Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

The blood is still warm on her hand when Caspian grabs for it. Red stains his skin and the torn up sleeve of his fancy white shirt. The sight is familiar.

Before her is a heap. White and gold of the Navy laid out on top of black and brown of the pirates.

Red, they are sharing.

There is a sound in the air and it takes Caspian yanking her on her feet for Lizzie to realize – that horrible keening was spilling from her own lips. She gasps and it stops, abruptly ended. Other noise filters through, that of a battle, of people dying, of people in pain. Lizzie feels her thigh burning, her knee buckling – Caspian catches her and moves.

She looks back to the bodies, her throat raw from screaming, from pleading with Ava, every breath burning. The blood is drying on her hands and face, cold and sticky. Not hers.

There is a wind coming from the water, beyond the fighting, where Caspian is dragging her.

Lizzie sucks in a breath, hurting enough to die, and the air smells of sea-salt and blood.

Chapter Text

Sea is a dangerous mistress. She doesn’t care for you, and you are lucky if all she is is indifferent to you – that's the kind of thing Finn would write in his books, mumbling while he did. Lizzie kind of hated that every time, because he’d sit with a candle for a long time, writing, muttering, scratching his pen, and she was supposed to just what? Sleep through it like nothing? So she hated it a little bit, and couldn’t help listening to the quiet voice, thinking how silly it was for a fishman to go on and on about the dangers of the sea. Didn’t he live in it?

Seeing Finn struggling with the Sakura Ocean’s fury made her realize how wrong she was. Even a fishman couldn’t fight a storm above the water, it turned out.

What chance did a little girl have?

And she was so proud of her height. Held it above Chip’s head – literally, along with whatever little pointless thing he decided was his treasure on that day. What good was it for her now?

It happened so fast. The ship, the strong and sturdy Midnight Rose that served as home to her like no place before, she went down like a paper boat. Breaking apart like matchsticks with heavy groans – less a ship and more wild animal on her last legs.

One wave was enough to soak Lizzie, water cold and sucking the warmth out of her. She didn’t even notice falling in, didn’t notice ship’s wood wasn't under her feet anymore. Didn’t notice her world shrinking until all she could see was light above. And she was falling away from it, struggling to move, struggling to breathe, already cold like death.

And then there was nothing but darkness and pressure, threatening to tear her apart.

Lizzie didn’t pray. Her last thought was of that stupid book Finn was writing and how much of a fool she was for dismissing his words as silly.

*

She’s coughing up water when she wakes up, sand in her eyes and burning. A coughing fit turns into vomiting, staining the sand of some nowhere-shore black. When she notices, the vomiting turns into crying and all she has the power for is to crawl an arm span away and collapse. She doesn’t wail; she is not a baby, she refuses to be a baby… but she does cry. For nothing, for everything.

Shadows have moved already when she stops, heaving breaths with a sore, burning throat. Her mouth tastes of salt and bile and something metallic. She blinks tears away, staring up at the sky in all its disgusting cheerful blue glory. Her vision is still blurry and she blinks more. Once, twice – it doesn’t go away.

When she rubs her eyes the pain is so strong she almost blacks out.

Her right eye burns. She yelps, rough and too quiet for how much it hurts, then curls up on the sand and lays still, too exhausted to tremble. There is blood on her fingers. At least she can still see it.

It takes until sundown before she gathers herself up enough to crawl off the shoreline and a little deeper into the sprawling greenery of the island. She figures only one of her eyes is fucked, which still makes her want to scream until her lungs bleed, but it’s better than being blind out here.

The shore is not as clean as she thought at first. The sand grain is small and soft, that's true, but all along the tree line there are roots sticking out of the earth and sand, and branches and twigs and even chips of wood, torn apart by something. Lizzie almost eats absolute shit when one of those branches trips her up.

When she kicks it, it only hurts her.

Lizzie isn't moving into the jungle woods just because she can’t sit still – she’s not like Chip, in that way. No, she has a goal – find shelter, find water. Maybe some food. Chey has taught her what things you can eat look like, right alongside teaching her to read, using books Finn or Arlin would find for them…

Lizzie squeezes her eyes shut until it really hurts and stops thinking about anything but shelter, water, food. The words drum inside her aching head and she has to force her body to move, but it’s okay. She can do it.

She’d been good at that before they got her on the ship. It’s not that hard to fall into the old patterns.

There is shelter on one of the bigger trees, tall and spread out. She gets up there and sleeps through the night, thirsty and hungry, hurting and with sand everywhere. Sleep still comes easy and she doesn’t dream. Thank the fucking gods, she doesn’t dream.

Water is harder. Half of her next day is wasted on looking for water, growing more and more desperate. She doesn’t dare drink off leaves, but she considers it. Fortunately, it doesn’t come to that; she finds a spring, a pathetic little one that doesn’t even make a sound coming through a mound of stones, and then she gets on all fours and drinks until she feels sick with it.

What’s more, there is a fruit tree growing a little bit down the stream that she sees on accident. She eats despite the fruit being bland and clearly unripe and then drinks some more water. She feels full.

That’s when the tears hit again. The realization of what happened. It hits her all at once that her home is no more and that everyone who was on it is dead. Drey, Finn. Arlin, little Chip who was so annoying to her, Roofus with his soft fur… Chey, who’d braid her hair properly and who got some sort of oil for her at their last port, to make her hair not painful to take care of. She even stopped wanting to cut it!

She clutches on the braids with both hands, curls up and this time she has all the energy to wail and not a drop of dignity to stop.

Lizzie doesn’t stay in one place. She tries to remember where the spring is, but walks away, making notches on trees with her small pocket knife. She needs to find people. She needs to get off this island. She needs to do something, because if she doesn’t,she’ll die. She’ll die of thirst or of hunger or because some wild animal tears her apart, and that’s no death for a pirate.

So Lizzie walks.

There’s no bird songs, but sunlight shines down through the thick canopy, and the walk would have been pleasant were the circumstances different.

*

Life does grant her one miracle.

When she stumbles onto the clearing, it’s almost sundown. That's not the miraculous part. There is a fire going on, which is also not the miraculous part, and some clothes are hanging above it on sticks – still not the miracle.

What is, though, is Chey. Alive and breathing and worse for wear, but smiling when she sees Lizzie. Chey opens up her arms for a hug. Lizzie thinks she for sure died and this is just what the afterlife looks like. Lizzie thinks this is a trap of some cruel fuckhead god. Lizzie thinks she must have poisoned herself on a fruit after all. She still walks forward and falls into Chey’s warm embrace.

She breathes and laughs creakily, moving in Lizzie’s arms, and oh gods she’s alive, she is alive.

“Oh, Lizzie-girl, I am so glad you’re alive… Your poor eye…”

Chey is alive and she is here.

She looks Lizzie over eventually, rinses out her eye – says it’s clouded and scratched, but it’s still there and Lizzie realizes she can even see with it a little. Chey helps her wash up – all of that salt and sand in all the wrong places has started to get really itchy and Lizzie almost cries all over again when she doesn’t have to feel it anymore.

Chey even has supplies, though it’s just a pot she grabbed on to when water took her and somehow held on to.

*

Days after that… blur. Fruit and water are enough at first, but living off of them is hard. It slowly becomes not enough, even when Lizzie brings them so much it rots uneaten, even when she stuffs herself full – an hour or two passes and she gets hungry again, craving something else. She’d kill for a proper stew. Chey gets skinnier too, frailer. Lizzie knew she was old, really old – not like other people on the crew and not even like Finn, who talked about grandchildren of his once or twice – but she didn’t really know what that meant until now.

Weather gets worse. Lizzie has no idea where they are – she thought surely this was still Sakura Ocean, but… well, she doesn’t think so anymore. Chey agrees, which means it’s most likely true. After all, Chey has been out on the seas for, like, thrice as long as Lizzie has been alive. She’d know.

She says the stars are wrong for it to be the Sakura Ocean. She says she doesn’t know where they are either.

The island turns out to be really small; they can walk from one end to the other in a day and a half. Lizzie doesn’t realize how small that is at first. Doesn’t take long to sink in, though.

They don’t find people, of course.

There is, however, a small lake they find with the tiniest of cliffsides framing it in a half-circle. Lizzie doubts water coming off of it can be called a waterfall, but that’s the best description for it she can find. It’s twice height of Chey at the tallest and provides a great cover from the winds and rains… which happen more and more often.

Chey makes a decision to move their campsite. Partial cover is better than no cover.

The weather keeps on getting worse. It rains everyday, and by the time Lizzie offers to try and hunt (despite absolutely hating dealing with dead animals) there isn't anything to catch. She makes and sets up traps as best she can, but the storm – constant now, it seems – scares prey away.

“There’s nothing,” Lizzie shivers. The wind makes trees moan and water roars somewhere not far enough away, not far enough at all. It’s so cold. “Again.”

She drops her ruined rope – Chey’s careful work, woven from some grass. It’s torn up and useless now. Chey is already making a new one, not looking up at Lizzie.

“Animals are running then. Not good.”

Lizzie tries not to get angry at Chey. Really, she tries! But she’s always had to fight against her own temper, had to keep in check that fire in her chest, and these days it feels different. Meaner.

Like there isn't warmth to it anymore. No passion, just cold bitter anger.

“Maybe we should run too.” Lizzie bites her nail so close to the bed it hurts. “There must be somewhere to hide!”

Chey just shakes her head, continuing to carefully pull weeds into thin twine.

“There isn't. This place is as good as it gets.”

“There might be a cave we haven’t found yet!”

Chey frowns. She’s annoyed – It’s such a rarity that it makes Lizzie reel for a second. She hates seeing Chey like this, especially right now.

“Sit down and calm down. It’s just a storm.”

*

It’s not just a storm.

Water pours from the sky not in droplets, but in sheets so thick it’s hard to see past an outstretched arm. Lizzie has to hide her entire face between her palms and knees to be able to breathe.Even then she still feels like she’s drowning, and Chey’s embrace does nothing to help. Wind is no more merciful than the rain, bringing small rocks and branches down on them with a force enough to cut. It hurts.

At least the worst of it doesn’t last more than a couple of hours.

*

Lizzie falls down with a fever not a day later.

It’s a horrible one. She burns – especially her eye, damaged but not gouged, and she hears Chey mutter something about an infection. She probably thinks Lizzie can’t hear her at that moment. Lizzie can, and makes it obvious.

“It hurts… Chey, it hurts. Please, help…”

“Shh, Lizzie-girl.” It’s so silly to call her a girl all the time, like she doesn’t know. Silly and warm in a good way, in a nice way. “Don’t try to get up now, none of that. Drink.”

Chey makes her and Lizzie doesn’t fight. She drinks and cries, pain and shakes wracking her entire body wildly enough to bruise.

“Good,” Chey’s hand on her forehead is warm, and she sets to redoing some of her braids – Lizzie knows it will take awhile. Chey will be here for at least that long.

Lizzie falls asleep.

*

Her fever lasts gods know how long. Lizzie only knows that she feels awful when she opens her eyes again, tired and sleepy despite being out for too long. Her mouth is dry enough to make her cough when she tries to speak and her whole body feels disgusting from sweat. She groans instead of talking, and that's when Chey is there once again, dripping water into her mouth from a wide leaf.

Lizzie’s almost like a mouse from some book or other. The kind Lizzie knows of but never really got to read.

...She’s really tired.

Chey still makes her drink, and at first it’s water, but then it’s…

“Where did you get meat? When?!” Lizzie drinks straight from the pot and it’s awful, really, a broth almost tasteless without spices and not that rich. Still, she drinks a solid half of it before remembering about Chey. She offers it up to her, wiping her face with her rugged sleeve.

“Oh, Lizzie-girl, it’s alright.” Chey doesn’t take it and for a moment there is something on her face, an expression of bone-deep exhaustion and a little bit of guilt and fear. It’s there… and gone. Lizzie doesn’t pay it any mind, though, because of Chey’s next words. “That’s all for you.”

Lizzie doesn’t need much more permission than that.

Chapter Text

“Are you feeling better?”

That’s something Lizzie has heard several times already but hasn't been able to answer, still too weak to stay awake for long. She would eat or drink whatever Chey gave her and then fall back into sleep, pulled away almost violently. Who could have known sleep can be like that, gripping and heavy, hanging onto her like molasses! She certainly didn’t.

This time Lizzie has it in her to sit up straight. She can’t stay upright without Chey’s warm hand on her back, but at least she can sit up.

Oh, she’s tired. And all she did was sit up! It is the worst thing in the world – Lizzie decides that very quickly, the moment her hands shake and Chey has to help her drink . Like she’s some sort of small little child, unable to take care of her own damn self!

Still. It’s not like she has a choice. And at least there’s stew. Objectively it’s a bad tasting one, but Lizzie has never been the pickiest, and any qualms she might have had about it have been crushed long ago by this stupid island and their stupid hopeless situation.

She eats.

“The storm stopped, right?” she gets out in a rasp, once she’s on her back again. She feels tired, like her bones are filled up by the same iron they make anchors out of. Pulled by them, she sinks into an exhausted contentedness – sick, but not hurting.

“It did. I don’t think it lasted more than a couple of hours,” Chey puts a palm on her forehead and it’s cool. Pleasant. “That’s not entirely unusual, but… storms like that don’t normally gather for days only to hit once and disappear. There’s not a single cloud in the sky.”

There really isn't. Lizzie huffs. Does Chey want it to come back? And do they have to keep talking about the storm? She didn’t ask for a lecture, did she? Silly Chey. It came, it passed. Wouldn't it be better to forget it was even here?

Right now, that is all Lizzie wants to do. Forget it ever hit. Forget the water on her face, in her mouth and nose, in her lungs, pulling and pulling and pulling her down-

“I think” Chey speaks, cutting through the memories, “these kinds of storms are normal for this island.”

Lizzie breathes in, opening her eyes back up to the clear blue sky. It’s vast and it feels like it’s fucking taunting her. There is a fucking bird up there! Flying and flying around… Maybe it’s circling her. Waiting to see if she dies.

Not a fucking chance.

“If we are really in the Northern Sea like I thought, then it wouldn't even be that surprising. Northern waters are quite magical, and islands with their own weather are more common than people think. I’ve seen my fair share of those, though not quite this… volatile.” Listening to Chey is soothing and Lizzie lets her eyelids slide shut. “Islands where it never snows and islands where it’s always freezing cold… and winter landscapes surrounding lush gardens, of course. Never these kinds of fast storm cycles…”

Chey shifts, pulling her hand away briefly, and Lizzie grumbles. That prompts another small chuckle.

“Well, this island adapted. From flowers that don’t need more than wind to pollinate alright to birds that leave and come back like clockwork. Fascinating. I would have loved it here before… oh, and Finn would have had so much to say! Can you imagine, Lizzie-girl? How much he would have written about this one?”

Lizzie’s been falling asleep. It was so peaceful.

Now all she can see is Finn’s face moments before everything went wrong. It’s not a true memory, there is so much more to it than just his face, but right now Lizzie wouldn't be able to remember even if she wanted to. And she. Does. Not.

“No, I can’t!” She tries to sit up and her head spins. She’s still upright though, Chey in her damn endless kindness helping her even though Lizzie doesn’t fucking want it. She swats at her and her face is wet for some reason. “No, I can’t, because he’s dead! All of his books are on the bottom of the ocean along with our ship and..!”

She chokes and pushes at Chey, shaking. It’s hard to breathe.

“And everyone… everyone, everything… they're all there and they're never coming back…”

Lizzie doesn’t want hugs. Chey gives them to her anyway, rubbing a hand up and down her back. Contact makes Lizzie feel sick, caged in. It’s suffocating, but she doesn’t have any energy left to fight…

And Chey is trying to be kind.

When she stops crying and Chey lets her go. It’s less about actual calm and more about that deep, never-ending exhaustion that Lizzie cannot get rid of. Sleep doesn’t come easy and for several more hours Lizzie watches Chey until she’s simply unable to anymore.

*

Everything good ends sooner or later. Lizzie wishes this lasted a bit longer though, savoring every last bite. It’s tubers and meat and water, boiled until they mashed together and even laid out on a leaf in absence of a plate. There’s no telling where one ends and the other begins – makes eating a little more palatable. There’s even herbs! Some stuff Chey found after the rain, grown rapidly and already wilting.

Chey hasn't spoken of it since Lizzie’s little breakdown, but she’s not stupid. Things being this fast can only mean that these fucking storms won’t stop. Right?

She’d ask, but she’s been avoiding Chey as much as it’s possible to avoid someone while you're bedbound and they feed you. And, like, Lizzie knows it’s not good not to talk to the only person on the whole damn island you're stuck on. It’s just not good! But what is she supposed to do? Fix it?

Lizzie eats a little more. And tries.

“How did you get meat for this anyway?”

Chey drops a knife into the boiling pot along with another tuber she’s been peeling, then she laughs. Lizzie didn’t even speak that loud.

“Ah, some of your traps worked. Caught a rat or two.”

“Really?” she perks up. “Wait… there are rats here?”

Chey blinks at her all weird and, gods, Lizzie already feels bad enough for not talking to her before! Does she have to make it like this now?

“Some kind of rodent. Looked like rats… maybe they can hide from the storm and survive.”

“Probably… we haven’t caught any more though, right?”

Chey just looks apologetic.

*

Surviving doesn’t get easier with time. You'd think it would, through practice and habits, but it doesn’t. You just get used to it and don’t notice until another little thing amongst all the other little things breaks you. Again. And the longer you go on the closer that breaking point becomes. Lizzie is intimately familiar with this now, she thinks.

She’d seen herself break so many times since Black Rose went down. She’d even seen Chey break, though only once. What broke her was a nightmare so loud it woke Lizzie up and scared her shitless. No one in her life before had nightmares like that – even Chip’s rare ones were quiet, and he'd go to Arlin for comfort, not cling to Lizzie like Chey did.

She let her go almost immediately once she realized what happened, forced herself to stop crying, but it was enough for Lizzie. No amount of false cheer in the morning and no brave face would fool her now.

That’s why she’s carrying a pot full of gathered fruit to the camp right now, as she has been doing for some time instead of Chey. She clearly needed more help after that nightmare night, and Lizzie can be there for her. She’s strong, she can help!

It’s not the only reason, of course. Well, it kind of is, but kind of not.

Chey needs help because she has nightmares and cries when she thinks Lizzie can’t see, yes. And that's enough on its own, really, but… she also limps. Lizzie isn't sure when it started and isn't sure why , but Chey doesn’t walk quite right anymore. Of course Lizzie asks what the hell is wrong with her, of course she does. Chey doesn’t answer though, shrugs her off in that nice, gentle way of hers that makes Lizzie want to chew through wood sometimes. She doesn’t answer, but she can’t hide how carefully she moves. Like something hurts, like something is really, really wrong.

Lizzie understands, just a little, that she can’t actually help, but not being told still stings. They're in this together, are they not?

Chey stumbles.

“Maybe we should rest? Just a little?” Lizzie sets the pot on a fallen tree they just walked around and stares at Chey’s back. She’s so thin nowadays… Lizzie remembers her being plump! With arms big from mixing dough and smiles with dimples. Now she’s too thin to properly see them, and doesn’t really smile wide enough anyways.

“Maybe. Just a little.”

Lizzie doesn’t help Chey sit down, but she really fucking wants to. She doesn’t offer fruit to her either – both because they're fucking sick of them already and because this one tastes bad uncooked. Bitter. Lizzie tried eating it raw to get it over with quicker and regretted it very much .

“I could have managed alone, you know? Didn’t have to come with me.”

“Maybe I just want to spend time with you, Lizzie-girl? Have you thought about that?”

“We spend plenty of time together already!”

Because there is no one else is left unsaid in the air. Chey doesn’t let it linger.

“Trying to get rid of me, I see how it is.”

“I'm not!” Lizzie punches her in the shoulder and ignores how bony it feels. “I am not trying to get rid of you!”

When Chey laughs this time, there are dimples on her cheeks.

Lizzie will remember those dimples for the rest of her life, even though she doesn’t know it yet.

*

Walking together like this becomes a habit. Routine. Something to get up off of the ground for and walk. It’s amazing how much of survival on this island is just trying to find a thing to do. They don’t have tools for much – most of the preparations they can make take awhile and don’t need them, like drying out sweet fruits.

Lizzie does learn to make twine, but that gets boring. Walking is at least a change in scenery… somewhat. So it becomes a part of their life. 

And the catalyst for its destruction.

“Your leg is worse today,” Lizzie calls out behind herself, trying to keep her face neutral. Not that it’s really needed; Chey isn't looking at her, focusing on getting through the bushes.

“I’m just an old lady, that's very normal for us.”

The joke doesn’t quite land. Probably because Chey is breathing so hard. Lizzie grits her teeth – another question, another non-answer, what did she even fucking expect? She’s been doing this awhile, trying to force Chey to admit something is wrong. She hasn't managed yet. It really came as a surprise that Chey was no less stubborn than Lizzie, though maybe it shouldn’t have had. They wouldn't have gotten along if Chey was a pushover.

“Be careful,” Lizzie makes it as obvious as she can that she doesn’t believe Chey even if she doesn’t have any hope left that it’ll work. “Don’t fa-”

She doesn’t finish saying that, darting forward almost before Chey hits the ground. Greenery hid a collection of moss-covered rocks and Chey slipped, falling with a thud and something crunching softly, but audibly enough.

Lizzie expects a scream as she gets on her knees near Chey, but she’s silent. She doesn’t even let a grunt out from behind her teeth, instead pulling down her beat up skirt.

“Chey, your leg- Chey!” There’s blood, there’s blood, Lizzie can’t fucking breathe, there is water in her lungs and all around her, squeezing her again . “Chey!”

She’s not even looking at her, that’s the worst part. She’s just trying and trying to pull her skirt down. Anger burns the water away and Lizzie tears Chey’s hands away from her clothes, finally getting a good look at her calf and ankle.

It’s a fucking mess. Blood is everywhere and it’s torn apart like someone chewed on it – Lizzie’s only seen something like this once, with a bad dog bite that wasn't treated in time. A memory from another life, from before the seas and pirate ships and Chey. She doesn’t even know who it was or where it was, she just remembers being disgusted and taken away.

This looks like that, but somehow worse.

Could a branch have done this? Torn her apart like this from a single fall? Lizzie is trying to wrap her head around it, but it’s hard. It doesn’t smell good – it doesn’t smell like blood, it’s cloying and sour with a hint of sweetness that makes what little she has in her stomach turn. She’s heard, once or twice, horror stories of someone trying to treat a wound and vomiting onto it instead, but until this moment she didn’t know how that could even be possible.

Now, she has to keep herself from doing just that by sheer force of will.

“What the fuck, Chey?!”

It still doesn’t quite compute that a simple fall couldn’t have done this. Broke toes or an ankle, sure, but not this. Somewhere in the back of Lizzie’s mind everything is going off and screaming at her, telling her this isn't right. But it still doesn’t compute.

Not until she notices, finally notices bandages. Or what passes for them, made out of Chey’s soft undershirt. Lizzie has a piece of it on her head – it covers her eye. They're bloody and yellow, used.

Chey is talking to her, or trying to – calling for her and saying, “Lizzie” and “Lizzie-girl” and the rare “sweetling”. Lizzie’s not hearing her, staring at those bandages and at the wound that looks like a bite and her entire leg, pale from the wound down and unhealthy. It doesn’t look fucking alive!

“Chey, what the fuck…”

Because it looks like a bite, Lizzie’s mind latches onto that thought like a leech and sucks it for all the fucking horror it has to offer.

There aren't any fucking rats on this island, there are only the rare birds that didn’t even show up until a week after the storm. And Chey has been limping since Lizzie woke up.

“You didn’t eat any of it.”

It’s all that leaves Lizzie’s mouth. Shocked. Shaken. There are tears gathering in the corners of her eyes, they burn. She swallows thickly.

Chey is silent and pale as a ghost. That tells Lizzie more than she ever wanted to know.

She turns and she runs.

Branches snag on her hair, scratch her skin, her arms and legs. She stumbles on roots and thick knots of grass, she grazes her palms on tree trunks when she grabs onto them for balance. Her only seeing eye is full of tears and she almost goes head first into bushes several times.

Her feet bring her to the tide. To quiet waves and the deceptively calm sea, glimmering in sunlight, inviting and bright. There is something in her chest. It is big and painful and has rough, big palms that take her lungs and squeeze-

She wheezes. Sucks in a breath through her teeth… or attempts to. It gets stuck in those greedy, cruel hands and she falls to her knees, curling up into a ball.

It’s almost the same place she washed up on, those days or weeks or months ago. The memory feels alien through the dark spots in her vision and the realization eating up her mind, like that girl was someone else, not her at all.

*

There is a limit to everything.

Lizzie can’t wander the shores forever, can’t go up and down familiar creeks for days on end. There was always going to be a moment when she would have to come back and face this. She knew this at some point, understood it once her tears had dried out and the pain dulled from sharp stabs to simply pulsing on beat with her heart. Either she will go back or Chey will come after her. She always did, always checking up on her, always making sure she slept well and ate well-

Lizzie wants to hurl. This kind of thing… it’s not something new to her. She knows people do it sometimes, out of desperation and in hopeless situations. But it’s not something she ever thought she would have to do.

And she didn’t, did she. It’s not like she even had a choice! Chey didn’t give her one.

That only makes the sour taste of bile on her tongue sharper. Lizzie doesn’t know if she would have said “no”.

She has to go back.

Chey… Chey is unwell. Sick.

Not just her leg, but her mind. Lizzie thought she knew when Chey broke, Lizzie thought she knew what it looked like. But she didn’t, clearly. She didn’t see this, didn’t see her cracking – did it happen when she was unconscious? Or was Lizzie there to see it all, not understanding a single thing?

It doesn’t really matter. Lizzie can’t stay away too long. Chey will surely die if Lizzie is not there.

And Lizzie can’t let her die. They're crew, they’ve made promises – even if most of them were never out loud.

At least that’s what she tells herself. If there is a more selfish desire underneath that… Well, there’s no one around to read her mind.

*

When Lizzie gets back to their spot – a place she started to feel almost comfortable at, if not exactly happy – the first thing she sees are bloody bandages. The second is a pot and the remnants of a fire.

Then she sees Chey.

Here’s the thing: Chey was always much livelier than people gave her credit for. Lizzie has seen her juggle apples in the kitchen of a rocking ship, Lizzie has seen her tie ropes with dexterous hands and Lizzie has seen her be better with a knife than even Captain Rose. She is used to Chey being old, but spry. Old, but full of life and fire.

Now there’s nothing of that left.

Her chest rises and falls, but she looks like a husk. Like something already dead. Lizzie can’t help but compare her to a bug in her own head… it fills her with disgust.

After a moment of still, thick silence she moves and it’s like a spell breaking, allowing her to breathe fully.

She regrets it immediately, gagging at the awful smell. Rot. Sour-sweet and punchy. It covers the inside of her throat and even water doesn’t help out much.

Cleaning out Chey’s wounds takes a lot out of Lizzie. There is more than one, and they’re all awful. Edges, blackened with a bluish tint, ooze dark blood when she presses on them, cleaning out what she can. Some of the skin comes off on the cloth she’s using, and the only reason she doesn’t throw up again is the emptiness of her stomach. She still retches, she can’t help it.

She’s done, eventually. Lizzie knows she should boil the cloth, but the fire is truly gone and this should help, right?

Chey gets some water, as much as Lizzie can force into her, before she’s off again, dry heaving in the bushes. She washes her hands in a stream until they go numb from the cold.

*

Lizzie settles nearby, curling in on herself. Sleep doesn’t come right away and even when it does, it’s uneasy. She’s torn away from it every time something as much as rustles, her heart racing.

The moon is low in the sky with dawn close when she startles awake again at the sound of Chey coughing. Moving.

“Chey?” She’s near her in a second, hands hovering. “Are you alright?”

It’s a stupid question, but Chey doesn’t call her on it. She just looks up, so very old and withered away like a flower. Her face contorts into a grimace, and it takes Lizzie a moment to understand – that’s a smile. Chey is smiling at her.

“Lizzie-girl… oh, don’t cry.”

“I'm not!”

She is.

Chey raises up her hand, cradling her cheek. Then she slides it back onto Lizzie’s neck and pulls her closer. It’s too violent to be a hug, but too weak to be anything else. Lizzie’s eyes are wide, whites bright in the pre-dawn light.

“Listen.” Chey looks her in the eyes and Lizzie nods. “I did this.”

Lizzie doesn’t get a chance to even shake her head.

“I did this. I wanted you to live. I want you to live. Do you hear me, Lizzie? I. Want. You. To live.”

It’s unfair, it’s unfair, it’s unfair-

Lizzie gasps a broken off sob.

“I love you.”

Chey catches Lizzie in a hug. She doesn’t stay awake long after that. Lizzie keeps her company, hugging her.

When her breathing stops Lizzie only hugs tighter.

*

There is a plate in front of her. It’s pretty. Prettier than what they have on the island. Prettier even than what they had on the ship!

Lizzie cannot tell what’s so pretty about it, but she knows it’s pretty anyways.

Hunger has stopped gnawing at her long ago. It doesn’t get bad enough here, doesn’t grow sharp teeth and doesn’t turn into desperation. It’s just always there. Sitting at the bottom of her stomach, quietly unsatisfied no matter how much fruit she feeds it.

There’s never enough to be full.

The plate in front of her has meat. Seasoned and cooked perfectly. Lizzie can tell even if there isn't a smell to it.

She wants to eat. She doesn’t want to eat this .

Chey puts a fork into her fingers gently and guides her hand. The meat is soft, and it goes onto the fork very easily. Lizzie is breathing hard. She doesn’t want it.

She.

Doesn’t.

Want.

It.

She bites down. It tastes of blood and rot.

Chey’s chest is very cold and very still under Lizzie’s cheek when she gasps awake.

Chapter Text

Sun shouldn’t be this bright. Wind shouldn’t be this pleasant.

Lizzie’s hands are shaking as she collects what little she has and leaves Chey behind.

It should be cold. With rain, but no wind. It should be dark. There should be clouds covering the bright blue of the sky. There should be something to show what happened, to make it real. There should be, but there isn't.

Lizzie doesn’t think of the one option she does have to make it real. She just continues to walk, not looking back.

If she looks into Chey’s dead, pale face she will also die, without a doubt. And she cannot now. She promised.

*

Days pass. It’s lonely, a part of Lizzie knows. She doesn’t feel it, doesn’t feel anything , really. But she knows it.

Gone is Chey’s brightness, gone are their little joyful moments. Gone is that spark that made even the most horrible of situations bearable. Gone, gone, gone. Cold and stiff.

Days pass.

Lizzie cries most days now. In the morning when she forgets for a blissful moment of what happened, in the evening when there is no one left to tell her stories. Things are harder without Chey in very tangible ways: Lizzie eats less and doesn’t bother with fires anymore. She knows she should, and she’s trying so hard to not give up… but it’s hard.

It’s hard every time she turns and expects Chey there, nearby. It’s hard to wake up and feel the cold all around. It’s hard when she tries to cook – she eats what fruits she can raw and drinks water as is.

She doesn’t want to die, but it’s like that desire is trapped in a box inside her mind. Visible, but closed off. There is no meaning to it now.

*

Lizzie takes to walking the island’s shore and kicking twigs on the days she doesn’t feel like laying in the grass and imagining herself turning into mulch. It’s the only two moods she has now – apathy and anger.

And exhaustion. It’s not an emotion, not supposed to be at least, but it’s so encompassing that it feels like her everything now. Tiredness. Her apathy is tired, her anger is tired. She’s too tired to care and too tired to be hungry.

That feels nice, at least. Not being hungry.

There isn't any wildlife on the island big enough to eat her or even hurt her. It’s all just plants. So she walks at night without fear, under the moon and stars so bright she doesn’t need fire to see. There is a spot on the low tide that glows in the dark. If it’s some sort of fish or seaweed, she’s not sure, but it’s pretty. She wishes she could show Chey.

On one of these days she’s walking the shore again, aimlessly trying to find a way to continue breathing, when she spots sails. Beige, normal. She thinks there’s a flag, but it’s too far away and she’s half-blind.

Still. It’s a ship.

*

Staring at the water reflecting sunshine is making her eye water. The burning is still nothing compared to the pain eating through the other half of her face.

Lizzie has been waving her arms around as much as she could after seeing that ship, but her energy ran out pretty fast. Hope turned sour in her throat when she couldn’t keep herself upright anymore and she fell to her knees on the hot sand. They weren't going to save her, were they? And what did she even expect? After all, they didn’t save Chey either.

“ Hello. Have you been shipwrecked?”

What a great time to lose her mind. She shivers at the voice, gruff and tense – it’s almost angry and Lizzie can’t help herself, she curls up, hugs her knees and thinks back at the voice twice as angry.

“ What the fuck do you think?”

The voice doesn’t give a response. Good riddance.

Lizzie doesn’t look up for a while, afraid of seeing nothing but an empty stretch of the sea. But that cannot go on forever, and she lifts her head eventually–

And loses her ability to breathe.

That ship is stopped quite a distance away, but it’s close enough to see people going about business on the deck, close enough to see a very big captain’s hat on top of a very tall man.

They're dropping down a boat , and it gets closer too. Slowly, but surely – Lizzie can tell even with her fucked up depth perception.

There’s just two people on it. They both get off, splashing water. One has maybe five years on Lizzie, shirtless and red from the sun like a crab – he busies himself with securing the boat. The other is older and only a shade or two lighter than Lizzie, with hair shaved closed and a tattoo on his face in vibrant green. It curls around his eye and comes down his cheekbones.

Lizzie had wanted a tattoo once. Maybe she’ll be able to get one now.

You know. Since she’s going to live.

*

Her rescue, miraculous and wondrous, is underwhelming. After the kaleidoscope of feelings, of shock and hope and anger and grief, she’s back to that detached apathy. Like she’s just too tired to even feel happy about being rescued. It’s all just too much.

She doesn’t answer questions. Not on purpose, really; she just can’t make herself pay attention no matter how much she tries to. It slips away through her fingers like fine grains of sand – the stronger she tries to hold on, the faster it goes.

Like that damn rope ladder.

The man with the tattoo lets her go up first, and she doesn’t think much of it. After all, she’s done this and things even more impressive plenty of times before. She was never as fast as Chip, but she also never had close calls like he did until Arlin chewed him out.

The memory is a dull pain in her chest, but it fills her with confidence. That ends up biting her in the ass, of course.

She starts to climb, and halfway through her arms give out, weak from hunger and lack of sleep. One moment she’s on the ladder, the next? Under the water. It shocks her with cold and in a second she’s not on the island’s shore anymore, not near a friendly ship anymore.

Lizzie is plummeting into deep water so dark it’s black from the Midnight Rose , small and insignificant against nature. She gasps and her lungs are filled with water-

Then she coughs and her next breath is air, smelling of wood and spices.

“Gods, don’t die on us now, will ya?”

Strong arms are holding her, hauling her up on board. Right. Different sea, different ship. 

Someone hits her across the back and she coughs again, scrunching her entire face up from the pain of the slap. It doesn’t stop whoever is doing it from going at it a couple more times, until she waves her hand around and tries to push them away.

She doesn’t even touch anyone, but the slaps stop regardless.

“There you go, there you go… breathe.”

She squints her good eye at the fucker – it’s the tattooed man. He makes her drink something that tastes earthy and eases some of the burning in her face almost immediately.

“Good. Now sit down here and let me get a look at you.”

*

Lizzie didn’t know how many cuts she had. Bruises too, but those at least are easy to understand – hit an arm somewhere and don’t notice, no big deal. Cuts though?

The man with the tattoo is named Roswell. He gives her another vial to drink – a potion, apparently – and then gives her a piece of hardtack. Says to go slow, the bastard, as if Lizzie can eat this fucking thing fast. It’s less like bread and more like a piece of wood, and she’s forced to chew on it.

He’s the medic on the ship. Or healer, as he says, though the verdict on whether he actually has magic is not in yet. Lizzie kind of doubts it – this guy doesn’t look much like Finn, too young to be properly educated. All magic types are old, even Captain Rose was.

Still, whatever he does makes her feel better. She sits up straighter and halfway through even begins to enjoy her piece of stale-as-fuck bread.

That's when the commotion starts. Lizzie doesn’t understand what’s happening at first, not until she hears the voice she heard in her head before – it’s gruff and loud, giving an order to drop the sails.

They're going away. From the island. It should make Lizzie happy, but instead she just thinks of Chey. Of poor, kind Chey who gave up everything for Lizzie to be here right now.

Lizzie didn’t even bury her, didn’t even try.

She’s up before she finishes her thought, bread tucked away into her shirt. Roswell calls for her, but he’s not close enough to catch her. She rushes up the steps, avoiding the sailors all looking at her in confusion. No one tries to get to her, though, and she stops face-to-face with the captain.

Well. With a man wearing a captain’s hat.

He is very tall. Lizzie has to look up so far her neck creaks, and she’s not short, especially for her age. She meets his eyes… no, actually just one. The other is covered with an eyepatch. Fancy thing, embroidered black silk, Lizzie can tell by the shine. She hates it immediately.

“What do you want?”

Lizzie swallows. His voice is not warm. The only other person talking to her here has been Roswell, and he’s been friendly, quiet, patient with his questions. This man has nothing of the sort. 

Lizzie doesn’t answer for one moment, then two, and the man scowls at her.

“If you don’t want anything, then scatter. Don’t get in the way of my crew.”

“You can’t leave just yet,” she gets out, steeling herself. She was on the crew with Captain Rose, she survived a damn hole in the sea and this island. She’s not going to be afraid of some man that doesn’t know manners. 

“Why is that?”

“Chey is still on the island.” If she says it like he’s stupid… well, it’s his own damn fault. “Can’t leave without her- can’t leave without her…”

She can’t say corpse. It won’t leave her mouth, gets stuck behind her teeth. Lizzie has to bite her lip to stay silent through pure force of will – because the man is actually thinking.

Then, he touches his fingertips to the edge of his eyepatch and there’s a ripple in the air. Lizzie doesn’t see it, just feels the hair stand up on the back of her neck the way it does sometimes before storms. The captain scoffs.

“There’s no one else alive on this island. Are you sure it isn't just some imaginary friend of yours, child?”

Lizzie feels her nails press into the skin of her palms, drawing blood.

“Yes, I'm sure. It’s Chey. I can’t leave her here, I have to- I have to bury her, or- or burn her-”

“You want us to stay near this accursed thing pretending to be an island for a corpse ?” he looks at her with disbelief and Lizzie doesn’t think she’s ever hated anyone this much before. “Not going to happen. Go back to Roswell and stop bothering me with stupidity.”

Can she really be blamed for what happens next? She doesn’t think so.

Her kick lands a little off the place Chey has always told her to target, but it still hurts plenty. The captain actually grunts, and she goes in to kick him again when a hand grabs her by the back of her shirt and pulls her away.

It’s Roswell. He finally followed her up the stairs, just in time to stop her from killing their useless old bag of bones of a captain. Lizzie growls, giving up on words as she tries and tries to reach him. To kick, to punch – something to make him change his mind, something to make him think.

Roswell doesn’t even seem to notice, taking her back down. He doesn’t sit on her to make her stay put, but it’s a close thing. Lizzie swallows her anger and sits. If someone thinks it means she’s calm… well, it’s on them.

*

Ships, even like this one, are small. They're cramped no matter how small your crew is. You basically live out of each other’s pockets all the time. Lizzie used to dislike that part of pirate life, and she still does to a degree, but this time it comes in handy.

Can’t really escape when you're on a single ship in an open sea, can you?

She’s sitting on the same crates she’d been put on by Roswell right out of the water. He offered her to go rest, to sleep, and she really wants to. She really, really wants to, despite the nightmares that will surely come. But she can’t, not yet.

That bastard. They didn’t have to turn around. All they had to do was get a boat back down and walk a little. How long does it take to bury a person? The ground of the island is wet and soft, it would be easy. He just didn’t want to. Bastard. Dickhead.

Coward. Scared of some little island’s weather. Is he even a pirate at all?!

His steps are heavy and wood creaks. Lizzie watches as he gives orders and then moves closer to Roswell, his back to the stairs… and to her.

“What’s with her? Report.”

“Dehydration, starvation. The eye was infected, but she’ll keep half the vision at least. It’ll take awhile to heal, but otherwise…”

Roswell shrugs, biting down on an apple. Lizzie chooses that moment to jump, immediately wrapping her hands around the bastard captain’s throat and digging her grown out nails into his skin. He yelps, trying to throw her off, but she’s done this to Arlin before, and this fucker might be tall, but he sure as hell isn't wide enough to escape her grasp.

“You have to go back!” she screams right into his ear, only now noticing the wetness on her cheeks. It takes another moment to register it as tears. Fuck. “You can’t just leave her, you can’t, you have to-”

He tries to shake her off, but his grip on her arms is too soft. She only digs in deeper, continuing to scream and scream. He screams too, something about getting her off and “you're being an idiot right now, child” – like Lizzie’s gonna listen to a single word he says. Fuck him and fuck his crew, they all can choke.

The captain gets a hold of her ankle eventually and tugs, forcing her to come off him. She clings to his arm then, kicks at him and then bites right into the soft space between thumb and the wrist. There’s a metallic taste of blood on her tongue and it makes her sick immediately with the thought of Chey, but unfortunately for the captain, it only makes her clump down harder.

“ Get the fuck off me !”

Lizzie’s too enveloped by her memory and too tired to really understand what happens next. In a second she goes from clenching her teeth on soft tissue to flying through the air and hitting something with her entire side. Hard.

It knocks the wind from her and she coughs, dark spots dancing in her vision before turning into complete darkness.

“What the fuck’s wrong with you, Captain? Since when are we playing with kids like balls?!”

Pretty voice, funny words. If Lizzie had it in her, she’d chuckle. But she doesn’t, and the hurt of the past months catches up to her, dragging her down into unconsciousness.

*

The light is way too bright when she wakes up. There’s a soothing rocking, and for a single moment she thinks it was all a nightmare.

That’s not true, of course. She blinks, lifting up her hand immediately and touching something wrapped around her head tight. Most of her hair sticks out of it and she recoils once she touches it – too dirty. Gross.

“Woke up?”

Lizzie jolts, raising up one her elbows and squinting at the speaker – Roswell, her mind supplies half a second later.

Her head is heavy. She’s pretty sure she was asleep, but she doesn’t feel very rested. Not hurt, relaxed – like she’s about to get the best sleep of her life, but not rested. Not yet.

Roswell moves a cup near her. It smells of fish soup.

“Slow.”

She grimaces, but complies. When she puts the cup down, she sees that the medic is reading a paper. Lizzie huffs, laying back down and tilts her head to get a better look-

It’s Captain Rose.

He’s smiling in the photo, joyous and a little feral, white teeth gleaming. Lizzie trembles, but forces herself to read the words underneath his face anyway.

Black Rose Pirates gone from the seas! Is this the end of an era?!

Gods. Fuck.

She turns around before the stupid doctor can ask any questions and shuts her eyes tight.

Chapter Text

Lizzie eats lots and lots of fish soup in the next couple of days. Roswell encourages her, bringing her small portions every other hour and then sitting down next to her to either have his own meal or read a paper.

She’s tired. It’s like once she was put away from the open air and the smell of seawater her body just… gave up. She sleeps a lot, eats, and doesn’t do much else. Those nasty potions Roswell keeps sneaking into her hands along with water only make her sleepier. He checks on her eye all the time as well, with detached care. Lizzie finds unexpected comfort in his coldness and calm demeanor, more than pleased to keep him at arm’s length whenever she’s awake enough to talk at all.

Roswell seems to be happy with that as well, talking only about things he needs to. Like asking her things about her health or asking her name, which she stays stubbornly silent about.

“Don’t trust us?” It’s less of a question and more of a confirmation, strangely lacking judgement. There’s almost approval in it, which Lizzie finds a little odd.

“The rest of the crew is gonna learn my name, but I will only know yours. Kinda unfair.” It’s also very silly, childish, but Lizzie is grumpy and these people haven’t deserved her good behavior yet… Well, maybe Roswell has, but he’s siding with them, so tough luck.

“Our captain’s name is Shadowbeard. You know, the pirate lord?” Lizzie’s eyes go wide and then, not a second later, she narrows them. Not in disbelief - that would be a stupid thing to lie about considering pirate lords are one of the only few who get posters with photos - just pissed off. Roswell clearly waited for the right moment to spring this on her. “His first mate’s name is Zoloto. And you know mine. Is that enough?”

She doesn’t answer for a drawn out moment, then sighs. Her and her rotten luck, from one pirate lord to the next. What the fuck. Couldn’t have caught a fishing ship, could she?

“Lizzie.”

*

Her first attempts at lurking around the ship are very short. Lizzie has to take breaks between small tasks like walking up and down the stairs, which gives her plenty of time to seethe about it and wonder where the fuck her strength came from on the day she bit Shadowbeard. Because by all means she was hungrier and more tired then, and yet.

Roswell said that getting used to food again and regular rest was taking a toll, plus recovering from an infection, but Lizzie didn’t fully buy it. Like, eating again shouldn’t tire her out, right? That's stupid.

Her body disagreed very much.

“Don’t stand in the way!”

Lizzie huffs, she’s not even standing , but ducks away and to the side, slipping into the half-open door of the ship’s kitchen, one of the few places where she doesn’t get underfoot. She plops down on one of the crates used instead of chairs and sighs. She’s not tired enough to go back to the small room that is doc’s quarters yet, but she can’t find it in herself to go walk around the deck. Especially not when there’s clouds gathering in the sky, promising bad weather. Everyone’s running around, getting the ship ready and for all that Lizzie doesn’t mind being annoying, she doesn’t actually want to be a problem. So there isn't much for her to do but sit and watch the cook work.

She thinks his name’s Tim. He’s a halfling that could be mistaken for a short dwarf under the right light – wide and sturdy, he reminds Lizzie of an oak stump. His hair is black and always in a bun, his beard always short and trimmed neatly. Overall, he looks serious and strict. Last time she was here, he gave her half of the carrot he’s been chopping to eat and didn’t say a word. She only learned that he’s deaf and doesn’t really ever speak out loud later, when she asked Ros about him.

This time Tim doesn’t do that though. He looks at her, one moment, two moments… then he steps up a little ladder to put a pot he’s holding down on the table and his hands move. He’s talking, but Lizzie doesn’t know signs at all. It shows on her face, she’s sure, because Tim sighs and gets off the ladder, disappearing behind a curtain into a small room. Storage, probably. Lizzie watches, intrigued and confused, until he comes back and shoves a potato in one of her hands and a knife in the other.

“You need those peeled?” she guesses, miming the motion and gets a nod. Tim seems approving, she thinks. “Okay, I can do that.”

She used to help Chey out a lot on the Midnight Rose. No one else really did, if you don’t count Arlin carrying around heavy provision boxes for her, so Lizzie took it upon herself. Chey never seemed to need help, but always smiled warmly at her anyway. Even when Lizzie would mess up.

Tim is not like that.

His only similarities to Chey are probably his job and how calm he is… and even then, it’s not the same calm Chey had. Tim doesn’t hide it if Lizzie makes him upset when she messes up, even if he immediately teaches her how to do better with enviable patience. Tim learns what she can and can’t do very fast and then starts to expect her to perform on that level whenever she comes into his kitchen, which happens more and more the better she feels. It’s a little daunting, but she understands: if she is to be on this ship, to eat with these people and sail with these people, then she can’t slack off. Everyone here has a part in this life, has a job, and that includes her. At least if she wants to stay.

It’s very different from the Midnight Rose . There she was a kid on a ship, taken care of out of kindness. Here she has a chance to become crew if she wants it, to be an equal.

She likes it a lot more and wants it desperately, no matter how guilty it makes her feel. She’s not at the mercy of someone else’s kindness now, her future depends on her and her alone. So she peels potatoes and chops garlic, guts fish on rare occasions and learns to speak with Tim slowly but surely.

She’s not the only one who works in the kitchen. Everyone seems to have a shift there from time to time and Lizzie is beyond happy when Zoloto, Shadowbeard’s first mate, puts her on the roster with everyone. It’s great until she realizes how much time it frees up… No, not even that. She’s glad for the free time, Roswell has books in his quarters she can borrow and she can try and catch some fish if they're not moving too fast.

The problem is with her mind.

It doesn’t understand that free time is for resting and makes memories come up from under the surface whenever she sits in one spot for too long, makes her look up to the sails expecting Chip there, makes her look around for Arlin’s bulk or for Finn’s green skin. Makes her wish Chey was here. And that’s when the memories are nice .

When they’re not, she remembers Rose and Drey, she remembers dark waters and cold, she remembers the taste of boiled meat and the scent of rot.

Which is why not a week later she is on her way to the kitchen even though it’s not her day. They can’t really stop her if she wants to work more, right? Roswell probably can do that, actually, as a doctor, but he won’t and the rest can’t. Right?

“Lizzie?” Deep voice, melodious. Pretty when she sings, which Lizzie has heard and was charmed by to an embarrassing degree. She turns to Zol, who is twice as wide as her, but is already shorter. Lizzie has always been tall, after all. “I don’t think they need another pair of hands in there.”

“I can still help with something.”

Maybe she sounds a little desperate or maybe Zoloto has always had this in mind, but she shrugs.

“True. You’re gonna help me with the ropes. Some of them need to be replaced and you said you climb well. The rest of the crew is busy or climbs like shit, so let’s go. While the sun is still up.”

The rest of the crew. Lizzie feels warmth in her chest for the first time in so many days and nods, following Zol out on the deck.

*

Routine sets in. Lizzie gets involved in other aspects of ship life, from chores and responsibilities to spending time on shore with Zol, who very gently forces Lizzie to let her braid her hair. They have almost the same kind of curls and it does look very nice on Zoloto’s hair and beard, so Lizzie has to admit she knows what she’s doing. But it’s still an entire day so she acts annoyed about it anyway, on principle.

They get into skirmishes too. Those moments Lizzie spends locked in doc’s little cabin, ignoring the booming of cannons and magic above herself, usually busy with sorting Roswell’s ingredients.

This one she spends like that too and doesn’t expect anything to be different. Except it is.

Zoloto comes down into the cabin earlier than she usually would, looking annoyed, but resigned.

“Clean up duty. Your turn.”

There’s something almost apologetic in her voice and Lizzie steels herself, hiding a surge of hurt. Why would she sound like she’s sorry? Lizzie is part of the crew, isn't she? What the rest of the crew does she does as well, that’s how it works! Why-

She gets why soon enough. When she steps out on the deck Zol hands her a mop and points at the group of sailors pouring buckets of water on the deck, washing down the red of blood into pink. They were fighting the Navy. Other people, not sea-monsters.

Some were killed, probably. They are pirates after all.

Shadowbeard is watching from the bridge and his gaze lingers on her. He’s watching her… is this what Zol was upset about?

Lizzie swallows, but goes forward and starts to work. She thinks it will be hard, cleaning away a sign of someone’s death like that… but it’s no different from any other time she swabbed the deck. Even easier, because now she’s just cleaning and not soaking the wood with water, which makes the work go by much faster.

It’s a weird feeling. The sight of blood doesn’t touch anything in her, but the absence of feeling in itself hurts. She expected it to hurt, thought she knew what she’s like and what her limits are. But she didn’t, she’s changed and the fact that she didn’t notice… hurts.

It doesn’t get in the way of mopping blood away though, and by the end she feels a satisfaction at a job well done.

She doesn’t notice the approval on Shadowbeard’s face, not that time, but next time they’re in post she finds an eyepatch made out of black silk laying on her bedding; not as fancy as the captain’s, but well-made nonetheless.

*

Her life takes on new colors, slowly but inevitably. Her birthday passes – she’s thirteen now, which she only tells Zol about as she is the only one who thinks to ask. She’s the one who tells Tim, probably, because he bakes her a little cake once they're in port. It’s another small island with a little town that Shadowbeard took under his protection. He seems to do that a lot, take islands underneath his wing. Lizzie doesn’t get it, but she doesn’t get most things about him so it’s no surprise.

Her celebration is solemn and doesn’t really include anyone, but herself and her cake. It’s a good cake, but she can’t help and think that Chey would have made it better before Chip would try to decorate it with something spicy while very badly convincing her that he wasn't. She would like them to be here. All of them, even that bastard Drey – it would be a great gift to kick him where it hurts. But she can’t have that, so she finishes her cake and then goes into town with Zol, who buys her gold beads for her braids and then drags her around buying provisions until Lizzie is falling asleep on her feet.

They spend a long time in that port-town. Lizzie doesn’t really get to know why, she’s too small-fish for it, but she’s curious, so she takes it upon herself to find out.

It’s a good plan, very simple and therefore hard to fuck up. It’s her turn on swabbing duty and Shadowbeard is on the deck, talking something over with his navigator by the name of Jean, with their too long limbs and a mess of grayish hair, who’s laying out maps on some crates and boxes, pointing out things here and there. They don’t seem concerned, but Shadowbeard is frowning.

That’s something Lizzie discovered about him: he’s actually shit at looking emotionless and the only reason anyone buys his facade is because his face has a perpetual frown. But it’s very easy to know what he’s feeling once you watch him for a little bit and Lizzie recognizes worry on his face. She swabs and scoots closer, careful to stay on Shadowbeard’s side. He’s more perceptive than Jean, but they suck and barely tolerate Lizzie, while Shadowbeard is as neutral on her as can be.

So. She stays near him and swabs-swabs-swabs, while trying to get a look at the map. Where they're going and what they're looking at can tell a lot about why they're spending so long in this town. Lizzie notes some of the drawn on points on and even catches a glimpse of some words written out, before her eyes flicker up and she sees Shadowbeard staring right at her. Busted.

“Hey, old man. What is it?”

She can’t run. Running would be admitting she was snooping and she, unlike some people, can keep her face closed off. So she does, raising an eyebrow and continuing with swabbing, not breaking eye-contact. Respecting his authority is the only thing she hasn't gotten good at yet… Though he doesn’t seem to mind.

“Nothing. Keep swabbing.”

More than that, he moves a little, badly pretending it’s an accident, and she sees the whole map, along with most of the notes. It’s nothing particularly interesting – just a bunch of Navy outposts popping out, but that’s been going on for a while, hasn't it? She frowns.

Eventually, Jean notices her looking and resorts to immediately hitting her over the head with a rolled up map. Shadowbeard doesn’t stop them and Lizzie still hears his laughter even when she runs to the other side of the ship, escaping Jean and their fucked little vendetta against her.

Watching them inspecting their maps becomes normal soon after. Lizzie always ends up on the bridge swabbing whenever they're there and Shadowbeard doesn’t get in her way. He also doesn’t even try to talk to her, which is weird, and she doesn’t understand him at all, but that's not very important in the grand scheme of things.

*

On her fourteenth birthday Tim gives her a set of daggers and his old lock-picking tools. One is much more of an exciting prospect to learn than the other, but she is determined to get at least passingly good at both. Tim starts giving her fighting lessons that same week, simply informing her of when and where they're going to do it. It’s very like him – he wouldn't gift her tools and not teach how to use them to the best of her ability.

“ Move it like so ,” Tim signs, spinning the dagger in his fingers a second later and lunging forward. Lizzie immediately copies him… or tries, more like. They have been doing this for a couple of months now, but her grasp of even the basics is still shit. She learned to pick locks pretty well, but daggers? It feels like she hasn't moved at all from where she started. “ You will get it eventually .”

She only sighs, keeping anger in. Tim halts their lessons immediately if he sees her getting upset or irritated, so she tries her best at least not to show it.

“What are you two doing?” Lizzie almost drops her knife at the sound of Zol’s voice. She and Tim turn one a moment after the other and Zoloto repeats the question in sign. Tim’s answer is short, just “practicing”. Like that explains anything . Zoloto squints at him and Lizzie can’t help but feel sympathetic.

Tim’s great. He’s a great cook and a good man. He is also incredibly calm, unmoving like an old tree unless he has a knife in his hand, and has a tendency to expect the same level of balance from everyone around him. Lizzie finds it comforting on good days, but on bad ones it’s… bad. It often feels like she’s a wave lapping up a cliff of his calm, like no matter what she does and how angry she gets it will stay there unchanged for centuries.

“Why here and not on the deck? There’s more space out there.”

Lizzie looks away. They both sign parallel to their words, Lizzie’s movements almost as good now. She’s learned! If she could only learn knives this well.

“Because I'm shit at it and don’t wanna go out there until I'm at least a little bit good.”

“Huh,” Zol looks thoughtful. “You bit Shadowbeard as a kid. And he didn’t expect it, which means he didn’t let you do it. I wouldn't say you're shit.”

Oooh, she can just feel herself blushing. Did they have to keep bringing up that time she bit their captain? She never tried it again!

“I'm serious, Lizzie. You were acting on exhaustion and emotion, of course, and people can do a lot when they're like that, but you still bit him. You have it in you.”

Lizzie rolls her eyes.

“I have what in me? What it takes to bite someone?”

“What it takes to fight . Let’s go,” Lizzie doesn’t get a chance to argue, because Zol grabs her with one hand, grabs Tim with another, and drags them out.

Lizzie eats shit this time. Tim also eats shit, which she feels vindicated and guilty about equally.

*

Next time Zoloto spars with the crew, Lizzie ends up being dragged along. Zol doesn’t let her spar with anyone, but she teaches her. It’s… more fun than it was with Tim, Lizzie is very sorry to admit that. Zol just understands things Tim doesn’t.

“What are you holding onto that temper of yours for, huh? Scared?”

For example, she doesn’t care if Lizzie’s angry or not. She accepts anything as long as Lizzie fights and that’s easier. She didn’t even realize how much of her was busy with keeping calm until she didn't have to do it anymore. It feels nice to let go and just lunge, stab, dodge and repeat, watching how Zoloto moves.

Lizzie keeps on training with her from that point on. It takes a little practice to translate someone else’s moves onto her height, but she manages…

It’s still not enough to beat Zoloto and Lizzie ends up face down on the deck every single time, but it’s a learning experience. No one on the crew can beat Zoloto, that’s just a fact of life.

*

“ I still think daggers would suit you better. ”

Lizzie laughs, shaking her head. Gold beads on her braids clink softly as she does, several fall into her face, but she doesn’t care. She’s too busy checking over her sword, a new shiny thing, curved slightly and giving off a magical tingle. It’s pretty, in its own way.

Lizzie’s fifteen and this is her own gift to herself, a new sword instead of an older one Zol has been letting her borrow. She hasn't used it once yet so it doesn’t really need maintenance, but she likes looking at it, and the feeling of magic as she slowly attunes to it is quite nice.

Tim shakes his head. He’s actually fine with her eventually choosing a sword to fight with instead of daggers, but he still brings it up whenever she comes out of sparring with a bruise on her blind side. It’s his way of having fun.

He’s been doing it a lot more since Lizzie made her oath to Shadowbeard a couple of months ago… Now that Lizzie thinks about it, everyone has been a little more at ease with her after her oath has been given - even that bastard Jean, though they still dislike her quite a lot. Lizzie has no idea if it’s because they’ve never forgiven her for biting their precious captain all those years ago, or if Jean just found something to hate in her on their own. The only one who remained the same is Zol, who has accepted her as crew years ago and never wavered in that decision. It makes Lizzie warm all over even if she won’t ever admit it.

“ Daggers are too much for me. One too many things to keep track of .” She signs and Tim almost smiles, which Lizzie counts as a win. Giving her blade a last look over, she sheathes it, and just on time Zoloto appears in the door. Seeing Lizzie ready she smirks and gestures for her to follow.

It’s their first spar in a couple months, definitely the first since Lizzie turned fifteen. Zol has been in charge of her own ship since Shadowbeard’s crew expanded, keeping guard around territories in his name, while Lizzie sailed on the same old one, keeping an eye on Shadowbeard as she has been doing for literal years now. It has morphed into more of an apprenticeship situation in recent months, but it’s still too new for Lizzie to think about too much, the feeling she feels too big in her chest, too bright to look at directly.

There is a small crowd. They're mostly here to watch Zoloto, but Lizzie will take that as a compliment anyway. Not many people are capable of making Zol go all out in a fight, especially someone like her, a lanky teenager still growing into her limbs.

“Ready?”

It’s wrestling. Not the most useful for fighting on the seas, but it’s the one Lizzie and Zol both enjoy.

Lizzie doesn’t answer, just smirks and gets low – she has to, to even have a chance of defeating a dwarf.

…“Chance” is the key word.

She gets it and Zol promptly tears it away, putting her back to the deck in a minute flat, if not less. That’s still pretty good, but Lizzie knows she can do better. So does the entire crew, booing her and laughing, which she doesn’t really mind – after all, Zol’s really good. Everyone knows that! Losing to her is not that big of a deal-

“Ooh,” Zoloto licks her lips, teasing lilt to her voice. “Getting angry, are we?”

Who is Lizzie lying to, exactly? It is a big deal! She wants to win!

So she tries time and time again and ends up on her back each and single one of them. Zol is simply too good. On the last try, she trips Lizzie into a hold and laughs in her face.

“Almost five minutes!” Lizzie swats at her with her free hand, breathing heavily.

“Yes, that's quite impressive. Still not a win though, eh?”

Lizzie snorts and gets up slowly, feeling out her arm. Zoloto’s holds are really impressive, and also painful. Painful as fuck.

Lizzie’s stretching when she hears laughter from behind that doesn’t belong to the rest of their audience. One she’s come to recognize from every time Jean slaps her with a map when she doesn’t sneak sneakily enough, one she gets immediately annoyed by.

Shadowbeard .

“What are you laughing about, old man?”

That’s not really a way to talk to your captain, but Lizzie doesn’t give a fuck. She’s been talking to him like that since forever and the old man hasn't ever said a word. Shadowbeard just raises an eyebrow and gives what can be generously called their sparring arena a look .

She knows he’s laughing at her, it’s not a tough nut to crack, but it still makes her livid. A lot of things about Shadowbeard have been making her furious lately – the smiles he’s been giving her whenever she voices an opinion of hers, the things he’s been explaining whenever she hovers around him and his maps, just the general attitude shift that she hasn't noticed happening and now this.

He’s been acting more like Zol and Tim for a long time now and he isn't supposed to! They're her crewmates, but he’s a captain, and the last time she got attached to a captain-

Lizzie breathes in and lunges, getting low and knocking Shadowbeard down. Using anger and not letting it use her has been Lizzie’s whole thing ever since she and Zol wrestled for the first time.

Shadowbeard almost expects her lunge, it seems, and gets her in a hold in seconds. Lizzie refuses to tap out and manages to turn the tides in her favor for a moment… enough to fucking bite him again, like years ago before he slams her into the deck and Zol calls for a win.

Lizzie notices him eyeing the bite mark on his palm and laughs, not even trying to be polite.

*

“Didn’t I say no already?”

“You’re such a bastard!” Why is Lizzie even here? She’s been trying to convince Shadowbeard to train her for like twenty minutes at this point and it’s clear the bastard won’t budge. So why is she here? “You clearly have the time to watch, why not participate?”

“Different things.”

“Oh, come on! If you train me you can bet on me! I’m second best after Zol and I know no one’s allowed to bet on her , so I'm your only chance.”

“Fucking hell-” he sighs loudly and massages his temples. Lizzie has that effect on people, she knows. “I teach you for a week. If by the end of the week you can’t beat Zoloto in a one-on-one – I'm done.”

She knew  that would work.

Chapter Text

In the last moment, Lizzie slows her punch down into something more like a smack. Shadowbeard still reels from it, stumbling backwards. His cheek blooms red. Lizzie pauses, not pressing the advantage – part of her thinks this is a trick to get her to come closer; another smaller part is getting more and more worried. Shadowbeard is distant today, unbalanced and unfocused, maybe half as good as usual. He still makes Lizzie sweat with an effort to get him somehow, anyhow , but it’s noticeably less than normal.

“What’s on your mind?” She finally tries when the pause stretches too far. “Are you going to fight me or what?”

Riling him up is the best way to get his attention and it works even now despite being very obvious. He snaps his head towards her, torn away from his thoughts, but they don’t continue their sparring. Instead he watches her for a moment and then sighs. 

Something is definitely wrong.

Thing is, Lizzie knows of at least ten things that could cause this and that’s if she’s going after sure facts, those problems that are real without a doubt. There’s much more if she takes into account all of the possible problems, gossip and predictions, things they haven’t checked yet or can’t check at all. Shadowbeard has been very levelheaded for the entire time she’s known him, but the same old shit can get on anybody’s nerves, especially with their crew’s rapid growth in the past year and Navy’s ever-growing pressure.

“A lot’s on my mind. Why’re you asking?” He finally answers with a fucking question and Lizzie grimaces. They step back into sparring, exchanging blows in a much more rehearsed manner – Shadowbeard starts and she follows, knowing his patterns. He wants to talk then, if he’s channeling her into something rather mindless.

Annoying bastard. What kinda answer does he think she’s gonna give him?

“Why d’you think? Obviously I don’t wanna know, that’s why I'm asking. Isn't that how it works?”

“Fair enough.” Strike, evasion. She actually almost misses it and frowns – should practice a little more.

Shadowbeard sighs, clearly noting it too. “Navy’s on my mind, girl. Same old.”

“Why?”

“You’re a woman grown and yet still ask questions like a toddler, why, why, why…” She goes out of her way to punch him where she can reach and he laughs. “Joking, joking… They've been very brave recently. Bold. I'm sure you know.”

She does know. There are more injuries and more damage with every encounter, more people die and more people leave, forgetting their oaths. Lizzie doesn’t think they need these sorts of sailors in the crew anyway, those who run and hide as soon as things get even a little bit hard, but she understands where the urge comes from. Most people joining Shadowbeard are looking for easy money and power, and of course they leave once they realize it’s not as easy as it seems.

“It worries me. Times are changing, but our crew is still the same. And it shows.”

Lizzie sidesteps him, raising her arms in a block. Hits still hurt, rehearsed or not Shadowbeard doesn’t ever hold back on her, but she doesn’t lower her block anyway and counts it a win. She’s not exactly a hand-to-hand fighter, she’s accepted that long ago, so any small victory is worth celebrating. From behind her raised arms she sends him a look.

“We follow the code, you know this yourself, old man. You enforce it , I don’t have to tell you, do I? The only way to change would be to forget it and be like the new wave.”

“Not the only way. We could go back further. They already call us old and me the last of The Pirate Lords ,” the smirk on his lips is wry. “They're asking for it so hard, we can indulge them, don’t you think?”

Lizzie swallows down a jolt of excitement.

“How?”

*

An armada. Not a single crew manning a single ship, even if it’s big, but a crew spanning an entire fleet, all loyal to one captain. To one lord, the only one still standing. Remembering the old traditions where the lord part mattered more than pirate, where it meant something besides being a pain in the Navy’s righteous ass.

It’s ambitious. Gods, it’s so ambitious it takes everything from Lizzie not to laugh in the old man’s face when she hears it. It’s so ambitious she can’t sleep in the coming days, her mind unwillingly turning back to his words over and over again. An armada. A fleet. So much power, and all of it standing against the suffocating Navy forces. What an idiotic, ambitious, wonderful idea that is.

It won’t happen fast, it will take years if they’re lucky, but Lizzie can already imagine it. Can taste it, like salt on the wind. 

It helps, of course, that Shadowbeard has had more than one ship under his command for a long time. They have not been anything more than guard dogs, sitting outside of his ports and bays, intercepting the Navy's interference in Shadowbeard’s business, but Lizzie figures they can make the transition into an army with time and effort. It’s ambitious, but by gods, it’s not impossible.

She’s the first one to be told, turns out. It warms something in her, fills her chest with something familiar, soft and big – so big it’s almost painful. She joins Shadowbeard when he talks with Zol, throwing ideas against her wisdom and experience, dissecting them until what remains is not wishful thinking, but a solid plan. Lizzie stays silent through most of it, simply watching and taking notes. It doesn’t really occur to her to ask what she is doing here.

Jean and Roswell learn of it next, together – Shadowbeard calls them in late one evening and for Lizzie it’s a shocking wake up call. Both of them are sporting hickeys, though Jean’s are a little more visible on their pale and way too skinny neck. They show them off too, once they notice Lizzie staring, and laugh when she scowls. That’s simultaneously the friendliest and the most annoying Jean has ever been towards her and she doesn’t like it.

Jean just smirks at her, like the bastard they are. The smart bastard they are. Unfortunately.

“Glaring issue: supplies. Where the fuck are we gonna get everything we need for a whole armada, Captain?”

Jean, of course, is the one to raise concern over the idea, in their usual asshole way, and they're right too, which only annoys Lizzie more. They will need full crews for each ship and they will need ways of communication and they will need a place to regroup, to rest, to resupply. They're right when they say it cannot all be done in a single village for more than two or three ships, the way they’ve been doing, not on the level Shadowbeard wants and it’s all true.

It’s one of the first serious problems they run into, but definitely not the last.

*

Preparations grow tedious fast. Lizzie has never been particularly interested in supplying and logistics, especially not at this scale; her involvement in that side of ship-life has always been minimal. But she’s decent with numbers, passable at talking to people and pretty good at snapping orders on the move, so she gets the dubious honor of helping Zol with their ambitious expansion.

It’s not about just getting stuff they need and bolting, not anymore. Now they need to know where they can come back, they need to know who will be down to working with pirates as is, who will hike a price up for silence and who will sell them out anyway. They need to know which routes to take in case of emergencies and which to avoid, where Navy patrols are frequent and where they don’t bother going.

Lizzie kind of loves spying on the Navy, which makes the mapping a little more fun – even if she has to deal with Jean the whole time.

The two of them get into a lot of fights on those slow cruises. Not physical, not even really screaming matches – just brutal arguments that turn into insults in moments. Most of what they say doesn’t really stick, which Lizzie is thankful for when she isn't so angry she can barely think, but it does slow them down from time to time.

Their biggest point of tension is the lack of any sort of base. It makes Jean’s work harder, they say, planning routes with no destination is horrible, they say – it repeats and repeats until Lizzie is fed up enough to say something back… and then they go back and forth. It happens almost everyday, and at times Zoloto has to physically force them apart to cool.

When they get back to their main crew several months later, the first thing Lizzie does is corner Shadowbeard and complain at him. Unbeknownst to her, Jean does the same thing as soon as they’re able to.

Shadowbeard calls a meeting to determine where they should make their hideout that same evening. It’s the first time Lizzie and Jean feel smugly satisfied about something at the same time.

*

“To the new era!”

Shadowbeard lifts a mug of ale high and his circle raise their own in turn, gathered round the table with a map laid out on top, the biggest, most detailed one Lizzie has ever seen. Captain Rose might have had one very similar, but she can hardly remember it now.

One of the islands is marked with their jolly roger, their soon-to-be home, their hideout – truly, the beginning of the new era. Their era.

Lizzie doesn’t get a drink no matter how much Shadowbeard glowers at Zoloto, who is insistent on not giving booze to children to a ridiculous degree, or how much Jean laughs, wheezing into Roswell’s unmoving shoulder, muttering something or other about her age. She genuinely doesn’t know who annoys her more, so she just stares down each and every one of them in turn.

She still doesn’t get a drink and Jean only laughs it up harder, almost falling over. Lightweight.

At least the old man seems as annoyed with this ban on drinking as she is.

*

“Have you heard? Captain’s been looking for you,” Lizzie barely manages to get off the ship when a new-ish guy approaches her. Skin blue, slightly wet in that way all Undersea people sport, white hair tied up a little messily. She prepares to tell him exactly where he and the captain can both fuck off to, but no sounds make it past her lips. Guy’s smiling – Caspian, she thinks, his name is Caspian – but something dark and tired shines through in his eyes.

She’s been silent too long because he sighs a little. Lizzie bristles.

“I just got here, for fuck’s sake. What does he want?”

Caspian’s lips twitch like he’s trying to hold off a smile… or force it. Lizzie isn't quite sure and she doesn’t waste time dissecting it, moving past him. He wants to talk – he can walk while they do it. She’s too tired to stand around and yap, especially where she can be roped into some other work. Their small dock, hidden from sight by rock formations, is always alive these days, people are always moving and for once she could not care less for any of it.

“He wanted you to be present at an execution.”

Lizzie stops short so abruptly she almost falls. Damn the ground that doesn’t ever fucking move like a good shipboard does.

Execution. A rare thing. It’s always been rare – Shadowbeard isn't fond of killing his own crew even if they did something to deserve it, unless they're stupid enough to try to fight him afterwards. There hasn't been any outright executions since they established their hideout, though there have been some duels and fighting that had to be resolved – they now had a list of rules because of it. Almost laws. It made Lizzie’s skin crawl a little, but she had to admit it was necessary with such a large group of people involved.

“Why?”

Who, she means. For what, she means. Is it someone close, a betrayal? Or someone she doesn't even know the name of, being fatally stupid? She has to know.

“Didn’t catch a name. Someone new, recent.” Tension unwinds in Lizzie’s chest. “Shadowbeard found him in a house on Bird’s Wing. Him and a woman he was… trying to force.”

There is no need for such careful language, Lizzie is not stupid nor is she a child. But she doesn’t say that, in a rare display of tact – Caspian is the one who looks most uncomfortable with what he’s saying and she doesn’t really want to make it worse. After all, they are still walking and he’s following her without complaint.

“What did he want me there for though?” Lizzie wouldn't be the one executing the bastard. She didn’t do that kind of thing ever and more so didn’t have the right. No matter how much Shadowbeard taught her and how close she was to him, she was still a kid he sparred with out of boredom. She doesn’t have any sort of illusions about that, even if sometimes a little recognition for her efforts seems alluring.

Caspian stares at her dumbfounded, stopped in his tracks by her question. Lizzie quirks a brow at him, feeling the skin under her eyepatch itch at the motion. For some reason, his stare is uncomfortable, like he is seeing right through her… and is shocked at what he finds.

“What?”

He flinches just a little and shrugs.

“He just wanted you to be there. Makes sense if you ask me.”

She isn’t asking, not really, but he continues nonetheless.

“You are his… heir, of sorts. The person he’s raising to be a pirate lord. Next to him or after him, I'm not sure, but…”

“What?!”

It does make sense, but Lizzie can’t stop the question. It’s already on her tongue before she even starts to think.

It’s ridiculous. She knew she wasn't a stranger to Shadowbeard, but she assumed this was him doing the same thing Arlin did. Parenting, of sorts. Taking her under his wing out of a sense of pity or some sort of duty. And fondness too, after some time, of course, but… not this. It hits her like the heaviest punch Zoloto can pack.

But it does make sense. The lessons. The sparring that would go on for so long not because of fighting but because of talking. Gods, it makes sense!

It’s so big that Lizzie can’t breathe for a moment. The beating of her heart in her chest is deafening as she keeps thinking back on everything. When did he decide she could be someone like that? When did she go from a girl his crew saved to… whatever this is?

When did he see the potential in her? Was she living up to it?

How come she had to have a new guy point it out for her to figure shit out?

It takes a moment to place the feeling, to understand it, and then it hits her all over again – she’s happy.

She’s really, really happy. It bubbles like that weird sweet cider Ros likes so much.

There is a smile on her face, she feels it. Big and hungry for that unexpected future only just now unfolding in front of her. Caspian takes a step back, badly hiding his worry and she just shakes her head, unable and unwilling to explain.

She is more than a charity project. She has known for a while that she is much more, that she’s a member of this crew like any other and that she earns her keep, but a future Pirate Lord ? Not just approved, but trained by Shadowbeard?

That’s more than just being someone .

And it feels warm. From her cheeks down to her feet and deep, in her very bones. It makes her giddy.

“Are you alright?” Caspian finally asks and Lizzie nods, covering her mouth with her hand in a halfhearted attempt to hide her joy. No matter what they guy did, being this delighted about the death of a fellow pirate is kind of bad manners… which she wouldn't care about in the presence of anyone, but fresh new fishies who just made their oaths.

“I’m fine. How did it go?”

“I wasn't there,” Caspian tells it to her with just a hint of a lilt to his voice, like he thought she was being stupid but he was too polite to say it. Lizzie rolls her eyes.

“I’m aware. What did you hear about it?”

“Not much… Shadowbeard and Zoloto were the only people present for the trial and it went very quick. I think she cut his head off.”

“Yeah, that sounds like Zol… did the old man say anything else afterwards about me? Does he still want to see me or..?”

Caspian thinks for barely a fraction of a second and then shakes his head.

“I haven’t been told anything. He’s at the house now, Zol’s been talking to the crew.”

Then he probably doesn’t want to see her. Shadowbeard likes his privacy more than anything after making these kinds of tough decisions, Lizzie knows the drill. She’ll visit him later in the day or in the morning, she’ll distract him and he’ll get over it eventually. After all, he doesn’t even mourn good crew for very long when they're killed, this guy won’t even take up a whole day. That’s how pirate life goes.

“What are you still doing here?” She looks at Caspian again, who blinks at her in return like this is the exact place he needs to be right now.

“I don’t want to deal with Zol and the others. Lots of people aren’t taking Captain’s decision well.”

“But not you, huh?”

Caspian just shrugs.

“I don’t like it, but what else is there to do? It’s not like they didn’t tell us exactly how this crew works before we agreed to be a part of it…”

He still looks uncomfortable and… Lizzie understands it, really. She has seen this only once before, when some sailor thought he was smarter than Shadowbeard and Navy both and betrayed him, so she remembers well how unsettled it made her feel. She couldn’t even pinpoint the reason, the same as Caspian just said – she knows how this crew operates – she just felt unbalanced for a while.

“Let’s get a drink.”

He stares at her in surprise and she stares back until he gives in.

*

Caspian turns out to be a great guy with a great fucking tolerance for drinks. He holds alcohol better than Lizzie, which shouldn’t be a surprise considering how recently she started drinking along with everybody, but she’s still impressed. 

Their conversation veers wildly from topic to topic, losing any sort of logic to the drunken buzz pretty early on, but Lizzie enjoys it anyway.

She wakes up in the morning with a terrible crick in her neck, having fallen asleep on Caspian’s uncomfortably wet shoulder, and it doesn’t take long for happiness to set in anew. She’s even smiling when she goes to bother Shadowbeard and only cringes a little bit when he laughs way too fucking loud at how shit she looks. It’s not like he’s much better!

*

“Oh, come on, you cowards!” Lizzie laughs, snapping her whip with a crack and watching an unlucky shooter fall into the water. Try to aim at her, eh? She doesn’t think so. With one swift move she coils her whip back up, holding it ready, and looks around quick.

The bullet went past her wide enough to hit someone else, another poor Navy bastard clutching their shoulder and looking up at her approach with fear in their wide, light eyes. Lizzie kicks them in the face, knocking them out with a crunch and a sense of satisfaction. She doesn’t like to kill and the more people lay down and stay down without needing to be dealt with radically the better.

She still has her sword in her hand, of course. Not liking to do something doesn’t mean she won’t.

There’s a lot of Navy soldiers, but most of them aren't that well-trained. They come at her and the crew in waves, trying to push them off the Navy ship and prevent more people from boarding, but it’s not working very well. It doesn’t take more than a couple kicks and punches to send every single one of them over the railing, especially when they come barreling at her all on their own. She’s not coming away unscathed from this; these fuckers are not skilled, but half of them are big enough that it doesn’t matter – they just rush her like stubborn bulls and leave bruises – but it’s still almost too easy. Lizzie doubts they have anything of value on the ship, whether it be gold or information, but it’s a little too late to stop their advance.

There’s another splash as one more soldier goes into the water and Lizzie spares a second to catch her breath.

In the next moment the entire right side of her ribcage flares up in pain like a bonfire. Literally , there’s fire behind the well-aimed hit and it burns through her clothes, going straight for her skin. She can almost feel the sizzling as she collides with the mast face-first, going down on the deck and rolling with the force of the impact. 

Holy shit , it fucking hurts.

Lizzie squints, gathering herself back and up and trying to stand – it’s not just a sailor. Not one of the soldiers that have been trying and failing to take her down. This is someone else. Some thing else.

The sun is behind Lizzie, but looking up at this person still makes her eye sting from the brightness, watering. They're burning up, aflame in heat and it feels angry; their steps are leaving scorch marks on the deck and don’t they know not to light up open fire at sea, it’s all wood here…

Lizzie coughs, forcing herself to breathe, reminding herself: what punched her can be punched back twice as hard… and the feeling disappears. Fear dissolves and Lizzie feels that familiar tingle of magic dissipating with it, harmless now that she fought through it.

It’s a woman in front of her, of the same height and, at a glance, age, but built way tougher. Her hair is flames, tightly woven braids burning bright with magic, her clothes are white and so is her skin. It would be pale, Lizzie thinks, if it wasn't shining with light from the inside out like a beacon. A pin sparkles brightly on her chest, a bird and a sun – Ferin pin. There are specks of flames on the knuckles of her clenched fists and yeah, Lizzie definitely has a burn.

And will have more if she doesn’t fucking move ..!

This woman is like a dog about to bite – completely silent as she goes after Lizzie. She doesn’t seem to care about the damage to her own ship, about burning holes she is leaving behind with every punch Lizzie evades, with every punch that shatters wood instead of her bones. Lizzie goes on defensive and hates every second of it, but it’s not like she has any sort of opening here. The tides of the battle are changing all around her with the arrival of Navy reinforcements and pulling attention from someone that strong is the best thing she can do right now. Let her crew regroup while she fights this fire-demon-monster-woman and maybe they'll be able to help.

Or her spell runs out. Lizzie hasn't studied magic a whole lot, not more than what she’d seen from Caspian and Ros, Shadowbeard on occasion, but she knows spells like these don’t last long unless you are unimaginably strong, on the level of a Pirate Lord of old or a Vice-Admiral at least. And this woman, girl even, is not that. Lizzie would have heard of her if she was.

This Ferin is strong, but Lizzie is faster. They run around the entire length of the ship before her steam seems to finally run out. In a single moment she goes from flames and power setting down in tingles on Lizzie’s skin to a girl around the same age, looking rather worn out.

“Aw, tired already?”

Ferin gets out a vial, trying to not break eye-contact, but Lizzie has more pressing issues. She glances sideways, never fully taking her eyes off the soldier, and finds Caspian’s blue skin… on the other – their – ship.

It’s just her then.

Lizzie doesn’t wait for the Ferin to resume her attack, instead running to the side of the ship, grabbing a sail rope and jumping, leaving the fight and the Navy behind. She cuts the rope with a practiced ease and rolls on her own familiar deck, coming up next to Caspian who doesn’t even look shocked anymore, just resigned.

When she looks back, Ferin-girl is clearly pissed, one leg on the rail and ready to go after her… but she doesn’t. Lizzie doesn’t know why she keeps watching, but she does and it lets her see how this girl, not a simple sailor judging by her regalia, looks down at her people in the water and clearly takes a calming breath, beginning to speak to someone behind her. Lizzie can’t quite hear the kind of orders she’s giving out, but she can guess.

“These waters have sharks in it! You better hurry up, Navy-girl!”

Lizzie makes her voice carry and eyes, blue even from this distance, burn into her with wonderful rage.