted his hat from the hook where he’d left it. He adjusted it without looking at her.

“I won't allow any harm to come to you,” he said, tone clipped, almost distracted. Then he offered her his arm, like a man escorting a lady to supper.

She stared at it.

He waited.

After a long moment, she crossed the room and took it - reluctantly, lightly. Just fingertips.

“You’re very noble,” she said, “for someone who put me in danger in the first place.”

“I do try,” he replied dryly.

They stepped out onto the deck.

It was the first time in days she’d felt sun on her skin. The wind caught her hair instantly. Salt stung her throat, and for a moment she forgot the weight of things. She closed her eyes, tilted her face upward, and simply breathed.

When she opened them again, Beckett was watching her.

They walked to the rowboat waiting at the edge of the ship. Sailors moved around them like ghosts - glancing at her, then away, too fast. She held her chin high.

Beckett stepped in first, then offered a hand to help her board. She took it. His fingers were warm. Steady.

The bench creaked as she sat. She glanced across - and froze.

The young man opposite her had long dark hair. He stared at her like he’d just seen a ghost.

Her gaze drifted further and landed on the figure beside him and the air left her lungs.

Davy Jones looked up, and their eyes met.

His face was half-shadow, half-nightmare. Barnacled, waterlogged, twisted by something beyond time. His clawed hand rested lightly on his knee, as though he didn’t need it - yet.

He grinned.

“She doesn’t look like Sparrow t’me,” he growled.

Beckett gave Maris a firm push onto the bench beside him.

“Actually,” he said mildly, “she has her brother’s eyes.”

Maris didn’t answer. Couldn’t.

Her hand had instinctively grabbed the sleeve of Beckett’s coat, clinging without thought.

She didn’t let go.

Chapter Text

The rowboat cut through the glassy water with eerie ease, its oars dipping in time to a silence that no one dared break. Maris sat near the stern, Beckett beside her, Will Turner opposite. Between them, hunched like a threat waiting to unfurl, sat Davy Jones.

Maris kept her gaze fixed on the horizon, but her peripheral vision was crowded. Jones’s breath rasped beside her like a tide dragging over coral. His clawed hand rested on the bench between them, idle but impossible to ignore. Her own fingers curled tightly into her skirts, knuckles white beneath the green silk.

She still hadn’t looked directly at him since boarding. Once had been enough.

Will Turner, the man across from her, hadn’t stopped staring. Not rudely, not unkindly - just with wide-eyed disbelief. As if she were a puzzle he didn’t know he’d been handed.

She didn’t recognise him, but she catalogued him all the same: young, serious, armed, and clearly on edge. His eyes kept darting to Beckett, to Jones, then back to her. It was unsettling.

They were heading for a narrow tongue of land jutting out of the sea like a warning finger - flat, rocky, and barren save for the small crowd gathered at its centre. Maris could just make out a row of black coats and sea-worn hats. Flags flapped. Voices carried. This was no battlefield, not yet. But it could be.

Jones would need help coming ashore - she’d overheard as much. A system of buckets and seawater laid out like stepping stones would allow him to stand on land without standing on land. It was grotesque, clever, and just arcane enough to make her skin crawl. She chose not to watch as the first bucket was tipped.

Beside her, Beckett adjusted his gloves and said nothing.

She wasn’t sure which was worse - his silence, or the fact that he seemed to enjoy it.

Eventually she was hoisted up by the elbow and forced to climb over the side of the boat onto the sand. The world seemed to hold its breath as they walked to meet the assembled group. 

Across from them stood the representatives of the Brethren Court - a woman in a battered coat stood at the front, chin lifted like she expected the sky to bow to her; Barbossa, slouched like a cat on a barrel; and-

Her heart caught.

Jack.

He stood with his hands clasped behind his back, hat tipped forward against the sun, and for a moment it was like looking into a warped reflection. His eyes narrowed as he saw her, and his mouth formed a shape somewhere between surprise and fury.

Maris felt the weight of Beckett’s hand on the small of her back. Guiding. Claiming. She didn’t shake it off.

She let it rest there just long enough to be noticed, then stepped forward, breaking contact.

Jack’s lips twitched. Not a smile. Not quite.

Barbossa’s glare landed on Will. “You be the cur who led these wolves to our door.”

Beckett turned to him. “Don’t blame Turner. He was merely the tool of your betrayal. If you wish to see its grand architect-” He tilted his chin. “Look to your left.”

All heads turned toward Jack.

Jack gave an exaggerated blink. “My hands are clean in this. Figuratively.”

Will stepped forward. “My actions were my own. And to my own purpose. Jack had nothing to do with it.”

Jack raised a finger. “Well spoke. Listen to the tool.”

Elizabeth - Maris realised her name only later - cut in from the opposite side: “Will, I’ve been aboard the Dutchman. I understand the burden you bear. But I fear that cause is lost.”

Will answered evenly. “No cause is lost if there is but one fool left to fight for it.”

It was theatrical but sincere. 

“If Turner wasn’t acting on your behalf,” Beckett said smoothly, drawing a brass object from his coat, “then how did he come to give me this?”

He tossed it.

Jack caught the compass without looking.

“You made a deal with me, Jack. To deliver the pirates. And here they are. Don’t be bashful. Step up. Claim your reward.”

That was when Beckett turned slightly, letting the weight of his gaze settle once more on Maris.

“I hold the Dutchman,” he said, addressing the Brethren. “And the advantage. But I am prepared to offer terms.”

Barbossa scoffed. “You bring a girl to a parley and call it negotiation?”

“She is no ordinary girl,” Beckett replied, voice ice-edged. “She is the daughter of the Pirate Lord of Shipwreck Cove. The sister of Jack Sparrow.”

He let it hang there. 

Jack’s eyes hadn’t left her.

Maris drew herself taller.

“Half-sister,” she said, clear and cold. “Only when it suits him.”

Jack opened his mouth. Closed it. Shrugged. “Well, we never did have the same taste in exits.”

“Or entrances,” she replied dryly.

Barbossa gave a wheeze of laughter.

Beckett pressed forward. “Regardless of their personal arrangement, her bloodline is not in question. Nor is her value. I suggest the Brethren consider what they stand to lose - before they insist on losing everything.”

Elizabeth turned toward Maris. “And what does she say to this? Is she your puppet - or your prisoner?”

Beckett turned to her. Maris let the silence grow just a moment too long before she spoke. 

“I came aboard his ship in the night, bound and blindfolded,” she said. “I’ve been gagged, shackled, and locked below decks. I’ve had better introductions… but you all know my father. He’s not the sentimental type. He won’t surrender just because his daughter is being dangled like bait. He might surrender if you all do. But he won’t do it for me.”

She turned to Beckett. 

“I tried to tell you that.”

His expression didn’t shift - but the muscle in his jaw ticked.

“I propose an exchange,” Elizabeth said suddenly. “Will leaves with us. And you can take Jack.”

Will didn’t hesitate. “Done.”

Jack raised a finger. “Undone.”

Beckett’s mouth curved slightly. “Done.”

Barbossa snarled, turning to face the woman standing beside him. “Jack’s one of the nine Pirate Lords. You’ve no right!”

She didn’t flinch. “ King. ”

That landed. Even the wind paused. Jack gave a shallow bow, his voice soft with theatrical reverence. “As you command, Your Nibbs.”

Barbossa scowled, stepping forward. He lifted his blade and cleanly sliced a small token from Jack’s braid.

“If you’ve something to say,” Barbossa muttered, “I might be saying something as well.”

“First to the finish, then?”

Jack walked past Will, trading places without a word, and came to a stop beside her.

For a moment, neither of them looked directly at the other. Too many eyes. Too much weight. But she felt the shift in him - shoulders rolled loose, fingers twitching just once, a held breath unspooled. When she finally glanced up, his gaze met hers sidelong, sharp and glittering beneath the tilt of his hat. It wasn’t an apology. It wasn’t anger, either. It was something harder to name - like recognition dulled by disappointment.

She had no idea what scheme she’d been dragged into. No idea who had played whom, or when the game had started. All she knew was that somewhere between the compass and the betrayal and the deal she hadn’t heard made, she had become another piece on someone else’s board. A hostage. A threat. A symbol. Beckett’s, Jack’s, her father’s - she wasn’t sure whose agenda she was caught in. But she knew it wasn’t hers.

Beckett stepped forward once more, addressing the pirates.

“Advise your brethren. You can fight - and all of you will die. Or you can not fight - in which case only most of you will die.”

Elizabeth’s eyes narrowed at him, and she stepped forward. “You murdered my father.”

Beckett didn’t blink. “He chose his own fate.”

“And you,” she said, “have chosen yours. We will fight. And you will die.”

Chapter Text

He could hear sobbing.

It threaded faintly through the rush of the sea - raw, human, near. Not the kind of crying meant to be heard. The kind that slipped out anyway, ragged and salt-choked.

The taste in his mouth was wrong. Bitter metal. Wet rope. Something burnt. His tongue felt swollen. His throat scraped raw. Fingers twitched against coarse sand - dry near the surface, soaked underneath.

He didn’t move. Not yet.

Just lay still and listened.

Waves crashed close enough to spray him.

That didn’t make sense.

The last thing he remembered - truly remembered - was standing on deck, Jack Sparrow’s insolent grin before him, Maris’s wrist gripped in his hand like it might anchor the world.

Then-

Cannons. Screaming. The smell of smoke in his lungs.

He tried to open his eyes.

Sunlight slammed into him like a hammer. He gasped, flinched. Everything swam. He clenched his jaw, blinked hard against the white - and then darkness reeled in again.

Time passed. He didn’t know how long.

Then-

Voices. No - just one. Low. Fierce. Familiar.

"Don’t you die. Not after all that. You miserable bastard, don’t you dare!"

Fingers pressed at his throat. A flutter. Checking for a pulse.

A splash. The scent of smoke. Cloth.

Her hands again. Hot against his chest.

He stirred. Just barely. A breath. A cough that scraped through him.

A shadow leaned over him.

Maris.

She looked like a drowned ghost - blood at her temple, hair plastered to her jaw, shaking so hard she could barely hold the flask.

“Come on,” she muttered. “Come on .”

Cool metal touched his lips. Water. He swallowed. Choked. Groaned.

His eyes cracked open - just a sliver.

Sky. Her face. Then nothing.

The dark took him again.

The first night was salt and shivers.

Maris stayed close to the fire. If it could be called that. A guttering mess of driftwood and stringy palm fronds that barely kept the wind at bay. But it was heat. And she had nothing else. Not even dry sleeves.

Beckett lay curled in the lee of a rock, wrapped in his coat, unconscious. Still breathing. Barely. She checked every hour. Sometimes with fingers pressed to his throat. Sometimes just watching for the tremble of his ribs.

She didn’t sleep.

By morning, she’d scavenged what she could. The canteen had a few swigs of drinkable water left. The island, though small, wasn’t barren. She found a spring tucked beneath a curve of volcanic stone - no more than a trickle, but it beaded into a brackish pool just clear enough to cup with her hands.

There were palms, sparse and wind-warped, but real. Coconuts clung high in their crowns like defiant thoughts. She threw driftwood until one fell, then cracked it open with a nail-studded plank torn from the wreckage. The juice was sour, the meat tough - but it was food.

She glimpsed a crab near the rocks, fat and wary. Later, maybe. If she stayed steady enough to catch it.

She ripped her dress halfway up the thigh to make bandages. Tended to her own scrapes first - then his. His were worse - the side of his torso was bad, but all she could do was apply strips of cloth there until he woke up. If he woke up. She muttered curses under her breath as she worked. Quiet ones. Nothing dramatic. Just enough to feel like she wasn’t obeying anyone.

When the sun got too high, she pulled one of the sailcloth scraps from the wreckage and strung it between driftwood posts for shade. Knots. Tension. Pressure.

Her fingers remembered old tricks from years she didn’t talk about.

She didn’t cry.

Mostly, she watched him.

Not because she was worried, or so she told herself, but because he was unpredictable. Even unconscious, men like Beckett had a habit of changing the room.

On the second night, she caught herself talking.

Just once.

“You shouldn’t be alive,” she murmured. “And yet here you are.”

His eyes didn’t move. His mouth stayed slack.

She lay down with her back to the fire. Curling her knees. Listening to the wind rasp through dead palms and broken timber. Her skin itched with salt and sand. Every muscle ached. And still - she stayed.

That was the part she didn’t understand.

She could’ve left. Taken the sailcloth. The water. Anything of use. Left him to the gulls and the tide.

But she didn’t.

She slept a little. Dreamless.

By morning, his breathing had changed.

Not louder. Just more present.

She rose, shook the sand from her arms, and crossed to him. His head lolled as she knelt. His face was drawn - paler than she remembered, and somehow smaller without the powder and pride. She reached to check his pulse. Still there.

“Two nights,” she said aloud. “That’s how long you’ve been out.”

He didn’t answer. Not really.

But his eyelids twitched.

She sat back. Folded her arms.

“Don’t you dare wake up thinking I owe you anything.”

It felt important to say it. Even if no one heard.

Chapter Text

He woke with sand in his mouth. Not a mouthful - just enough to grit between his teeth. There was also the burn of salt in his lungs - sharp, invasive. His tongue felt thick, cracked at the edges. His lips tasted line brine and iron. His throat, dry and scalded.

His first breath rasped like it scraped up a splintered hull, and something was pressing against his ribs. Not weight. Absence. A hollowness that throbbed behind every breath.

When he moved - just barely - pain bloomed in his side like bruised fire. He flinched and stilled again. 

Shade played above him in uneven patterns. Something flapped in the wind, slow and arrhythmic: a sailcloth canopy, rigged hastily with driftwood, torn flag, and rope. The scent of smoke lingered nearby - old smoke, not firelight warmth, but the sharp tang of damp ash and burnt kelp.

He coughed. A shallow, unsteady sound. It startled something nearby.

Movement - barefoot, cautious - approached. He blinked against the light, eyelids sluggish, lashes crusted with dried salt. When the blur resolved, it wasn’t the sun or the sail that held his gaze.

It was her.

Maris crouched on the far side of the makeshift camp, one hand wrapped loosely around a coconut husk, the other clutching something sharp and improvised - half a plank, maybe, from the wreck. Her skirt was ragged up to one knee, her knees themselves scraped raw while her arms were streaked with grime and shallow cuts. Her braid had collapsed somewhere along the way, leaving her hair tangled in sheets across her shoulders.

She didn’t speak. Just watched him through tired eyes.

He tried again - this time lifting his head a fraction. A wave of dizziness hit so fast it turned his stomach. He winced and pressed a palm to the sand, fingers splaying in damp grit.

“How long?” he rasped.

She tilted her head, birdlike. Appraising. Then answered, flatly, “Three days.”

His mind lagged behind the words. Three . He’d been asleep for three days.

The tide hissed faintly behind him. Wind stirred a corner of the canopy. The fire had long since died down to embers and charcoal stains. He swallowed, and it hurt.

“We’re not dead,” he said after a moment.

“No,” Maris replied. “Though you gave it a fair try.”

He let out a breath through his nose - shallow, laboured. The kind of exhale that meant: don’t test me . But it lacked conviction.

He shifted again, managing to sit partway upright, propping himself against a tilted rock. It cut into his lower back slightly. Everything hurt. Ribs. Spine. His eyes. His pride.

“You dragged me out.”

It wasn’t a question. It didn’t need to be.

Maris didn’t answer right away. She set the coconut aside with a quiet thud, then brushed her hands off on the remains of her dress.

“You weren’t moving,” she said. “The ship was gone. The tide was turning.”

“That doesn’t explain why.”

She looked away, eyes scanning the water like it might offer something better than the truth. 

“It was the right thing to do,” she said eventually. 

No theatrics, no saviour’s pride. Just a flat fact, spoken like an admission she’d already made to herself too many times.

He studied her - slowly, without sharpness. Her exhaustion was evident in every line of her body. Her shoulders were curled inward, like she hadn’t stood straight in days. Her fingers were nicked, her lip cracked, her voice hoarse.

She hadn’t slept properly, that much was clear. She carried herself like someone who'd spent every hour holding something heavy - not with arms, but with willpower.

The silence stretched.

“Don’t read into it,” she said eventually, eyes narrowing as they returned to him. “It doesn’t mean I forgive you for anything.”

He gave a small, almost imperceptible nod. “I wouldn’t dare presume.”

She rose, legs stiff, and crossed the narrow camp with a limp he hadn’t noticed until now. She picked up a halved coconut and carried it back toward him, dropping it into the sand just near his hand - not close enough to touch, but close enough to claim.

“Eat,” she said. “If you can.”

He didn’t reach for it. Not yet. “Where did you get…”

“I climbed a tree.”

He stared at her. She didn't flinch.

“You climbed a tree,” he repeated slowly, like trying the shape of the words in a foreign tongue.

She gave the barest shrug. “I had a better chance than you.”

He offered no retort. Just glanced down at the food, then back at her.

“You could’ve left me.”

“I still could.”

That made him smile. Not a warm smile - more of a dry twitch. Like someone remembering they still had a mouth.

She didn’t return it.

“Maris-”

“Don’t say my name,” she interrupted, voice low but direct. “Not like that. Not like we’re equals now.”

“Maris,” he said again, deliberately. Testing.

Her mouth tightened. She turned away, not with a flinch but with something more calculated. Controlled. She walked the edge of the camp like she was mapping its limits. Her shoulders were taut and her steps deliberate. He noted that she never strayed far from the makeshift shelter.

“Have we seen ships?” he asked after a while.

She didn’t answer right away.

“One. Two days ago,” she said at last. “Too far off. Didn’t see us. I didn’t have anything to signal with.”

He looked at the torn sailcloth canopy. At the driftwood arranged like ribs near the fire pit. At the bit of rope cinched tight around one of the stakes.

“You used the flags,” he murmured.

“They were already burning.”

Silence again.

“You built all this,” he said, not quite a question.

Her tone was dry. “No one else here to delegate.”

It earned the faintest huff of amusement from him. It hurt his ribs. He winced.

She didn’t look over.

“You’re not as helpless as you pretend to be,” he said.

Her head tilted slightly, eyes still on the water. “I never pretended I was helpless.”

“No. I didn’t pay attention.”

That brought a glance.

Just a flicker of it - sideways, guarded, but there.

He watched her for a moment longer. Then braced his hand against the sand and forced himself upright. The movement sent pain lancing down his spine, but he didn’t let it show.

He managed to sit fully upright beneath the ragged sailcloth. The world tilted, then steadied.

“Thank you,” he said.

She studied him for a moment.

Then, without expression she said “You’re welcome.”

It didn’t sound kind. It sounded like a line she had decided she could live with.

She crossed to the fire, crouched again, and began picking at a piece of scorched coconut shell. Not urgently. Not to be useful. Just to keep her hands occupied.

He reached for the coconut she’d given him, slower than he meant to, and took a bite - chewing deliberately, like the act itself might tether him back to something human. It tasted sour and fibrous. Real.

The wind rose, curling through the broken sails above. 

He let it settle in his chest - this silence, this island, this woman who had dragged him back from death and still hadn’t forgiven him.

Maris crouched in the sand beside what passed for a fire pit, coaxing a line of smoke from the damp kindling with short, careful breaths. The wood was salt-streaked and stubborn, half-rotted from the tide, but it was all they had. She shielded the flicker of ember with her hands, curling her fingers like a windbreak, and blew again. Her lips were dry, the breath she pushed out raspy with fatigue. Smoke stung her eyes. Still, she worked.

The smoke thickened, curling upward in a pale ribbon that fluttered, hesitated, then continued climbing. Not much. Not bright. But it was visible - eventually. If someone was looking. If luck still existed.

A soft scuff behind her signaled Cutler's approach. She didn’t turn. His steps were slow, uneven, and deliberate, like a man calculating each footfall. She could tell he was trying not to wince.

"It won't draw much attention," he said at last, voice rough with disuse.

"No," she agreed without looking at him. "But it's something."

He lowered himself onto a piece of driftwood she'd dragged over as a bench. It creaked under his weight, and he shifted with care, trying not to aggravate the bruises blooming across his ribs. He watched the smoke for a long moment, then looked down at his hand, flexing his fingers with a grimace.

The gash across his palm was swollen and red - an angry line that pulsed faintly with each heartbeat.

Maris noticed. She tossed a piece of kindling into the fire, wiped her hand on her skirt, and stood. "Let me see."

He didn’t move.

"You want it infected?" she asked, eyebrow raised.

Cutler muttered something she didn’t catch - likely a protest disguised as dignity - but held his hand out.

She crouched beside him, inspecting the wound. Her fingers were gentle but efficient, clinical without warmth. She didn’t speak, didn’t soothe. Just pulled a strip of cloth from the pouch at her hip, wet it with water from the canteen, and began to clean the wound with methodical care.

He hissed at the first touch, shoulders tightening.

"Don’t be dramatic," she said, voice flat.

"I'm not," he muttered. "Merely commenting on the agony."

She glanced up. "Still dramatic."

The cloth turned pink with blood. She tore another strip from her overskirt - the hem was already ragged - and bound the hand quickly, efficiently. Her movements were practiced. When she finished, she sat back on her heels and wiped her hands again, smearing blood across the linen.

"Try not to open it again."

"Would that I had the luxury of stillness."

She stood with a sigh. "You have the luxury of being alive. I'd enjoy that while it lasts."

He looked up at her, then past her to the plume of smoke that wavered in the morning air, lifting toward the too-blue sky.

"What are the odds anyone sees it?"

"Low," she said honestly.

"Then why keep it lit?"

Maris shrugged. "Hope. Spite. Habit. Take your pick."

Cutler didn’t answer. He let his gaze settle on the fire, watching the way the flames gnawed slowly at the damp wood. For a long time, neither of them spoke. The quiet stretched, not awkward, but heavy. Like a truce neither had agreed to but both were living in.

Eventually, Maris sat beside him. Not close. Just not far. Her legs folded beneath her, arms crossed over her knees. Her eyes stayed on the smoke.

"I used to hate silence," she said, her voice low. "Thought it meant something was waiting to go wrong."

Cutler shifted slightly. "It often does."

"But not always. Sometimes it just... is."

He looked at her. Really looked, for a moment. She wasn’t the girl he had taken from her home - not anymore. Salt clung to her skin like armour, and her hair had curled into loose, unruly knotted waves from the heat and wind. But there was something steady in her now. Something that hadn’t been there before.

"You were a different person on that ship," he said quietly.

She didn’t look at him. "So were you."

The fire crackled. The tide rolled in again. The smoke rose - thin, grey, fragile - curling toward a sky that wasn't looking.

But they kept it going anyway because it was all they could do.

Chapter Text

He woke to silence. Not the soft, tentative hush of recovery - but absence.

Beckett pushed himself up on one elbow, blinking against the light. The shelter still stood - threadbare sailcloth twitching in the morning wind - but the fire had gone out, and the coconut shells lay discarded. Cold. Picked clean.

She was gone.

A sharp current of something moved through him. Not fear, not quite, but something like it, cloaked in pride.

He scanned the camp - no movement. No sound but the lap of tide and the rasp of wind in palm fronds. He turned, slowly, every muscle protesting, and dragged his legs beneath him.

Pain bloomed across his ribs as he stood. Not fresh pain - an old ache, half-conquered, now reminding him it still held dominion. He gritted his teeth and took a breath that rattled down like broken glass. Then he stepped from under the shade.

The sand scorched his feet.

He limped forward, pausing to steady himself on a warped length of driftwood. The sun was higher than he’d realised. Midday or near it. She’d been gone hours.

Another ten paces brought him to the edge of the rise - and from there, the sea.

And her.

She stood knee-deep in the shallows, barefoot, back to him. Her dress, wet again, clung to her legs like reeds. She held something small in her hands - scrubbing maybe, or rinsing - and dipped it with the slow rhythm of repetition. Her braid had come undone entirely. The wind moved through her hair in loose, tangled waves.

He didn’t call out.

Instead, he leaned against a rock, watching her. Watching the way her shoulders moved. The way her feet shifted with the tide. The stubborn grace of someone who hadn’t wanted to become competent, but had.

She turned after a moment and saw him. She didn’t react, didn’t shy from his gaze. Just lifted the rag she’d been rinsing - wound tight around her palm - and began walking back toward him, the surf chasing her heels.

“You’re upright,” she said. Not approval, just observation.

“Temporarily.” His voice cracked. 

She offered the rag. He took it. It was cool and wet, smelling faintly of brine and something older. He pressed it to the side of his neck and closed his eyes for a moment longer than he meant to.

“There’s more wreckage,” she said, turning. “Down past the rocks.”

He followed her gaze - toward the curve of the island, where jagged stone rose from the sand like shattered teeth.

“I wanted to see if anything floated in,” she added. “It’s not all wood.”

He raised a brow, but said nothing. 

She walked ahead without waiting. The sand was coarser this direction, littered with fragments - nails, splinters, cloth, the bent prong of a fork. Beckett limped after her, slower, scanning what the tide had surrendered. Most of it useless. Some of it disturbing.

A sleeve. Still buttoned.

He stepped over it.

Near the rocks, she crouched beside a larger piece of timber. A locker door, maybe. Or part of a footlocker lid. She nudged it aside and revealed a small leather book, water-swollen but intact. She didn’t touch it. Just gestured.

He knelt, ignoring the scream of his knees, and pried the object loose. His thumb smudged across the cover: stitched initials, E.I.T.C.

Not his. But close enough to sting. He stared at it for a moment then closed it again and rose.

Wind picked up suddenly, strong enough to pull at the material of his shirt. Maris turned her face into it, squinting. The sky had darkened just slightly - the clouds above were thickening in long, smudged strokes, like a painter’s hand had wavered.

“We’ll lose the fire if that hits,” she said.

He nodded.

“There’s shelter inland,” she added. “A kind of cave. I saw it on the second day. Too far to risk dragging you.”

“And now?”

She turned to face him fully. Her gaze held steady - measured, unreadable. Then her eyes flicked to his feet.

“Now you can walk.”

He straightened his spine, ignoring the throb at his side.

“Show me.”

The path inland wasn’t a path at all.

No trail, no clearing - just tangled undergrowth, gnarled roots, and the kind of silence that made Beckett itch. The world here was dense and indifferent. Leaves slick with mineral film slapped his shoulders as he passed. Every step sank too deep into soft soil. His boots were soaked within minutes.

Maris moved ahead of him without ceremony, pushing foliage aside with her forearms. Her stride had a deliberate rhythm - quick, but not hurried. Like she’d already memorised the route.

He didn’t ask how far.

He wouldn’t give her the satisfaction.

Instead, he followed. Slipping once on moss, catching himself with a grunt he tried to stifle. She didn’t look back. Or perhaps she did and said nothing.

By the time the trees thinned, sweat stuck his shirt to his spine. His breath came hard and thin, and the throb in his ribs had narrowed to something meaner - a quiet, pressing ache that refused to fade.

She stopped at the mouth of the cave.

It wasn’t much; a shallow overhang carved into black volcanic stone, maybe twenty or so feet deep - enough to block the wind and the rain. Sand collected in the hollows. Someone - her, clearly - had dragged half a crate inside, along with a few scavenged planks lashed together into something like a bench. A hastily built fire pit, unused, sat in a circle of rocks near the wall.

Beckett ducked to enter. The cave ceiling brushed his hair as he stepped inside and let his eyes adjust to the dim. Like some wounded beast crawling into a hole - sheltered, yes, but stripped of dignity.

Maris was already moving, restacking dried palm fronds, adding flammable scraps. Her fingers worked methodically - practiced. She didn’t ask for help. He watched her for a moment, then lowered himself onto the bench. The crate creaked beneath his weight. He didn’t lean back.

“You’re efficient,” he said eventually.

She didn’t glance up. “No one else here to carry the load.”

He let that sit. After a beat, he added, “I wasn’t always like this, you know.”

Her hands stilled, fingers pressed flat to a split branch.

“Weren’t you?”

There was no venom in her tone - just curiosity wrapped in disbelief. He didn’t answer.

Instead, he leaned forward, elbows on knees, and rubbed his temple with salt-crusted fingers. His body was a battlefield. Bruises beneath bruises. Muscles cinched into knots. He knew, vaguely, that he ought to be dead.

Instead he was sitting in a cave with a girl who should’ve left him to drown.

Maris broke the silence first.

“If the storm hits properly,” she said, “we’ll need to dig a runoff trench.”

His head turned. “We?”

“You want to sleep underwater?”

He gave a dry huff - neither laugh nor exhale. Then nodded. “Very well.”

She moved past him, toward the cave’s mouth. Paused. Then turned back.

“You don’t give orders here.”

His eyes rose to meet hers. Something unreadable passed between them - recognition, perhaps, or the first tilt in a long power shift.

“Noted,” he said.

She didn’t reply. Just turned again, disappearing into the daylight with measured steps.

He sat back against the stone, closed his eyes, and exhaled into the empty air.

Not command. Not comfort. Just breath.

The storm came without warning.

One moment, the sky beyond the cave mouth was overcast but calm. The next, rain hammered down like punishment - sharp, slanting sheets that turned the palms outside into trembling silhouettes.

Inside, the temperature dropped fast. Wind curled inward, damp and insistent, tugging at the edge of the sailcloth they'd rigged as a curtain across the opening. Water ran in narrow veins down the stone walls. The fire sputtered - more ash than flame now, the kind of heat that warmed nothing past your knuckles.

Maris crouched beside it, coaxing what embers remained. Her hands trembled slightly - not with fear, just cold and strain. Her sleeves were still damp. 

Beckett sat further back, braced against the wall with a folded edge of sailcloth. He hadn’t asked for it, she hadn’t offered but she’d left it there while he slept, and now it was half-draped over his legs like a poor man’s blanket.

The cave wasn’t large. With both of them inside, and the smouldering fire between, there was nowhere to stand that didn’t feel too close.

She sat opposite him, knees tucked to her chest, arms wrapped tight across her ribs. Her shoulders were hunched. Her lips pale. Wind knifed across the floor.

When thunder rolled, it echoed through the stone like a living thing. Neither of them spoke.

A particularly sharp gust slipped past the curtain and hit her directly. She shivered, hard enough that it jolted her elbow. The coconut she’d been holding tipped, spilled, and rolled near the fire.

Beckett’s eyes tracked it. Then rose to look at her. Without speaking, he shifted the cloth higher on his lap - then held one edge out, just slightly, in her direction. Not quite an invitation.

She glanced up and frowned.

“What is that supposed to mean?” she asked.

“It means it’s warmer under here,” he said. “And I’d rather not listen to your teeth chatter all night.”

She didn’t move straight away and the silence between them stretched.

Eventually, she sighed - tight and reluctant - and crawled the narrow space between them. She kept her arms folded even as she settled, shoulders stiff. He shifted the sailcloth so it draped over them both, a pocket of brittle warmth against the cold.

They sat like that. Not touching. Not speaking.

She could smell salt and damp wool on him. He could feel the tension in her posture, like a string pulled too tight.

Another gust of wind pressed the curtain inward and the storm beat against the stone like it meant to enter. The fire hissed low. Between them, the sailcloth barely moved, save for where it touched her knee - pressed close, but never quite overlapping his.

It wasn’t comfort, it was concession, and in the dark, that was enough.

Chapter Text

The world was quiet, but not in any way that suggested peace.

It was the kind of quiet that came after violence - not rest, but absence. The storm had emptied itself and moved on, leaving behind a landscape soaked and bruised. Everything dripped. Rocks, leaves, the edge of the cave roof - the water clung to each surface in beads and threads, dripping in staggered rhythm like a clock that had forgotten how to count.

Beckett sat with his back against the cave wall, legs stretched stiffly in front of him, palms braced against the damp grit beneath. He could feel the cold of the stone through the seat of his trousers. His boots, wet through, squelched faintly each time he shifted.

Somewhere deeper in the cave, water fell from a crack in the ceiling in slow, deliberate drops. One every few seconds. Just enough to keep finding his attention.

He exhaled through his nose and closed his eyes.

His ribs ached. Not sharply, not urgently - but in a constant low throb, like someone pressing a thumb into bruised fruit. The bandage around his torso felt tight. Damp. He didn’t know if it had shifted during the night or if the wound had simply decided to protest the indignity of healing.

Maris was already outside. She hadn’t spoken when she left. He’d heard her moving; quiet steps, the scrape of something being lifted, then the brief rustle of the sailcloth curtain pulled aside. Then only the sound of dripping and the distant hush of trees breathing out.

He waited ten more minutes before forcing himself upright.

The movement took longer than it should have. He rolled forward onto one knee, pushed himself up with one hand braced against the cave wall. His legs felt heavy, wooden. His left arm still didn’t like being raised above his ribs without complaint.

Outside, the light was dull. The sky overhead had stopped brooding, but the clouds hadn’t lifted completely. A fine mist hung between the trees, softening the edges of everything. The forest steamed faintly - not smoke, not fog, just the earth giving back what the storm had taken.

Maris was crouched beside the pile of their salvaged supplies. A miserable-looking collection of rope, canvas, metal scraps, and clothing now soaked through and clinging to itself like discarded skin. She was wringing water from a strip of sailcloth and stringing it along a thin length of bent wood propped between two branches. Makeshift drying line. Ingenious, if pathetic.

She didn’t look up as he stepped closer.

“I’d suggest rebuilding the fire first,” he said, his voice rasping against itself.

She didn’t glance at him. “You’d be wrong.”

He frowned. “Dry clothes would make the work easier.”

“And catching pneumonia would make it permanent.” She twisted the cloth and hung it. “We need sun. Fire’s not worth the effort until we have kindling that won’t hiss itself out.”

Beckett lowered himself stiffly beside the pile. He picked up a twisted length of netting and began to pull it apart. Water slicked his fingers, making the cord slippery. The knot wouldn’t give.

She was right, of course. It irritated him.

They worked in silence for a time. Not companionably - not yet - but not at odds either. Just the kind of silence that comes when two people have accepted, however reluctantly, that survival requires company.

The storm had left behind more than water. The air was thick with the smell of rot and minerals - the churned guts of the island exposed. Crushed ferns, split bark, the sour tang of overturned earth. Somewhere, something had died. He could smell it faintly. Not enough to worry but still distantly present.

Maris crouched low again, sorting through a soaked cloth bundle that had once been something useful. Every motion she made was precise. Economical. He’d yet to see her waste energy - even in the way she breathed. No dramatic sighs. No groans of discomfort. Just movement. Just function.

He hated how much he noticed.

Beckett sat back on his heels and rubbed his eyes with the heel of his palm. His body was a slow revolt. Not quite pain. Not quite recovery. But everything he did cost more than it should. Each gesture had to be earned.

The sun pushed through the trees in staggered shafts, dimming in and out as clouds passed overhead. A breeze picked up - just enough to stir the drying cloth and shiver his damp shirt against his skin.

He closed his eyes and tilted his face toward the light. Even filtered, even brief, it felt like something stolen.

“You’re slow today,” Maris said.

He opened his eyes. “Am I usually fast?”

“You were less stiff yesterday.”

“Yesterday I hadn’t spent the night lying on rock beneath a flapping sheet during a minor apocalypse.”

She didn’t argue.

She stood instead, crossed to the pile of would-be firewood near the mouth of the cave. She tested each piece, weighing them in her palm, pressing her thumb against the grain. Most were still too wet. A few she set aside. He watched her fingers work, noting how methodically she sorted what was salvageable from what was lost.

Again, that sting of awareness.

If I hadn’t had her taken - if she hadn’t been on that ship - I’d be dead.

There it was again. The thought, quiet and constant as the cave’s dripping stone.

He’d nearly drowned. Would have, without her.

He wouldn’t have found the cave. Wouldn’t have built the fire. Wouldn’t have known which plants burned clean, or how to rig sailcloth between tree branches to catch and filter rain.

She hadn’t hesitated. She hadn’t even seemed surprised to survive.

And he - with all his titles and plans and power - had done what? Barked orders into wind. Passed out. Bled on a rock.

It sat wrong. Not because she was a woman - though the discomfort was shaped like that, familiar and brittle - but because she had no reason to keep him alive.

She should hate him. Likely did.

And still… here they were. She hadn’t left. Hadn’t taken the salvage and disappeared inland, left him to rot in the sun. Beckett shifted his weight and forced himself upright again, ignoring the tremor that moved across his thighs.

She noticed. Of course she did.

“If you’re about to suggest dragging half-dry firewood into the cave, don’t,” she said.

“I wasn’t.”

“Hm.”

A pause stretched between them, broken only by the breeze and the sound of a branch snapping in the trees above.

She reached into the salvaged bundle and pulled out a torn piece of shirt - his, judging by the embroidery near the seam. She examined it, then twisted it gently in both hands, feeling for integrity.

Then, without ceremony, she tore it again - longways, slow and even - and added it to the drying line.

He watched the movement.

“What was that for?”

“Binding. Slings. Cordage. Bandages. Whatever we need next.”

“And if I needed that shirt?”

“You’d be less of a liability.”

He gave a soft, mirthless laugh. “You wound me.”

She said nothing.

She didn’t need to.

He eased himself down again near the cave’s mouth, shoulder grazing the edge of stone where the sun had begun to pool. His shirt clung to his back. The dampness was less now, but persistent - not enough to shiver, just enough to notice. Like a second skin that hadn’t asked to be worn.

Maris sat across from him with a hunk of coconut between her hands. She bit off a piece and chewed slowly, eyes fixed on nothing in particular.

He watched her for a moment. Noticing the way her shoulder moved. The small lines around her mouth. The faint impression of bruises beneath the dirt on her forearm. She looked like someone who'd fought the island and won, but not easily.

“You don’t hate me,” he said, more curious than surprised.

Her eyes flicked to him, sharp and immediate. Then narrowed.

“I mean,” he continued, gesturing vaguely, “you haven’t murdered me. Or left me to die. You patch wounds. You ration food. You give me the driest cloth without complaint.”

She didn’t interrupt.

“And yet I can’t imagine I rank particularly high on your list of beloved figures.”

He expected silence or sarcasm. What he got instead surprised him. 

“I’m busy surviving,” she said. “When we get off this island, I’ll hate you then.”

The words landed flat. Not angry. Not kind. Just true .

She took another bite and chewed in silence.

He looked away. Something in his chest pulled - not painful, not sharp, but familiar. Like stepping into a room and remembering you’re unwelcome.

He shifted slightly, elbows resting on his knees, hands clasped loose in front of him.

“That’s fair,” he said.

“I know.”

She dusted her hands against her sides, then stood. She stretched her arms overhead, spine cracking faintly as she moved, then let them drop again.

“I’m going inland,” she said. “There’s a stretch I haven’t checked yet.”

He nodded once and she turned, began walking toward the tree line - then paused.

Glanced over her shoulder.

“Don’t fall into anything while I’m gone.”

He gave her a dry look. “Once was plenty.”

Her mouth twitched, almost a smile. Then she disappeared into the trees.

He stayed there long after the trees had swallowed her shape, the damp of the earth seeping back into his clothes, the scent of wet stone and bruised leaves thick around him. Her words clung tighter than the air. Not a wound, but a warning. Not rage, but a promise.

If they made it off this island, she'd hate him, and he wasn't entirely sure he wouldn't deserve it.

Chapter Text

The tide had drawn back just enough to widen the beach, revealing a long curve of pale sand that reached toward the northern rocks in a broken arc. The breeze came in slow breaths, rustling the treetops and shifting the scattered gull tracks that patterned the shore like some unreadable script.

Debris littered the sand in hunched piles - twisted ribs of timber, salt-rusted bolts, the odd remnant of canvas or barrel staves warped into strange shapes by the sea. A cracked mast lay half-buried near the waterline, its splintered end gnawed blunt by waves.

Maris stood barefoot on the sand, one hand braced against her hip, the other raised to shield her eyes from the white glare of the sky. Her braid was unravelling again - loose strands sticking to the line of her jaw - and a streak of grey ash smudged her forearm where she’d reached into the fire earlier without hesitation.

Cutler came limping up from the tree line, dragging a plank behind him. He dropped it beside the growing pile with a grunt and straightened, one hand pressed instinctively to his side. His ribs burned - not sharply, but with a dull insistence, like wet rope being pulled too tight.

“This won’t be enough,” he muttered, eyeing their pitiful collection of smoke-worthy salvage.

Maris didn’t turn. “It will if it’s green enough.”

They’d been gathering since morning - sea-damp branches, palm fronds, torn sailcloth, a few lengths of resinous wood that had somehow stayed dry inside a broken crate. The fire they’d lit earlier had taken too long, resisting each spark like it resented them. But this wasn’t about warmth. Or food.

This was about being seen; Smoke, not heat or light. Signal.

Cutler crouched again, reaching for a salt-bleached bough.

“Stack it loose,” she called over her shoulder. “It needs to breathe.”

“I do know how fire works.”

“You know how tea works. This is different.”

He almost snapped back, but caught himself. Not because she was necessarily right - though she probably was - but because there was a kind of certainty in her tone that left little room for debate. Like arguing with a tide.

So he worked in silence. They both did. Moving in tandem but never quite together. He was aware of her constantly - the way her shadow crossed his, the way she crouched low to wedge palm fronds beneath the damp timber, the steady rhythm of her hands. She had a kind of efficiency he resented for how often he needed it. His arm was still not right but he didn’t mention it, just struggled on the best he could. 

By midday, they had built something with potential - a modest pyre rising from the sand like an altar of splinters and cloth. It was ugly but functional. Already, a thread of smoke began to curl upward from the base, licked into being by a buried coal from earlier. Faint, pale, but rising.

Maris stood back, crossing her arms as she assessed their handiwork. Her face gave nothing away other than that habitual look of quiet assessment, as if measuring the fire’s value against the effort it had cost.

Cutler followed her gaze. The smoke bent east with the wind - not straight, but steady enough to suggest direction.

“How far do you think it’ll be visible?” he asked, voice rough from disuse.

She shrugged. “Depends how close someone is.”

“And if they’re not?”

“Then it’s still a signal,” she said, evenly. “Which is better than no signal.”

He opened his mouth to offer some flippant remark - something dry about futility or theatre - but found, oddly, that he didn’t want to. Not just then.

Instead, they sat. Separate but near. On a rock, a drift of sand, the edge of a long-ruined spar. Letting the fire burn on. Feeding it when it begged for more. Saying nothing to fill the silence.

Eventually they stopped watching the horizon directly.

It hurt too much - to stare at nothing, to watch the sea unchanging, like a wound that wouldn’t clot. Instead, their eyes shifted between the fire and the drift of clouds, the curve of tide and the small daily labor of existing.

And then it came.

Maris stiffened first.

She’d been scanning the horizon absently, the way one might glance toward a window in passing - not expecting anything. Not hoping. But something changed in her posture. Her back straightened. Her head tilted, almost imperceptibly.

Cutler noticed.

“What is it?”

She didn’t answer and instead lifted one hand and pointed. There, out past the shallows, beyond the last visible curl of wave.

A shape.

White and slim. Not quite motionless.

At first, Cutler couldn’t place it. His eyes strained against the distance, the glare, the heat shimmer rising off the water. But then-

“Is that-”

“It might be,” she said.

He stood too fast. A sharp pulse of pain lanced through his ribs, but he didn’t stop. He stepped forward, breath held, every muscle caught in the half-second before belief.

“It’s moving,” he said, uncertain whether he was describing the shape or himself.

They reached the water’s edge without speaking. Shoulder to shoulder, squinting into the light, bodies angled forward like they might walk out to it if they tried hard enough.

It looked like sails.

Not full, not clear - but thin lines against the soft blaze of sky. Something solid cleaving the horizon.

Cutler’s heart surged.

He had already started to run ahead in his mind - already begun deciding what face to wear, what story to tell. Would it be a merchant vessel? Navy? Did he still have his name, out there, in the world? Did it mean anything?

He glanced sidelong at Maris. She stood very still beside him. Mouth parted slightly, as if she’d forgotten to breathe.

Then - the light shifted as clouds moved.

The water stilled and the shape was gone.

Not vanished - revealed. A trick of light. A curve of heat shimmer. Nothing more than sky reflected, twisted, refracted through their own want.

An illusion.

Cutler stared for too long, waiting for it to reappear. As if maybe it was just hiding - as if belief might drag it back into being.

It didn’t. The shimmer had been real but the ship had not.

He felt the heat drain from his chest all at once - not like pain, but like grief. The hollowing that came after. Beside him, Maris lowered her hand. She didn’t speak. Just turned and walked away, back up the beach in slow, even steps like someone leaving a grave.

Cutler stayed where he was a moment longer.

The waves came in, slow and steady, brushing the tops of his boots. The fire crackled behind him, forgotten. He closed his eyes, just for a second, and let the sting pass through him like weather.

Then he turned and followed.

They didn’t speak. Not when they returned to the remnants of the fire, which had slouched into a low hiss of embers. 

Not when the smoke thinned to nothing, barely a memory, just a faint trail of scent that clung to their clothes and hair like failure.

Not even when the light began to shift - gold to grey, and the tide reached up to claim the space they had worked so hard to mark.

The silence didn’t descend.

It settled gradually. The kind that dulled thought and made the sound of breath feel intrusive.

Neither of them said let’s stay , but neither moved inland toward the cave either. It was as though the beach itself had claimed them - two still forms staked by futility.

Cutler sat slouched forward, elbows braced on his knees, hands clasped loosely like he might pray if he still had anything left to barter with. His shirt clung damp to his back and his eyes burned.

The thing that stung - the thing that truly ached - wasn’t that they hadn’t been seen. It was that, for one impossible moment, he’d believed they had.

He’d felt the swell of it - the absurd, animal hope that someone had come. That this would end. That he could step back into the world and decide how to be seen again. He’d begun calculating the terms of his survival.

And it had been nothing. Just light and heat and want. A mirage shaped like a rescue.

He looked over at Maris.

She hadn’t moved.

She sat folded in on herself, arms looped around her knees, chin tucked against her forearms. Not asleep. Just still. The kind of stillness that wasn’t rest, but the absence of effort. The posture of someone trying not to feel too much at once.

The tide had fully returned now, gentle but insistent. Small waves curling up to wet the sand where their boots had been. The sky above was thin and tired. No stars yet, just the bleeding hush of late light.

Then just when the silence felt unbearable, he heard it.

A melody.

At first he thought it was the wind in the trees, or gulls far off - but no, this was lower, steadier. Carried just above the breath of the surf.

A hum. Slow and mournful. 

He turned his head toward her.

Maris hadn’t changed posture - her face was still half-hidden against her arms, but her mouth moved just enough to shape breath into sound. The hum came and went like a tide. No words, no verses. Just the trace of something old and worn thin with use.

And yet he recognised it.

“Lowlands, lowlands away…”

He hadn’t heard it in years.

A sailor’s song. Or a lament. A dirge shaped like a lullaby. It used to be sung at sea burials, though few followed tradition anymore. And now - from her.

Not defiance or comfort, as such, just something unburied. Something private, bleeding out without permission. It pierced him in a way her silence hadn’t. It felt… real . A seam opening between them by accident.

She noticed him watching and the sound stopped instantly.

She didn’t lift her head, just shifted her weight, tucked one foot beneath the other, and looked back toward the sea like nothing had happened.

But something had, and it settled in him the way salt settles in a wound - not unbearable, but impossible to ignore.

He didn’t speak but he stayed there near her, letting the silence creep back in, softer now. Not quite peace. Not quite anything.

Just two people breathing.

Waiting.

Chapter Text

Cutler hadn’t meant to show her the spring like it was a gift.

He’d stumbled across it quite by accident earlier that morning. He'd woken in the cave to find he was alone again. She’d gone to check the shoreline, presumably. Scavenging. Hauling things. Carrying what he couldn’t.

He should have stayed where he was, but the stillness of the cave had started to gnaw. The same patch of stone. The same rasp of wind through leaves. And her absence stretched longer than he liked.

So he rose. Slowly, with effort. Braced himself on the cave wall and tested his weight on each foot like a man preparing to duel gravity itself. He hated feeling weakened like this. Hated it. 

He hadn’t told Maris about the extent of his injuries - not properly. A ragged cut, high along his left side, just beneath the ribs. It bled less now, but throbbed like a second heartbeat. He’d tried to keep it clean when she wasn’t looking, rinsing it with trickles of fresh water and binding it with strips torn from his coat lining. Crude work.

 He kept his left arm tucked close, moved with rehearsed nonchalance, as if favouring it by choice. She hadn’t mentioned it. But she hadn’t needed to.

She hadn’t asked. Not even when he’d winced at standing or when he couldn’t hold the weight of something without shifting his stance. Yet he knew she had him chalked up in her mind as damaged. It was evident in the way she’d gone ahead that morning without waking him - gathering, hauling, doing what needed to be done. A gesture of practicality, perhaps. Or quiet concession. Either way, it was confirmation enough: she knew. She simply hadn’t made a point of it. And somehow, that was worse than if she had.

He was determined to not be a set back so he, somewhat stubbornly, made his way after her towards the shore. The path was familiar enough now - tangled, root-bound, disinterested in his suffering. He moved slower than usual, compensating for the burn and faint tug of muscles along his side. Sweat collected at the back of his neck as birds watched from the canopy like indifferent judges.

He unknowingly took a wrong turn near the split rock without realising it, and suddenly the ground sloped without warning. Moss disguised the slick angle of stone beneath. His foot shot forward and he managed to right himself with a jolting lurch before he crashed into the body of water that had been sitting - glass-still and waiting - just beyond the undergrowth.

Now, later that same morning, as they stepped into the clearing together, sunlight filtered down in pale green shafts through the canopy above, flickering against the surface like scattered coins. The pool wasn’t large, but it was quiet, glassy, edged by dark stone and moss. A vein of water trickled out the far end into a gulley and the air smelled of minerals and leaf-matter, old and untouched.

He gestured toward it. “Freshwater, as promised.”

Maris crouched at the edge, trailing her fingers through the shallows. She sniffed the water, tasted it on the edge of her thumb. Then nodded. “This’ll do.”

No praise. Just acknowledgement. Still, it settled something in his chest.

She dipped both hands and splashed her face - twice, briskly, like a ritual. The water ran down her cheeks and neck, washing away the grime and leaving pale skin. When she looked up, blinking water from her lashes, he found himself… staring.

Her skin looked raw with clarity. Not delicate - never that - but new . As if something of the last few weeks had been stripped away, leaving only her. Eyes sharp. Mouth set. Breathing deeper now. Less guarded, if only for a moment.

She caught him watching and he looked away.

Maris stood then, shook her hands dry, and wiped her palms against her hips. “You should let me take a look at your injury now we have proper fresh water.”

He didn’t answer. Not right away. Just kept his gaze on the spring as if it held something of interest. As if she hadn’t spoken at all.

“What?” she pressed, stepping a little closer. “You thought I hadn’t noticed you’re not using your left arm properly?”

Still, he said nothing. His jaw shifted slightly - not a wince, not quite - and he crouched near the edge of the water, watching the ripples build and settle.

“I was conserving energy,” he muttered eventually.

She made a faint sound of derision - not cruel, just tired of the performance. “You’re suspiciously eager to undress me,” he added, finally glancing up at her.

“Not especially,” she said flatly. “But if we’re to survive here, we need all limbs working. I won’t haul you twice.”

He sighed - low, reluctant, irritated more at himself than her. For being cornered. For knowing she was right. His fingers moved to the buttons of his shirt, slow and stiff, and he tugged at the fabric like it had grown teeth. It clung where it had fused to dried blood. When it peeled back, he didn’t cry out, but his breath caught - sharp and involuntary - before he forced it down and out again.

She didn’t gawk or offer pity. She crouched, rinsed a strip of cloth in the spring, and wrung it out with hands that had done this before. No ceremony. Just purpose.

Still shirtless, still crouched, he stayed as he was. Vulnerable without meaning to be. The act of baring skin had revealed more than the wound.

She turned slightly, cloth in hand, then paused.

“Do you want to do it yourself?” she asked. Quietly. Not a challenge - not even a kindness, really. Just the courtesy of pretending he had a choice.

He didn’t answer at first. His eyes stayed on the water.

They both knew the truth of it. He couldn’t lift his arm that far. Not without bracing against something. Not without showing just how much it cost him.

“No,” he said at last. “Get on with it.”

She nodded - just once - and reached for the makeshift wrap. Her fingers brushed his side - light, clinical - and still he felt it like heat. Shame bloomed up his neck. Not for the damage itself, but for the intimacy of being witnessed. Not just seen - seen .

She touched the cloth to his ribs and he hissed. A breath punched between his teeth.

“Don’t be dramatic,” she said.

“It’s refreshing,” he managed. “Like knives.”

“You bandaged over sand.”

“Would you prefer I’d bled elegantly into the ocean?”

She didn’t respond. Just rinsed again, then pressed anew - slower this time. More deliberate. The sting dulled slightly. Or maybe he was simply forgetting to notice it, distracted by the contrast: cool cloth, warm fingers, the steady presence of her beside him. The air between them had thinned. Her breath was audible now, close and even.

She wasn’t quite touching him - not really - but she was there . Knees brushing his. One hand bracing herself on the stone beside him. He could smell the spring on her skin - clean and mineral, threaded with something warmer.

He looked down. Her brow was furrowed and her lips slightly parted in concentration. A single strand of wet hair clung to her cheek and he fought the urge to brush it away.

Then she looked up and their eyes met.

Neither of them moved.

He watched as she tore a clean strip of fabric and began the wrap - steady and sure - then passed the cloth across his front without a word. He took it with his good hand and brought it round his back, and when it reached her again, she caught it and tied it off with a firm knot beneath his ribs. Not gently. Deliberately.

“You’ll live,” she said. “Don’t pull it too much or I’ll have to do it again.”

He breathed once, shallowly. “God forbid.”

But she didn’t move away.

Instead, her gaze shifted upward - to his shoulder, to the awkward angle of his raised arm.

“You’re guarding it,” she said.

“I’m not-”

“You are.” Her tone left no room for protest. “You haven’t lifted it past your ribs since we left the cave after that first storm.”

She stepped closer again, placed her fingers under his elbow and lifted his arm slightly. He flinched.

She didn’t acknowledge it. Just moved in further, crouching between his knees without hesitation, bracing herself with one hand against his thigh for balance. She was close enough now that he could see the faint freckles across her nose, the uneven trim of her lashes. Close enough to feel the brush of her breath against his collarbone.

Her hands found the knot quickly - buried deep in the deltoid, pulled taut by days of misuse. She braced her thumb against it.

“This’ll hurt,” she warned.

“It already does.”

And then she pressed - a short, precise pressure, firm enough to draw another breath through his teeth.

“Breathe,” she said.

He did. Eventually.

She worked with the same rhythm she used to scrub sailcloth or strip bark - economical, no-nonsense. He bit the inside of his cheek. Not from pain this time, but something else. Something harder to name.

She was close again. Too close. 

In London, this would have been unthinkable . A woman like her touching a man like him. Shirtless. Bruised. Without witnesses or chaperones or consequence. No powdered aunt to swoon. No footman to chase her off.

She caught him staring.

One brow lifted and there was suddenly a faint flicker of amusement in her expression, just enough to make it clear that she knew exactly how close she was, and exactly how flustered he’d become.

“Just so we’re clear,” he muttered, voice dry, “this is wildly inappropriate.”

“I’m not your governess,” she replied. “I don’t care what’s appropriate.”

“Evidently.”

She leaned in a little more, pressing her thumbs harder into the tightest part of the muscle until he flinched again. Her voice dropped, blunt and cool.

“Don’t flatter yourself, Cutler. I’m just tired of doing all the work.”

That threw him. For a moment, he almost laughed - not from humour, but from the ridiculousness of himself.

“I know,” he said quietly. And let her keep going.

After a moment, the knot began to loosen beneath her thumbs. The pain dulled - not gone, but tempered. His breath came easier. She withdrew her hands to signal that she was done, and stood up. 

“That should help,” she said as he pulled his shirt back on slowly. The new bandage was snug, secure. It made breathing easier, oddly. He was able to move his arm somewhat more than before. 

She turned away, already moving back toward the edge of the spring, as if nothing had passed between them but practicality.

But the skin beneath the cloth still burned - clean now, but not numb. And the way her fingers had moved - not gently, but deliberately… that lingered longer than he cared to admit.

He watched her kneel again at the edge of the water. 

In London , he thought, this would’ve ended reputations.

Here, it ended nothing at all. 

Strange, how the world rearranged itself when nobody was looking. 

Chapter Text

The fire had collapsed sometime after dusk, reduced now to a loose constellation of ember-threaded ash, still warm beneath the crust. They hadn’t fed it in hours. There seemed little point.

Earlier, they’d eaten in near silence - strips of half-dried fish, bitter with salt and smoke, wrapped in scorched leaves from a low, trailing plant Maris had identified with a shrug and the words “doesn’t kill you.” The unnamed greens were sharp on the tongue, vaguely peppery, but edible.

They ate like people used to measuring meals by effort rather than flavour. No ceremony - just hands, food, flame.

Now only the scent of char lingered, along with the weight of things unspoken.

The beach was quieter than usual - windless, breathless - the sort of lull that came after storms or arguments. A stillness that left everything suspended.

Beckett sat just beyond the fire pit, balanced on a warped length of timber half-buried in sand. His spine was straight, his hands resting on his knees, the knuckles pale from tension rather than cold. The high collar of his shirt was open at the throat. He looked like a man who hadn’t moved in hours - not because he couldn’t, but because stillness had become its own sort of armour.

Across from him, Maris crouched with her back to the fire’s dying glow, makeshift stone knife in hand, stripping bark from a narrow branch. She worked slowly, rhythmically, the shavings collecting at her feet like wood curls from a lathe. Her braid had frayed again, loose strands clinging to the salt-stuck edge of her jaw. She wore the look of someone who had decided, quite firmly, not to speak first.

It troubled him more than he’d admit. Which, of course, meant he’d pretend it didn’t. However it was an unavoidable fact that he was stranded with this woman who, in one moment was cleaning his wounds and passing him food, and the next treated him as though he were not even present on the island with her. 

The silence between them was not companionable. It was precise, and Cutler, despite his intelligence, broke it not with a question, but a provocation.

“You know, you’re quieter when you think you’re right.”

Maris didn’t look up. The knife in her hand continued its quiet scrape.

“And you’re louder when you know you’re not.”

His mouth curved slightly - not a smile, but the shape of one remembered. He looked down at the ash, prodded it once with a stick, then let it fall still again.

“Is that why we’re always circling the same argument?”

“No,” she said. “We circle it because you’ve never once admitted I was right.”

There was no venom in her tone. Just precision. The kind that didn’t need to raise its voice to cut. Cutler let a few seconds pass, eyes on the faint rise of smoke curling off a buried coal. 

Then, casually - too casually - he poked the topic they’d wordlessly agreed to ignore up until now. 

“Do you imagine this was personal?” he asked. 

That pulled her gaze. Not sharply. Slowly - like a woman choosing to look rather than reacting.

“Taking you,” he clarified, his eyes meeting hers in a steady gaze. “Your name. Your position. Your life. Do you think I looked at you and saw anything beyond utility?”

The way he said it - calm, measured, almost bored - told her everything she needed to know.

Because it was that voice .

Not the one she’d been stranded with. Not the man who limped beside her through thickets or pressed sailcloth against her shoulders when the storm rolled in. No. This was the voice from the drawing room, from the boardroom. The voice that had men dragged from cells, ships from docks, and her from her bed. 

The voice that could say necessary and mean irreversible.

And the worst part? He hadn’t said it to hurt her. He’d said it because he believed she already knew.

Maris slowly stood.

She kept the knife in hand - not as a threat, but as punctuation. Tucked easily into her palm. Her fingers flexed once, quietly.

Then she took a step forward. Just one.

“There he is,” she said. “Lord Beckett. I wondered when you’d surface again.”

The words were soft. Almost reverent, if reverence could be shaped from salt. He looked at her fully now - no evasion, no flinch. But his throat moved, barely.

“You see ghosts where there are none,” he said.

“No,” she said. “I see a man rehearsing the version of himself he’s afraid he never really was.”

That landed. Because it was true - and they both knew it.

The silence that followed wasn’t strained. It was settled . Like the moment just after a blade has found its mark and both parties know it.

Maris turned then - not fast, not triumphant. She tucked the stone tool into her belt and walked past him without hurry, steps smooth, back straight. Her boots left deliberate prints in the sand.

He didn’t watch her go, not at first. Only when she was a dozen paces away did he finally exhale. It came out through his nose - sharp, soft, almost a laugh, if anything could be that bitter and quiet at once.

“I wasn’t trying to win,” he said.

But the wind didn’t carry it and she didn’t turn. 

He stayed there, long after the last ember faded, the curve of her footprints still unbroken in the sand. The ash stirred faintly in the breeze, but it wasn’t warm anymore.

Dawn came soft and silver, the kind of light that made everything seem briefly suspended - outlines without weight, edges without bite. A pale, rinsed sky above a beach scrubbed nearly bare. It looked, Cutler thought, like the world had been reduced to outlines overnight. No depth, just the suggestion of things.

He sat up slowly, rolling his shoulder to test the stiffness. Not as bad as yesterday. Worse than tomorrow, hopefully. The sailcloth slid off his lap in a crumple.

Maris was already awake, crouched near the fire pit with her back to him, shaking damp ash from split wood. She hadn’t greeted him. He didn’t expect her to.

The silence between them wasn’t new. But this silence - this one felt different. Not tense, exactly. Just full . Like something had been said and neither of them had quite worked out what to do with it.

He considered staying quiet. Then decided against it.

“You said once,” he said, brushing grit from his sleeve, “that you’d save your hatred for after we were rescued.”

She jumped slightly at his voice, as though she hadn’t noticed he was awake, but she did not look at him, nor did she respond. 

“You said it wasn’t worth the energy,” he continued. 

Still nothing. She moved a piece of burnt wood, shook her hand clean. He let a beat pass. Then added - with a dryness he hoped passed for self-awareness,

“Would you consider redirecting a small portion of it toward me now?” he added, dryly. “Just to… loosen the tension?”

There was a pause. Then she looked over her shoulder at him, not smiling, not scowling. Just looking , like someone checking a wound to see if it had stopped bleeding. Then she stood, dusted off her hands, and jerked her chin toward the surf.

“Are you going to help me drag up the latest spoils from the waves? More of your boat drifted in with the tide.”

“Ship,” he corrected, automatically.

“Not anymore.”

He pressed his lips together at that barb, but didn’t argue.

They walked down the beach together without another word, feet crunching in the sand. The water had calmed since last week’s squall - a lazy wash of foam that sighed up the shore and back again.

The wreckage was scattered, as always - wood warped into strange angles, ropes knotted with kelp, metal dark with salt-rust. But this time something stranger had arrived: a single wooden chair.

It sat perfectly upright, half-sunk in sand. The varnish ruined, the upholstered cushion long gone, but the shape intact. A dining chair, probably from the officer’s mess. Someone, somewhere, had once sat in it and read reports about pirates and taxes and duty - never imagining it would end here, ruined and ridiculous, on a spit of island where the air smelled of brine and rot.

Maris didn’t hesitate. She sat. The image was surreal - not comic, not serious. Just... absurd. Like watching a queen take her throne on the deck of a sinking ship.

Beckett almost laughed out loud. Almost. Instead, he kept it to himself, the twitch at the corner of his mouth the only sign of his amusement. 

Maris leaned forward, resting her arms on her knees, and spoke without looking at him.

“I won’t waste energy on hate,” she said finally, squinting up at him as the sunlight illuminated her face. Her words were clean, not cruel. 

“But if you’d like to hate yourself on my behalf, you seem well-suited to the task.”

He exhaled through his nose at that. It wasn’t quite an agreement, but it wasn’t denial, either.

Of all the things she could’ve said, it was that - the implication that he’d already been doing it. Not for her, not as a noble gesture, but out of some warped, private accounting.

He gave her a faint, almost respectful nod.

“Noted.”

She looked out toward the surf again.

“I mean it. I’ll save it.”

“Save what?”

“Hatred. The real thing.” She leaned back in the chair slightly, shoulders settling. “I might be the daughter of a pirate lord, but I’m not stupid. I’ve seen what hate does to people who feed it too often.”

He said nothing.

But something shifted inside him at that - not guilt, not shame. It was a kind of recognition. The thought that she might be stronger than he’d assumed. Or worse - that she already knew how to live with what he’d only just begun to name in himself.

Cutler looked down at a strip of sodden rope at his feet. Nudged it with his toe. The words lingered between them, heavy but clean.

“So you’re pragmatic,” he said after a while. 

“I’m tired,” she said. “There’s a difference.”

She stood again without ceremony. The chair creaked, as if protesting being useful so soon after the journey it had taken. They didn’t say anything else to one another, just turned toward the shoreline to begin their work for the morning.

The wreckage was strewn wide, caught in tangled clumps of kelp and flung high on the tide line like offerings. They picked through it slowly - not talking at first, just lifting, tilting, discarding.

Cutler bent to examine a twisted length of brass. Useless. Too thin to reshape, too warped to barter with - even if there had been anyone to barter with. He tossed it aside.

Maris pried open a warped box no bigger than a book. The hinge snapped. Inside, nothing but damp paper and a curl of wire.

“Do you know what this was?” she asked, holding it up.

“Electrical conduit,” Cutler said after frowning at it for a second as he brushed wet sand from his sleeve. “Likely part of the navigation equipment. If it was from my ship, that is.”

She raised an eyebrow. “Which it was.”

He nodded once. “So it seems.”

They worked for another few minutes in silence. The sun was climbing, but not yet cruel. A gull wheeled overhead and screamed as if offended by the lack of carcasses.

Maris brushed salt from her palms and stepped over a beam slick with algae. “Strangest thing that’s washed up?”

He glanced around. “Beyond the chair?”

“Mm.”

“A pair of boots,” he said. “My size. Not mine.”

She gave a dry little huff. “The island provides.”

He didn’t say it, but he looked at her longer than necessary after that. 

She crouched beside a knotted rope and began untangling it with her fingers, quiet for a moment. Then she said, lightly, almost offhand:

“For the record - my father wasn’t resplendent either.”

Beckett blinked. “I never said he was.”

“No, but you did look surprised. When I mentioned him.” She tugged a loop free. “As if a pirate lord ought to raise a daughter with better manners.”

“I don’t remember commenting on your manners.”

“You don’t have to. You wear judgment like it’s tailored.”

He scoffed gently at that. Then his eye caught something pale and curved beneath a thin layer of wet sand. Porcelain, maybe. At first glance it looked like bone.

He reached in carefully and unearthed it - a mug. Half-buried, handle intact, rim chipped but whole enough to use. The white glaze had cracked in a spiderweb of fine lines, and a faded company crest clung stubbornly to one side: E.I.T.C.

Of course.

He stood, brushing grit from the surface with his thumb. Maris looked over, squinting. 

“What is it?”

He held it up by the handle, brow lifted. “Civilisation.”

He tucked the mug into the crook of his arm like a minor relic, and said nothing more. Then, carefully, thinking back to their earlier conversation he asked, “Was your father kind to you?”

She gave him a sharp look. Not because it was too personal - but because it was unexpectedly… gentle. 

He expected her to deflect. Instead, she wiped her hands on her thighs and straightened, considering.

“Not really.”

A pause followed.

“I don’t think he meant to be cruel,” she added, eyes on the rope in her hands again, but fingers not really moving. “But men like him - men with kingdoms made of salt and blood and oaths - they’re not built for remembering small things. Like birthdays. Or promises… or daughters.”

She tossed the rope aside and stood.

“He always brought me back something when he went away for a long time, but never the thing he promised.”

“Disappointing,” Cutler said, watching her move.

“Predictable,” she corrected, glancing up at him. “Strangely worse.”

She stepped around a crate and bent to examine something half-buried. A hinge. Maybe a chest. Her fingers dug into the sand to free it.

After a moment, she said, without looking up, “What about yours?”

“My father?”

“Unless you sprang fully formed from a ledger.”

Beckett paused for a moment while he considered his words.

“He was very… precise. Spoke little. Listened less.”

“Sounds delightful.”

“He believed in improvement,” Beckett said after a moment. “And repentance.”

“Repentance?”

“I was made to copy out passages from the Book of Common Prayer. In Latin. For laughing at a bishop’s wig once.”

Maris stared.

“How old were you?”

“Eight.”

She blinked slowly as she processed this, then after a moment, “well that explains everything.”

He gave her a look. “I still remember the line: ‘Have mercy upon us, miserable offenders.’ I wrote it two hundred times.”

“Did it work?”

He smirked, “Not even slightly.”

She shook her head. “That explains so much.”

“You asked.”

“No, I did. I’m glad I did.” She smiled - not wide or warm, but real enough.

“You had pirate ships and broken promises,” he said, gesturing toward the wreckage. “I had ink pots and bible study. And now-”

“Now we have salt rash, a mug, and a chair.”

They looked at each other. Neither smiled fully, but something passed between them - a mutual, bitter kind of amusement. Not camaraderie. Not yet.

But coexistence. Or the beginning of it, at least. 

And on that island, it passed for progress.

Chapter Text

The sun had reached that cruel height where it felt like it might never move again.

High noon on an empty shore meant no shadows, no mercy - just heat, thick and stifling, pressing down from above and radiating up from the sand below. The air shimmered over the tideline. Even the gulls wheeled higher than usual, avoiding the suffocating stillness close to the ground.

Maris lay under the makeshift canopy, propped against the curve of a half-buried beam. Her arms looped loosely around one knee, the other stretched into the sand by her side. The grainy salt on her skin made every shift of her muscles feel abrasive, like she’d been rolled in sandpaper. Her braid, loose and heavy, stuck damply to her shoulder.

The tide hissed and withdrew in slow intervals, as though even the sea was reluctant to expend effort in such heat.

Cutler lay opposite, nearer the centre of shade, one arm behind his head, the other resting across his stomach. The battered mug they’d salvaged two mornings ago sat in the sand near his hip.

Neither of them had moved in a while - breathing, yes, but otherwise still. Not quite asleep. Not quite alert. 

The silence between them wasn’t chosen. It was survival. There was nothing else to do. Nothing worth the energy. The day was too hot to forage, too blinding to scout, too breathless to argue. 

Even the smallest task - the tying of a rope, the lifting of a plank - would demand more than it gave back.

When the sun started to descend and the breeze picked back up they would each wander inland to the pool of fresh water and bathe. It was tempting to do so now in the heat, but it wasn’t worth the journey just to cool off, as they’d come back just as dirty and sweaty as before. 

So they sat in the quiet and the heat. It wasn’t comfortable. But it was… bearable. 

The longer it stretched, the more it felt like some strange kind of truce.

Maris shifted slightly, tipping her head toward the sea. Her eyes were narrowed against the glare, watching the bright line of the horizon as if it might crack open and offer something. A sail. A miracle… anything.

After a while, she said, not quite to him, “I miss loud neighbours.”

The words fell like a pebble into still water. Cutler didn’t look over. Just blinked up at the shelter’s sagging sailcloth.

She went on, slow and dry. “Not good ones. The kind who argued through walls. Slammed doors for the drama of it.”

A faint grunt of acknowledgment came from his side of the shade.

“I used to hate them,” she added. “Now I think I’d pay coin to hear someone throw a shoe at someone else through a wall.”

There was a long pause. The sea murmured. Somewhere inland, a cicada rasped out its monotonous, metallic trill.

Then Cutler said, “I miss paperwork.”

Maris huffed softly. “You don’t.”

“I do. The illusion of order. Neat ink. Decisions made with clean hands. No sunburn involved.”

She shifted again, squinting at him now. “You really are unbearable.”

He offered a faint, dry smile. “You started it.”

She didn’t reply right away. Just tilted her head back and closed her eyes for a beat.

“I miss soup,” she murmured eventually. “With herbs. Served hot in a bowl. With a spoon.”

Cutler hummed low in his throat. “Scones,” he said. “With currants. The way they fall apart if you’re not careful.”

Maris gave a sleepy nod. “Toasted almonds.”

“Stewed figs.”

“I miss proper bread,” Maris said almost reverently. “Still warm. With butter. Not salted goat fat pretending to be butter. The real thing.”

He turned his head toward her. “Are you crying?”

“Shut up.”

A beat of silence passed, then Maris added, “Brioche.”

“Duck confit.”

“Candied ginger.”

He made a small sound of approval. “That I can understand.”

“Sweet and sharp at the same time,” she said. “My father used to keep a jar of it on his desk. Said it helped him think. I think he just liked the bite.”

“Or the sugar,” Cutler offered.

“Or the sugar,” she agreed.

He shifted slightly, eyes half-closed against the glare filtering through the canopy. “Pâté,” he said after a beat. “With good bread. And a knife that doesn’t bend when you try to spread it.”

She gave him a sidelong glance. “What sort?”

“Duck, mostly. Sometimes chicken liver, if it was dressed up with enough brandy and spice.” He almost smiled. “The trick was getting the balance right between the richness and the salt.”

“Sounds awful,” she said.

“That’s because you’ve never had it done properly.”

She made a noncommittal hum and let her head tip back again. “Cheese,” she murmured. “Any kind, really. I’m not fussy.”

He huffed faintly. “Camembert.”

“That’s the round one?”

“With the white rind. Goes molten if you bake it.” He paused. “Served with fresh bread. And grapes. Preferably while it’s still warm enough to melt the inside of your mouth.”

She opened one eye. “You’re going to make me steal a goat at this rate.”

“I’d prefer you didn’t,” he said dryly. “Goats bite.”

She chuckled under her breath and closed her eyes again, letting the sound of the tide fill the space between them.

“Oranges,” she said suddenly. “Cold ones, straight from a barrel of fresh water. The way the peel smells when you tear into it.”

That seemed to soften something in his expression. “My mother used to put slices of orange in hot water in the summer,” he said. “Said it made the heat feel cleaner somehow.”

There was a small pause, and then he added, “I miss proper tea.”

That startled something from her. A short exhale, not quite a laugh. “Of course you do.”

“I had crates of it,” he said, lightly. “Custom blends. One for each season. Served with silver tongs.”

“Gods help us.”

He closed his eyes again. “When we get back, I’ll see you try some.”

That earned a pause.

“You mean when I pop around for a chatter?” she said slowly.

His mouth tugged into a smirk. “Why not?”

She sat up straighter, adopted a falsely sweet tone and said, “Oh hello, yes - I’m just here for a pot of tea with Lord Beckett, if you please.”

That drew a breath of real laughter from him; low, startled, begrudging.

Maris chuckled. “Can you imagine the reaction?”

“Yes,” he said. “And I rather wish I couldn’t.”

She shook her head, smiling without meaning to. A real one. The kind that slipped free before she remembered to stop it.

They didn’t speak after that. The sun dipped low enough to cast the beginnings of a shadow from the rock behind them. The canopy creaked faintly as the wind turned and the tide made lazy work of the shore.

Maris leaned back again, arms loose at her sides. Her fingers dragged lines in the sand - circles, then nothing. No pattern. Just motion.

After a while, she glanced sideways.

Cutler looked to have dozed off. Not slack-mouthed or slumped - he would never allow that. Just angled back against the beam, arms folded, head tipped like a man too proud to admit exhaustion but too tired to resist it.

She watched him for a few seconds longer than she meant to.

A flicker of movement broke the stillness. He shifted, rolling one shoulder back and reaching for the battered canteen at his side. Rather than drink from it directly, he pulled the EITC mug from its perch in the sand - a ridiculous survivor from the wreck, still chipped from whatever it had struck on its way to shore. He tipped the canteen carefully, pouring until the thin metal rang faintly with the measure.

Maris found herself watching the absurdity of it: Lord Beckett, marooned and sunburnt, drinking lukewarm water out of an officer’s mess mug as though it were porcelain china.

He caught her looking. Paused with the rim just at his mouth, one brow lifting.

“Don’t judge me for reaching for the little things, Maris,” he said, voice low from disuse. “You were just crying over the thought of bread, after all.”

Her mouth curved, but it wasn’t a smile. “Bread is civilisation. You’re drinking the last of our water like it’s a vintage claret.”

“Exactly,” he murmured, and took another sip.

She shook her head and settled back again, the sand warm against her spine.

When he’d finished the water, he turned the mug in his hand once, as though weighing it, then held it out across the scant space between them. She took it without comment, the ceramic warm from the sun and his grip.

As her fingers closed around it, he said, almost idly, “Civilisation, as promised.”

She glanced up at him, one brow tilting, but didn’t answer. Instead, she raised the mug and drank.

The silence resumed - lighter now, almost companionable - and the surf went on whispering to itself as though neither of them mattered at all.

Chapter Text

The wind had died sometime after midday, and the heat clung to the island like a damp breath. Maris moved barefoot along the shoreline, the hem of her tattered green dress damp with brine, the skin of her shoulders browned by weeks in the sun. 

Cutler had ventured inland to bathe in the pool and when he returned she would make the journey herself to do the same. It had quickly become a midday ritual after he first found the source of fresh water. It made the scorching heat more bearable and stuck a pin in the structure of their day. 

Her fingers grazed the short length of salt-crusted driftwood she carried as she walked, eyes scanning the tideline with the instinct of someone who’d learned to find usefulness in ruin. A shell could become a knife. A length of netting, a snare. Even broken glass had its purpose.

She crouched low to inspect a knot of seaweed half-buried in the sand, hoping for something, anything, that might help them survive another day.

What she found instead was a footprint.

She froze and time felt like it had suddenly narrowed around her.

There it was - unmistakably fresh. Toes pressed deeper than the heel. Not hers. Not his. She followed the track with her eyes: one set of prints, then another. Three different treads in all, converging and heading inland from just beyond the curve of the bay.

Her breath caught. 

She didn’t shout, didn’t run. Instinct wrapped its hand around her spine and guided her into motion - slow, controlled, deliberate. She slipped between the tall grasses and curling fronds near the rock ledge, heartbeat thudding in her ears. Her body knew what her mind was still trying to accept: they were no longer alone.

Too many weeks without company, too many signs that they had been left behind… but this - this wasn’t the Company coming to retrieve Beckett. And it certainly wasn’t Jack.

Voices; Male, laughing, crude.

She inched closer to the vegetation’s edge and peered through.

Three men. All rough-cut and sunburnt, hauling a battered rowboat onto the sand. Pirates or wreck-scavengers by the look of them - shirts open to the waist, belts bristling with weapons, eyes hungry in a way that made her skin crawl. The kind of men who looked at people and saw meat or coin.

“Hell of a find,” one of them crowed, tossing a glance at the treeline. “Bet no one’s stepped foot on this place in a year.”

The second man pointed with the butt of his pistol. “Shelter that way. Saw smoke.”

The third unslung his rifle with casual malice. “Let’s see who’s home.”

Then, in an unfortunate moment of timing, Cutler stepped out from the treeline. Not shouting or calling, just squinting into the glare, one hand shielding his eyes. He looked like a man expecting to see someone familiar.

Maris’s blood turned to ice.

“That’s Lord fucking Beckett,” one of the men breathed, and everything changed. Their postures shifted - alert, predatory. A name like his didn’t belong out here. But if it did, it came with a bounty.

Money, power, revenge. She saw the realisation dawn across their faces and without thinking, she stepped out from her cover. A bold move. A stupid one. But it was that or watch what was about to happen unfold without doing anything, and that didn’t feel like a choice.

The driftwood was heavy in her hand, half-hidden behind her thigh.

“He’s mine,” she called out. Her voice rang across the beach and three heads turned. One man’s grin widened.

“You live here, sweetheart?” he said, taking a slow step forward. “Paradise all to yourself?”

She didn’t blink. “With him.”

The second man laughed. “Eve and Adam, eh? Which one of you sinned first?”

Maris smiled, all teeth. “If you want to deal, you’ll deal with me.”

Beckett hadn’t moved. His expression in the shrubland far behind the intruders was unreadable. Confusion, maybe. Or horror. She didn’t look at him again. 

One of the men advanced another step, hand drifting near the hilt of his knife.

“What if we don’t want to deal?”

Maris took a half-step closer, shifting her weight.

“Then I stop pretending to be polite.”

That earned a laugh, but it didn’t last. The one nearest was watching her too closely now. Her confidence was wearing thin, and they could smell it.

Then she saw the flash of the knife in his hand at his hip and she moved. The driftwood in her hand arced up fast and hard, cracking across his face with a wet, splintering crunch. He reeled, howling, blood erupting from his nose as he fell sideways onto one knee.

Maris turned on her heel, adrenaline surging.

" Run! "

Beckett stood frozen, eyes wide, watching her advance on him. 

" Go! " she snarled, and grabbed his arm. Behind them, one of the men raised his rifle and fired. The shot went wide, thudding uselessly into the sand.

She yanked Beckett into motion. Their feet pounded the beach, the heat and wind forgotten. Another shot cracked behind them as they vanished into the jungle, swallowed by the green.

The island, once their prison, now offered their only chance of escape.

The jungle wrapped around them like a humid, green throat. Vines clung to their ankles. Thorns dragged at their sleeves. Birds stilled. Even the wind seemed to hold its breath.

They crouched beneath a fan of broad leaves, breaths jagged and shoulders trembling. Cutler's shirt stuck to his back with sweat, and Maris pressed a hand to her ribs to steady their heaving.

"What the hell was that?" he hissed, low and sharp.

Maris didn’t answer right away. She tilted her head, listening for pursuit. Nothing yet, but it would come. She turned to him, eyes fierce. "They were going to take you. And they were going to do whatever they wanted to me."

He stared at her, something unspoken and unnamable burning behind his pale eyes.

"You didn’t have to step out-"

"Yes. I did." Her voice was quiet, but final. "You heard them. The moment they knew who you were, everything changed."

A long silence followed. Just the blood roaring in their ears. Just the jungle waiting.

Then, with a breath that came too calm for the fire she held inside, Maris said, "They won’t stop hunting us now. Not for ransom. Not for fun."

Cutler nodded. Once. He understood. "Then we stop them."

Her gaze met his. Calculating and cool, and she began to move.

"We need misdirection," she whispered, slipping into a crouch, already scanning the jungle floor. "And terrain. And bait."

He followed and paused beside Maris as she pointed toward a bend in the trees, just visible through the brush. 

"They’ll come back around for the shelter in the end. They’ll think we ran, got separated and  one of us came back."

"Me," he offered.

"No," she said, curt. "Me."

The pit took the most time. A shallow natural dip near the front of their makeshift shelter on the beach, widened with their hands and a flat piece of driftwood. It was only a couple of feet deep but that was enough. Its base was lined with sharpened sticks and broken shell shards. Some of the sticks came from Cutler’s idle habit of carving in the weeks before, when he had nothing else to do - tools now turned deadly. They layered the top with palm fronds, loose sand, and dry grass, disguising it perfectly.

Next came the tripwire. Maris unwound one of her fishing nets to harvest the thin twine. She rigged it knee-high across the main approach to the shelter, securing it to a pliable sapling bent back under tension. Cutler helped her embed into the branches shards of broken glass, their handmade fishing hooks, rusty nails and other metal remnants scavenged from the shipwreck during the weeks, delivered each morning by the tide. 

The moment someone disturbed the twine, the sapling would snap forward and the branches would hit like a hooked lash. Maris tested it, staying low to the ground. It worked. Cutler watched her in silence as she adjusted the weight.

"They’re not going to take you," he said suddenly, voice hoarse.

She paused and looked at him. 

"Or me," he added.

She raised a brow. "They’ll try."

And that was the truth of it. No comfort, no lies.

They set a final decoy - a line of scuffed prints near the edge of the clearing, angled to look like a single person had circled back, careless. The makeshift traps were set. The wind carried the scent of salt and rot, the brine-heavy stillness of a beach that would soon see blood. 

Maris stood, tearing a long breath into her lungs, and then - without announcement or ceremony - she pulled her dress up and over her head.

Cutler blinked. Hard.

She was left in her shift, thin from salt-wear and damp at the collar. It clung to her spine. He tried not to look but failed, then looked harder, as if indignation could cancel the instinct.

Maris didn’t flinch under his gaze. She was focused, methodical. She bundled the dress and carried it to the shelter where she stuffed the garment with the spare flag material they had scavenged and stored away. She shaped it with care and practiced hands to resemble the crude shape of a person curled in sleep and laid it atop the thin blanket she usually slept on, arranging it just so. A decoy - bait.

"They’ll think I’m alone. They’ll go for me first."

He swallowed and looked down at her. "And if they see you like this?"

She gave a dry smile. "Then the bait looks all the more tempting."

"Maris-"

She raised a brow. "Are you scandalised, Lord Beckett?"

He closed his mouth but his gaze didn’t flinch. 

For a beat, the space between them pulsed with something unspoken. Not heat, exactly, but a charged awareness. Her shift clung damp to her collarbone, slightly translucent where the salt had worn it thin. His eyes flicked - once - to the line of her throat, then held, stubborn and still.

A bird cried in the distance, sharp as flint and Maris leaned in, breaking the stillness between them like a blade through glass. Her voice dropped, just above a whisper. “You think they’ll hesitate to do something because I’m wearing a dress?”

He didn’t respond. What could he say?

She straightened and turned her back to him, pointing towards the jungle they’d emerged from earlier. "We wait in the trees. Let them get close, let it finish itself."

He nodded once and together they vanished into the underbrush. The dress lay waiting, like a promise in the dark.

They huddled side by side beneath the underbrush for hours, cold earth pressed into their legs and hands, roots digging into thighs and shoulders. Maris trembled once beside him, breath shallow and hot against his collarbone. He tried not to look at her shift, or how her knees tucked up against his side.

He thought of the traps. Of her hands - scraped raw, steady. Of her voice, cold with purpose. Where had she learned this? Who had taught her to weaponise a jungle?

Her brother, of course.

And yet, even knowing that, there was something in the way she moved through this - all jagged grace and grim familiarity - that unsettled him. She was too good at this. Too calm.

From their hiding spot they could just about see the shelter between the concealment of the greenery around them, where it stood along the shore in quiet stillness. Faint smoke curled from the remnants of the fire. From a distance, the figure beneath the lean-to looked like a woman dozing. 

A green dress, half-wrinkled, wrapped around a body whose back was curled towards anybody who approached. The trickery of a fake woman too stupid to know the error she had made, created by the real woman hidden in the jungle who was cleverer than any man ever gave her credit for. 

Somewhere during the time between the stars appearing in the sky above them and dawn punching through the darkness at the horizon, the ambient sounds of the landscape around them were broken by the heavy footfall of one of the newcomers stalking forward along the beach. 

Cutler and Maris simultaneously shrunk lower to the ground and watched with bated breath. He was the largest of the three, sunburnt and foul-tempered, armed with a cutlass and a pistol tucked into his belt. As the shelter came into his view he saw only prize. A girl alone. Ransom, revenge, recreation…

He stepped around the lean-to cautiously, scanning the tree line. He didn’t see them. 

He moved closer now. A step forward, another step…

One final step-

-The earth gave way beneath him.

He let out a startled shriek, then a sickening crunch followed as his weight drove him down into sharpened sticks and broken coral. His body thrashed, impaled. One spike tore through his thigh, another through his ribs. Shells shredded his back as he bucked and screamed. Blood soaked the sand, thick and dark, and the smell of it turned the air metallic.

Maris flinched in the brush next to Cutler - but didn’t move. Cutler crouched beside her, fists clenched tightly. They listened to the man writhe, whimper, and finally fall still.

A beat or two followed, air electric with tension, then shouts echoed through the jungle. The other two men came running. Drawn by the screams, they stumbled through the brush and burst onto the beach - faces twisted with alarm, weapons drawn, swearing and cursing as they moved.

One of the men - lean, scar-lipped, jittery with violence, saw his companion's body in the pit and sprinted toward it, heedless of the trap ahead. He stepped into the clearing, rushed ahead without thinking and the taut tripwire brushed his shin.

SNAP

The sapling loosened with a vicious twang, and the hook-lined branches whipped sideways with a force that surprised Cutler. It struck the man across the neck and jaw with such impact that he stumbled backwards, but not enough to stop the burying of fishhooks, bone, metal shards, and glass into the soft tissue of his lower face and throat - severing something important. 

Blood erupted in a violent arc, spraying the ferns behind him in a fine mist. He gave a strangled cry - the sound that came from his throat was wet, like boots through mud. He staggered forward three steps, his hands clawing at the air before he collapsed. A gurgle, wet and sharp, escaped him as he bled out into the sand.

The third man stopped short. He was smarter - or cowardly, perhaps. Either way, he hadn’t rushed in like his companion. He stood frozen for a second - eyes on the carnage, breath high and fast, then he turned and bolted back toward the trees.

Cutler’s breath caught. There were no more traps, no barriers. If the man reached the trees, he’d vanish. And then he’d be an unknown, vengeful variable - a risk to them both at every turn while they remained on the island.

There was no one else to stop him. Cutler didn’t think - just moved.

Boots crunching sand, he lunged from cover, crossing the distance to the fallen body at the pit’s edge. The pistol was there, half-buried where it had fallen from the man’s belt - slick with blood, warm from the sun.

He snatched it up, fingers curling tight around the grip. It was heavier than he remembered.

The third man was halfway to the tree line - legs pumping, arms flailing, wild with fear. Each stride was a countdown.

Cutler squared his stance. Raised the weapon. Wrist braced, elbow locked. His body remembered what to do even after years behind desks and ledgers.

His heart slammed against his ribs as he drew a breath. The gun shook - raw, unsteady, too fast to fire. 

He inhaled again. Slower. A second of stillness gathered in his lungs.

He exhaled… then fired.

The shot cracked across the clearing like a thunderclap. For a half-moment nothing happened - then the man jerked as the bullet struck the back of his neck. His spine bowed, legs flew out from beneath him, and he slammed into the sand. Motionless.

Cutler simply lowered the gun and turned toward the trees as Maris emerged from them, barefoot and ghost-like in her shift. She looked at Cutler for a long moment. Then she turned her head to look at the man he’d shot. After a pause, she walked with slow purpose to the pit and looked down.

The first man wasn’t quite dead. His eyes were opened. He choked something - a curse, maybe. Maris crouched beside the pit and picked up a length of driftwood honed to a sharp-point.

“Quiet now,” she said simply, and thrust the driftwood down.

He spasmed. Then stopped moving and breathing.

Cutler watched from a distance, face unreadable as she stood. Blood streaked her arms. She didn’t move straight away, just watched the horizon dim and let silence stretch. 

But the silence had teeth. Somewhere behind the dunes, gulls wheeled overhead, shrieking. The kind of cry that sounded like mockery. Or warning.

Eventually she turned to him. 

“We need to bury them,” she said, voice flat.

There was no ceremony in it. No emotion, just a job to be done. 

Across the shelter, Beckett didn’t answer. He sat hunched near the edge of the lean-to, hands idle in his lap. His eyes, dull and rimmed with fatigue, flicked toward her. He felt older than he had the day before - drawn hollow by survival’s weight. But not broken.

“Now?” he asked, though he already knew the answer.

She didn’t respond. Just turned toward the nearest body, the one that had landed in the shallows when the trap sprang, his legs twisted like snapped rigging. The man’s throat had been half-shorn open by the hook trap, blood pooled in the sand like a tide that hadn’t gone out.

Maris crouched beside the corpse and reached for the ragged edge of the man’s shirt, tying the sleeves together to make dragging easier.

Behind her, she heard Cutler exhale - sharp and reluctant - and then he stood. 

There was, as ever, work to do.

Chapter Text

They buried the first two together.

The soft dune at the north end of the beach had collapsed slightly during the last storm, forming a shallow bowl of sand and loose stone. Maris judged it large enough and began digging with a flat-edged plank she'd set aside.

Cutler joined her in silence. He didn’t ask questions, didn't say this was beneath him, or suggest they wait for rescue. That kind of man had burned away with the wreckage.

The work was slow.

They dug with driftwood and their bare hands, pulling clumps of sea grass and wet, rotted wood out of the way. The earth stank of salt and root and the coppery undertone of decay.

The first man - her kill - was heavier than he looked. They dragged him by the legs, muscles screaming in protest. Cutler faltered once, a sharp grunt escaping him as his ribs twinged, but Maris didn’t look over.

He didn’t fall behind.

When they reached the edge of the grave, Maris stepped aside to let him lower the body in. He did it carefully. Almost too carefully, like he was afraid of touching something he shouldn’t. When the man’s head rolled limply to one side, Beckett looked away.

Maris didn’t. She tossed in the man’s broken belt, then turned to fetch the second.

The third body had landed furthest inland, near the tree line. He’d run - the clever one, or the coward - and Cutler had shot him in the back. He’d fallen hard, face-first, a thin trail of blood marking the path behind him like spilled ink.

Neither of them said anything when they reached him. Maris crouched and rolled the man onto his back. His eyes had gone dull already. Open and staring. Glassy.

Cutler moved stiffly, reaching for one of the man’s legs to drag his corpse up the beach. His hands trembled. Maris didn’t miss it, but she didn’t mention it either. Instead, she took hold of the other leg, gripping the trousers just below the knee, and they moved together.

The body left a long, broken trail in the sand - arms outstretched behind it, mouth open, filling slowly with grit. When they reached the grave, they lowered him in. Not with reverence, but with exhaustion. A shared grim understanding that this was survival, not ritual. Not mercy. Just the last task of the day while the air was cool enough to work in.

The wind had picked up and the fire was starting to die. 

Maris stood at the edge of the pit, rubbing her palms together, scraping blood and dirt off her skin like it was something she could shed. Beckett rested on his knees, breath shallow.

“They chose what they came here to do,” she said suddenly, breaking the silence. “They would’ve killed us.”

“Yes,” he said, unsure who she was justifying it to.  

He watched as she picked up a nearby piece of driftwood and began pushing sand into the pit, the motion deliberate, firm. Then he rose with effort and joined her. They worked side by side until the bodies were no longer visible - just three rough mounds of sand, rising unevenly beneath the twisted palms.

They didn’t speak on the way back to the fire pit.

The moon had risen, silver and high. It cast hard shadows across the sand. Maris’s feet moved automatically, navigating the uneven ground with a survivor’s gait. Cutler followed a pace behind, one hand at his ribs.

The camp looked unchanged.

The fire pit was a black circle. The lean-to sagged slightly at one corner. A coconut husk lay split near the path, ants crawling its edges.

Maris sat.

Cutler lowered himself across from her, slowly, wincing as his knees bent. The silence between them was different now - not resentful, but heavy with something unfinished.

He cleared his throat. “I know I’ve been-” He stopped. “I know what I am. Or was. To people like them. To people like you.”

Maris didn’t look up.

“I thought I understood power. Structure. I thought if the world was ordered enough, everything else would follow.”

She didn’t interrupt, but her body tensed. Just slightly. A shift in her shoulders. A warning.

“But out here,” he went on, “there is no order. No ledger. Just… consequences. And you still-”

“Don’t,” she said.

Beckett blinked. “I just wanted-”

“I said don’t.” Her voice was low. Not angry but worn thin.

He shut his mouth.

The firelight flickered between them from the few coals she’d stirred back to life.

“I’m not your confessional,” she said after a while. “You don’t get to name things and call it understanding.”

“I wasn’t-”

“You were.”

A beat of silence followed then she added, more quietly, “You think it matters that you feel bad now?”

“No,” he said. “But I don’t think it doesn’t.”

Maris didn’t answer him.

She just stared into the embers, jaw tight, hands braced on her knees like they were the only thing keeping her grounded. Her forearms were streaked with ash and dried blood, her knuckles scraped raw.

Beckett sat across from her, quiet now. Still. He didn’t reach for resolution. Didn’t try again.

The fire crackled. Somewhere out beyond the dunes, a gull screamed once - lonely, sharp. Then silence.

Minutes passed. Maybe more.

Then she moved. Not much - just leaned back slightly, palms in the sand, legs stretched out in front of her. Her shift had torn again at the hem, riding up along one thigh. She didn’t adjust it. Didn’t seem to care.

The stars overhead were bright, diamond-hard and indifferent. The moon carved the world in silver and the fire had sunk into that last quiet stage - not quite embers, not quite flame - casting soft orange shadows over the packed sand and the salt-silver edges of her hair. 

Cutler sat with his knees drawn up, arms draped over them, gaze locked on the horizon though he could see nothing but dark water and the faint curve of moonlit sky.

Still, he watched it. Not because he expected ships but because he didn’t know what else to do.

He could feel her watching him. Not constantly, not intently. But now and then, her eyes would drift across the space between them and settle. Just long enough for him to sense it. To wonder.

She didn’t say anything, didn’t ask anything, and he didn’t turn to look. It felt… easier, somehow, to let the moment hang untouched. Like a thread they both knew not to pull.

And then she moved.

A quiet shift beside him - cloth brushing sand, her arm lifting. He didn’t glance over or brace, but when her fingers touched his cheek, he stilled.

Not the palm of her hand. The back of her knuckles - rough with sand, trembling ever so slightly. She brushed something from his face. Ash, maybe - blood. He hadn’t kept track.

The gesture wasn’t tender, but it wasn’t casual, either. It was deliberate. Measured. Like wiping clean a slate she hadn’t agreed to write on.

He didn’t stop her. He didn’t breathe, either. Not for a few seconds.

‘What the hell are you doing,’ he thought. 

‘I chained you - turned you into leverage. Now you’re sitting beside me, wiping blood from my face like it’s yours to touch.’

He felt the weight of the moment press against his chest - not unbearable, but sharp. Like something had cracked slightly, not enough to break but enough to echo.

She let her hand fall and didn’t speak. She leaned back again, arms braced behind her, face turned toward the fire. It was like nothing had happened.

But something had.

He turned his head slowly. Watched her in profile - the smudge of ash on her collarbone, the way her shift clung damp to her shoulder, the faint crease between her brows that never quite smoothed. She looked… not at peace, but still.

As though the world wasn’t something she had to fight in this one moment.

He didn’t say thank you - he didn’t even breathe it, but for the first time since the wreck, since the jungle, since the blood and the traps and the screams - he wanted to.

They sat like that for a long time as the fire burned lower. Their shoulders never touched, but the heat between them shifted. Not tension or trust but something quieter.

Eventually, Maris spoke. Her voice was low and almost distant.

“There was a girl, when I was younger. At Shipwreck Cove. Daughter of one of the old pirates. She used to follow me around like a shadow.”

Beckett looked at her, but said nothing.

“She liked to bury things. Coins. Marbles. Little bones she found in the gull nests. Said it kept the dead from noticing us.”

He waited.

“One day she buried her father’s pipe,” Maris said. “I asked her why she did it. You know what she said?”

He didn’t answer.

“She said ‘If I don’t, he’ll take up more space.’”

Maris’s eyes were distant, but her voice stayed even.

“I didn’t get it at first. I thought she meant at the table. Or in the room. But she didn’t mean that. She meant in her. In her head. In the cracks where fear crawls in.”

Her hand moved slightly, brushing grit off her thigh.

“She thought if she could take away a piece of him - the part that filled the air, that made her flinch at nothing - maybe she could breathe a little more. He beat her so badly for breaking his pipe that she lost hearing in one ear.”

There was a silence then that dragged out between them.

“That’s all I ever wanted.” Maris added after a while. “Just… less space for them.”

Cutler watched her, the words lodging somewhere beneath his ribs.

“And tonight?” he asked, softly.

Her expression didn’t change. “Tonight we buried them - the weight of them. And I can breathe.”

“But that’s not peace,” she added after a moment. “It’s just… air.”

Neither of them moved at first when the fire finally died. Night pressed in slow and heavy, dense with salt and the memory of blood. The island never truly slept - the wind shifted like a restless animal, the brush clicked and sighed, and somewhere beyond the treeline, something called once and fell quiet.

Sleep didn’t come easy here, especially not this night; The ground was too hard, the air too warm, the ghosts too loud.

Maris lay down first, curling onto her side with her back to the fire. Her limbs moved stiffly, every muscle worn thin from the day’s work. Cutler hesitated a beat longer, then lowered himself down behind her, mirroring her posture - knees bent, arms tucked close.

They lay back to back, not quite touching. 

At one point, as he rested, the back of his shoulder brushed against the back of hers. She didn’t pull away and the silence that settled between them wasn’t wary anymore. It simply existed. 

He kept still, barely daring to breathe. The contact was faint - fabric against fabric, the warmth of her skin bleeding through his shirt - but it grounded him more than any prayer he’d ever mumbled in a church pew.

And still, she didn’t move. Not to pull away or to close the distance.

She was just there, solid and real.

And in a world that had stripped them both down to muscle and will, it was perhaps the closest thing to grace either of them had been offered. 

Chapter Text

It had been twelve days since the scavengers had come to shore.

The beach still bore faint traces; a groove in the sand where a body had been dragged, a smudge of ash where blood had baked into salt. But the tide had taken the worst of it. The pit had collapsed. The fishhook trap dismantled. Nature, indifferent, had resumed its hold.

Maris sat where the jungle met the shore, one arm hooked loosely over a drawn-up knee. The wind tugged strands of hair from her braid and carried the low crash of distant waves. Further up the rise, Cutler was oiling the rust from a pistol barrel with a torn strip of linen. He’d cleaned the blade too, several times, though it no longer needed it.

They didn’t talk much now. Words had become a currency neither was rich in. Survival lent itself to gestures, glances, and shared labour. They had shelter, food, and clean water. The island had ceased to feel like so much of a threat, but they never stopped watching the horizon.

So when the sail appeared that afternoon, low and dark on the water, both of them froze.

“It’s coming this way,” Maris said, standing slowly.

Cutler joined her, squinting against the light. “Too fast for trade. Wrong shape for navy.”

They were quiet for a long moment.

They had weapons now - Cutler’s stolen pistol, Maris’s scavenged sword, a second pistol with a finicky hammer that misfired half the time. They had the instincts of people who had killed to stay alive. But neither moved to hide.

“They’ll have seen the smoke from our fire,” Maris murmured.

Cutler nodded. “And the shelter.”

“We could go inland. Lose ourselves.”

He glanced at her. “And then what?”

The question hung between them, dry and impossible. Maris looked back at the sea. The ship was larger now, its detail coming into shape. She could see the glint of a spyglass at the bow.

“They’ll come ashore either way,” she said. “We can either meet them as people… or be hunted like animals.”

She hated how steady her voice was, as if she weren’t shaking. As if the last few weeks hadn’t redrawn the lines of who she was. Cutler didn’t answer immediately. He stared at the ship a moment longer, then let out a slow breath.

“We stay visible,” he said at last.

She nodded, and they built up the fire. The heat clung to their skin as the ship dropped anchor.

Maris laid the sword across her lap. Cutler placed the pistol beside him in the sand. Neither made a move to look more helpless than they were.

The longboat struck sand with a hollow scrape. Six men stepped into the surf - armed, alert. Two held cutlasses drawn. One lifted a musket. Their eyes swept the beach, then fixed on the two figures beside the fire.

Maris stood first.

“Don’t move!” barked one of the crew.

Blades pointed. A musket aimed.

Maris raised her empty hands. Cutler didn’t flinch; his pistol stayed on the ground beside him.

The six men fanned out. Two veered toward the shelter, rifling through the lean-to, checking for others. They found only a single blanket, scattered coals, half-dried fruit. One kicked over the basket of shellfish with a scowl. “Just the two of them.”

Another pointed his blade at Cutler. “You. Speak.”

“We’ve been here a little over three months,” Cutler said evenly. “We were shipwrecked.”

The accent - clipped, composed - earned a few exchanged glances. Upper class. Well-to-do. Company, by the look of his ragged clothing.

But it wasn’t him they recognised first.

One of the older pirates slowed as his gaze passed over Maris. He’d been heading toward the shelter, but now his eyes narrowed like he’d caught a glint in the sand.

“Hold,” he muttered, stepping closer. The others kept their weapons ready, but a few shifted, watching him.

“You’ve the look of-” He broke off, tilting his head. “-someone I knew once.”

Maris didn’t move, just watched him right back. He came closer still, close enough to see the pale flecks in her eyes, to take in the shape of her jaw. His brow furrowed deep.

“…Gods above,” he breathed. “Teague?”

The name hit the air like a spark.

“Teague’s girl?” someone echoed.

Another gave a sharp laugh. “Maris? Thought you went down with the Endeavour!”

Maris’s voice was low, rough. “I didn’t go down. I got left.”

Murmurs spread. 

“Your brother’s been tearing up every port from Nassau to Havana looking for you!”

“Didn’t think he’d find you on a bloody island.”

A few blades lowered. Then the man’s gaze slid from her to the figure sitting in the sand beside the pistol.

“If that’s Teague’s girl,” he said, voice carrying the weight of a wager, “I’d bet money that makes you Lord Beckett. Am I wrong?”

Cutler’s reply was cool. “I don’t deny it.”

The mood hardened instantly. Rope came out; wrists were seized. Cutler didn’t resist - only met Maris’s eyes once, brief and steady, before they hauled him toward the longboat. 

She took a half-step forward before someone’s arm shot out to bar her. “You’ll get your say, miss. But he answers to the Council.”

She stood where she was and watched them force him through the surf. The sky had darkened, clouds thick with the promise of rain. Water lapped at the wreckage of a life too strange to name.

Cutler didn’t look back.

“You don’t have to do the statue thing,” said one of the crew still lingering on shore.

She didn’t move.

The man shifted, boots scuffing against the sand as he approached - cautious, like she might bite. He was younger than the rest, wiry and sun-cracked, with a bit of rope looped around his belt and a dagger that had seen too many whetstones.

“Hell of a reunion, eh?” he said lightly. “Thought you were some feral castaway at first. Good thing Silas recognised your face.”

Maris kept her eyes on the ship. Its hull loomed black in the water now, sails half-raised, the boarding line swaying like a noose.

“Bit of a legend, you are. Teague’s daughter, lost at sea - turns up in the company of a monster.” The sailor let out a low whistle. “That’s a story. That’ll get around.”

She still didn’t respond.

He cleared his throat. “They’ll want you cleaned up. Council’ll want to see you presentable. I imagine your brother’ll be first. Then your da.”

The wind shifted. The ship groaned.

He stepped closer, just shy of her shadow. “You alright? You look like someone gutted your dog.”

Maris turned to him slowly. “What’s your name?”

He blinked. “Jonas.”

“Jonas,” she said. “Shut the fuck up.”

He raised his hands, grin sharp and easy. “Right. Got it.”

She turned back to the water. The smaller boat was gone now - lifted, swallowed. Behind her, the beach lay quiet. The fire had burned down to embers. The shelter they’d built sagged in the wind.

She looked at it over her shoulder - the cloth roof, the basket of half-cleaned shells, the pile of dried palm leaves, the stump where he used to sit sharpening sticks.

It struck her, sudden and sharp, that she was going to miss it. The island had been a prison, yes - heat and salt and hunger - but it had been hers. 

No orders, no expectations, no pirates, no father’s voice thundering from the high table.

And now they’d sail her back to him. Back to Shipwreck Cove.

Jonas’s words echoed in her head: “Council’ll want to see you presentable.” She knew exactly what they meant. She’d been presented before - as a child, standing on aching legs while men weighed her like coin. 

She’d escaped once, smuggled out by Jack under the pretense of her own death, her throat still damaged where her father’s rage had found her. 

She’d sworn she’d never walk those halls again.

She realised, with something like bitterness, that perhaps being marooned with Cutler Beckett hadn’t been so bad after all.

The thought caught in her throat. Because if the Council had any sense, they’d keep him breathing - a living link to the King of England was worth more than gold. But pirates weren’t known for their sense. If they hadn’t killed him already, they might by the time the tide turned.

The longboat was coming back. She didn’t watch it land, just walked towards it, like a prized pig going to market. 

Chapter Text

The brigantine was a tired, salt-brittle thing that had been patched more often than it had been built. Every plank seemed to creak for the sake of creaking, as though to remind anyone aboard that the sea had its claim on her. The sails, a sun-bleached patchwork, pulled and bellied in the wind, giving the whole vessel the faint look of an old drunk leaning into a fight.

They’d put her on deck as soon as they’d hauled the longboat alongside. Someone had pressed a rough-woven blanket over her shoulders, not out of kindness, but because everyone knew that the salt wind could eat the strength from a person faster than hunger, and they wanted her to still be standing when they reached their destination.

The captain had met her just once, not long after she came aboard. A broad-shouldered man with a faded blue coat and a beard bleached almost white at the edges. He’d received her at the quarterdeck rail with the kind of deliberate politeness men used when they thought you might break in their hands.

“We’ll see you to safety,” he’d said, voice rough from salt air. “And we’ll see him to justice. By the Code.” 

He hadn’t said Shipwreck Cove. He hadn’t needed to.

Since then she’d only seen him from a distance, fixed near the wheel or in quiet talk with his first mate. Orders passed from him down through others before they reached the deckhands. His eyes were quick, his hands restless on the rail.

Jonas had already told her more than the captain had - about the Council, about how they’d “want her presentable”, but she’d kept that to herself. No point getting the younger man in trouble for running his mouth when she might want him to keep running it. She knew how justice happened among crews like this one, for even the smallest of insubordinations.

The rest of the crew came and went, each with their own way of acknowledging her - or not. A cup of watered rum passed into her hand without comment. A heel of bread with a slice of salted fish tucked into it. She ate in small bites, each swallow deliberate; too much, too fast and her stomach would turn on her after weeks of island fare.

Someone had found her a change of clothes not long after she came aboard - trousers and a shirt that must have once belonged to a boy not yet grown into his shoulders. The fabric was salt-soft, patched at the elbows, the sleeves slightly too short. The shirt hung loose at the collar where a button had been torn away.

They were clean, though. Cleaner than anything she’d worn in months. The smell of soap still clung faintly under the sharper scent of the sea. She’d kept her own belt and used it to cinch the trousers, the leather creased in new places from where she’d pulled it tighter. When she sat, she often tucked the too-short cuffs over her wrists, hiding her hands in the fabric. A strange sort of comfort from somebody else’s clothing.

Jonas was there from the first moment. Though never announced officially, she suspected he’d been tasked with keeping an eye on her. He always seemed to have a coil of rope slung over one shoulder and a dagger hanging loose at his hip. If she moved toward the rail, he shifted with her. When she lingered too close to the companionway down to the lower deck, his hand appeared lightly at her arm. Not enough to bruise, just enough to turn her in another direction. She ate when he ate, slept when he slept. 

That afternoon, the light had gone to pewter, the horizon smudging into the same grey as the sea. The wind had eased, and with it the ship’s pace, so the brigantine rocked in a long, heavy rhythm. Maris sat cross-legged near the foremast, her back against the rail, the blanket folded beneath her for a seat. The bread in her hands was coarse and pocked, crust salted from the air; she tore at it in small, neat bites, her jaw working slowly.

A gull drifted overhead, its shadow sliding across the deck in a slow arc.

Jonas appeared without ceremony, dropping into a squat a few feet away before settling onto the deck with his back against the opposite rail. As ever, he had a length of cord looped in his hands, fingers moving with idle precision, pulling knots loose and drawing them tight again.

They sat like that for a while - the silence broken only by the gentle creak of timbers and the slap of water against the hull. Somewhere aft, a burst of laughter rose and died.

“How’d you even do it?” he said at last, eyes still on the rope.

She glanced at him. “Do what?”

“Make it out there. Heard one of the lads say it was nothing but heat and flies and the kind of thirst that makes you talk to ghosts.”

Her mouth curved faintly. “He’s partly right.”

Jonas raised a brow, still working the rope.

“There was a spring,” she said. “Up in the rocks. Cold enough to hurt your teeth. And a cave nearby to keep out of the rain. Without those, you wouldn’t be talking to me now.”

“That’s not all you had, though,” he said, voice more a statement than a question.

Maris tugged at one cuff, rolling it between her fingers before answering. “The sea gave a lot - from the wreckage. We salvaged bits, turned thread into a net, wood into fire, stones into blades. Fished at dawn before the heat settled. You can see them in the shallows at low tide. We built a lean-to big enough to stand in - with driftwood and sailcloth."

“I saw the shelter,” Jonas replied. 

Maris nodded as she pulled another piece from the bread, rolling it between her fingers before putting it in her mouth. “Sometimes we found fruit - for eating, when it ripened. You can tell by the skin - green turns to yellow overnight if you’re paying attention.”

Jonas nodded slightly, letting the details spool out between them. “And the other one? Lord Beckett?”

A shadow crossed her expression, but her voice stayed level. “No use for the first few weeks. Lay on the beach like a corpse. I thought he was dead. Might’ve been easier if he had been.”

That earned a flicker of a glance from him before his attention returned to the cord. “But he wasn’t.”

“No,” she said simply. “He wasn’t.”

The gull called again overhead, the sound thin and carrying.

“Guess that’s why you don’t look half-dead now,” he said after a moment. “Could’ve fooled me back on the beach, though.”

She gave him a sidelong look. “Didn’t think you were looking.”

“I’m always looking.” His tone was matter-of-fact, no swagger in it.

She believed him.

He tied one last knot, neat and tight, then rested his wrists on his knees and looked at her. The swell rolled under them, lifting and settling the deck in a slow, hypnotic rhythm. For a time, neither spoke, the conversation having run its course like a tide.

“He can’t get to you now, Miss.” Jonas added after the beat of silence grew heavier between them. Then he rose and wandered toward the bow, the dagger at his hip swinging lightly. Maris was left with the taste of bread and salt and the faint sense she’d given away more than she’d meant to.

The ship moved steadily, each rise and fall of the deck beneath her feet pulling her farther from the place she’d come to think of - against all reason - as a kind of freedom. The island had been a prison, but it had been hers. No one had told her when to speak or where to stand. Not even Cutler Beckett. 

Now, when she moved, she felt the eyes. Not just from Jonas but others, too. Conversations on deck that dipped quiet when she passed. Quick glances from the men in the rigging. A shift in tone she’d heard before in taverns and dockside alleys - the weight of people deciding what, if anything, she was worth.

When one of the older crewmen passed her a cup of water, she asked him where they were headed. He only grinned, the kind of grin that showed more gums than teeth, and said, “You’ll know it when you smell it.”

She already knew.

Shipwreck Cove sat in her memory like a half-healed wound. She could still see the fortress rising in tiers, smell the reek of the bay crowded with ships. She could still hear the slam of a heavy door, the sharp bark of her father’s voice, the sick pain in her body under Jack’s arm as he smuggled her down to the waiting boat, her hands gripping the wound on her neck as though trying to keep life inside. 

The sky stayed low and pale into evening. A few seabirds circled, then fell away. She didn’t ask how far they were. She didn’t need to. Each creak of the hull felt like a step toward something she’d sworn never to see again. 

She was a prisoner being returned. 

Chapter Text

They put him in a room that used to be for cargo and was now having a go at pretending to be a cell. No bars, just a door with an iron latch and two men outside who did not sound bored. The air smelled of salt-damp timber, old rope, and the stale sweetness of spilled rum ground deep into planks. Tar bled from the seams in thin black lines that caught the light.

Cutler sat with his back against a buttress rib that curved like a whale’s bone. The rope binding his wrists was common hemp, three-strand, tarred. It bit if you pulled thoughtlessly. If you tested it with patience - small, regular twists when no one watched - you could loosen the lay and give the skin a place to swell without cutting. Cutler had been patient all his life.

The ship spoke to him. Not in poetry - he had no use for that - but in facts: the pitch of the hull when she fell off a swell, the different whine the rigging made when the wind edged a point, the angle of light filtering down the companionway that told him where the sun had gone. Twice now the deck above him had shivered in a way that said they’d trimmed sail. Once, briefly, he’d heard the bosun call to brace the yards. They were making time.

Sometimes, through the open slat at the top of the door, he could hear a voice that might have been Maris’s - low, contained. Not often. Once he caught laughter from men that had that roughened, soft-edged sound people used around something they respected or feared. He assumed she was being kept where she could be watched and fed. He preferred her alive, for practical reasons. The thought that there might be other reasons arrived uninvited; he ignored it until it left.

Footsteps paused outside. The younger guard - bare feet, light tread - shifted his weight and knocked twice on the door with his knuckles. It was not a signal or request for entry - it was a habit. The older man exhaled as if sitting down and removed something from a pocket. Cutler pictured a tin, maybe tobacco. The smell that drifted through the slat was not tobacco, but instead peppermint.

A moment later the latch lifted and the younger one ducked inside, a wooden cup in his hand. Sun had carved the boy’s face into quick, narrow planes; sea had bleached his hair at the ends. He had a scar across the first knuckle of his right hand where a blade or a hook had once argued with him and won. He carefully shut the door with his heel and crouched, offering the cup like a peace token.

“Water,” he said.

Cutler leaned forward just enough that the boy could tip the cup to his mouth. The rim smelled clean, scrubbed with lemon or salt; someone aboard cared about such things. He took three measured swallows, stopped, and waited for his pulse to settle at his throat before taking two more. Never drink to fullness when you do not control when you drink again. He’d learned that long before the sea.

“Thank you,” Cutler said.

The boy’s eyes flicked - surprised at manners, not sure whether to trust them. “Aye.”

Outside, the older guard shifted and hummed tunelessly. The hull creaked. A bolt somewhere overhead worked in its housing with a soft metallic stutter, the sound you got when wood swelled and made metal reconsider its place.

“How long have you kept to this course?” Cutler asked, conversational, as though remarking on the heat.

The boy shrugged without malice. “Long as the wind says.”

“Mm.” Cutler glanced to the ceiling. “She’s favouring you.”

“That she is.” He hesitated. “Won’t say where we’re bound, if that’s what you’re fishing for. Captain said as much. Said you’d ask.”

“Did he.” Cutler allowed the faintest curve at the corner of his mouth. “Then let me ask something humbler. You will forgive a man who has been living on brackish water his curiosity about its absence.”

The boy’s mouth twitched. “There’s a cask up by the hatch. We keep it shaded. Peppermint in it.” He jerked his chin toward the door, conspiratorial without entirely meaning to be. “Keeps the belly right.”

“Prudent,” Cutler said. “Thank you, Mr…?”

“Kit,” he said, after the briefest pause - either a nickname or a lie that fit well.

“Mr. Kit.” Cutler inclined his head, the smallest courtly gesture, ridiculous in a room that smelled of tar. He watched how the boy held the cup, how his thumb whitened along the rim. Nerves, yes, but also care; he did not spill. “And your companion?”

“Rook,” Kit said, jerking a thumb toward the door. “He’s the one hummin’ like a beehive.”

A muffled snort from outside - the older man had heard his name.

Kit’s gaze drifted to Cutler’s wrists. “That biting?” he asked.

“It’s fine, thank you.” 

Kit considered that for a moment. “We’ll bring food at bell. Stew,” he added, like it might be an apology. Then he turned, knocked once on the door with his knuckles, and slipped out. The latch fell back into place behind him. 

Time went back to being ship-time. Cutler counted heartbeats to sixty and then to sixty again, found the rhythm the hull insisted on, matched his breathing to it until the ache along his side settled into a tolerable complaint. When the deck above shuddered and stilled he pictured the men hauling on sheets, pictured callused palms and the brief, wordless harmony crews made when they pulled together. He did not romanticise it; he simply acknowledged a system working as designed.

He tested the door in his mind the way a man tests a chessboard - what happens if, then what happens after. It came to the same answer each time. Survival here was utility and timing. He had both, if he did not squander them by appearing either desperate or smug.

The next time the latch lifted much later in the afternoon, Rook filled the doorway with shoulders and a scowl he might have been born wearing. He set a wooden bowl down on the deck with one meaty hand and slid it toward Cutler with his boot. The stew was what the sea always made of stew: anonymous brown with a clean line of fat shining on top, smelling of onion and something smoked. Beside it, two torn slices of ship’s biscuit had given up pretending to be bread.

“Eat,” Rook said. His voice had gravel in it. “Captain says keep you upright.”

Upright. Useful. Cutler inclined his head in a way that neither submitted nor provoked and lowered himself enough to pick up the bowl with bound hands. He ate slowly, letting heat and salt and dumb nourishment do their work. Rook watched with the patient stare of a man who had waited out many storms and a few executions.

“Word is,” Rook said finally, as if idly, “you’re bound for judgment by the council.”

“Word.” Cutler tasted the word, neutral. “Words travel faster than ships.”

Rook’s mouth bent in what might have been a smile if someone had told it how. “They do. Been a while since some of us heard your name from a man still breathin’ it.”

Cutler let that sit. He took another mouthful of stew. “And yet,” he said, “here I am.”

“For now,” Rook said, not unkindly. He tapped a knuckle on the doorframe twice - a habit, like Kit’s - and went out.

The ship fell back into its breaths. Somewhere above, feet ran, then slowed; someone swore and was answered by laughter. A gull made a sound like a hinge in need of oil. Cutler let the bowl sit empty on the deck and leaned his head against the rib again, eyes half-closed, listening.

He thought of leverage. A man like Teague - if Teague’s hand was indeed the hand that would take him - understood leverage the way other men understood weather. The East India Trading Company was a weather of its own. A living tether to the Crown could fetch a price measured in influence rather than coin. If the Brethren wished to prove themselves strategic rather than sentimental, he would not die today.

If.

He pictured Maris as she had been the last time he saw her on the beach: salt-tangled hair, eyes steady because she made them steady. He could not afford the indulgence of regret that she had been seen beside him. He could, however, recognise the hazard in the way the men spoke her name on deck -  reverent, half curious - as if the sea had decided to return a story. Stories could be sharpened and used.

Bootsteps again. Lighter this time. Kit slid in through the door like an apology and set the cup down, full again, an inch closer than before.

“Bells’ll go soon,” he said. “We’ll trim and settle for the night run.”

“Will you,” Cutler said. It was not a question.

Kit scratched the scar on his knuckle with his thumb. “You know ships,” he said.

“I know systems,” Cutler said. “Ships are honest ones.”

Kit’s mouth twitched. He glanced toward the slat, lowered his voice. “They said I shouldn’t talk to you.”

“And yet,” Cutler said lightly, “here you are.”

He considered it, then lifted the cup for Cutler to drink. Peppermint, cool, clean. Cutler took two swallows and stopped, out of principle as much as prudence.

“If, in the press of duties, you should forget I’ve had no water, do remember this: a parched prisoner is a heavy one. No captain enjoys hauling dead weight before a council.”

Kit huffed a small, involuntary laugh. “Aye,” he said. “I’ll remember.”

He took the cup back and lingered half a second longer than necessary, as if he might ask something else and had decided, sensibly, not to. Then he was gone, and the latch fell again.

After the bells, the wind freshened - he could hear it gather in the canvas and push, steady, like a hand between the shoulder blades. The hull’s groan changed note, lower now, content in purpose. Somewhere in the distance, under the skin of the air, a smell crept in that was not only sea; a sweet rot that came from too many hulls tucked inside one bay; smoke braided with mangrove.

Shipwreck Cove.

Cutler closed his eyes. He did not pray. He adjusted his wrists within the rope, found his breath again, and counted. He would need all his numbers intact when the talking started. He always had.

Chapter Text

The Cove rose from the sea like a mouth of broken teeth. Jagged black stone caught the overcast light and threw it back in splinters. The brigantine slid into the narrow pass between two sheer spires, the water below turning dark and slick as oil. Spray leapt in sudden bursts where the swell struck rock, salting her lips.

Jonas was at her shoulder. He hadn’t spoken since the pass narrowed, but his posture had changed - weight slightly forward, eyes moving over the cliff faces the way a man checks a room for hidden exits. It wasn’t for her benefit. Everyone knew the Cove’s waters were watched.

Inside the ring, the wind dropped to a breath. The sound carried sharper here. She could pick out individual voices from the docks: a barked order, a woman laughing, the sing-song of someone calling the day’s catch. The smells hit next - pitch, fish-gut brine, and the sweeter tang of roasting plantain from a stall she couldn’t yet see.

Masts crowded the inner bay, a forest stripped bare of leaves. Ships leaned on one another like drunks in an alley, some fresh-painted and gleaming, others scarred and barnacled from years without a dry dock. Above them, the fortress climbed in crooked tiers - black timbers lashed to ancient stone, each level leaning over the one below as if to listen.

She’d been gone for years, but her body remembered. The taste in the air, the close press of voices, the faint vibration underfoot when a heavy door somewhere above slammed shut. Shipwreck Cove.

“Welcome home,” Jonas said, though there was no warmth in it. And though Maris would never admit it freely, part of her did feel like she was returning to a familiar place, even if it was one she swore she’d never step foot in again for as long as she drew breath. 

They docked hard. The hull thumped against the fenders, crew throwing lines to waiting hands. Before the gangplank had settled, a man in a deep green coat stepped onto it. Narrow face, eyes like wet slate, a knife tucked horizontal across his back. He scanned the deck thoughtfully and when his eyes landed on her, he looked her over with an expression she’d seen in merchants weighing cargo. Then he gestured.

“This way.”

Jonas fell in beside her. His sleeve brushed hers as they crossed the gangplank; she couldn’t tell if it was deliberate but she did know that she was strangely glad of the slither of familiarity the man offered in that moment.

The dock planks gave under her weight, slick from spray and something darker she didn’t care to name. She could feel the eyes on her before she heard the whispers. They came in fragments:

Teague’s girl.
Thought she was dead.
Back from the bottom.
Jack’s sister - sure as salt…

The words slid between the shouts of fishmongers and the slap of dice cups. She didn’t look at anyone, didn’t break stride.

Every step off the dock and into the streets felt like walking into the mouth of something that had already decided to swallow her. But she knew better than to show that she knew. You kept your head up. You didn’t let the teeth close until you’d mapped them from the inside.

If she was wise, and quick, and said exactly the right things to exactly the right people, maybe she’d leave the Cove alive and intact.

Maybe.

Below the deck, events folded out in a slightly different way. The change for Cutler came first in the form of light -  the narrow spill through the slat at the top of the door went from a hard white glare to a greenish hue, the colour of shallow water under shadow. The hull’s pitch altered, no longer lifting to the open swell but swaying with a heavier, deliberate roll. Then came the smell: guano, tar, and the cloying rot of too many hulls lying still together in one bay.

“On your feet,” Kit said, appearing in the doorway with rope in hand.

Rook loomed behind him, filling the companionway with his shoulders. Beckett stood without comment, allowing Kit to bind his wrists again - tighter than necessary, but not enough to bruise. The younger man avoided his eyes; the older didn’t bother.

They marched him up into light that made his pupils sting. The air outside was thicker than the hold - hotter, salt-heavy, tasting faintly of metal that lingered at the back of the throat. From the quay came a dozen competing rhythms: the rattle of chains on a capstan, the squall of gulls, a man calling numbers in a language Beckett didn’t know.

He lifted his chin just enough to see. Masts packed so close they tangled their own lines. Gaps between ships filled with smaller boats bobbing like baitfish. Beyond them, a sprawl of buildings climbing the rock, some little more than lean-tos nailed into the cliffside, others fortified with stone and iron. 

The information filed itself away without conscious effort. Number of ships. Likely choke points in the harbour. Guard patterns on the dock - not uniform, which meant some worked for the fortress and some for captains with coin.

He was turned almost immediately toward a set of stairs bolted to the stone. The wood was worn concave from years of boots, damp with spray that never dried. Above, the noise shifted - fewer shouts, more the thud of boots in hallways, the muffled clank of metal on stone.

The stairs became a narrow passage slick with moss. Kit’s hand stayed on his arm the whole way, not guiding so much as ensuring he never moved faster than they allowed.

They stopped before a chamber cut straight from the rock, the space enclosed into a cage by solid bars of iron that criss-crossed as they stretched from floor to ceiling and from wall to wall. In the centre of the cage wall was a door made of the same metal and he watched as Rook unlocked it with a key as long as his forearm.

Cutler observed that as the door swung open, shadows shifted within. Faces - gaunt, stubbled, eyes quick and assessing. Uniforms ragged from royal blue to faded grey, but the set of their shoulders still marked them as Navy. Recognition flickered in a few of them.

Lord Beckett. 

The words weren’t spoken aloud, but he could see them forming. That could be dangerous, but equally it could prove very useful. He stepped inside and the door closed with a weight that said it didn’t like to be opened often. It didn't need to be given that there was no privacy here. Not really. 

Water dripped somewhere in the dark, steady as a clock marking time he no longer controlled. 

If he was clever - cleverer than the Council, cleverer than whoever had decided he belonged in this damp cage - there might be a way out. But it would mean playing the long game, matching his breath to the slow beat of that dripping water until the right moment came.

And when it did, he’d need to be ready.