Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

Jeong Yunho had a fierce hatred for forced endings, among other, less depressing things.

He secured the bronze clasp of his messenger bag, fingertips grazing coarse brown fabric and rough paper edges as the overflowing rolls of parchment crammed together. He couldn’t afford to leave any behind, and if he had it his way, he would never be within these four walls again nor any other building in the town of Nestone.

Death was perhaps the most conventionally notable of his list of hated things, however his hatred for forced endings had been around a little longer, planted there at the top the moment his mother, Jeong Sun-young, had been taken from their home and her ending forced before eleven-year-old Yunho could say goodbye. Then they’d taken him, too. Hours and weeks and years since had been spent asking countless questions, a few of the most prominent being: Am I like her? Will I be like her? How can I stop being like her?

Her ending was the one thing he never questioned in relation to himself. He could not and would not share it with her.

That was precisely why he was risking his life breaking out of Nestone’s Navy base, one of the many across the Hala Kingdom, ignorant of that notable factor of death and haunted by another much greater. Technically, he didn’t think he was obligated to stay anymore, his punishment long fulfilled, but the Commander would disagree. He didn’t plan to stick around and double check.

Yunho’s thin features twisted into a grimace as he hoisted the bag’s strap over his head, the parchment rustling far too loudly in the silent room of sleeping sailors, and forced his feet into his worn leather boots. Scuff marks littered the edges, inflicted some time over the last eight years by the corner of his bedframe and the heavy wooden door and the solid stone floor as half-known faces had dragged him along, but he could not afford to make a sound today. They would torment him here no longer.

If he did not leave now, he would meet his very own forced ending at the barrel of an Admiral’s gun within the week, and he refused to die for a crime he did not commit without allowing himself a chance at the freedom he’d persevered for.

Yunho glanced towards his bag once more, checking the clasp once, twice, fiddling absently with the loose thread along the seam. The maps inside it, both those he’d drawn out and slaved over for hours without benefit and those he’d stolen from the chests and woven baskets of the other cartographers, would not leave his sight without their loss having value.

Holding his breath, Yunho crept past the remaining few beds to the door, dragging his foot slowly towards the frame on the other side until it clicked quietly into place behind him. The plan ran on a loop in his head, at once controlled and uncontrollable, as though he could merely will it into existence as he slipped across the quad. He tucked himself into the familiar shadows of each building, shivering against the fresh cold of January.

He would leave the base under the secrecy of blind spots and guard rotations and run like the wind. He would slip into the streets and blend into the crowd with the ease of an ordinary man on his evening wander home. He would sneak onto a small, unassuming merchant ship, or bargain for a place if necessary, and sail away to a new place and become a new person.

Yunho tripped over his own feet and scuffed his shoes, the scratch of the gravel echoing and his tall body careening into a sphere of lamplight, directly in front of the guards stood several paces from the side gate.

There was one, singular moment where Yunho cursed the sky and the sea and his own life force before he was running for dear life.

He took off, stumbling into a messy sprint, gangly limbs windmilling and driving him forwards in a zigzag as shouts of his name ricocheted off the walls. He hadn’t met the eyes of the guards pursuing him, but they all knew who he was, everyone bloody did, because no one would be foolish enough to run from the Hala Navy unless they had a death wish or were close enough to one that it wouldn’t matter either way. Many would assume that Yunho had both.

The bag jostled against his hip, threatening to spill his precious maps across the paving stones, and Yunho gripped it in both hands as best he could without crinkling the parchment. Cursed and prayed it remained shut as he stumbled through the narrow unguarded slot at the gates and reached for the dark streets, pulling himself into the evening crowd.

His own sharp breathing echoed off the backs of the bodies closest, and he was all too aware of how obnoxious it was. The crowd’s current moved him along like a churning wave and he clung to the actions of men and women in their drunken stupors, their laughter loud and boisterous and sending his ears ringing. His heart hammered against his chest, in time with his feet as they hammered against the cobblestones, the little grip on his soles struggling for purchase.

Golden lamp light cut across his vision, the dingy bars a kaleidoscopic blur, unknown flat noses and thin lips and startled eyes in brief focus as he slid between the warm mass of bodies. Yunho met several grunts as he barrelled forwards, shoving people out of his path with the clumsy force of tipping unbalanced, and tilted through the centre of intoxicated fights and shady deals both breaking out and apart in a chaotic scramble at the sound of heavy Navy boots. Overlapping music fought against the noise of his pursuers, but it could not take their weight off the cobblestones nor Yunho’s mind, so the rhythmic stampede continued on and on, surrounding him, bleeding into the pulse at his throat.

Yunho bent down into a hunch, trying to put his mess of brown hair below the others surrounding him, and hoped it was enough to hide him. His slim frame and pale, unblemished skin were a far cry from the burly, sun-beaten sailors and the sooty strangers of the town’s alleys both. The crowd thinned as he carried himself across the harbour’s edge, towards the rows of anchored ships, and he belatedly slowed his steps in time with those around him. He clenched the strap of his bag in his hands, the edges cutting into his palms, and risked a hesitant turn to look behind him as he panted.

Every head in the crowd mingled and merged, a steady tide of shifting figures, the presence of Yunho’s pursuers only evident in a few sudden gaps in the centre behind the blockade of people. As he had hoped, there were many either dazed or willing enough to intercept on the Navy’s incessant marching, their violent egos and demands. That, or there were several criminals amongst the crowd being apprehended for the deals he’d broken up—bribery, betting, fake concoctions of magic, goodness knows what else—distracting the sailors. Good riddance.

Yunho let out a heavy exhale, squeezing his eyes shut. His mind tripped and spluttered with adrenaline, caught on the sharp scent of oranges that was flooding out of one of the bars nearby and enveloping his senses. He breathed it in, continued walking backwards, stare shifting side to side to scout for merchant ships.

His back slammed straight into a solid object.

By the time he worked out what said object was, his body had already gone rigid, betrayed him. Too late, Yunho pushed forward to step away, stopped by an arm hooked tight around his waist, locking them in place together and wedging his hands down against his bag. The stranger said nothing, only tensed harshly when Yunho grasped at empty thoughts and attempted, to no avail, to force himself away. His hands clawed at nothing, and this stranger did not so much as falter with every kick to his legs.

His thoughts echoed nothing but oranges, oranges, as a puff of breath landed on his neck, hot and gross against his skin over the collar of his loose beige shirt. Yunho shivered and his face twisted into a grimace and his hands tightened, tightened around the edge of his bags, fiddled with the loose thread until a piece snapped off. He was done, he knew it. He was meeting the beginning of his end. Yunho swallowed against the growing lump in his throat.

Only, when he looked down, it wasn’t the dirty, fitted jacket of a Navy sailor donning the arm of his captor, but worn brown leather, a sliver of sun-kissed wrist visible between the sleeve’s end and black-gloved hands. The voice that met his ears was not demanding, but low and rough, far too close and crawling between a growl and a purr.

“What are you plotting, hm?”

A damp cloth smothered Yunho’s mouth and nose.

Chapter Text

An overwhelming feeling of nausea took hold of Yunho before he opened his eyes. His body, falling, back and forth, like the hard floor beneath him had taken to mimicking the rocking sickness in his stomach.

He squeezed his eyelids tightly shut and rolled over onto his side, reaching for a moment of sanity before he was forced to face another day of the same gruelling training, the same sneering faces. They must’ve hit his head this time, or perhaps he’d hit it as he fell from the bunk. His ears rushed with muffled static, and he was bound to throw up if he wasn’t careful when rising. Familiar hard floor. Rare, unlucky, but no less familiar rocking sickness.

A very different, cut-off, blank sort of sleep.

Yunho startled awake and bolted up from the floor, his boots stuttering against the unfamiliar planks so unlike the dusty stone they were used to, straightening himself out rigid like a lightning rod and tilting upright as the room spun. Crumpled swiftly back down to the floor when a harsher pain split his skull. He curled himself into a ball unwillingly, knees to his chest, clutching at the top of his skull with trembling fingers through matted hair. Darkness spun beneath his eyelids.

“Doesn’t seem like a sailor,” someone said. A voice emerging through the pounding in his head. Yunho was familiar with the tone of it, had expected it, the coarse mockery, the edge of humour unstifled, but it still pierced his ears like a dart and left a hollow pit in the depths of his stomach.

Reality came to him in fragments. Splinters digging into the pale skin of his shoulder, chills skittering over his skin, the slow drawl of a new voice. Silence hovered like a cloud around him. Within it, lingering, a hint of sour orange, sticky in his throat. Memories of its origin seeped through his head, slow and syrupy.

Yunho pulled a sharp breath into his lungs and froze. Even as he held his body stubbornly shock-still, it rocked steadily, side to side. The world was spinning and swaying like its own hallucination. He peeled his eyes open to stare with acute focus at a wooden knot in the unknown wall. Watched as the height of it slid up and down. It took a great amount of effort to keep his string of curses internal.

Yunho had seen enough plans and pictures to know that he was somewhere low in the belly of a ship. He was not naïve enough to think it was docked. He was going to be sick.
Routine came back to him like a promise, and he pulled his shaking hands from his head, eased himself up slowly.

“Ah, there you are,” another said in a smug drawl, a different voice to the first.

A cavern of curved oak wood arched around him, rows of brown planks along the walls and flat ceiling and beneath his sprawled legs, meeting at the shadowed edges. Yellow-orange light crawled across the floor from the opposite side of the room, on him and the open space around him like a spotlight, bronzing the pale skin of his arms and face and picking out the lighter strands of his mussed brown hair.

Yunho sighed. Being in the spotlight had only ever been the first step to danger and misery.

Beams stretched over his head, one conveniently above him, and Yunho tightened the hold over his facial features to stop himself glaring or cringing or both. No wonder they’d been questioning his status as part of the Navy. He fell into a husk of himself, willing his stare vacant and expression blank, too aware of the soot on his shallow cheeks and the gravel and dust staining his wrinkled shirt grey. Dark, invisible corners called like a familiar friend, but glaringly out of place was that slight glow. He needed to know how long he’d been here, laid out, watched, seen. He did not want to know, not one bit.

He truly had the worst luck of anyone he’d ever known. Granted, he had not known many people, but he would still say as much regardless.

In front of him, crates laid haphazardly, and rough rope snaked through and sat waiting in coils. Beyond them, two figures, side-by-side in a framed doorway. Illuminated by the shrieking golden lantern grating against Yunho’s ears, every swing sending their shadows reaching for his body. Not a merchant ship, then. That sickly feeling sloshed in his stomach and crawled up his throat.

The first figure was perhaps everything Yunho wasn’t, and his silhouette was so much like one of the more violent Navy brutes that he startled. Broad shoulders and thick, muscled arms caught the lamp light, tanned skin ridged as he pulled his arms tighter across his chest. But he could not have been Navy. The platinum blonde mullet roughed up in a mess on his head was far too eccentric, curling down the shaved sides towards his ears, the right pierced with a small hoop. A black waistcoat stretched across his torso, a sliver of skin visible above low-waisted trousers and Chelsea boots. Under Yunho’s acknowledgement his sharp jaw remained tense, but his dark eyes narrowed, sweeping up and down. The promise of aggression Yunho had been prepared for was missing. The alternative—a single arched brow slashed through with a pale pink scar, pursed, tight lips—was much worse. Yunho gulped.

The other commanded Yunho’s attention in an entirely different way. His stare poured into Yunho’s dazed searching ready and waiting like a black cat ready to pounce, eyes ringed in coal. His black hair grazed his shoulders, a frankly absurd amount of silver chains glinting in the dark coal of it, and as he tilted his head against Yunho’s assessment, draping bangs fell to frame his Cheshire cat grin. He rested against his companion, a hand curled round one thick, bare shoulder, but the line of his slender body was posed to make himself seem taller than he was.

A series of daggers were tucked into the black fabric sash high over his waist. The point of a large cutlass dug into the wooden planks lining the floor, held loosely between his larger companion’s fingers. Every time either shifted, it sent spots of light dancing on the walls, like a laser in this game of cat and mouse they were all playing with their eyes. Both were less stern, less aggressive than Yunho had anticipated once he had wits about him, and more dangerous. More dangerous than the Hala Navy.

“Pirates,” Yunho muttered bitterly, sighing. His body sagged, and his heart sped up in his chest. “Of course I’ve ended up with pirates.”

They only stood up straighter, tipped their chins up, like he was singing their praises.

The blond pirate sauntered to the crate closest to them, his lips spreading into a dangerous bow. “Not your first time?” he assumed. “You should be grateful it’s not on violent terms, this time, then. Welcome to our ship. We call her the Wanderlust. Us two oversee the guests, and we’re the best company you’ll find here, though don’t let Captain know I’ve said that. He believes we’re all charming in our own ways.”

There was a beat of silence, a harrowing muffled slush from the ocean, before the smaller one snorted in spite of Yunho's silence.

“Charming. I like that, very smooth,” he said, smirking. Though, to Yunho’s surprise, he turned away from taunting him entirely. “You have fully rehearsed this, haven’t you, you twit. When I said that I didn’t mean you were supposed to make yourself sound like some evil supervillain.”

The first pirate glared, in Yunho’s objective opinion, not unlike some evil supervillain.

His stare darted between the two of them, wary. Bright, blinding spots were appearing in the corners of his eyes from the flame dancing in the doorway to outline their silhouettes, but he did not waver. He near-enough stopped breathing with the effort of it. His grimace, however, must not have been as internal as he’d aimed to make it, because the smaller pirate let out a sudden laugh the moment their eyes met, wild and cackling like a wretched crow.

“San, can’t I have this one?” he said, breathless. “He’ll be a lot more fun than Sangie was when he arrived, I’m certain.”

Yunho recoiled, horrified, churning with thought and worry and whatever else, watched as he bent down and reappeared with a bowl in his hands, reeling back and half-convinced he was about to either be burned alive or melted into some acidified goo—except the bowl was swiftly forgotten, remained as low as the pirate’s hip. Instead, both his and Yunho’s attention were shifted to the large, muscular man—San—spluttering like a petulant child.

“But—You—Wooyoung,” he seemed to struggle for letters, then for words, and Yunho slowly descended into madness as he frowned. “You said I could introduce this one. You didn’t give me any terms and conditions. It’s my turn to welcome the guest after you almost scared off Yeosang, you promised!”

Introduce? Welcome? How hard had Yunho hit his head?

“Oh, come on, you’re still on about that?” Wooyoung groaned, loud and dramatic and false. “That was months ago, and Yeosang’s still here, aren’t they? You wouldn’t have managed it any better!”

“Says who?”

“Uh, says me. Says Hongjoong, probably, if I asked.”

“Seonghwa wouldn’t agree with you.”

His threw his arms up and latched onto San’s arm, his loose shirt slipping lopsided from one tanned shoulder. “Seonghwa never agrees with anyone or anything if so much as a bloody object could be offended by it!”

The blond shook him off. Wooyoung bared his teeth like a rabbit animal. The bowl teetered back and forth, its contents threatening to spill over the sides, and poisoned or not, Yunho’s stomach began tearing itself into ribbons. He almost considered interrupting their catty fight to request it like a fool—that, or to snatch the bowl from his hands of his own accord, now he gathered it was not acidic or burning in their insistence to throw it around. Almost. Had he not been busy pinching himself repeatedly on the forearm to ensure this ridiculous scene wasn’t something he’d managed to conjure. That would’ve been more of a concern than the severely pressing matter of it refusing to disappear. He was equally almost too bewildered to be puzzled at why his heart was still unpunctured behind uncracked ribs and able to keep on beating as rapidly as it was.

Yunho unclenched his fists as though they were an entirely disconnected addition to himself and stood. Neither of the men reacted. They were too preoccupied with a childish routine of push and shove, and looked as deranged as Yunho had known pirates would be, even if murderous had been replaced by downright mad.

It was only when San drooped, seeming to resolve himself to sulking the rest of the feud away, and Wooyoung’s lopsided shirt had almost entirely fallen down his chest, that they turned back to Yunho and found him with a coil of rope curled around forearm and a whipping end in his palm.

He was aware he looked stupid. He did not know how to use a whip. But they did not know that he did not know, and there was hardly anything else he could gather to defend himself in a more menacing way, alright?

The dark-haired pirate stepped forward towards Yunho only to dig a final elbow into his larger companion’s side, hard. San yelped, high-pitched and unexpected, and Yunho flinched like he’d been shot and scrambled to recover the rope as it loosened.

“Honestly, don’t look so appalled,” Wooyoung said. “I’m not so bad. You’re in much better hands than you could be in. I even made you pea soup, see.”

He lifted the bowl up in offering, ignoring several dribbles of thick greenness sliding down the side and over the silver rings on his middle finger and thumb. Yunho narrowed his eyes at it.
Wooyoung cocked his head, that clean, cat-like smirk returning to his face, ignorant of his dishevelled appearance, “I suppose the Navy do not tell you we have personalities, do they?”

“What do you want with me?” Yunho replied.

The pirate sighed. “You were a Navy mapmaker, correct? Before you ran away?”

Yunho tightened the rope between his fingers. “I wasn’t in the Navy.”

The pair exchanged a glance. Yunho almost recoiled from how blatant, how knowing it was. Like they knew him. San looked at him, really looked at him, until Yunho’s skin was tingling with phantoms of it, and smiled.

He’d tried to disguise his identity before leaving the base—a dirty shirt smeared with alley dust, straight slacks, no jacket—and it wasn’t like his figure gave anything away. Even the maps did not mean sailor, not when he’d been going for the look of common petty thief, trying his luck to avoid unwanted attention.

Yunho sat up straighter. A higher angle changed nothing—it was still a strange, soft sort of smile, one that Yunho doubted would’ve fallen in line with the intimidation of this encounter even if not for the dimples indenting his cheeks. Commander Sullivan had smiled softly at Yunho when they’d first met, too. He’d grown bored of the deception within a year. But even before then, though Yunho was too young and sheltered to recognise it, there had been a pre-emptive callous edge twitching at the corners of his mouth.

When San spoke, there was not an ounce of falsity nor callousness in his voice. “We have our own runaway. You are not as unusual as you think.”

Yunho waited a moment, two. The pirate showed no sign of lying. Then he slumped, feet heavy on the dusty floorboards, in the middle of the Hala Sea. It was not from relief.

For those two moments, the word ‘unusual’ was interchanged for the word ‘alone.’ He had never heard of a runaway who had lasted more than two weeks. A small glimmer of something he could not afford buried into a tight, distant crevice within himself. That was all he allowed it to be. Ultimately, Yunho’s mind was a rickety waterwheel, turning the same thoughts round and round until the wood wore away, and he did not believe there was a Navy sailor capable of survival and aversion who was not the type to shun him. Nothing this stranger had said indicated their treatment of said runaway, and he did not wish to learn of ill treatment, or of good.

To compare Jeong Yunho to a runaway turned prisoner, or to a Navy sailor turned pirate… Which was worse? Yunho clenched his jaw and traced the dents in the wooden floor. His body lifted, sunk, lifted, sunk, over the waves.

“His name is Jongho, and we’ll take you to meet him,” Wooyoung said. “Our Captain considered you meeting him first, but we had to check you for any threat, I’m sure you understand. Navy sailors are far too official for primary introductions. Your name is Yunho, correct?”

Yunho’s arms hung limp at his sides. As his vision blurred, his surroundings changed. The cavern was not shadowed mahogany shades but darker, an endless void of black. Paint seeped from the walls like blood. Flooded from the seams between each plank and every splintering crack, pooling on the floor at his feet. The floor was black beneath Yunho’s shoes. Yunho’s shoes, no longer his Navy-sanctioned boots, but the emerald green slippers he wore as a boy. Slowly, slowly, as the paint poured down, emerald darkened to black on the wood.

“Your maps,” a murky voice cut through. “We found the name Yunho written on the back of many of them, more than the other names.”

Yunho forced his head to snap back up. Brown walls. No paint. No small, emerald slippers.

The dark-haired pirate resumed searching his eyes. The muscled blond was frowning again, creases lining his forehead, trying to pry his mind apart. They’d no doubt already worked out that his assumption was correct, given Yunho’s response to it. Colour returned to Yunho’s cheeks as he scorned himself. Manually, he forced his face to tighten once more. To slaver the cracks in himself once more in this lifelong game of play pretend. His breathing evened out with no less effort.

Maps. Not articles. Not recognition. No black wood. Yunho wiggled his fingers, one by one, then his toes. Tested his jaw. Maps. His maps. His messenger bag was gone from his person, taken, laid somewhere on this ship, upended.

Yunho grounded himself on the oak planks and nodded, once, before he could back down.

The sharp assessment in the smaller pirate’s eyes receded. “My name is Wooyoung, and this is San. If you can behave and do what the Captain asks of you, you’ll get your maps back.” He raised an eyebrow. “Can you do that?”

Yunho surveyed them both, their scars and their jewellery and the shining, pirate’s cutlass, and nodded once more, staring straight ahead without wavering. Let the rope fall from his forearm and coil into a pile at his feet. Strong, or numb?

“Good. Come, we’ll take you to Jongho.”

Chapter Text

When he reached them, Yunho took the bowl from Wooyoung's hands mechanically and swallowed several mouthfuls of soup. He couldn’t taste it, but it was still warm. It didn’t make him any more lightheaded than he already was, he didn’t think.

They turned towards the golden lantern, swinging gently beside the open doorway, and moved into a thin corridor. Yunho’s legs were reluctant behind Wooyoung, but they could not disobey his mind. A whoosh of air as San blew out the lantern behind him, the slam of a heavy door, the pressure of eyes on his back as the pirate followed—past several closed doors sat a set of steep upward stairs. At the top, the sky’s white light spilled over each step.

Fear cracked jagged lines through his neatly manufactured composure.

Wooyoung went up first. Following a man with more knives than Yunho had ever seen on a person onto the deck of a pirate ship was very pointedly worrying. Foolish. Downright insane. But what could he do? The floorboards creaked behind him. Yunho glanced as far backwards as his eyes would allow without turning his head, until the harsh, metallic shing of San sliding his cutlass all-too-easily into the sheath at his hip snapped him forward again.

Freedom could be a fickle, sudden thing.

They emerged under a blanket of rolling grey, frigid air and spitting rain raising goosebumps over his skin. Yunho’s eyes fought for several moments to adjust to the sharp contrast of the bright white light, and even longer to take the true sights in as tears gathered along his eyeline.

Relief or fear? Overwhelm at trying to tell the two apart? It could’ve been anything. Yunho wasn’t entirely sure how much of any of it was real. Certainly, he himself did not feel so.

A stretch of wooden planks, two towering poles at the front and back wrapped in rope and hoisting billowing white sails that shifted up above Yunho’s head. At the top of one of them, glint-ing dangerously through the blur of rain, was a black pirate flag stitched through with glittering golden thread, an image of a crown. Intricate railings either side, carved into hourglass shapes, attached to sweeping shrouds. One door with a square of metal plating bracketed by two curled sets of stairs leading to the helm, barrels and crates tucked into the inside corners and hooked to the ship’s sides. A near mirror image to the front of the ship behind him.

A rolling expanse of endless midnight blue.

Waves stuttered around the ship, denting and merging under the light rain, stretching off into the horizon. Yunho must have been out for at least a day or so, he figured, as the edge of Nestone was nowhere to be seen, nor was land in entirety. His life left far behind him. It was wrong, terrifying, but equally he could not deny that the buzzing under the surface of his body tasted, past the fear and right at the centre, like relief.

His core begged his body to jump or shake or run around in some combination, an inexplicable sensation of joy that threatened to split him in two, built up through its disuse. For the first time in his life, the rocking beneath him and the sea surrounding him was his choice. He hadn’t chosen this boat, but it was not of Navy origin, and that was as far as he’d ever let himself believe was possible. The truth of it was exhilarating. The rest of it less so.

An ocean of unknowns with no conceivable ending. His body, unsteady and at the mercy of its every move. Two unidentified figures on the upper deck, the pressure of the eyes of the two rogues beside him, and reality weighing down on him like an anchor that had been lodged indefinitely.

No one else was around. In all the places he expected pirates to be slaving, there were only untouched barrels in clusters in the corners, rope hanging from various beams and hooks and curled in coils on the floor. His own footsteps against the wooden planks. The mast creaking with every swell of the ocean, and the sails rustling with every gust of wind. The rush of waves breaking against the sides. Yunho dug through them all and found…nothing.

There was no yelling. No boisterous shouts or drunken leering, no grunting or fists on wood or skin.

He’d expected scenes like those of Navy ships they taunted with him, overwhelmed with sailors all with too much or nothing to do, relieving their stress and satisfying their boredom on people like him, people more unfortunate than him. Worse. Chaos living up to the reputation of thieving criminals, brutal and wilder and unforgiving. He had not expected tranquillity. He had not expected the gut-wrenching feeling accompanying it that sent his heart plummeting to his stomach, nor the thoughts that gathered like a chorus, chanting this is wrong this is wrong I am wrong over and over and over.

Yunho’s legs shook, his hands. One step forward became more of a jolting shuffle. He traced the marks on his shoes and the edges of Wooyoung’s silver blades, stood waiting, turned towards him. Idle as he processed this sight. This feeling. Reactions that they could never truly understand unless they tore their own hearts from their chests and found them alien.

Yunho inhaled with everything in his body and exhaled pure, unfiltered rage.

San reached out, possibly to tug him along, but made it only halfway before he let his hand drop back to his side with a furrow in his brow. His hand twisted around the head of his cutlass, tense. Yes, Yunho screamed. Yes, see me as a threat.

“Jongho is up there,” San said, but Yunho was no longer looking at him. He began walking on his own, away from the pair and towards the stairs, and they had to move swiftly to bracket him as he ascended. Each step a heavy thud reverberating through the floor like a beast on the prowl.

The two figures fell silent and turned upon their arrival, but one slid forward an inch until one of each of their shoulders were level and a single bullet would tear through both.

Jongho was held up ramrod straight, his head raised, on the edge of tense. While the other pirates had used their bodies to further their expressions, slouching and leaning and constantly restless, he did not. He was bigger than the others, packed with undefined muscle, and he stood wide and open like he knew it. It was how they’d all been taught to present themselves. Sharp, anonymous. One of the few things Yunho could do correctly, even if it set a dull humming ache under his skin like he’d been wired with electrics.

San and Wooyoung hadn’t been lying about having a Navy runaway. It did nothing to calm Yunho’s apprehension—in fact, may have made it worse, did make it significantly worse. One question after another until he was drowning in them.

Jongho did not even wear a pirate’s dress, but an old Navy uniform, because of course he did, tattered and torn with a perfect knot keeping his necktie together in place of the clasp. Familiar dark blue slacks, covered in messily sewn patches of various coloured scraps, with a shirt that was stained and bobbled and fraying at the collar. Over both, a long navy coat with big shoulder pads, littered with tears, the buttons rusting from shining gold to a patchy bronze. His chestnut brown hair was parted to one side, neat and intentional despite its damp strings.

It was hardly believable that he would’ve been shunned, and that likelihood of choice put a bitter taste in Yunho’s mouth. There was a story here, scribbled in the scruffy stitches of Jongho’s clothes. An absence of sailor and pirate both.

Yunho gritted his teeth in lieu of shaking himself. Two men trained, unsuccessfully, though all the more marked for their failures. Both tuned out the uneasy eyes on their backs, until Yunho noticed the first crack.

Jongho’s solid gaze fell apart into pity. Yunho may as well have been doused in freezing water. The angry heat simmering in his veins fought against it, two sides of the same furious coin.

A ringed hand came up in a wave between them, snapping both of their stares away. “So,” Wooyoung said, “Jongho, Yunho. Yunho, Jongho. Now please drop the mind-reading and get to something the rest of us can be entertained by, would you?”

Jongho sighed and put his hand out. “Are you really a runaway, or did you just get kidnapped?”

Yunho considered as he kissed his teeth. “The kidnapping was not part of the plan.”

He took Jongho’s hand and firmly shook. Worn skin and rough callouses scratched against his palm and dug in when he squeezed a fraction tighter involuntarily, pulled away the same, willed his arm not to flick off the feeling and ants not to crawl up into his sleeves.

The snorts of San and Wooyoung fell into the background with the groans of the ship and the insistent crash, crash, of waves against the wood beneath his feet, uneven and unfamiliar. Each one tugged at his ears like a whip. It was all he could do to keep the strange concoction of anger and unease brimming in his mind down, down, into careful concealment.

“Great. I only ask because we’re typically in the business of releasing other people’s prisoners and you’re only the second one we’ve ever had,” he replied.

Yunho’s eyes twitched. No prisoners on a pirate ship while shining silver and gold hung from the ears of its crew? With a successful Navy runaway, and that ease of kidnapping?

Jongho registered the expression and thinned his lips. “If I was kidnapped, I wouldn’t believe that, either, but you’ll learn I have no reason to lie to you. And if it makes you feel any better, you’re not exactly a prisoner, and neither was Yeosang,” he replied, eyes flicking back to the figure behind him, and sending a whole new onslaught of questions through Yunho's head.

It was as though he had not noticed they were there, and when he did, his eyes were opened. His senses clear. They were… beautiful. Stunning. There was not the words to describe it, nor any capacity to deny it. Gentle and sharp, too, in the calm, calculated sense. It struck Yunho with a sense of alarm, how fast he settled on a description so physical and vain that he had never once before cared about and was sure he equally didn’t care about now. And yet, he could not stop thinking it, round and round like a broken record, rhythmic rather than grating.

Yeosang smiled, and the kindness of it illuminated their pale skin. Decidedly un-pirate like. One side of their long, midnight hair was plaited back and twisted with pieces of sea glass, revealing a small pink birthmark next to their right eye, which seemed to shimmer an impossibly iridescent turquoise. The same shade tinted a pearl resting between their collarbones, hanging from a string of brown leather.

Yunho felt himself growing warm. He became swiftly conscious of the slowly dampening fabric of his pale shirt sticking against his back, his stomach, so different to the silk draped over their small frame, the waves of his hair flattened in a bowl of muddy brown. When he woke from the dream to the sound of Jongho still talking, he wound his hand behind his back and clenched his fingers into tight fists.

“We’d been discussing the need for maps and presumed we’d be stealing them, San and Wooyoung were to research sources,” Jongho was saying, raising one shoulder in an uncomfortable shrug. “Mingi is more of an instant action kind of guy. He claims he took you because it was convenient and has refused to elaborate or listen to Seonghwa’s—our first mate’s—ethical preaching, as you’ll learn is… not uncharacteristic of him.”

Yunho squeezed until his nails pressed against the flesh of his palms.

“We all know he had additional motives. We’re just waiting for any indication as to what exactly they are,” Wooyoung said, voice low and drawling like he was bored, though his smirk said he was far from it. He looked Yunho up and down once more.

Jongho cleared his throat. “Besides, if you were the runaway he suspected you were then… you already worked out that something was off about the Navy, didn’t you?”

Four pairs of eyes on him. Yunho swivelled his glare between them all against undeterred rain. He hated this. Hated being assessed, the way Jongho was feigning to speak casually. They knew and he knew it wasn’t casual and what was the point of pretending?

The Navy had executed Yunho’s mother and kidnapped him as a child for their own twisted revenge while turning Yunho’s own memories against him for no other reason than because they could. How, precisely, was he supposed to explain his issues without explaining too much about himself? He wouldn’t, was the answer.

“Mingi was the one to kidnap me,” he observed instead, tested the name in his mouth as his stomach took a violent roll. It tasted like sticky sweet syrup and soured on his tongue. “Where is he? Is he here?”

Jongho only had the chance to cock his head at the shift before Wooyoung was butting in again, grinning, “He’s our explosives master. Probably tinkering with something or other down in the work-room in that adorably fascinated way he does.”

Yunho closed his eyes for a long, distorted moment. Wooyoung had to be joking. He really hoped Wooyoung was joking. Getting kidnapped by an unhinged pirate was one thing, but a man an arsenal of foreign weaponry at his disposal was another entirely. Shivers glazed over his skin like hives of skittering bees.

Anger and hopelessness was a vile, violent combination.

He had no idea what moral insistences Jongho was referring to, but he assumed it was beyond anything he needed to know for his own plotting if they also thought it was agreeable to kidnap a human being in the same way the Navy had. Granted, Mingi’s kidnapping had been far less painful and traumatic, all things considered. Really, he seemed uninjured, which was curious, and—Yunho clenched his fists further until his nails bit into his palms and the thought was willed from his head and his mind was back in front of him, and neither was worse or better than the other. Because he’d still been kidnapped. Again.

He had no time to waste on pedantries. There were maps to get, an escape to plan. Why was he entertaining the moral whims of devils?

How dare they simply stand by? Nonchalant as he took in this new fate, keeping him here and mocking him for his bewilderment, bickering and introducing themselves as though they hadn’t changed the course of his life entirely and emptied him inside out. They were selfish, so unbelievably, unfathomably selfish, and he knew with absolute certainty that he needed to get his maps and get out before they had the chance to take his bravery and his body and his freedom as well as the information he’d worked for.

To go along with them in order to protect himself. To go along with them and get whipped up in their world and their chaos and their damned nonchalance. This was a very dangerous game to be playing. Yunho imagined himself like a stone wall, immovable, and suppressed every twitch in his body, holding his fury close and unseen in his chest.

“The maps you brought with you, they’re very detailed,” a new voice interrupted, deep and smooth like the silk draped over them, Yeosang watching him. “Did you make them?”

“I did, yes, most of them,” Yunho replied, or tried to, stumbling over his words and feeling heat flush to his cheeks. What?

“So you’re a cartographer,” Jongho muttered. He gave Yeosang a significant glance that Yunho couldn’t interpret, hated himself for. “The maps are based on Navy information then, I assume, up to date?”

“Some of them are older.”

“And what were you going to use them for?”

“Revenge.”

Wooyoung cackled again at Yunho’s words and it battered his eardrums. “Oh, we can certainly help with that.”

Jongho nodded once, with solemn certainty, and a curious smile stretching over his lips. The pirate in it had Yunho scowling. “Take him to Captain.”

Chapter Text

The door to the Captain’s quarters was as chipped and scarred as the man who emerged from behind it. Yunho was grateful that Jongho had been the one to raise his fist to the wood, for his hands were worn enough that they resisted splinters, and Yunho suspected he would not have been so lucky.

He was glad he hadn’t been the one to face the Captain head on, too, for fear of the consequences of the sour expression crossing his features.

The Captain was small. As he looked up at them all, mousy hair dishevelled with strands from his mullet overlaying the shaven sides, wrinkled shirt flung open before quick fingers worked to button it halfway up, he seemed little more than a petulant child.

A pirate’s child, certainly, with thick gold rings sliding over his fingers encrusted with emerald and ruby stones, chains layering his neck like a noose. He wore them like one would wear spoils of war. The others had not nearly as many, as was to be expected, but what they did wear said enough about how much the Captain could afford to give out.

Yunho didn’t want to think about how they’d acquired it, those he’d stolen from, the lives he’d ruined, the people he’d killed. He appeared carefree, casual, but his relaxed posture violently clashed with his title, and they’d sauntered up and knocked on his door like it was nothing perhaps to induce Yunho into a heart attack, then—

“Hongjoong, sorry for the interruption.”

—called him by his first name?

The Captain’s eyes slinked from Jongho as he spoke, unconcerned, but his thin lips slid into a smirk when they landed on Yunho. Nonchalance schooled into sharp observation.

“You should be,” he drawled, chin tipped up to Jongho, “but no bother.”

Yunho stiffened as that gaze crawled up and down his body, the Captain bringing one arm over to cross just below his chest and the other up to tap against his chin. He wasn’t sure how long they stood silently for, the unexpected smooth, higher pitch nature of the man’s tone echoing in his head and throwing him off.

This game of cat and mouse he had been expecting and conscious enough to prepare for. The Captain sized Yunho up like he knew he was the bigger man, willing him to drop his resistance, and forced Yunho to swallow the hard knot of discomfort it lodged in his throat.

He’d been playing this game all his life. Very rarely was there a correct decision. The Navy sailors dumped the chores on him anyway, the officers hounded him in physical training despite the skills he provided them in mapmaking, the Commander demanded his sentence with an iron fist knowing there was no evidence against him but existence. This crew was just the same. Yunho could see it all forming, piecing itself together.

The door behind the Captain slid open again, just enough for a tall, slim figure to slip through like a shadow. He draped a long coat of thick matted fur smoothly over the Captain’s shoulders, ignoring the rest of them entirely, dark eyes impassive and expression bored.

“Thank you, love,” the Captain muttered, his face turning towards the other figure. The intensity melted away, and his eyes went wide for a moment, his jaw slack before it tightened again.

Perhaps, Yunho realised, his previous observation hadn’t been inaccurate at all. He’d looked suddenly so much younger.

Glancing round at all of them—Wooyoung’s curled grin, San’s bright eyes, Jongho’s soft cheeks, and Yeosang, closest beside him, calm and self-assured at his shoulder—they were young, likely no older than Yunho himself, even the Captain. How old had they been when they’d started this, then? Young teenagers? Pirates were so rarely their age, and even less so held enough power to remain in control of their decisions—what did that make this crew? They were different from one another, their accents twisted from different areas; there was no way they could’ve been together for long. And yet in the gaps between gentle kindness and cocky smirks and stiff responsibility, they stood close and silently communicating like they’d been together for a century.

The Captain put his arms through the fur coat, the grey and brown fur sweeping just below his knees. As he did so, it dragged against his collar, exposed patches of red bruising along his neck and collarbones. The stranger hovering behind him stepped closer an inch once he’d stopped moving, leaving no space between them.

Yunho pointedly averted his eyes and drew a breath deep into his swirling gut.

“I think it’s Seonghwa you should be apologising to,” San said, breath stuttering in a barely concealed laugh. Wooyoung had already given up and was cackling beside him.

The stranger’s—Seonghwa’s—irritation was more in his stance than his face. His hair was jet black and split at a middle-part, falling either side to his ears. A long, white coat was fitted to his body, pulled in at the waist with a black corset tied tight, two long, thin swords attached to it. He was far quieter than the Captain—no jewellery, silver or gold, nothing twisted into his hair—but the composure and plainness of him sent a shiver down Yunho’s spine. Only someone with a lot of practice could achieve such a stony silent treatment.

Not that any of the others seemed particularly fazed. They stood around in slouches and echoed San’s laughs and jokes, and even Yeosang, who so far struck him as the most sensible, remained still and relaxed. Yunho wasn’t sure whether to take that as reassuring or as a suggestion that this steady intimidation happened regularly, and he’d be forced to face it every day he was here.

Then again, to be here willingly, all of them had to be somewhat immune. Somewhat insane. He was alone here. No less alone here than he had been anywhere else.

The Captain sighed and rubbed a light hand up over Seonghwa’s shoulder. “I think you might have to find a new tactic to scare them, you’re too soft for all this.”

“Just trying to make a good first impression,” Seonghwa muttered. He stared down at Yunho, dead in the eyes. Yunho found himself unable to tear his stare away.

Dead, dead, dead.

Yunho shuddered and couldn’t stop shuddering. The sense of panic that had been steadily building washed over him at once. The physical rattling of his body left him no power to try and hide it.

These strange men crowding around him, trailing him, trying to intimidate and welcome him in such contradictions of one another, willing his mind to quiet in some weird twist of plausible deniability alone in the middle of the ocean who knows where—What had he done?

He wasn’t a corpse, who was he kidding? He’d been trying to be unemotional for years, shut himself off in the hopes it would somehow make things better, easier, silence that relentless fear, but life didn’t work like that. No one could truly turn off their feelings, their hopes, their fears. Yunho’s bones were heavy. Lead under his skin. All he could think to do was to slump to the ground, but his instincts wouldn’t let him, and he wobbled on his feet.

A hand rested on his shoulder, gentle, but Yunho flinched like he’d been shot. Stepped forward from it on instinct, stepped back again, startled, when he met the Captain and Seonghwa in front of him, unconscious of the way both of their gazes had softened.

Inescapable. This life, this dazed state of being. He did not know of anything else.

Seonghwa’s voice was so displeased. Scornful. Far too much like the sneering officers who’d looked at him for the first time anyone had looked at him and found nothing of value.

What had he done? What had he done?

Someone hummed. He couldn’t tell nor cared who. The figures around him became blurred shadows. That only made it worse, their stares haunting him, their presences like ghosts. Yunho stumbled into their bodies, sliding over the wooden planks, urged along while his boots caught on theirs and crates and rope, each of them sending shocks over his skin. His fingers dragged along damp walls as he tried to steady himself. Someone was talking, a deep, soft voice, but it fell on his ears as a whisper, Yunho backing himself away into the corner of the deck, at a distance from the rest of them.

He stared blankly ahead, heart thumping in his ears while his eyes reformed the image of Seonghwa crouched in front of him, his expression so different to moments ago. Unimaginable. Unreal. His eyebrows were raised over wide, dark eyes, frantically searching, his mouth open and moving, saying something. That whispering voice settled over Yunho’s ears again, but this time falling from Seonghwa's lips, calm and soothing against the bewilderment.

“You’re okay,” he was saying, “You’re safe, we won’t hurt you, I just had to make sure you wouldn’t hurt them, I promise,” over and over.

The contradiction played with Yunho’s mind until it was reeling.

The other shadows were fading, moving away separately in the background, turning and scattering across the deck. Their eyes eased off and the weight of it bled from Yunho’s limbs.

“See? You’re safe, they won’t bother you, you can hide away if you want to.”

Yunho did, pulled himself up into a tight ball, tucked his head beneath his knees, questioning why he was listening, why he was following the instructions of the man who had been the very thing to tip him over the edge.

The first hit rocked the ship and sent him scrambling.

Chapter Text

Seonghwa was gone in an instant. The rest of them leapt into motion, half sliding to the railing to look out over the sea before scampering away and the others answering the Captain’s calls without question. They struck the air and Yunho’s ears, even as they continued to ring.

The ship lurched again as the rain and wind picked up, and he grabbed blindly for purchase on the ropes attached to the wall with slick hands, pushing himself flush against the ship near the belowdeck stairs. Only then was he aware of what was happening.

They were under attack. They were under attack.

“Jongho, red!” Hongjoong shouted. Too loud, too close, cutting through the downpour.

Yunho had prepared for attacks, sure. But he’d always been shunned to the securing tasks, his mind numb to any supposed danger posed by the same people he had to face every day in their free time. None of it was real, and he’d known too well that it never would be—or so he’d thought, at least. The sea spray kicking up over his head certainly was, the rope slipping in his grip splitting the skin on his palms as he was tipped away, the ship tilting forwards.

A third boom rattled the mast, the sound rolling off the sails, and Yunho cowered as a shadow encroached on the ship floor, followed by the unmistakable scratch of swords being drawn. Blood rushing in his ears.

“Yeosang, hold!” the Captain shouted, but Yunho had not so much as processed the words before the ship jolted to an upright position beneath his body, the little food in his stomach bobbing with it, and the nauseating sickness stole any semblance of their meaning from his mind.

He could make out Hongjoong’s short silhouette and swaying fur coat if he squinted, in the centre of the deck, Seonghwa and Wooyoung either side of him wielding their blades. Seonghwa was drawn up to full height, his shoulders back and white robe gleaming, a thin long-sword in a loose hold. Wooyoung was his opposite, crouched down and hunched over two small daggers, their sharp edges bright in the mist.

San’s call— “Dropping!” —came from above, and Yunho’s eyes shot upwards, catching the arc of the wooden plank in the air a moment before its bang vibrated through the ship and he was wincing and squirming to will the rattle of it from his bones. A battle cry ripped through the air. Footsteps pounded, at least three or four sets of them, echoing down the strip bridging one ship to the other, cut off into shrill screams and mighty splashes.

One by one by one. They were highly unlikely to survive. Yunho was not naïve, and he could hear in their terror that they were not either.

The biting cold seeped through his thin clothes, his brain no longer immune to the sensation.

Motion cut across his vision and Yunho pressed himself back against the ship, panting. It was San, swinging down in front of him with a rope in his grasp, an arm and foot twisted into an intricate hold.

How he was doing it Yunho didn’t know, and his palms began to burn with the ghost sensation, clenching and unclenching around the rigging in his reach. San dipped down, brushing the masts and the railings as he flew out with a curved blade in hand, knocking each of them clean off the plank in one foul swoop. He continued towards the upper deck and out of sight, and Yunho’s head dropped to the wood behind him.

One glimpse of the intruders on the plank was enough for Yunho to see exactly who they were dealing with, in their navy slacks and neatly buttoned coats, emblems sewn into their sleeves.

As soon as he had his mind back, he cursed and tucked his head into his arms, allowing himself only a sliver of vision. They were here, the Navy, possibly from his branch being only days from departing, long enough for his missing status to be recorded. Long enough for them to know exactly who he was if they managed one look at his trousers and boots, if they didn’t recognise his face alone.

San threw himself out into the sky in intervals three, four times, without stopping for a moment, but soon the sailors caught on to his timing and began leaking onto the deck with swords out. Murderous glares, sharp brows set in heavy scowls.

Yunho trembled with every inch they grew closer. Waiting for them to turn their gazes on him. With them right in front of him he could not tear himself away enough to picture his memories in full, their torment, but his chest ached and he choked on phantom blows.

It was Wooyoung who cut them off.

He was the first to meet the sailors, darting forward and through like a fox, sly and calculated and sharp in all the places that mattered. That man’s stomach, for insistence, and the neck of another from behind. He was quick and constantly in motion, ducking and weaving and twisting his daggers between his fingers like he was spinning harmless rings or lockpicks, and they disappeared and reappeared in his palms as he swapped between them like a magic trick.

Blood sprayed a vibrant red against the cloudy grey and followed Yunho wherever he looked.

The sailors approached with renewed fury at watching others be knocked down, and for a moment Yunho’s breath hitched, his worry increasing. Wooyoung was small, after all, especially given the company Yunho had always been surrounded by, and these men and women were huge with weapons double the size of his. A few of them were gaining on him, Seonghwa and Hongjoong having already been pulled away into their own fights, but upon a closer look, Wooyoung was…smirking?

He stuck his arms straight out and swung in a wide, straight arc around himself, cutting deep through the chests of three sailors who could only get scratches and small gashes on him with the tips of their blades. He left only one, behind him, who took her chance and leapt.

Yunho watched Wooyoung's smirk stretch into a wide, lopsided grin, his eyes alive, as San wrenched the sailor back by the neck directly onto the point of Seonghwa’s long sword. Seonghwa forced the blade upwards before taking it back and darting away again, while San launched the body off Yunho’s side of the ship before it had a chance to slump.

Blood splattered on the floor in front of him like red paint, remaining there beyond the final splash of her body hitting the water. Yunho shouldn’t have been able to hear it in the chaos, her splash one of many, but he did.

Shrieking metal echoed in quick bursts, striking against the blades of the sailors, sending their weapons clattering onto the deck and their bodies after them. Seonghwa was a whirlwind. He moved like a storm, natural and instinctual and raining down, the bottom of his white coat fanning out below the corset at his waist. The hem was dusted in red. He sidestepped each body on the floor like a dance, one sword in front of him like an extension of his arm and the other at his side.

Dropped back behind them was the Captain, and if Yunho had been unsure of his authority up until now, he would’ve certainly been corrected. He bellowed orders over the constant fights breaking out around him, the waves crashing against the ship, the groaning of the masts in their struggle. Perhaps the more significant aspect of it all, though, was that he fought amongst his crew.

He took his place behind Seonghwa and Wooyoung, but was no less involved, using his small frame to weave through bodies and blades. His coat swayed with the movement while the thick fur of it made him unreachable, burying his figure and sending anything he hadn’t dodged cutting holes in the fabric rather than his skin. Yunho followed him in flickers of gold chains and jewelled rings, but it was difficult to keep up with, his vision cut off by the larger sailors pursuing him.

Yeosang was nowhere to be seen, but Yunho was hardly managing to keep track of the crew as it was, moving through them all rapidly in his panic. His head spun with the dizzy nature of every manoeuvre; his focus lost in the swirling crowd.

How many were there? Yunho couldn’t bear to try and count, but it had to be almost a hundred. A hundred fighters, for one pirate ship—is this what he’d been training for? Navy sailors were being cut down before they had the chance to fall into any sort of practised pattern or drill.

He’d expected the battles on the Hala sea to be ruthless. He was Jeong Sun-young’s son, after all, and she hadn’t been known for kindness, and he’d heard the sailors taunting him, telling him he wouldn’t last a minute out here. Loathe he was to admit it, he was starting to think they’d been right.

But that was just the thing; he’d expected it to be ruthless on the pirates’ side only. Sure, the sailors taunted, and they were rough and vicious in their spare time, but they all rehearsed drills repeatedly with the understanding that they would mean something. Technique was supposed to set them apart from the pirates themselves and position right against wrong. There was no attempt at organisation here. There was no obvious right or wrong.

If anything, given that the Navy boat had attacked first, their men and women flooding onto the deck, Yunho appeared more on the morally correct side cowering in a corner than he’d ever been growing up in a Navy camp. With the comparison spread out before him, a rush of sweet hope flooded through Yunho, even if it was washed out by sour resentment. He pushed both down for fear of how many realisations could break a person’s composure.

But then the Captain faltered.

His right leg seemed to buckle beneath him. He tipped to the side, sliding on the slick ground, shoulder colliding with the chest of a bloody sailor recently victim to Seonghwa’s silent fury before managing to correct himself with a harsh shove of his knee and veering left again. He made no sound, no outcry.

Yunho watched in awe as San wrestled his way through the crowd using nothing but his fists, a sharp cane with a metal top melded like twisted rope tucked beneath his armpit, until his back was to the Captain’s and they circled each other for one, two rotations. In the split-second break between one sailor and the next, San shifted the cane from his hand to the Captain’s, and they instantaneously peeled away from each other. The cane’s metal toe was firm on the floor one moment, airborne the next, the curved tip punching straight through a bearded throat.

For a reason he didn’t have the focus nor the willingness to place, Yunho let out a short exhale of relief.

Before the call cut through the air, tearing reality in two.

“Pirate King!”

Yunho flinched, violently, his eyes wide and blinking rapidly against the water invading them. He was too blinded and distracted and rolling through the motions of an internal splitting down the seams to feel the presence behind him, until his body was snatched by the neck and tugged.

He went spawling on his front, his hand no longer clutching but tangled in the coarse rope on the wall and restraining him, his knees and elbow colliding hard with the wood. Centimetres from face-planting flat-out. His jaw ached, his mouth hung open, weak copper bloomed on his tongue.

Real or false? Reality or imagined, an aftereffect of horror? He could hardly bring himself to try and pull his hands from their bindings but when he did it was frantic, scrambling, eyes blown wide. He faced the rough planks beneath him as though he would find his reflection staring back at him in the blunt brown, gasped an inhale, tracked the scuffed boots inching into his field of view as if they could not attack while he was watching.

A rickety cackle cut against his ears. His body seized up like the tightening of violin strings, high-pitched and shrieking.

The man had a clear shot to his ribs, his chest. Yunho tugged his right arm away, again, tried to twist his fingers and his wrist this way and that but the rope only cut further into his skin, the friction sending a burning sensation running down his arm.

He cursed, less of a curse and more a mangled noise resembling a feral growl, boots searching for purchase on the damp wood and in the unsteady rocking of the ship. Bracing for impact, preparing to pick himself back up. Nothing he hadn’t done before. He clenched his fist tight and tensed his abdomen.

It didn’t come.

The sweeping boot drew back and returned only as a heavy thud beside Yunho's body. The rest of him followed. A bullet made its final bang as it embedded in the wooden wall towards the front of the ship, above his head, and Yunho’s eyes were shocked open in bewilderment. His heart hammered in his chest, nothing but his hard breathing rattling his ears.

He hadn’t even seen a gun on this ship.

It took seconds for another sailor to notice Yunho in his wounded condition, the gunshot having brought attention to him even if it had potentially saved his life. He weaved around the rest of the crew, skirting towards where Yunho laid, his face rough and scarred and his eyes hard and dark as coals. Yunho gritted his teeth and pulled himself upright, eyeing the stunted movements of the man as he approached with all the grace of a felled log.

He sure as hell hadn’t planned any of this—in fact, a certain detail was so unhinged that he had never so much as considered it, otherwise he would’ve recognised the glaring golden flag—but it didn’t mean he was going to throw himself away. The gunshot had been enough to launch his body from flight to fight, a reminder that while he didn’t belong here like the rest of them, in this very moment he would be perceived as such and could die just the same.

Besides, they couldn’t identify him and haul him back to land if they were dead.

The man pitched his weight and threw himself forward with his fists clenched, a small knife remaining wedged in the belt beneath his stomach, and Yunho pulled himself back, slipping be-neath the first punch he threw.

Before the man could rebalance himself and pull back another punch, he was grunting and stumbling again, Yunho’s boot already removed from upon his toes. A distinct anger curled his cocky grin into a snarl as Yunho’s elbow struck against his ribs. It wasn’t enough to take a person down, but enough to throw some off, inaccuracy generated by blind rage. Rage that only developed as the man put one foot forward again and Yunho steeled himself, his body poised in a crouch.

He lightened his steps, quick on his feet, and tipped left so the next fist caught the edge of his side—his body ached at the impact, but not so much that it overwhelmed the adrenaline—and snapped a leg up around the back of the man’s knees as he held himself on the railing. They buckled and his movements stuttered with the weight of his muscled body unsupported.

Yunho gasped, cursing, as an arm came up across his chest and slammed his back over the side of the ship, digging harshly against his spine. The wind whipped up around his ears, cold spray biting at his neck, his torso leant over the open ocean and open to this man, who he knew violently, intrinsically, had no problem with tearing out his throat and thrusting his body overboard.

Yunho forced the sharp gusts to the forefront of his mind, let them pinch his bruising skin in a twisted grasp, and stared straight into the man’s crinkled gaze. He was laughing, rough and cruel, pushing his weight further as he curled over himself in his amusement. It cut off when Yunho’s knee jammed up between his legs.

He reared back, his arm loosening in its grip across Yunho’s chest, his eyebrows knitting themselves together. The knife slid easily from the man’s belt once Yunho latched onto it, and it found its mark nicely at his throat. He gasped once, twice, each shallower than the last, his hands clawing at his neck, and Yunho removed himself from the sailor’s reach smoothly as he choked on the blade. He could taste the blood in his mouth renewed, strong, singing with the intensity of phantom metal.

A searing bang ripped through the air, embedding square into the sailor’s forehead, and dropped him to the deck with a heavy thud.

Yunho’s head whipped round, blinking in rapid succession through the rain arching into his eyes. The stranger hopped easily from the top deck. They landed with a light thump in front of him, undeterred at Yunho’s attention.

He was draped in an even longer, sweeping coat than the Captain’s, but his was cut from brown leather, with a rough collar and wide lapels and a row of gold buttons left undone. Beneath it, a black waistcoat like San’s but in the same leather as his coat, the edge of a gun in its holster. From it, curls of hazy smoke.

His hair burned glaringly on his head like a blowtorch, unnaturally yellow and orange in a bright gradient of light to dark from roots to tip and swept back to expose his forehead. Yunho had never seen anything like it, even amongst the pirates he’d heard described.

He was tall, not taller than Yunho but close, tall enough for their eyes to meet exactly as soon as Yunho rounded on him. He had a small, incriminating mole under his right eye.

He looked bored. Startlingly blank. His eyes were thin and hooded and dark either side of his hooked nose, and the rest of his face was schooled into an equally blank expression, sharp and brooding.

Yunho spluttered—briefly, he insisted, briefly—and cleared his throat. “Was the gunshot necessary? I had it handled.”

“I know.”

Rough and low, docile. Familiar, somehow. Yunho glanced at him again, with a more conscious mind, watched as he flipped his coat back into place to cover the gun holster at his hip, his gloved hands receding into his pockets as he turned his body far too calmly towards the Navy ship.

Why did he sound so—

An enormous boom wrecked the atmosphere. Yunho stumbled backwards, suddenly, his arm crawling blindly along the side of the ship until his hand found a point to grip and squeeze. A sharp sting hit his nose, all gas and smoke, and heat shocked his skin.

The Navy vessel was ablaze. Engulfed in flame and thick black clouds hissing in the rain, the masts no longer visible. Frantic yelling and bellowing screams were the only indication of those onboard remaining, and that wouldn’t last long, not as Yunho watched the birds nest stutter, the entire pole cracking from its base and tilting slowly towards the tip of the ship. It buried itself as it landed. Split the deck in half.

He was stood motionless, numb, as Wooyoung finished off the last few standing sailors, San carting their bodies into the water to join the rest of their crew amongst the wreckage. The Captain stood and looked out at the great smoking mass in front of him, following the trails into the sky, Seonghwa gaining his breath back at his shoulder.

Eventually, he turned in Yunho's direction, his face breaking into a grin. “That one was certainly a success. Keep it up, Mingi.”

Yunho turned his eyes on the figure beside him. Pieces of a twisted puzzle. The singed edges of his clothes and the soot stains, hair that reflected the fire right back at the Captain even as his back was turned from the true blaze. The recognition.

Yunho let out a short puff of air from his nose. Of course, he thought begrudgingly. Then, a little less begrudgingly, staring as Mingi talked with San and Jongho and listened while they pointed out different patches of blood seeping into the planks, I am so utterly screwed.

Chapter Text

The Captain swept his eyes over the length of the ship and found Yeosang, who was leaning against the railing at the front of the upper deck, not quite panting but out of breath. Not a hair out of place, and less bloody than the rest of them, even Yunho.

“You’ll be okay to boost us for a few minutes, then join us for dinner?” the Captain said.

Yeosang put a thumb up in response and pushed off the railing. Yunho’s stare lingered, flickering between them both, until the Captain was the only one of the pair remaining in his view, and in the fur of his coat there was—

Yunho stared at his own hands. Traced the red up and down and along each of his fingers, as though they were foreign. Something was gnawing at his stomach aside from his hunger. He was too entranced to put it into words, to make it tangible, and so he forced his hands behind his back and out of sight.

He hadn’t seen Yeosang fighting. They’d disappeared with Jongho, remaining away from the action on the lower deck. Were they both navigators, then?

The crew seemed to hold a natural rhythm, their roles rehearsed. It was satisfying, in a way. Ignoring some of the blaring issues. None of them seemed lost or conflicted, even during sudden attacks or the aftermath. Most of them stood in various positions of recovery, San with hands on hips and Wooyoung and Seonghwa slouched to different degrees while they casually wiped their blades on their clothes. As was customary, he supposed, for one of the most notorious crews of the Hala sea.

The blood removed from their weapons remained embedded in the thin fabric on their torsos, their legs. More mixed in the shallow cuts on their faces. Too blaring crimson to ignore, especially as it was smeared on Yunho’s own skin, warm and fuzzy and stinging on his knees and scratched back.

He tested his jaw. Open, closed. Rolled his neck. Nothing felt broken, at least. A concussion, though, or some degree of whiplash, he was unsure of, given that he’d hardly shaken off both the drugging and the panic and the hunger. He felt as though he was outside of his body, distant, floating, his heart beating outside of his chest.

“Wooyoung, here!”

Yunho lifted his head again to find Seonghwa heading for him with Wooyoung in tow. He blinked, numb. Wooyoung moved behind him, but Seonghwa remained in front, and—the previous harsh lines were gone. In their place: downturned brows, a slightly open mouth, and deep pools for eyes. Yunho was unable to dislodge his gaze.

Wooyoung’s gentle hand rested on his head, titled it up, down. Featherlight fingers in his hair.

“It’ll bruise, but not too bad. Probably feels worse because you’re overwhelmed. I’ll give you water to wash any cuts after dinner. Let me know if there’s anything else, Yunho, yeah?” Wooyoung said, slipping away before he could reply.

Yunho nodded on autopilot anyway. He averted his gaze to the floor, to his own blood on his fingers. Added this moment somewhere, to the mess of floating puzzle pieces, none of them fitting together. Observations made of the crew two minutes prior re-scrambled themselves in the question of his fitting into it.

After a few beats of low-level discussion and surveying, the crew drifted over to the door beside Yunho, down the staircase that he’d ascended before. They disappeared one by one, Mingi one of the last to stalk around him, while he stood shifting his weight back and forth.

Jongho paused in the doorway. “You went through combat training, right?” he asked.

“The drills, yeah,” Yunho replied, quietly, from a bed of cloud.

“I saw you take down that sailor, but you didn’t follow any of the drills. You’re adapting already, that’s good.”

He said it like it was supposed to be motivating, reassuring. Like it wasn’t the least of Yunho’s worries.

Yunho didn’t offer a reply. What was he supposed to say? Think? The way Jongho was staring at him, switching between his eyes like he was sifting through his soul… It wasn’t hopeful, exactly, but maybe if Yunho could allow himself optimism, he seemed almost impressed, which only added to the growing discomfort settling over his mind.

He didn’t want to register it. How foreign, how wonderful it felt, how it made him want to preen and weep and hide altogether.

Nor did he want to register that cursed ‘already’ dropped into his speech. ‘Already’ made it sound like his stay would be permanent. ‘Already,’ as though he had no hope of getting out, as though taking a life in the wild, reckless manner of a feral dog was merely the beginning of his positive progression.

Of course, he registered both nonetheless and stood silently split apart between praise and frustration, flowers growing and blooming and mowed down in the rolling plains of his mind.

Distraction allowed Jongho to approach and place a hand lightly at Yunho’s back, urging his steps after the others before Yunho had the chance to panic or question or back away. By the time he was trapped body to body in the thin lower corridor of the ship, his mind only buzzed with why, why, why, and there was no refusing it anymore.

The hand on his back applied pressure light enough that it was no more than encouragement, a kind insistence. He couldn’t believe it for a second. Yet he couldn’t believe they weren’t being more violent towards him, either.

Red. Crimson. Burgundy. Warm and smooth. He’d do best to remember that.

Jongho steered him right, towards one of the doors he’d passed before, now open. Growing noise filtered out into the corridor. Wooyoung’s voice could be heard over the rest, against the backdrop of chairs scraping against the floor and the occasional clashing of metal pots and pans, exclaiming loudly in an elaborate re-enactment of one of his fights.

“Like this—bam, bam—he went for me again, but I found an opening, spun him right round ‘til he was dizzy—You should’ve seen it, San! Seriously! Oh, how I’d love to see what he saw, the way his vision went all blurry and confused—”

He cut off in a spin in the middle of a small kitchen, the ship’s galley tucked away in the corner, cursing when the contents of the pot he was swinging splashed up and he had to chase it back mid-air.

“Careful, Woo,” Seonghwa said. There was fond laughter in it, and he rose from his chair beside the Captain and hovered close to the galley.

Yunho’s eyes followed them both as he stepped through. Wooyoung’s carelessness, his speed and mouthy sass, they were the same. There before the fight and during and echoing through the ship evermore in the aftermath.

Seonghwa, however—surely, this was not the same man he’d watched gut half of a professional crew. Nor that brutal fighter the same man who had tried to soothe him in his panic-fuelled haze. It had seeped away from Yunho like a hallucination, buried under blood and stinging pain and ringing ears, but the memory returned to him now.

His next step faltered.

The room was small and dark, with only a few lanterns rocking back and forth making little squeaks, the ship in stronger motion again. But the gloomy lighting, however terrifying it was for Yunho, didn’t make for a gloomy atmosphere.

The pirates were smiling watching Wooyoung, San with stars dancing in his eyes as he gave him the attention he was looking for, even the Captain and Seonghwa with soft expressions so far from the arrogant smirks and cold stares. They took no notice of the contrast whatsoever.

Yunho tried to clear his head out of necessity and threat and danger and failed.

He could’ve dismissed their nature before as misunderstanding, as pretending, had thought for a long moment he had imagined it, if he wasn’t witnessing their fond comforts for a second time. He hesitated in the doorway in some strange mix of shock and terror and unfathomable whimsy.

Terror at entering the room with them, surrounded and watched, or terror at the realisation that they were more human than he’d expected? Yunho wasn’t sure. Whimsy, though, he was sure of, no matter that he shouldn’t have been.

Yunho had not met a group like this before.

Jongho shuffled him inside casually, towards the chair beside San on the far side of the long table. There were three either side, with one at each end, all of them assorted colours and styles of wood.

The Captain didn’t sit at the head of the table, and Yunho wondered why he’d so violently expected it. Not because it was ordinary as this crew already seemed far from it, but because he didn’t look out of place, didn’t look any different from the rest of them in this private space.

The chair at the head of the table was empty, San and the Captain sat opposite each other beside it. At the foot of the table, Mingi leant back into the shadows.

Yunho allowed himself to be coaxed by Jongho around the table, keeping a careful distance as he moved past Mingi and still narrowly avoiding tripping over a chair leg. San whipped his body round and beamed wildly the moment Yunho so much as put his hand on the top of the chair next to him to pull it out. Yunho flinched back and grimaced. So much for composure. The screech the chair legs made against the floorboards struck Yunho’s ears like a gunshot. It was cold and hard and uncomfortable, even more so when Jongho followed and sat on his other side.

“Hey, you’re eating dinner with us!” San said, voice bright with surprise, though his blond hair was slightly streaked with red.

Yunho shuffled and cleared his throat, unable to tear his eyes from the contrast. “I, uh, wasn’t aware I had any other choice?”

Someone snickered in suppression of a laugh. The rest of the crew glanced towards their conversation bar Mingi, who was pulling out a series of small bottles from the inside of his coat and lining them up along the table. They were all suspicious colours—a neon green and a murky one, a sunset orange that matched the darker sections of his hair, an electric blue, a mauve sort of purple. Most of them shimmered in the lamp light.

Yunho cocked his head a fraction and moved on before anyone could notice his curiosity.

The Captain was watching him through dark eyelashes, hunched over the table with arms not quite crossed. There was something enamouring about his expression. A smile on the edge of being a smirk, small and downturned as though it was a secret, his eyes glinting with mischief. It reeked of everything a Pirate King would stand for.

Yunho gave the Captain what he wanted and allowed himself to look, despite the heartbeat drumming along from the crown of his head to his sternum to his toes.

The wood of the ship rooked more heavily around them and sent one of the lanterns gently screeching. Wooyoung continued banging by the stove, no longer usefully, only playing with a few that he’d upturned like makeshift drums. Metal thudded and clinked on the surface of the table, placed by Seonghwa’s hand.

“I want to apologise to you.”

Yunho’s body recoiled in its seat.

It didn’t come from the Captain, but his accomplice.

Seonghwa’s eyes were wide and round like a doting parent. “For scaring you, earlier. It was just a precaution,” he said. Low and soft like he had been when they were both tucked into that corner.

Yunho forced his mouth closed. Cycled through his brain for any words he could bully into a lopsided reply.

He glanced around the circle of them. To his surprise, most weren’t looking at him, as he assumed they would be. They only had eyes for Seonghwa, San shaking his head in endearment and Jongho struggling to suppress a grin. The Captain remained trained on him.

He didn’t want to face looking over at Mingi.

San knocked a light fist on the table, his voice dropped to a whisper. “He means it, I promise. He’s just protective and specialises in giving people whiplash. You should’ve seen what happened the first time he met Hongjoong.”

A tilt of the head, a knowing smile. A little too intense.

Seonghwa leant back and crossed his arms, the blatant opposite of the Captain’s posture beside him. Casual, a smile stretched over his lips. Genuine. No, practiced acting—there was a hint of shyness in the way he folded back into himself, watching for the rest of the crew’s reactions.

“It’s fine,” Yunho replied. Unsure of what else to say. But it wasn’t fine, none of this was fine, none of his being here at all—and yet, he was fine, wasn’t he?

He was alive. He was not majorly harmed. How else to answer such a complex question than to say what they were probably expecting?

He crossed and uncrossed his ankles. Ran his fingertips along the ridges on the underside of the table. The banging of pans was beginning to grind heavily on his ears, and then Wooyoung let a cupboard slam, and he had to dig his nails into his palms to direct the pain somewhere else.

“Gave it to that sailor pretty good, though,” the Captain drawled, “I wasn’t sure that you would survive. When Jongho joined us, he was all fancy techniques. Didn’t think he’d last a week.” He looked to Yunho’s right and winked, “Still is, but at least now he’s less predictable.”

Well, Yunho supposed, at least one thing may have come out of failing to perfect the Navy’s technique, after all. It both was and wasn’t reassuring. A failure, a survival.

He picked at a splinter. “It was nothing,” he mumbled, and then feeling he had to explain himself given that it hadn’t physically been nothing, obviously, spluttered something resembling, “Dumb luck.”

A sudden, intentional creak came from the end of the table, beyond Jongho. Yunho snapped his head over, as did the others sat around. Wooyoung stopped humming; he was listening, too.

He met Mingi’s eyes head-on. Both dark endless voids and blunt, dull coals at once.

“No,” he said, and paused. Paused for long enough that Yunho’s chest was tight, his lungs starting to burn, and he looked down to the table. “It wasn’t luck.”

Wooyoung’s banging stopped. He moved silently from the kitchen in the corner like a slinking cat, carrying with him a scratched cauldron by its thin loop of a handle. Steam was rising out of it, the smell of tomatoes flooding Yunho’s nose as he approached with the soup. He placed it in the centre of the table and turned again, returning with eight bowls, only two of them the same and different even then in the cracks and chips around the edges. Surprisingly, though, they weren’t particularly stained, clean enough to be relatively hygienic. Better than the state of the Navy’s crockery, and Yunho was well acquainted with it.

San reached for the ladle, but Seonghwa was there before he could reach it, beginning to fill a bowl for each of them.

A shadow formed in the corridor before Yeosang appeared in the doorway. They offered a weak smile to the crew before sitting opposite Jongho in the chair he kicked out.

Mingi didn’t speak again.

The pressure on the side of his face was there still, the weight of his stare, and on his chest sat the weight of his acknowledgement. It was heavy, sinking to his stomach like an anchor. It was everything he wanted.

Mingi had recognised him as more than chance, his actions as more than dumb luck and coincidence spurred by fight or flight.

Mingi had kidnapped him and was likely bragging of his catch.

Yunho’s delight was swiftly quenched. Goosebumps rose the hair over his arms and legs. He stared down at the bowl in front of him, now full to the brim with hot, red soup. Not a single drop had been split down the side of it, even with the chipped porcelain. Two small basil leaves had been placed on the top of it when he hadn’t been paying attention. Accompanying bread sat on another plate in the centre.

The rest of the crew started eating, the clanging of metal soup spoons comfortably filling the silence, interrupted only by Wooyoung slurping his straight from the bowl. He was cut up into a yelp and spluttered. “What?”

“Be polite,” Seonghwa said, scowling at him, with the same hardened expression he’d given Yunho at the Captain’s door. Unlike Yunho, Wooyoung did not bat an eye, only sulked and glared back with an exaggerated pout. “We have a guest.”

He was talking about Yunho, of course. A guest. The word fit strangely in his ears despite knowing they were speaking of him and no one else. Yunho didn’t think he’d ever considered a pirate having consideration for table manners, of all things. He felt like he was living a fever dream, watching them bicker, watching Wooyoung fiddle with his spoon like it was a foreign object.

A nudge at his ankle, and Yunho turned to face Jongho and Yeosang, who smiled softly even as their eyes drooped.

“Eat,” Jongho said, offering Yunho a spoon. He curled his fingers around it. “It’s better than the Navy, I promise. He may not seem the type, but Wooyoung’s passionate about his cooking.”

Yunho took one last sweeping glance around the table and began to eat.

Chapter Text

“So, then,” the Captain started, a few seconds after Yunho had put his spoon down as the last of them to finish, amongst the idle chatter he zoned out. “Initial thoughts, anyone?”

Yunho wished he could’ve remained zoned out, focussed on his soup and bread and the chipped porcelain of his bowl, once they began sharing their actions. He didn’t want to know. He didn’t want to know. He repeated it in his head so many times that he became a blur of blank syllables scraping themselves from the blood in his veins and the breath in his lungs.

His stomach was full. His body was warm. He was surrounded by a family.

He was sat listening to idle, unreal conversation with a crew discussing their violent brutality against sailors who could’ve been him. Should’ve been him. And in the moment, he hadn’t even had the decency to be appalled. In fact, he’d been impressed.

Every drop of soup sat heavy. Sodden bread clogged his throat, building and building.

“It’s unusual for a vessel to have so many sailors, which makes me wonder,” Jongho said, turning to his left, “Yunho, do you know if this is a particular area that the Navy frequents?”

Anything remaining of the spell snapped. “I don’t even know what area we’re in,” Yunho replied, sharp with frustration at himself, at them, “and even if I did, you’re sorely mistaken if you think the Navy would’ve told me anything at all.”

He raised his head, sweeping the room with intent, finding each of their hard stares and cruel smirks and the vile bloodstains bright against their fronts.

The Captain met him head on with a heavy-lidded glare that pierced straight through to Yunho’s sternum, caught him like a knife held tight to his throat despite his damning self-made arrogance.

“You may have been treated as our guest so far,” he hardened his voice until it rebounded like a coarse echoing bass from wall to wall, “but you are solely mistaken if you think you can speak to any member of my crew like that.”

Yunho sat back. Swallowed.

He squirmed in his chair. Tensed his body against the shiver that threatened to rack it. He could utter no reply. Broke the contact with the Captain and let himself skitter away along the splintering dents in the wood of the table, the dark knots standing out along it, the glazed bowls and twisted metal spoons and glowing, swirling vials. Once he reached the end of the room, as far away from the Captain as he could scamper away to, he found Mingi. Mingi, who looked back with the steady blankness of someone who wasn’t truly present, given away only by the split-second twitch of his right brow.

Stupid, foolish, reckless, that’s what he was. For several minutes, Yunho had forgotten that his leaving of the Navy base hadn’t gifted him the freedom he longed for. That these were not the same men he had built himself up to survive. From the moment he woke up he hadn’t wanted to say anything. Especially anything useful, anything real.

Yunho examined the smooth surface of his fingernails as though it would drown out the thump, thump of his rapidly beating heart.

When Jongho began again, his ears clutched for each shred of information like a desperate, starving man.

“We haven’t been in this part of Hala for a while, but last I heard there’s rarely a Navy presence here. It’s odd to have so many sailors on one ship. If they were doing a mass send out across all ships the bases would be deserted, and we would know about it.”

“Closest port?” the Captain asked. “We need to stop to clean and make repairs, so we’ll ask the locals. San, Wooyoung, I want a light approach. If any of them have noticed the increased Navy presence, we don’t want to be blamed.”

“Got it, boss,” San gave a sharp salute, in exact sync with Wooyoung. Wooyoung offered a high five and the sound of it was so loud and enthusiastic Yunho reared backwards on instinct.

“Every time,” Jongho sighed. He shook his head, though it wasn’t in malice. It never seemed to be. None of the others had so much as flinched, but Yunho had, like a fool, like an outsider, alienating himself more by the minute.

It was not being one with pirates he cared about. But what would he be, if he managed even to be an outsider amongst outsiders?

Yunho started over.

“Does this happen often?” he asked.

Mingi started tipping the liquid inside the bottles back and forth. The glimmer running through them was memorising, as he turned them over again. Yeosang twitched to draw Yunho’s attention away, and gave an approving nod that let the next breath settle a little more comfortably in his lungs.

“San and Wooyoung tag teaming the rest of us? Yes, much to our annoyance, you’ll see,” Seonghwa replied, giving the pair of them an affectionate glance.

Yunho could see in the wary look the Captain exchanged with Jongho that they were aware San and Wooyoung wasn’t what he’d been asking about.

“Do they often attack like that? Did you do something to cause it?” he pressed.

“Our existence is cause enough,” the Captain said. “We’ve always been a specific target they attacked if they encountered us, given how many casualties I’ve caused for the Navy as the Pirate King, but most crews were left alone. Now all ships suspected to be pirate-owned are receiving the same treatment. Minor skirmishes are common, given that all pirates are regularly violating laws, but it’s never been this often.”

Yunho shifted uncomfortably and narrowed his eyes. Looking between him and Jongho after their swift exchange, a Captain and his personal advisor on Navy intelligence, had the gears in his head turning over possibilities, pointedly avoiding churning over the rest. There had to be a cause here that he was missing.

It was believable that the Navy would attack due to hierarchy and a sense of superiority alone. The way that suggestion sat so easily on his mind despite eight years of theoretical, written loyalty said everything about how right he’d been to leave, even if that hadn’t come into his reasoning at all, and he hadn’t cared about more than his own survival. Maybe he should’ve done.

Not once, that he could remember, had he heard any concrete reason for a target, a capture, an execution, of which he’d been witness to many, beyond throwing around the typical connotations of pirate. All of them were the same, and never once had the official declarations provided any details of events or locations or dates that would pick out their crimes from amongst the masses. Yunho would know if they had, given how many he read to feel somewhat clued up about the place, in control.

Yunho supposed he probably had noticed at some stage. It wasn’t a startling realisation, just an observation he’d become used to and not thought much about, twisted now into a different light he hadn’t been concerned about before. He’d assumed it was just that they didn’t want to disclose anything about specific operations out of safety or sugar-coating to keep the sailors there. What if there simply hadn’t been any details to record? A part of him reared back in horror that he’d allowed himself blissful ignorance, so focussed on himself.

It was harder, however, to reason like this when sat in a small, shadowed room opposite the famous Captain who took the name of the Pirate King. There was not a bone, a muscle, a nerve in Yunho’s body that believed this was as obvious as a frequency issue. This crew must’ve done more than cause a few extra casualties, and Yunho had been dropped into the crux of it.

Some part of his frustration must’ve been evident on his face.

“You didn’t run away out of morality, then?” Jongho said. His face scrunched up for a second in wincing concern. “You have a lot to learn.”

Yunho released the tension from his muscles and allowed himself to sink just enough for a quieter contemplation to replace his anger. A sliver of it, somewhere, asked why he was concerned with morality now, after all this time.

“Well, at the very least you’ve confirmed our next course of action. If we’re to work out the cause we’re going to the need the pattern. Mingi might’ve had certain…” the Captain paused and grinned at the blank look he received from the end of the table, though Yunho was quickly learning that that was just Mingi’s face, “…biases in taking you in, but it was also intentional, because while we have the best navigators it is difficult to get hold of accurate maps, and we so happen to have lost ours during an attack.”

Wooyoung rose, clearing the bowls from the table in a lopsided stack and taking them along with the empty pot into the kitchen, next to a water barrel that he slid the top from. But Yunho hardly noticed him.

He’d snapped up at the mention of his maps and had to clench his jaw to keep a straight face. Those maps were his lifeline. The absence of them, of knowledge of where they were and what condition they were in, had been buzzing low in the back of his head since he’d woken up, even if the fight had stolen his attention away for a while. The first step towards an escape.

He knew his mapwork was good, he’d say some of the best, even, and it had been held in high importance, hence why he’d taken everything he could when he ran. He’d planned for them to help him navigate, and that was true especially now he’d been thrown off course on this ship, given that he knew the routes surrounding the base by heart since he’d drawn out the area so many times in various copies for plans and demonstrations. But more so they gave him value. Mingi had recognised it too, he supposed, in some twisted way, given that he was still alive to be able to take them back.

Still, he’d hoped that he’d be able to use them personally before he had to give them away in exchange for anything he needed, a last resort if he couldn’t manage to get a small job somewhere.

Jongho rose from his chair, leant down in the shadowed corner behind Mingi, and reappeared to spread Yunho’s largest and most intricate map across the table. It was covered in small scraps of fabric, pinned to mark points on the surface.

Yunho could not think of any combination of curse words that would express his internal agony.

“So,” the Captain said, stern, “you’ll make a replica of this one with these port locations confirmed, and then we’ll get details of the recent attacks so you can place those, too.”

Yunho looked to the ceiling and took in a deep enough breath that it muffled the screaming in his mind. “I suppose I do not have a choice.”

The Captain clapped his hands together, his face transforming into blinding, artificial glee, and Yunho pointedly ignored the shuffling of San’s shoulders, the muffled laughter from their end of the table. “Excellent! You can get started tomorrow. We’ll be using this room for repairs for a while, though—Wooyoung—”

“What about Mingi’s room?” Wooyoung interrupted.

He continued clattering with the bowls like he’d never said anything at all. The Captain pursed his lips in thought, though the rest said nothing, waiting.

Yunho looked up, only to find Mingi already staring straight at him, those dark eyes sweeping up and down his torso before they narrowed into Yunho’s own paralysed stare.

He gulped. A lump stuck in his throat. His brain fizzled out and he couldn’t think hard enough to get his limbs to move, and his thoughts and worries and irritation floated aimlessly around the dome that was his mind. He couldn’t remember he had limbs at all.

He only breathed again when Mingi’s gaze snapped away to the Captain, who was swivelling between them.

Wooyoung started again, oblivious. “No? The maps we do have on paper are in there, anyway, so Yunho may as well make use of those—"

San cut him off with a noise somewhere between shock and contemplation, leaning sharply forward and jostling Yunho with his broad shoulders. “I think that’s a great idea!” he said, and at Yunho’s slowly widening eyes, “it makes sense! Mingi brought you in, and he has space, and he’ll need your maps eventually to plan explosives attacks. He could probably do with some help, sometimes, too—Yeah, okay. Stop looking at me like that. You’re still creepy.”

Yunho turned in time, in sync with the rest of them, to catch Mingi’s hardened, deadpan expression twitching up dangerously into a smile. His eyes crinkled up into lines, the hint of a dimple in his cheek, but it was gone again as soon as it came.

Yunho’s face scrunched up like he’d been burned. Even looking sharply away did not remove the twisted image from his mind, like a figure from a nightmare.

The Captain nodded. “That’s settled then,” he said, though Yunho strongly disagreed and had to force his mouth closed, “Yunho will be stationed with Mingi, and we should reach the port in a few days so until then everyone has their roles.”

He paused for confirmation from the rest of the table, surveying them all until he landed on Yunho, who was still glancing over towards Mingi every few seconds and resisting the urge to shuffle in discomfort. That, or leave the room entirely. Or leave the Earth. That sounded the best option as of right now. He jerked his head in more of a twitch than a nod, but enough for the Captain, nonetheless.

“Anyone have anything else to add?”

No one answered. The Captain stood from the table and left the room, Seonghwa following, the scrape of their chairs rattling against the floorboards. San’s presence from his left side vanished towards the kitchen. Jongho’s from his right. Yunho tucked himself in so their arms wouldn’t brush his own. Yeosang rose to the light touch on his shoulder and followed Jongho out, but not without a glance that Yunho could’ve called worry, if he hadn’t been watching it at a distance, hovering above himself.

His head was full of cotton. Clouded with thick fog off the ocean, the kind he’d pictured rolling over great Navy battles, dusted with gunpowder smoke and bright fire. The kind he wasn’t sure existed anymore. What he’d seen was no cinematic atmosphere, no negotiation or build-up, only an explosion of violence that had manifested outwards in desperation and panic. There was nothing pretty or great about it.

Mingi gathered his bottles one by one and slipped them into pockets inside of his jacket with slow care. He slipped out like a ghost, a dark silhouette with blazing hair.

Yunho’s map still laid out on the table, and he ran one fingertip along its edge, traced the lines he’d once placed there. It felt like mourning, the heavy weight that sat over him. Yet he wasn’t sure what he had to mourn over. Any fear he had was a light simmering compared to everything else, given that he’d been contesting with it ever since he could remember, and while the situation changed the feeling never did.

He was tired. He was so, so tired. He could sleep for centuries, draped over this map, and lay drowsy for a few more.

As it was, though, he was not alone.

“So, then,” Wooyoung’s voice rammed into his ear, immediately close, with San beaming just over his shoulder. “You ready for the grand tour of our humble abode?”

“Humble?” San interrupted, “our Captain is Kim Hongjoong. He’s literally the opposite of humble, don’t let him hear you say that—”

“Don’t let who hear what?”

The Captain appeared in the doorway with an eyebrow raised.

Wooyoung shrieked, shoving San towards the door past the Captain, wafting Yunho along to follow them. Yunho did, rather haphazardly tripping over the table leg as he went, glancing at the Captain as he shuffled after the pair’s hurried footsteps echoing through the ship.

Hongjoong tapped the side of his nose twice and winked, previous anger gone like dissipated smoke, like the Navy ship they’d left behind.

What a strange, strange place he’d ended up in.

Chapter Text

In the darkness of the ship’s bunkroom, Yunho’s thoughts alternated between spiralling and disappearing altogether. His mind had always worked like this—exploding one moment like fireworks, sparks flying off in all directions, a hive of bees pouring into his head, stabbing behind his eyes, a whisk making his teeth vibrate and scrambling his brain like egg.

Then the next moment: nothing.

Not white noise. Not a few wispy thoughts here and there, fading before they finish. Nothing. It’s as though he’d never had a single thought in his life, and he’d forgotten entirely what it felt like to have one, forgotten it was an option at all. It was frustrating, made exhausting when he hadn’t genuinely slept of his own accord in days and spent much of those similarly frustrated.

He laid in the bed they gave him for hours. Sleep wouldn’t come, not when he couldn’t control his mind, and when it went quiet enough for him to feign ignorance the soft snores from beneath him functioned as a reminder.

After dinner Wooyoung and San took him on a tour of the ship, from vague gestures towards the Captain’s quarters at the front of the deck to the maze of rooms stretching beneath it.

Beyond the dining room and galley there was extensive storage holds of food and maintenance supplies stacked in crates, some named and others bare, though they hadn’t lingered long. Yunho guessed there were weapons amongst it. Part of him was relieved that they’d taken care not to disclose that specifically, even if it gave him a harder job, should he try to take them; they might be mad against his standards, but somehow reassuringly, they weren’t stupid.

Mingi’s room—the ship’s previous general workroom, though as he did most of their technical work it had become known as Mingi’s alone, San informed him—that Yunho was instructed to use was pointed out at the tail end of the ship, just before the spare room he’d laid unconscious in. They hadn’t shown him the inside, and Yunho was grateful for it. He needed rest before he could confront both working in Mingi’s space and working at all. Having a regular space in that room would create a permanence in his presence here that he absolutely did not desire to achieve.

After the tour, and Yeosang had ghosted over to his side and led him back to the galley, away from the wandering ears of San and Wooyoung. Stood so differently to the slouching of the others, polite beside the table as they spoke.

“I talked to the Captain about you,” he'd said, and before Yunho could feel that vicious wave of panic sweep him under, “I told him I don’t think you mean harm against the crew. That you’re angry, frustrated, and how understandable it is that you are, moving from one unwanted place to end up in another. It is only natural that you have the urge to lash out, and I am impressed you haven’t done so more.”

Yunho could only stare, uncaring to hide the bewilderment showing plainly on his features.

“Hongjoong will give you a little more patience, but he is not a very patient man, so be careful, okay?”

A fraction of a nod given on autopilot, and he was sliding back past him again and vanishing with a smile, and Yunho was reclaimed by the louder pair bickering as they waited to lead him back to the bunkroom.

The night would be over soon, the sun pulling itself from the ocean and breaking over the horizon, and he’d long since given up trying to pull himself together before it happened.

He felt weightless every time the boat swayed, floating up in the top bunk, raised to the middle of the room in the middle of the ocean. It wasn’t quite how he had imagined it. Being out on a ship had been presented to him as a privilege, something to be earned and something he would never be able to reach. Yet here he was, not because he’d worked his way up the ranks after all, but because he’d broken them entirely.

A fractured image of Jeong Sun-young pieced itself together between the silences.

The only memories he had of her were fast: all scrambled visits at random times tinged with an underlying urgency, checking him over, hushed conversations with the maids, constantly looking back over her shoulder. Her arrival announced only by an entourage thundering through the house in their heavy boots, her departure by a swift kiss on the forehead. Wild hair and even wilder eyes, a pirate in every which way. A mother in some.

He wished those some were still as vivid now as they once had been, before they’d been tainted over and over by cruel hands tearing him from their home and the feeling of her presence, and then by crueller words.

Ironic that years after her execution Yunho supposed he was closer to her life than he ever had been, though the thought only left a bitter taste in his mouth that he didn’t want to acknowledge. He stuttered on the question of what she’d think of him here, and that was enough to have him casting the curiosity aside.

San shuffled in bed on the bottom bunk underneath Yunho, the blankets rustling before he settled again with a sigh. Yunho echoed it.

On the bunk bed to the left, he could just make out the lumps of Yeosang and Wooyoung, obscuring Mingi and Jongho beyond them. They slept soundly despite having a stranger amongst them, and it drove him mad with confusion and with anger. Why did they get to rest while he laid up tracing the dents in the floorboards over and over under the glow creeping into the corridor?

Unable to take his eyes away for more than a few minutes, not because he genuinely thought a shadow would appear with a knife in hand, but because he imagined it anyway.

Back to the floorboards, back to the ceiling. Back to the left-hand corner the light didn’t quite reach. He’d have to work with Mingi tomorrow, reveal he had no real intention of doing so, because he wasn’t naïve enough to think they wouldn’t catch onto the half-hearted effort.

He cursed aloud, into the dark of the room, and dug the heels of his hands into his eyes.

Chapter Text

Yunho watched San walk away, nails biting into his palms where his fists were tightly clenched at his sides. There was nothing behind him but a door, and yet pressure was building on the back of his head as though the wood had sprouted eyes and gained enough consciousness to suck him in and swallow him whole. Either that or Mingi was stalking him with x-ray vision. It wouldn’t have even surprised him much.

Hence why Yunho hovered for a moment before turning to his fate. This man was even more of a mystery than the rest. Yunho knew nothing but his glowing bottles and a flaming fireball of a ship and kidnapping tendencies. It wasn’t the most welcoming of first, second, or third impressions. Third time’s a charm was the saying, not fourth, and said he was doomed—but Yunho had always been one to undermine expectations. He hoped his luck streak wouldn’t choose now to redeem itself.

Yunho took as deep a breath as he could manage, trying not to make a sound, and forced his feet to turn at once. Winced as though expecting Mingi to jump out and bite him. He reached for the copper handle and pushed the door open.

Mingi’s small work room was brighter than the kitchen and bunks had been. Yunho was pleasantly surprised. He dragged his eyes across the lamps and lanterns and candles dotted here and there across the space, high and low. None of them followed a pattern, but most illuminated shelves and parchment pinned to the walls, casting a warm orange glow from behind their glass cases.

The shelves beside the entrance were a marvel, the wildly shaped bottles upon them standing out in neat rows and many of them shifting and glittering with minds of their own. Round-bottom flasks and ridged glass jars with decorative patterns and tubes shaped like wiggly lines corked at the top. Smaller, pocket-sized bottles like the ones Mingi had slipped into his coat the previous night, only here they stacked up in variations of colour and consistency, most of which Yunho had never thought possible let alone seen before. His pupils reflected their contents like bright, fizzing fireworks. The others were no less alarming, and inspired awe in a very different way; small jars of animal bones, shrivelled tails and spider legs, several containers of flies and insects both dead and alive. All had their places against the wall, secured with wooden planks and nails and tied with string that pulled taunt as the ship swayed with another wave.

Opposite, a desk, the content on its surface obscured from sight by Mingi’s back, some wooden crates to his sides with wires cascading down to the floor.

On the lefthand wall, remaining incomplete maps and scraps of paper were pinned together haphazardly, all of them uneven pieces of a dire puzzle. Yunho could point out several miscalculations and outdated landforms the second he laid eyes on them, and as he surveyed the rest of the room, his eyes kept dragging back and taking note of something else each time.

He understood, suddenly, how serious they were when they said they needed his maps. Why they needed him here and co-operative. It was a miracle they’d lasted on the sea this long, surely stumbling into trouble with unmarked whirlpools and rocky areas, the criminally inaccurate port locations delaying navigation to aid.

Below the maps were two large, upturned crates forming a makeshift desk, a single lantern sat on the back corner, and a dining chair.

Every other available space on the floor was piled with crates, stacked up and overflowing with spare parts separated into shining and rusting, and the walls were covered with messy hand-written notes and mechanical sketches tacked and strung together.

“Took you long enough.”

Yunho had to resist flinching, though he had no reason to be surprised when Mingi broke the silence. He knew the other was there, had already glossed over his back.

“Thought you’d never make it past hovering at the door,” Mingi muttered.

Yunho stilled. Froze with his mouth open, poised to speak. He really, seriously, had been joking when suggesting x-ray vision, and yet, he had said he wouldn’t be surprised—

Mingi turned in his seat, looked him up and down through thin, black-framed glasses. Those were certainly new. The singed leather coat he wore was the same, but the waistcoat under-neath different, a rough brown fabric, slightly shorter than the last. A black sash was pulled tight around the skin it didn’t reach.

“I saw your shadow in the corridor,” Mingi said, voice flat.

Yunho diverted his eyes back to the maps to his right, rocking back and forth on his feet, heat rising to the back of his neck. Fool, fool, fool. He squeezed his hands behind his back and picked at the skin around his nails.

Mingi reached beside his own desk into the room’s curved corner, pulling back to reveal one of Yunho’s maps, one that was truly his, that he’d personally penned and knew like the back of his hand. Dropped it unceremoniously onto the spare desk. Yunho cringed and went to reach out for it on panicked instinct before cringing again at his haste and retracting his hands.

“Captain wants a replica of that one. Jongho will give you the information to mark down recent naval activity once it’s done.”

Yunho hummed absently. With Mingi’s speech, he shifted from eyeing the room’s supplies with suspicion, to eyeing the man who owned them. He’d seen the explosion finish the battle, tear the Navy vessel in two. Better yet, it didn’t seem like the worst of his concern, with the amount of bottles stacked delicately around them. He dreaded what those chemicals did and planned never to find out—explosives master had almost certainly been a bland understatement.

Mingi turned his back, paying no mind to the obvious observation. He began fiddling with something on the desk in front of him.

Yunho took his movement dismissal and shuffled over to the upturned crates, taking up the pencil and blank parchment laying on top of it, and folded his legs down around the small stool.

It took exactly seven minutes of incredibly light, reluctant sketching for the weight in the room to become unbearable.

Map-making was Yunho’s thing. Always had been. He’d latched onto some discarded pieces when he was a toddler and scribbled over them with coloured crayons, finding scraps of them throughout the messy cottage quicker than the maids babysitting him could take them away. The faces of the many maids he’d had all blurred together now, his memories scratched through with jagged knives, but a few continuous occasions had managed to imprint themselves in his mind untouched by the cloudy sheen.

It was his thing, and something twitched uneasily in his body at the involvement of someone else in such proximity, even if Mingi’s unrelenting focus indicated that he couldn’t have been more unbothered about his presence. Or anything at all.

It shouldn’t have mattered, considering he had thus far put little pencil to paper and had no intention of creating a map usable to the pirates; unless they gave him good reason or hefty threat, he wouldn’t willingly pull his passion so low as to use it for criminals. More criminals. Yunho wasn't sure where the boundary was anymore.

Mingi hadn’t looked at Yunho once, but that feeling was still unfurling in his stomach and reminding him of the dangerous edge he walked on, and he couldn’t settle into any sort of rhythm calm enough to focus on strategy with it there.

He let out a heavy sigh, trying to will the pressure to go away through huffing alone. Mingi didn’t shift a millimetre.

“So,” Yunho said into the empty space, before he had the chance to think better of it, “what exactly is it you’re making?”

A spark lit up in front of Mingi, its glow peeking over his shoulder, as Yunho spoke.

Mingi ignored him. It didn’t stop Yunho from leaning forwards, however, attempting to crane his head around the other man’s body, rather than facing his own turmoil in map form. “It’s another bomb, isn’t it?”

A delicate clink, clink sounded from the metal in Mingi’s hands.

“Do you only make bombs? Or is it just them and the… chemicals?”

Yunho’s gaze wandered to the opposite wall, to the shelves stacked with them, and he shivered at the sudden phantom sensation of how one of the freezing bottles would feel beneath his fingertips. Condensation licked up the sides of it, frost on the inside.

“Don’t touch them,” Mingi said, though his voice droned, dull and empty as ever, hardly commanding.

Yunho didn’t register it, only rose from his hard stool and moved on to the next, this one a pale sky blue. He reached out to take hold of it and shift the expanse of the sky in his own, trembling hands. In an instant, his fingertips went from frozen to burning hot. He tugged his hand away, careless, cursing.

Yunho hesitated to fix his mistake a moment too long and watched as the bottle he knocked teetered, teetered, toppled off the shelf and tumbled to the floor, the glass shattering into tiny crystals lit like sparks in the lamplight.

Then dissolved.

The glass crumbled to dust in front of Yunho’s wide eyes, and he stood stock-still, hand raised and hovering as the blue liquid seeped into the wood, through it, ate into the floorboards and sizzled and spat like oil in a pan. So much for a cloudless sky.

Yunho felt Mingi rise to stand shoulder-to-shoulder with him more than saw it, because he was blatantly refusing to look, eyes fixed on the burning hole despite the horror settling further into his gut the longer he stared. It was far better than the horror he would have to endure staring at Mingi. In mortification over his mistake, shame in not listening to the warning that was only now processing through his ears, but most importantly in his opinion, in alarm at what on earth Mingi was doing creating something that could eat through the floor in such a small quantity. On a floodable boat in the middle of the ocean.

It was on a minute scale, and yet so much worse than the bombs that had downed the Navy ship. He didn’t want to imagine what this and the rest of the bottles were being used for, what they would feel like being used on him, given he hadn’t been sure how long he’d last on this ship regardless.

Like burning. Acid on his skin, itchy and raw and slightly fizzy, tickling the hair on his arms before crushing his bones to dust.

Mingi said nothing at all. He reached across to where a small bucket of water sat on the end of a shelf and splashed some over the mark on the floor. Unscrewed the cap of a jam jar and tipped droplets of a pearly, iridescent mixture on top of it.

A thick plume of glittering smoke rose from where the mark had been, and Mingi swept it away with his hands, beginning to collect the glass shards into his palm. He appeared to be in no hurry.

Yunho couldn’t stop his jaw from dropping, no matter how queasy he was, as the wood stitched itself back together in front of his very eyes, like a self-weaving tapestry.

When Yunho finally snapped back into the world, he spluttered, his eyes darting across the rest of the shelves where the chemicals sat swirling at him. “I don’t—I don’t think I’ll touch them.”

Mingi didn’t respond verbally, but the look he levelled at Yunho gave him such a shuddering feeling that he assumed his soul was being drained straight from his head to the very tips of his toes. He swayed on his feet.

Mingi dropped the shards into a small mound on the side of his desk and went back to his work, but the motion only served to remind Yunho of the rest of the projects going on in this room; a multitude of metal components sat upon it, all wired together with a small pouch of gunpowder sat in the centre.

“Where—Where did you learn to make these things? How?” Yunho said, couldn’t help himself, peering over the man’s back. “That’s impossible. That’s not science, that was—Was that magic? Do you have magic?”

He staggered back, turned on the shelves. Confusion and possibility and disbelief and conviction all welled up at once in a tide. He hadn’t needed to ask the question. It was right there, in front of him. It shouldn’t have been, but it was. Yunho could scarcely keep his head on straight. Everyone knew about magic. Not many were alive who had seen it, let alone spill it.

Images of childhood fairytales and magical creatures flooded into his mind. All of them fictional. Magic, however, he had learnt during his time at the Navy, was merely chemical and very real. It had only ever been a matter of time before someone mixed the right things together in the right order with the right equipment, with more ambition than sense.

Not that he had seen it. Not that he’d expected to come anywhere close to it in his lifetime.

Rumours over its creation floated between the sailors at the dinner table, guesses bellowed in the bunkrooms, each more extreme that the other, squeamish and bloody. It had to be terrible. If not, it would not be outlawed, exchanged in black markets, would not lead to politicians and mayors and business owners dead in the streets and within their homes, sparkling dust clouds hovering over their bodies. There were ringleaders, runners, a whole organised operation regularly of Navy interest, many of which apprehended. Not once had the leader been caught. They called themselves the High Mage.

Yunho surveyed the rows, each unnatural shift within bottles grey, blue and green. They seemed almost alive.

What had and could be made rarely equalled what should or should not be made. It relied on morality, on goodness, on restraint, and Mingi it appeared had none.

Truthfully, however, Yunho never did have much self-control when it was needed, either.

His hands flittered, reached out to the shelves and the re-woven patch, then back to the desk and the crates and the wires, then back again, “Do the bombs have magic in them, too? I’ve never seen magic, only heard of it, usually when the sailors came back from following the High Mage.” A bolt clattered from Mingi’s hand to the floor with a metallic tingle as Yunho twitched, almost frantic. “Wait. Did you use magic when you kidnapped me? With whatever was on the cloth?”

He turned to stare at Mingi’s back. “You… you used magic to kidnap me, didn’t you? Oh my God. You used magic to kidnap me. How could you do that? I mean, the kidnapping was bad enough,” he began pacing again as he spoke, “but I figured no point discussing the moral issues there considering you wouldn’t consider those, anyway, and it was enough of a criminal offence that you probably already have some twisted idea of morality of your own. But I have to ask now, because how dare you steal or—or make magic and use it on me, don’t you understand how messed up that is—Are you even listening?”

Yunho came to a full stop. The creaking of the floorboards ceased, and only the groan of the ship itself responded. His hands hovered in the air, poised to resume their wild gesturing, but they slipped slightly when he turned fully to face Mingi.

He remained straight-backed. A harsh set to his shoulders. Not a tremble to his body. Only short, little huffs of air that Yunho could hear when he stepped closer, and even they were controlled in a set rhythm. Small sighs born out of exhaustion, not rage.

But Yunho had lost his composure the instant the opportunity had arisen, and it ran away with him. Unravelled like an endless string. He reached a hand forwards, slowly, extending one finger so that he could tap Mingi on the shoulder, to get some kind of reaction, anything, but Mingi rose and turned around in one fowl swoop before he had the chance.

They stared at each other for a moment, almost level but not quite, Yunho being slightly taller. Mingi’s eyes were startlingly blank, and Yunho didn’t want to think about how foolish his own face must’ve looked, how foolishly expressive he felt in comparison with his shock and rage and unrivalled fascination left uncovered. Yunho desperately searched for something to decipher, to give anything away, but there was nothing.

It wasn’t that they were empty. No person, especially not someone who had ended up here surrounded by these wild inventions and capable of a kidnapping, was truly unemotional. It was as if there was a wall stacked up just behind his pupils, thick and unbreakable, carefully concealing his thoughts. Yunho knew enough not to point it out or attempt to break it down, but he saw it. He wondered inexplicably what had made him feel the need to put it up in the first place, who the person he’d shut out had been.

He did not quite have the effort to dispel his wondering, this time, with the man in such close quarters.

Mingi diverted his gaze and broke the contact, staring to the left of Yunho’s head instead, towards the door.

“Magic doesn’t have to have bad intentions,” he said, twitching his chin up in defiance.

Yunho eyed the shift warily. “So, you didn’t have bad intentions during a kidnapping?”

“No, I didn’t.”

“And how do you expect me to—”

“You’re not supposed to believe me.”

Mingi slipped away. He shifted around the room slowly with a too-smooth ease that only suggested how forcibly he was controlling his limbs, though he wasn’t doing much with them. “You should believe the others. They will treat you with kindness, so long as you do the same.”

“But why?” Yunho pushed, his voice rising. “I don’t understand. You have my maps, you don’t need replicas, there’s no reason to be nice to me. To—to try and lie about the intentions of a kidnapping. None of the things any of you do make sense!”

Yunho steeled himself against flinching back. Mingi gave up with his elusive movements and whirled to face him again, leather coat flaring out around his body.

“Hongjoong won’t let any strays slip through.”

His voice was hard as rock. Hot and fierce as the fire in his hair. Yunho stared and stared and stared, across the narrow space between them.

“Strays?” he answered finally, quieter. The slight furrow of his brows an opposite to Mingi’s trembling fists.

“He took us all in differently, but the premise has always been the same,” Mingi said. “We were lost, and he gave us somewhere to go, if we wanted it. He never talks about why he does it, and you learn not to ask.”

Yunho surveyed Mingi’s face, the certainty in his expression. It held the intensity that had appeared as they’d waited for the explosion to hit, and yet somehow resembled how Hongjoong had looked over Wooyoung and San at the dinner table, too, and how Jongho’s attention had latched onto Yeosang the moment they’d joined them. Yunho both acknowledged it and shook it off.

“I wasn’t lost,” he replied firmly, “I had a plan, which you’ve since ruined.”

Mingi glared back. “Are you trying to tell me that, or convince yourself?”

“I was going to trade with a merchant ship for passage—”

“And what happens when you get to the end of that journey? You’d try to trade your way into a job, but you’d be pursued. You’re aware that the Navy hold even the King of Hala in a head-lock, that you are nothing but a bug to squash, but you are refusing to acknowledge it. They are much harder to lose than you could ever anticipate. The second fliers went out no tradesperson would consider you, and it would only have been a matter of time before someone powerful got wind of the opportunity for big monetary gain and pulled you right back in. Or, if you’d prefer, pirates much worse than us would hear of military maps on the run, and you’d either be robbed blind or stored away in a dark hold without ever stepping foot on the deck. And that’s if the initial merchant hadn’t spotted all that early and decided they’d take advantage of a willing worker. Trust me, you would not be willing for long.”

Yunho stood. Stared. Increasingly wide-eyed and unable to look away. His body shook, no matter how he willed it not to. Willed the dry ache to crawl back down his throat.

So much passionate emotion from a man wiped clean. The words flowed easily, pre-assessed. There was so much lying within his speech, Yunho did not know where to start. Anger? Denial? Some strange, foreign worry? An encroaching sense of dread washed over his senses and rendered his brain incapable of identifying how he was supposed to react.

Yunho’s blood simmered in his veins, until he could feel his pulse harsh in his head. He felt the insufferable urge to scream. He took a deep breath instead and sat back down on his stool.

“I don’t need saving,” he snapped, spitting each word with frustration tangled up between himself and the criminal before him. “You can’t just pick people off the street and expect them to be grateful for it, acting like you’re doing them a favour. I didn’t ask for any of that.”

Neither did he, Yunho’s traitorous thoughts betrayed him. Neither did Mingi. He knew, intrinsically, that something of Mingi’s own story lingered like a thick cloud in the air of the workroom.

Mingi leant down, a certain fury in his eyes, burning though the stone wall he’d so carefully constructed. He bent at the waist until his face hovered in front of Yunho’s, and Yunho traced the small circle of the mole beneath his right eye. A little brown oval. Too delicate.

“Hongjoong knows that,” Mingi hissed, “but he hasn’t been wrong yet. If you want to deny it then fine, go ahead. You can keep your ignorance. We needed to replace our maps, I need to aid them, and you popped out the crowd looking dazed with every map we could ever need, straight out of a Navy compound. It would’ve been a stupid opportunity to waste.”

Yunho grasped it like a dog with a bone. He could not deny the way his voice steadied. An edge of relief crept in. This, for the first time perhaps since he’d arrived, finally made sense.

“I’m your sacrifice, then,” he said. “To what, make them trust you and see past your bombs and your magic?”

Pirates were selfish. They looked after themselves first, and their own second. He was nothing but a pawn to another dangerous man. That blanket of unease was far easier to stomach than the discomfort invading the rest of him.

The wall behind Mingi’s eyes slammed back into place. He leant back, rigid, perfectly consistent. “Yes, exactly that,” he said. So painfully, thankfully monotoned that it gave Yunho whiplash. “You are a child, who has not left the safety of that building and its status in years. You do not understand how the world works. I will do what it takes to keep my crew alive.”

Yunho glared. “You are not the first dangerous man I have met,” he said, as though that was all Mingi was.

“And I certainly will not be the last.”

Yunho continued staring, just long enough that he could feel like the bigger person if he was the first to turn away. Not long enough that it was obvious he was thinking less of that and more of the man in front of him, and what his life may have looked like, how and why this is how he had ended up. As Yunho returned to face his desk and traced the thin lines over the parchment with his eyes, stubbornly aware of Mingi’s presence behind him and refusing to react to it, he could think of nothing else.

His rage dulled under something softer, something enlightened.

Mingi remained in the middle of the room for what could’ve been hours, unspeaking. Yunho remained glaring down at his paper until he wasn’t conscious of time anymore and vowed that he would stop listening for speech. It was drawn out over centuries when he acknowledged that pressure and sped up just as much when his determination to feign ignorance returned in full force.

The ship lurched over a particularly harsh wave, and several of the lanterns started creaking again, shrill and metallic.

In the end, Mingi never returned to his desk and stood tall and motionless in the centre of the room. “You will hate me,” he said, with harsh certainty, “but not the rest of them.”

Yunho froze.

“My inventions and the magic I manipulate are cruel. I use them willingly and will continue to if it means protecting them from attacks they don’t deserve. If not that, then to thank Hongjoong. If you and your Navy target anything here, it will be me, and having a set of maps will mean that it stays that way. This crew will survive.”

He slunk from the room like a shadow.

The ship continued to rock steadily beneath Yunho’s body, the lanterns swaying and creaking on their hinges. Ocean slashed against the walls, muted by thick wood and the absent buzzing of his mind. Wooyoung began cackling somewhere down the corridor, distant enough that he wasn’t sure if he was imagining it, making him press down harder into the grooves of the pencil between his fingers, to become aware of the torn insides of his shoes squeezing the sides of his feet, curling his toes. He placed the pencil down on the desk in a precise straight line and uncurled them. Let his shoulders drop from his ears, and his eyebrows unfurrow. Sat feeling through each of his limbs for a while.

When he reached for the pencil again, he moved slowly, worked calmly in the ship’s ambiance as if nothing had happened at all, only a singular thought remaining like an echo.

It followed him along the outlines of each landmass, haunted after him hours later towards the bunkroom, sent him missing dinner and slipping into an early sleep instead:

Hongjoong may take in strays, but it wasn’t Hongjoong who had taken him in at all.

Mingi considered himself separate, selfish, in a way that only appeared to the outside eye as callous and cruel. But Yunho had already seen past his wall, and heard that layer peeling back, and he wanted to know why.

The next time he was in the workroom, the lines he sketched were clear and sharp.

Chapter Text

Dragging his pencil sideways across the page, fighting against the waves he drew, Yunho hummed to himself. It was whispers of a song he’d heard in childhood, whistled only by Sun-young’s crew. A haunting thing that rocked back and forth like the rhythmic tugging of oars.

Days had passed quietly, calmly somehow, in the treasure trove that was Mingi’s workroom. It was easy, almost, his mind soothed by the new sprawling maps filling the gaps on the wall, his life’s work safely returned to his side, tucked in the familiar messenger bag on the floor by his feet. They’d given him it back a week ago with the majority of his maps inside, after he’d presented the first of the Captain’s requests. The brown corduroy stared him down whenever he stopped paying attention, wherever he slipped.

Most of the time it was silent, save for the subtle bubbling of liquid in a cauldron in the corner, the scratching of Yunho’s pencil on the rough parchment, the tink, tink of another metal tool.

He’d found the song on the tip of his tongue that morning and hesitated, but in the solitude of Mingi’s room, the man himself having been absent for a reason he did not dare ask, he allowed himself a little freedom. Wondered how many times his mother had sung it. If his father ever had. He had gathered years ago that he never would know if his father had been a part of her crew or a pirate from another, now she was gone.

Yunho wasn’t sure how many times Yeosang had listened to it roll over and over again before he leant to pick up a piece of charcoal and noticed him stood in the doorway, hands neatly clasped.

The charcoal flew across the room and clattered to the floor with a gasp, never to be found again.

Yunho wrists crossed over his chest like a shield, his body pulled back and heartbeat hammering in his ears. “How did you get there?” he whispered loudly.

Yeosang attempted a smile and achieved a grimace. “I walked.”

“When? I didn’t hear you—”

“I thought you’d be a jumpy one,” he replied, coy and satisfied, “Jongho and Hongjoong sent me to get you, they’re on the top deck. Don’t worry, I think it’s only some basic questions.”

He stalked off back down the corridor without a sound. Yunho sucked in a breath and followed, staring down at his shoes, exasperated every time the boards creaked as he followed the same path.

He stumbled onto the deck, bringing a hand up to shield his eyes from the glaring sun. The sky was bright blue, but the Captain had talked of a storm coming in and steadily darkening clouds were beginning to inch closer. They had all been itching to get to the port and off the ship, Yunho included, though he suspected his reasoning was different to theirs.

Half of him itched with the knowledge of increasing escape and the underlying fear of being caught. The rest felt no fear nor anticipation nor need. Instead, it put a burst of speed into his steps and dug its claws into the ship’s planks, leaving trailing marks wherever he went. In the workroom, thousands glared up at him along the floor, from his desk, Mingi’s, so violent it was as though they were real.

Yeosang went to join Wooyoung, who was sat on a barrel off to the right, making enough noise for the entire crew with incessant whining. Seonghwa, both to Wooyoung’s relief and chagrin, remained stone-faced at his side, prodding him in the shoulder like a game of cat and mouse while looking upwards; the shadow of San's body curling around the shrouds was laid out over the deck.

Yunho steeled himself and continued up the stairs, onto the top deck, where Jongho and the Captain were conversing near the wheel, facing out to sea.

“…certain. We can’t assume he’s lying, Hongjoong, there’s no evidence.”

“You know as much as anyone that Navy evidence means nothing. There will only be rumours to follow, and if you’re not prepared to push him, I have no—”

“Ah, Yunho.”

Jongho cut the Captain off and turned towards Yunho as he spoke. His expression twisted into a small smile. As they’d first met eyes, though, Yunho had caught his mouth drooped to a frown, and the Captain’s face was all rigid in hard lines when they faced each other.

Yunho’s stomach clenched. “Yeosang said you wanted me for something?”

The Captain narrowed his eyes. “Something, indeed.”

“We just have a few questions for you, that’s all. Nothing to worry about,” Jongho said, “It’s been a while since I left the Navy, so our intel is out of date, and it would help us to—”

“Tell me what you heard at the base.”

The Captain’s voice was blunt and dull. Like the grey storm clouds above them, dark and blank before they let loose.

Yunho stuttered, the muscles in his neck tensing.

The Captain stepped forwards, though his torso remained rolled back with his arms crossed over his chest, and he stared up at Yunho without craning his neck. He didn’t stop approaching, sauntering, once he started.

Yeosang shot him a sideways glance, and Jongho cringed. Neither gave Yunho a vote of confidence.

“You must’ve heard talk of pirates, of our violent rampages, our plans to tear apart villages,” sarcasm dripped from the Captain’s tongue, “what did they say about us? The officers, the sailors?”

Yunho stammered uncertainly for a reply, watching, analysing reactions. “Uh—They did say most of those things, yes—”

“What else?”

Stern and bold. Grey storm clouds, like thunder, like heavy rain. Phantom water clogged Yunho's throat. The others, where were the others? A misshappen form, a navy silhouette, but the Captain moved closer, blocking Jongho out like a solid wall.

Yunho's eyes darted back and forth, seeking anything else. “That they were checking any pirates they could find, and more sailors were being sent out, and they would complain about stricter training designed against curved weapons and shorter daggers—”

His speech sped up with every word, every step the Captain took closer. Watchful eyes sent ants crawling over Adrian’s skin. He found himself stepping back, until he was running out of space, glancing behind at the approaching railing as words fell from his mouth. It was as though his vision was shadowing at the edges as the bright sky faded, warping to a fish-eye lens.

“Locations? Names?”

“No, no I don’t think so.”

“Come on, there has to be something.”

Yunho’s back hit the railing, and he scrambled to grip the wood, struggling where his hands shook. “I don’t know anything else! They never told me anything!”

“Why?”

“I don’t—” Yunho gasped, forced himself to pull in a breath. The fur of the Captain’s coat brushed his knees. “They wouldn’t let me go to the advanced mission training, and they hated me enough that they wouldn’t tell me anything useful—”

The Captain cut him off with a hum.

Stepped back.

His body slumped into a slouch, suddenly his true height once more, and his gaze diverted to the ocean. He buried his hands into the fur of his coat, and the sweeping edge of it vanished from against Yunho’s skin. Yunho blinked down at him, his hands remaining firmly on the wood.

Even with the arrogant officers and incessant sailors spending years trying to make him so, he was sure he’d never been so small in his life. But watching the way the Captain gazed off into the distance, it was as if it had never happened at all. The others—Yeosang, Jongho—faded back into his vision. Sprawling, shadowed ocean, a muted blue-black.

“So, is that why you left? Because they treated you like an outsider?” the Captain said, his voice neutral, analytical. Not quite cold.

By the time Yunho’s mind caught up to him, it was too late to backtrack. He swallowed the lump in his throat. How could it sound so much worse aloud like that, without mockery?

“I suppose,” he replied, slow with caution. He flickered a look swiftly over the Captain’s shoulder to where Yeosang and Jongho stood, both stiff and slightly reeling. Yeosang’s face squeezed apologetically.

“Why you?”

Yunho looked anywhere but the Captain’s face. “I didn’t make a good sailor. Too distracted, asked too many questions, could never get the drills right,” he said, shrugged in a forced attempt to be casual, began shifting his voice until it dripped only of sarcasm he could hide behind. He wasn’t sure if it was even self-critical anymore. “The only thing I’d be able to tell you beyond what you already know is the chore rota.”

When he looked back, the Captain was looking him up and down, satisfied in the silence with a smirk tugging at his lips. Eventually he poised himself to speak again, and Yunho—

“You know what, I think I like you,” the Captain said.

Yunho had been preparing for just about anything but that. “You… do?”

He made a short sort of noise in confirmation and offered nothing more. Leaving Yunho with furrowed brows, he turned away, his cane thumping on the floorboards.

Yunho remained there for some time. Struggling to connect this commanding force in battle with the man he’d shared at table with, eaten soup at rather than beige prisoner slop, this danger that Mingi vowed to defend as though he needed protecting. They were all a paradox of expectations and subversions, describing each other and pulling up in front of him as the opposite, then tasking Yunho with separating them out and remain unaffected. He wasn’t sure which he’d prefer: to figure out they were acting in a rehearsed, joint performance to scramble him up, or that they were each twisted up all by themselves.

After Mingi, there was one leaning more logically towards reality.

During every interaction, the Captain stared at Seonghwa like he had hung the stars, his mouth soft and shoulders dropping down, all the tension melting away. And the rest of them—Wooyoung tugging at Seonghwa’s arm, San hanging from the ropes with one hand and no stress like a madman, Yeosang against the wall staring straight back, and even Mingi, who had appeared unnoticed on the stairs opposite—he looked at them as if they were the stars themselves.

They orbited around each other in this tight galaxy of theirs, and Yunho was a meteor who threatened to disrupt them, but not quite as much as these attacks had the potential to. He understood then why he had been welcomed onto the Wanderlust. A necessary sacrifice. A tool to keep this crew from becoming strays once more. Neither, however, explained why the Captain had finished as he did, and why Yunho’s heart tugged insistently in his chest.

The Captain made a remark to Seonghwa and watched the kind smile arch into his face, and disappeared into his cabin beneath them.

“Well,” Jongho said. “I’d say that went better than expected, somehow.”

Yunho shuddered.

It took him a minute to answer, pulling himself back into motion, voice still unsteady. “How else exactly did you… think that was going to go?”

“Honestly? All of us joined this crew voluntarily, even if we were desperate to different degrees at the time. Mingi’s way of doing things with you is completely unfamiliar territory. The Captain is kind, but he’s also prone to a short temper. I think it’s why Seonghwa insisted I could stay despite the unease about my Navy background. They needed someone diplomatic who wouldn’t cause a lovers spat.”

“That’s why you’ve both been sticking with me, then?”

Jongho smiled, and Yeosang met his eyes before mimicking it. “That, and personally I really am the only one who could do anything with the information you had the potential to give us. Speaking of, I have another map to give you. I didn’t want to show you it until the Captain approved. Stay here.”

He jogged down the steps and into the hold.

Yunho leant back on the railing, tentative, itching to have a piece of work back with him. But he was not the only one watching Jongho go.

The moment Jongho was out of sight, Yeosang headed towards Yunho as though he was gliding, smooth and swift into place, and his expression morphed into something of the opposite. His eyes darted across Yunho’s face, not wide enough to be panicked, but his jaw was set in tense concern. Yunho, jolted, blinked rapidly back. Where had the calm smile gone?

The tugging at Yunho’s heart sunk to a dull throb in his chest, his previous reassurance lost to the growing wind.

The sails whipped suddenly over the deck as Yeosang opened their mouth to speak. “I need you to make me a map marking any locations from mermaid tales, sea myths, anything you can think of,” he said. “Don’t tell the others.”

“You—What? Mermaid tales?” Yunho spluttered.

“You can’t tell them.”

“But I don’t understand.” Yunho wasn’t sure what he had been expecting, given that he hadn’t been given any time to expect anything at all, but it certainly wouldn’t have been that. “You want me to—”

Yeosang huffed, the first time he’d seen their gentle expression drip into something like frustration, and Yunho’s eyes almost fell out of his skull. How could he huff as if he was being ridiculous?

He leant forward, fixing firmly on Yunho’s face, unblinking. When he spoke it was hardly a mutter, and yet the intensity of his eye contact and the storm-riddled wind and the jolt that shook him at the difference meant that he couldn’t have missed it if he tried.

“What we’re dealing with isn’t just on land. There’s interference from the sea. There’s something fighting us underwater.”

Chapter Text

Yunho stood on the sidelines, watching as Wooyoung and San sauntered down the ridged wooden ramp like a pair of drunks, urged along by Seonghwa. The Captain followed behind them. They waved to Jongho and Yeosang as they departed, who stood conversing on the quarter-deck.

They’d breached the rocky cliffs bordering the port half an hour ago. Tied the Wanderlust up amongst the ships, most significantly smaller and adorned with various striped merchant flags, to the wooden pier stretching out from the cobblestone streets.

A needed and welcome reminder for Yunho that the Wanderlust was no lower-class pirate vessel, was anything but.

Below them, sailors and seamen both smart and shaggy meandered along to join the crowds in the height of the day, men and women and children all in long trousers and skirts and thick jumpers against the breeze whistling through. Several paused upon sighting the Wanderlust.

Yunho felt their eyes as though they were focussed solely on him, searing into his soul.

Yunho had been watching, waiting, since they arrived. None of them, it seemed, had considered that he would not remain on the ship.

In one fleeting thought that he passed swiftly away, Yunho considered perhaps that they were not so naïve and were allowing him his own choice.

He hovered in the masking shadow of the corridor, tightening the strap of his messenger bag a final time. Mingi was tucked safely away in the workroom, he’d checked enough times to be sure, but he still found himself alternating between peering out of the darkness at the top of the stairs and further into it behind him, just in case. Still silent. Still a long, steep path downwards.

If Yunho went back down, he’d find the soft glow of the lanterns spilling out into the hallway, the door flung open, as it had been increasingly since he’d arrived. Like a light at the end of the tunnel. As it was, though, the workroom was too far down the corridor, and the bottom of the stairs could not even be made out. A descent into the unknown.

He had everything he needed, only the map duplicates left behind as an offer of goodwill and gentle farewell, for their unexpected kindness, no matter how strange and subtle it had been. Something to ease his conscience when he thought not of pirating duels, but of some terrible fantastical sea beast chowing down on the Wanderlust and Yeosang cursing his name, as had been recurring in his dreams.

If he was going to do it, he had to do it now.

Yunho steeled himself. He slipped through the doorway, bent low to balance himself over the ship’s deck in the hopes it would minimise the creaking wood beneath him. It worked well enough, blended his steps into the mass of voices and clattering crates in the port and screeches of the gulls, his rhythm blurred with the natural sounds of the vessel swaying around its anchor.

Jongho and Yeosang were still on the quarter-deck, their eyes to the cobblestone streets, tracking any movement towards the ship. Not tracking movement out of it, if Yunho was careful enough. He was lucky it was the two of them on watch; they’d trusted him when he declared a full day of mapwork to prepare for the journey away from this port.

Any jitters and suspicious over-explaining—which could not be avoided given Yunho’s nature, no matter how hard he tried—were easily dismissed by Yeosang, covered by the secret task he’d been given.

Enough, at least, for Yunho to reason their naivety logically, and dismiss the idea that they were letting him go. An uncomfortable ache crawled up his throat if he thought too hard about it, both unreasonable and entirely explicable.

Once he reached the top of the ramp, Yunho hopped onto it and steadied himself, turning to shuffle backwards down its thin width and raising his eyes to the ship’s deck.

He was no longer alone.

Mingi stared straight at him. From the mouth of the corridor, doused in shadow, taking the place Yunho had held moments ago. His sunset hair blazed through the darkness, ever unable to be put out. It was less that Yunho could see his eyes than feel them, bearing into his head. They floated in tense limbo once more.

Yunho took in a breath and slipped away.

He merged seamlessly into the throng of people and flowed with them to the left, down the harbourside, towards the thin space slotted between two houses in the row. He passed doorway after doorway, taking shade under fabric market stall covers and between crates and display boxes, shuffling over the paving stones past beggars and stray dogs and children with scuffed knees. Long strides, as far from the ship as he could get.

Mingi’s stare didn’t fade from his mind no matter how many steps he took, but he hadn’t followed. Yunho didn’t know what to make of it. He kept moving instead, through the thin space he’d spotted and off the harbourside, onto the main roads further inland and leaving the rolling, navy expanse of the Hala sea behind.

Keen eyes tracked every individual around him, their pale shirts and woollen winter coats, their plaid bandanas and patterned neckties. That stare wouldn’t matter once he’d left them, none of them would matter at all. They would go on their journey with the few duplicate maps he’d left, and he would go off on his own.

When he deemed himself far enough along, he turned back towards the front with the intention of asking around for transport, mindful of needing to duck away from the crew members roaming the town and sticking to the darkened side-streets.

At the end of the alley, the opening he came to sat between a brick house with a red-tiled roof and a sailors’ pub, marked by the sign rocking overhead. It looked straight out onto the opposite edge of the harbour he’d began on, where small merchant boats boasted wares from their decks and temporary stalls on the pavement. Calls rang out from underneath colourful tents, shielding golds and silvers and all sorts of leather and cloth garments from the sun, splitting gaps in the pale cloud.

Two men in scruffy, torn clothing were sat at the table closest to Yunho outside the pub, their backs to him, though he doubted they would’ve seen him if they’d looked back regardless. Both were talking loudly enough that he could hear them from a distance, uncontrolled in their volume, their voices slurred by alcohol.

“We’ll be rich, rich! I don’t care how many of us he’s hired for the slashing, he’s enough money to make us rich, all of us!” one of them jeered, sloshing beer onto the gravel.

Yunho’s face scrunched up in disgust, considering them petty thieves, and shook his head. At least, he figured, their celebration would make it easy for him to slip through unnoticed.

The man’s companion choked on laughter, “You reckon we’ll get a share of the Captain’s booty too? Mingi gone and the wizard’ll crush ‘em with his magic tricks. I’d rather a ring than a chain…”

Perhaps, when he looked back, he’d decide that it was the bright white reflecting down on the cobbles through gaps in the crowd. Or the colour, vast and vibrant and in multitudes, spread out across the stalls and sewn into clothing and tapestries. That it could be the contrast of either compared to the grimy darkness of the alley he stood in and the cruel conversation and callous intentions of the men that made him take notice. Made him jolt where he stood and hesitate.

Yunho’s gaze snapped to the men in a heartbeat. It wasn’t exactly a common name; they had to be talking about his Mingi, and their Captain, the gold he flaunted under his coat.

He didn’t care, he didn’t, tried to shake it out of his head and prepared to saunter past them, knowing that any moment he wasted gave the crew another moment to stumble across him and haul him back into captivity, but the more he tried the more the words jumped out at him. Round and round they went like a twisted carousel, a haunting tune on repeat. Wizards and magic tricks. Slashing. Crushing. Each brought sickness to his stomach and bile to his mouth.

Yunho muttered a harsh curse under his breath and reversed back into the alley, slumping against the wall. He clenched his eyes tightly shut, tilting his face to the cracks in the clouded sky, and squeezed his hand around the rough strap of his messenger bag. It dug into his palms, like the rigging of the Wanderlust. The world spun off its axis beneath his eyelids, spiralling out of its rhythm, and a daze washed over him in some swirling notion of calm.

The next time he opened his eyes, the furrow of his brow was replaced by smooth skin, and his stare fixed on the neat, chiselled lines of the bricks in front of him.

Yunho had always prized himself on his affinity for logic.

His reliance on logical explanations, logical solutions, had been there in memory for long enough that he wasn’t sure if it was a feature of his personality from birth or something he had picked up to keep himself safe within his own daydreams, to keep him sane in the forever shuttered windows and locked doors of his childhood home.

It wasn’t his business. He had one job, and that was to get as far from the danger as possible.

Yunho checked the latch on his bag and jostled the maps around until they were more comfortable at his hip. He spurred himself forward and marched straight out of the alleyway, bypassing the men at the table, ignoring the beer he stepped through even if the thought of it seeping into the bottoms of his shoes made his skin itch.

Directly into the path of a black figure, cloaked from head to toe, save from a sliver of flat brown eyes.

It was when Yunho instinctually reared back that he saw it. A small glass bottle no bigger than a thumb tucked between gloved fingers, a flash of neon green sparking near its top. Like a lit fuse, a fizzing sparkler in liquid form.

Not a moment later than Yunho acknowledged the magic in front of him with wide eyes did the man become aware of his noticing also, and Yunho scarcely had time to blink before hands gripped tightly around his elbows.

He thrashed, throwing his elbows back into the sides of his captors, for he could feel one distinctly either side, his fists into their heads. The strong stench of alcohol invaded his nose, sending him flinching and careening to one side.

That only made it worse. The men holding him were drunk of equal measure, and neither of them gave him enough breathing room to avoid the other, causing a game of constant ping pong in his refusal to endure it.

A swift glance told Yunho it was the two men who had been sat at the table, their chairs empty, confirming his suspicions. The cloaked figure continued ahead at a leisurely pace and paid them all little mind. There was no doubt in Yunho’s mind that the timing was in no way coincidental.

He stumbled backwards, dragged over the cobblestones into the alley once more, his weight thrown off as they pulled him down to their height. They were all wobbling, the three of them, caught in a lopsided shuffle.

Yunho couldn’t hear anything but his own heartbeat in his ears, his adrenaline spiking. He tugged away from them again, over and over, ramming his limbs in any direction he could reach, his mind screaming to get away, to take the hands off his clothes, off his skin, squirming with the need for it, their touch crawling like ants over his body.

He looked up, wide-eyed stare darting over the people around them, all swerving with quick, light feet away from the mouth of the alley, with no idea that the fight extended beyond a rowdy bar brawl. Yunho gained hold of his consciousness enough to shriek and shout for help, calling out into the streets a mess of jumbled words, but a grimy hand soon clamped over his mouth, sending his stomach rolling and his throat convulsing, threatening a violent gag.

Only a handful of people paid him any mind, and those who did stared blankly like they were seeing through him. Yunho could feel himself deflating, his movements growing skittish as he lost strength. He was tired of people looking through him, feeling it sucking the life out of him, reducing him to a blank body in the crowd.

He pulled his head back up and watched the figure merge into the crowd, people crossing behind them. He kicked and screamed through the hand at his mouth, bit down on the fingers, clawed at them, stamped on their feet, earning only curses and insults and pained protests.

They were going to die here. Panic seized him wholeheartedly. They were going to die here. All of them.

Yunho felt as though his life had only just begun, and they were going to take it from him, with no more effort than it took to snuff out a candle.

His vision was narrowed by the walls building up around him. The sliver of light at the end of the tunnel grew further and further away. He hung his head between his shoulders, dropped his arms to his sides, his breathing shallow and quick.

He inched his right hand closer to the bag at his right hip. Out of sight, with Yunho’s body draped over their arms, the men were careless. The darkness obscured their sight and the limited space had them crowding him, uncoordinated in their movements and unable to see his own.

Yunho should’ve hesitated, and yet, he pulled his stolen knife from the gap in the corner, and had it wedged in the neck of one of the men in an instant.

His hands ripped away from Yunho’s body, flying to his throat, fingertips smudging the scarlet streams pouring from the wound. He clawed at the knife to no avail; Yunho’s aim was desperately strong and true. As he gasped his last breaths, Yunho was deaf to the struggle.

He had already pivoted, throwing his weight to the left, taking advantage of the gasp that echoed in his ear.

These men were heavy with muscle, and he’d known he was half-stupid to attempt such a thing as brute force them, but he knew of little else in his panic. Hesitation was the only chance he could take.

The remaining man stumbled from the elbow to his stomach, the punch to his neck, no longer so stubbornly tense. He reared back, and Yunho reached behind himself to take his knife back, tugging it harshly.

He brought it out in front of him just in time for the stranger to launch forward and impale himself.

Yunho’s knife, scavenged from the storage of the Wanderlust, stuck deep in his gut. His hand still wrapped stubbornly tight on the handle, unable to release it. That look they exchanged, wide eyes suddenly sober, meant too many haunting things for Yunho to decipher.

He would remember it for as long as he lived.

Yunho looked away and pulled the knife from his body, unable to ignore the harrowing thud as he hit the floor, and he was left alone in the alley with thick red blood on his hands. There, in the quiet side-street in an unfamiliar town, Yunho felt as small and lonely as he had as a child.

He struggled through one ragged breath before he ran.

Tearing back through the alleyway, down the dirty side-street, splashing through the puddles cowering in the shadows. He didn’t feel the cold water against his legs any more than he felt the blood on his fingers, the wind against his face, his heart against his ribcage and up, up into his throat. He skidded round the corners, throwing himself haphazardly at the walls, fingers skimming the rough brick. The world blurred around him, only the view in front of him clear.

Halfway between himself and the Wanderlust was the cloaked figure.

Yunho burst into the crowd, keeping his blade tight to his chest. He was hardly conscious of the people leaping back from around him, the yelps flying from their lips, parents keeping their children back from the state of him. Unconscious of the state of himself, the horror in it. A wide path opened out for the taking with every thundering step.

It took one of them barrelling right into the gap for Yunho to notice that some were moving closer from the sidelines rather than turning away.

They appeared from bars, cafes, some haggard in torn clothes of various states with alcohol fumes surrounding them like a haze, others holding themselves higher, strides longer and calculated, though a handful hesitant underneath finer coverings shielding their eyes from the public. In moments they spilled over the path like oil, slippery in Yunho’s pursuit.

He reared back when the first swiped at his body, grumbling words inaudible and insignificant, but he didn’t so much as jolt from the shock of it. His mind was both too fixed and distant at once.

Blood splattered the cobblestones. Someone was screaming. A body hit the ground and their lifeless hand sent a cutlass clattering and this one grunted loudly and doors slammed shut and noise rose in a cacophony. Yunho sliced through another’s shins, turning away to the next as his legs crumpled, the edges of the new slits in his dark slacks staining maroon.

A straight-backed figure caught him off-guard with far more certainty—or desperation—than the rest, but the cut they grazed into Yunho’s skin by shining dagger was too clean and swift to do much and the sting kept him grounded. After all, these strangers were no more than a distraction, as much as the whispers in the back of his head pitied them, and he was running out of time.

They dropped like stones one by one by his hand or foot or elbow in a mixture of muscle memory and instinct and scrambled limbs, until he could see his target clearly, a few paces away. No one separating them, save the chaos left behind on the ground. He kept advancing like an oncoming storm, sweat dripping from him like rain.

As he approached, his breathing heavy and footsteps equally so, the figure turned and faced him. A standstill. He was tired of standstills.

Yunho let out a stubborn grunt as he threw himself forward, eyes darting between face and limb and the bottle nestled just inside this stranger’s coat, visible for a moment as they drew their own blade from beneath it. A longer blade like Seonghwa’s, its hilt wrapped in black and fitting firmly into their hand. Yunho gripped the small handle of his knife between nimble fingers.

Brought his left hand out from where he’d been keeping it behind his back not a second too soon, wielding a second weapon, a stolen cutlass.

They parried; the stranger met his blows one after the other, swords ringing out in a sharp rage. They spun in equal timing, crossing their feet over and over again like circling sharks, panther and prey.

He hefted his weight forward, then back, the long sword grazing his forearms, his bicep, before he flailed away. The figure’s coat swept around their feet, obscuring the movement of their legs, leaving him to make unsteady predictions. It was messy, Yunho’s avoidances far more disorganised than the other’s precise swipes, but Yunho’s attempts were driven by instinct, and he was nothing if not stubborn. Indecisive, maybe, but it only made his fight more certain when he chose it over years of flight.

He didn’t fight like a sailor. He fought as himself, clumsy and lopsided but with focussed eyes, bubbling with anger.

Yunho kept the knife tight against his body, fighting with his cutlass in equal measure with the stranger’s sword. Grinding his teeth, he weathered the burn licking up to his shoulder. For the first time he was grateful for the Navy training, for the endurance it gave him. A little longer.

Diving forwards again in the next step of their rhythm, he let his right arm loose, sending both blades together, and won the first deep cut at his opponent’s hip. They didn’t make a sound, but the knife was doused in a new sheen of fresh blood when it skittered across the pavement, torn from his grip by a strong tug. It didn’t matter.

His hit had only spurred the other on; it was evident in every inch he shuffled backwards, the slight hunch in his opponent’s back stealing from that firm rigidity, torso leaning forward over their legs. It had done more than that, though. The shadowed figure veered left. Hindered undoubtably by the red seeping onto their dark silhouette.

No risk, no reward. Yunho allowed himself a single glance to locate his target, before he shifted the direction of his feet and the arc of his blade, sweeping it horizontally. The air displaced by the swing of the returning long sword sang in his ear in near miss.

That was the last he felt of it.

The figure in front of him fell to their knees, bending in half, their hands seizing and clawing at the space around their side, where the bottle had been. In its place now was an increasing nothing, as its contents began to eat through the material of their coat, glowing green at the edges and shrivelling at it burnt. They threw the coat open, shrill screams tearing from their throat. The same liquid began swiftly melting skin away, and remnants of it fizzled out on the edge of Yunho’s blade, sharpening the metal.

Eyelids fluttering and chest heaving, the stranger ripped the cloth from their face. A woman stared back at him, her features contorted in pain and grief and apology. Her body tipped to the side until her temple rested on the cobblestones.

“I’m sorry,” she whispered as her eyes closed. A single tear leaked from one corner, and, though he did not know how long it had been waiting along his eyeline, from Yunho’s own. “They’re” —she struggled through her final breaths— “everywhere. Mage, Navy, merfolk. He hired so many. I’m not the only one.”

Chapter Text

Chest heaving, arms aching, bloody knife strewn across the pavement and another, stolen, a pirate’s blade and all, God, a sob threatened to tear from Yunho’s throat. But he would not cry any more tears over his actions and hers and those of the strangers he’d murdered and the children he’d scared while they all remained in vain.

His legs were already moving when he swept up her sword, fire burning at his thighs, his calves shot with the effort of hammering down on the cobblestones. He was back in the training grounds of Nestone again, being hunted by the worst burly men with too much muscle for brains, his attempts a show for their mocking and their low laughter ringing like funeral bells and the buildings around him blurring to a mighty grey mass he lost a part of himself in. Theo could’ve been one of them, some time ago. And yet.

He’d been convinced those sailors would kill him one day, and if today was it, after he’d survived and left them and a jumbled crew of stray pirates had revealed that there was far more life out there than he could ever have imagined, in that unexpected difference, that strange sense of community… Sue him for having the sort of care for his existence that they never had wanted for him.

This time there were no trees, and he was not lost. No matter how lost he knew he may feel afterwards. It was a contradiction within itself; could he be lost, when he had found himself somewhat in making his own free decision, even if he was charging headfirst into the very thing he’d wanted to lose?

He shook his head like a great lion shaking his mane, with a grunting roar to match, and ran. His eyes fixed on the ship, blind to the buildings around him, to the people watching from the windows.

When they looked at him, what did they see? A furious murderer who’d just sent several to their deaths inexplicably, mixed up in some criminal pursuit, or could they see the twist of aching desperation in his features from behind the glass?

Once he was close enough to see the details of Mingi’s figure at the bottom of the ramp, brows furrowing as their eyes locked, he was close enough to watch the silhouette creeping up behind him.

Yunho’s world warped. Narrowed into a neat frame. Time dragged into slow motion.

Mingi sensed the stranger behind him, because of course he did, sliding aside with a practised ease and letting the sun glint on his pistol. He surveyed the threat in an instant. The gunshot split the air, rebounding off the houses like a ghost that had come to haunt them, already knowing what Yunho did not.

Yunho’s torso tensed up in a flinch at the gunshot, his neck seizing up, but his legs kept pounding on autopilot. He saw the blood splatter when the body fell. He saw Jongho and Yeosang appear over the side of the deck and launch themselves towards the ramp. He saw smoke drifting up over Mingi’s shoulder, even though his gun was dropped limp at his side in plain sight.

Yunho saw Mingi stumble. Watched his hands come up to fumble at his coat pockets and return with nothing.

He was gone before he could watch him slump to the floor.

Yunho thundered past Mingi and Jongho and Yeosang, up the ramp of the ship, barging the pair out of his path without hesitation. They were nothing but a light brush against his shoulder, far away, and he did not hear the great metallic clatter his swords made on the deck as he discarded them.

He propelled himself down the steps into the dark corridor, jumping the last few, and bounded into Mingi’s workroom. The jam jar sat just as it always did on the end of the shelf, its pearly iridescence shining like it knew he didn’t care about anything else in the room. Hands shaking, Yunho ripped the jar from the shelf and the bucket of water from next to it, body already turned back towards the doorway before he had a good grip.

Most of it had splashed out against the floor in a frantic trail by the time he reached Mingi, but there was some left low in the bottom.

Magic was magic, was it not? Did it not activate and reverse the same on skin as it did wood?

Mingi laid sprawled out on the floor, eyes fluttering, fists and jaw tensing on and off to fight the poison eating away at his skin. Someone had pulled his shirt up to his chest to expose the wound growing on his lower stomach, both the material and his skin charred and hissing. It was slower and less furious, with only a splash acting on him compared to the bottle that had acted on the woman, but Yunho had seen with his own eyes what it would do in time.

Yunho dumped the rest of the bucket’s contents onto Mingi’s body, the cold sending his back arching off the floor with a gasp.

Mingi’s eyes flew open on instinct for long enough to watch the water pooling on his stomach, the jar trembling above it, its lid pulled off. His head dropped back with a thud onto the ground, and Yunho watched as he hooked his hands around the legs closest to him.

A few drops of the glittering pearl disappeared into the angry red.

Was risk taking all Yunho knew how to do, now?

He waited.

They all did; Wooyoung shaking against San, San tense all over trying not to shake himself, Seonghwa with his face transformed from steel to soft, eyes wet, Jongho and Yeosang still on look-out darting between Mingi and the streets. The Captain’s hands were all tangled up in Mingi’s clothes, balled around them, his skin ghostly white. Yunho knew they were there, huddled around him like a barrier, but he watched them only out of the corners of his eyes. He stared at the bloody mess on Mingi’s front and waited.

Perhaps, if you’d relayed this sequence of events years ago, Yunho would’ve kicked and screamed and gone red in the face swearing he’d never waste the opportunity to escape. No matter the days spent on a miracle pirate ship, the magic at his fingertips, the dying body of a man he wasn’t sure about but knew the name of, the silent presence of, and wanted more than he should’ve to know the story of.

And yet somewhere in the mess of days and weeks and months and years between then and now, Yunho had lost a part of that rage. Not lost it, not quite. Shifted it. From rage to anger to sadness to misery to nothing to something he couldn’t quite place. A little candle, its wick dark and shrivelled, but just strong enough to hold a flame. A tiny pulsing orb tucked back inside his head, glowing with gold and blood orange and the same crimson that was drying against his skin in the beaming sun.

He was delirious.

He watched as smoke curled in faint tendrils up to eye-level and dispersed to the wind.

The wound at Mingi’s stomach was stuttering with flashes of magic, the incessant bleeding slowing, slowing, then in nothing short of a miracle, stopped. Stopped. Some of it remained, dry-ing, and some vanished as though dissolving. But the flowing stopped.

Yunho distantly registered himself slumping to the floor.

He watched as the deepest layers of Mingi’s insides were covered by a new stretch of flesh. As Mingi’s clothes drew particles from the air and partially stitched themselves back together. Someone had wiped a cloth over the blood, revealing a patch of discoloured scarring.

His body remained slack on the pavement, but he was breathing, a steady rise and fall, rise and fall.

Mingi’s body was removed from in front of Yunho, and he only stared at the ground where it had been. A ringing sounded in the back of his head continuously, but it was as muddied as the voices were, slowly fighting through thick syrup. It took several words of Wooyoung’s speech for him to acknowledge his voice, longer to register it in words. Back and ship and on.

He rose on autopilot, moving after the hand at his arm, gaze blurring over whatever strayed into his line of sight. One tall figure and one short in a pair, another in between, like a slope. They all had their backs turned.

For a second, in a flicker of consciousness, Yunho considered breaking out of Wooyoung’s grasp and attempting a run for it, his eyes darting, his foot stumbling a step, but what then? What then? He couldn’t imagine it like he had before.

It had to be the blood was on his hands. Little of it was his own, but today must’ve shifted sense into place, shown him well enough that it was bound to be more his than theirs at some future stage if he remained alone on the streets. And yet it didn’t feel like he knew that any more than he had the moment he left the Navy grounds, the ship, the alley.

The only difference, Yunho realised, as he neared the cabin and shifted closer to Wooyoung and took in a final breath of salty sea air and sun and tugged himself back to life, was that Jeong Yunho had been willing to accept the fate of death, before. Had it fallen to him, after his initial attempts at escape, he could’ve taken it reluctantly but taken it nonetheless. Figured that at least he’d caused his own chain of events.

Now, he wasn’t so sure.

Chapter Text

An hour later they were on the move, the port gone from the horizon, surrounded by endless blue. Azure skies and cobalt sea. A hunk of wood floating aimlessly in the middle of it, lugging slumped inhabitants.

They were all sprawled out on the floor in various places of the deck or leaning against the railings and the shrouds. Save Mingi, who was sprawled out on the Captain’s bed in his quarters-turned-medical bay. Unconscious and yet in a better condition than the rest of them, in a way.

The Captain was leant back against the crates, his twisted cane beside him and head dropped onto Seonghwa’s thigh, who sat atop one with his brows furrowed in severe concentration. Where Seonghwa was tense, all darting eyes and pursed lips, the Captain was his opposite, slack with defeat.

Jongho sat on the stairs to the upper deck, looking out towards the horizon rather than at the rest of them, deep in thought. Yeosang was nearby, against the wall next to the door of the Captain’s quarters. The usual peace on their face had morphed into something distant and conflicted. Wooyoung spread out like a starfish at their feet, arms and legs out wide and constantly fidgeting, face to the sky. Every so often he’d poke at Yeosang’s boots, tie and untie their laces blindly without turning his head.

San mirrored Yunho, almost straight opposite him, the two of them on the railings either side of the ship. Stiff with exhaustion, though for different reasons, Yunho was sure of that. Only one of them had just foiled their only plan for no logical reason, and potentially doomed himself.

Yunho looked between each member of the crew repeatedly, in the same order. Captain, Seonghwa, Jongho, Yeosang, Wooyoung, San. Again. Took in their bodies, more slumped than straight, Wooyoung’s movements and the rest’s lack of, their silence and the scratching shuffles at Yeosang’s feet.

No one complained. Yeosang moved his feet so Wooyoung could grasp the laces whenever he reached for them. Seonghwa held the Captain’s head without complaint, even when he rolled his neck and his skull rode over his thigh bone, his left eye twitching. Again. San was watching him do it, but said nothing, only ground his teeth. Let out big, deep breathes in a manufactured rhythm every few rounds when he lost the previous one. He was the tensest of them all, which didn’t surprise Yunho; his energy was so high the rest of the time, it was only natural that it would feel bigger than the rest now, too. His shoulders were almost touching his ears and back so straight it was likely to end up arched backwards in its extremity.

Yunho purposefully bypassed the door to the Captain’s quarters, and the figure laying within it, in every round of his count. However, avoiding both with his eyes didn’t discourage his mind.
He’d saved a life. Ended more than one. So, why did the second statement seem so much less significant than the first?

It was glaringly obvious, especially considering the way his body had reacted without him, how little time it had taken to make the decision to leave the alley. After that, the rest hadn’t been a decision at all.

Curiosity was overwhelming his fear. It was as terrifying as it was exhilarating, and he had no idea what to do about it.

Something had clicked, a puzzle piecing itself together in violent trial and error until the opposites combined. That was just the problem. He’d been trying to connect them in some strange juxtaposition of character. He hadn’t combined them.

The Captain was fierce because he had to be to protect the rest of them, and the moment he perceived the threat gone, his crew became his priority, and that carefully constructed mask melted away. They were two sides of the same coin, but it was more than that still; when Yunho had glanced up away from Mingi in the aftermath and caught the Captain’s face, the gold weighing heavy around his neck, there was nothing but his youth and the bags beneath his eyes.

He never thought he’d view a pirate as truly human, not after the last one. And yet. He’d been begging this crew to make sense, and now they did, he hit a wall taller and harder than the first had ever been.

Yunho dropped his head backwards, ignoring the tinge of pain in his skull as it hit the wood, the other in his jaw, tensed as fiercely as he could manage. Azure skies and full sails, streaming calmly along, despite the trainwreck that was everything else. To say it was following him would be wrong. He was following it now, like a suicidal fool.

He closed his eyes tightly for long enough that Wooyoung’s scratches became the movement of Navy sailors, the waves and wood the sound of Nestone harbour a few roads away spilling through during its busiest hours.

He would stay away from Mingi. He should stay away from them all.

Hot rage rushed from his head to his toes, and Yunho’s fingers dug hard into the railing of the ship behind him until it pinched his skin.

He didn’t have to be there. He could’ve been gone, gone to the city, heading into the countryside. The undeniable knowledge of that fact marked every thought like a burn, a scar, tainting.

He was kicking himself. Desperately, repeatedly kicking himself, like it would knock some sense into his head, jolt him back to the logic he’d held unwaveringly when he hopped the wall of the Navy base, when he’d first heard the call to the Pirate King, when he’d felt the eyes of the public on the Wanderlust and on himself. It wasn’t working. The instant he had a grasp on his anger, it spiralled into questions and frustration again.

Was he angry because he turned back without thinking, angry because he’d doomed himself and his fate to Mingi’s hands and that dead stare atop the ship’s ramp, or because he knew, deep down, that he should want to be angrier than he was?

With every insistence that he should’ve left, his eye twitched with the foolish, illogical, protesting desire to stay. He could try to pretend he didn’t know the answer, but it would solve nothing.

Yunho was the first to leave the deck and stalk into the shadows of the crew’s quarters, each step a sharp thump, and he feigned sleep when they tried to involve him in the group discussion, steaming silently in the dark.

Chapter Text

Yunho was up at the break of dawn.

Dressing quietly at the end of his bed, accompanied by the snoring of the crew. Only Yeosang’s bed was empty, Seonghwa and the Captain having taken Mingi’s, intertwined together.

They’d managed to pick up more clothes for him at the port before the chaos, it seemed, as there was a bundle of linen shirts and cotton trousers sat next to his bag. He’d dropped it to the floor there beside his bed last night, sighing at the tears in the fabric and the dented parchment inside. Years of work and a single brave choice.

Today he didn’t spare it a glance.

Yunho chose a sage green shirt with string laced over his chest and brown bottoms, cuffing them both, cinching a thick leather belt at his waist. Ran a hand through his hair to flatten it over his forehead, though it was harder to control than before, dried out and made fluffy by the salt in the sea air. Laced up his boots.

At the bottom of the pile, a black woollen coat was folded haphazardly. When Yunho took the fabric between his fingers, its hems were coarse with soot, littered with small burn holes. He paused only for a moment before shrugging it over the rest of his clothes and heading for the deck. Trailed the sweet scent of orange and sandalwood with him.

Yeosang heard his footsteps as soon as Yunho emerged and turned towards him from the upper deck, a pleasant, lopsided smile growing on his face. It was knowing, just as Yunho had expected it to be.

They greeted each other with a nod, Yeosang skimming his figure and sending his cheeks warming. Yeosang's expression gave nothing away, but embarrassment plucked like the strings of a harp at Yunho’s sternum regardless, his mind tangled up in the strange development of it all and pinching just slightly with shame.

Out of a newfound self-assured type of stubbornness he did not let it hunch his back, nor drop his head.

Both stood silently looking out over the sunrise, the pink and orange and yellow glow reflecting off the sea glass twisted into Yeosang’s hair and sending kaleidoscope patterns over the wood and Yunho’s hands on the railing.

“You weren’t always a pirate, were you?” Yunho asked.

Yeosang was quiet, but self-assured. Incredibly observant. He’d hardly spoken, but Yunho could feel the itch of eyes over his skin every time they were in the same space, and the interactions they had shared were telling. From the very moment Yunho had met him, they had seen straight through him, whether it be questions about the simplicity of his role at Nestone or trusting him with a map request, knowing he wouldn’t betray it, knowing it would end up on the top of his priority list now.

Whether he'd guessed the course of Yunho’s actions in turning back he could never be sure, for he had not known himself, though that debate hardly mattered anymore. Yunho was thinking about that choice undeniably less than he should have been. It unnerved him. A fierce contradiction of relief at someone sensing who he was and the complexity he was facing, had faced, and the reminder that he wasn’t supposed to want anyone to know at all.

Yunho was aware he’d been lured into comfort with Yeosang as well as Jongho, with their quiet contrast to the louder intimidation of the rest of the crew, though he imagined how easily both were possible and chose to remain tense as he stood beside them.

Yeosang seeking him out in secret had confused him, especially about something so important. The ball hadn’t dropped as to how and why until last night, when he’d stopped to process the magic and mentions of the High Mage, even if the rest of it was lost on him. Until it wasn’t.

Consciously, at least. He was equally convinced he was overthinking to an otherworldly level and losing his mind.

Yeosang glanced at him before he replied smoothly, “No, I wasn’t.”

“How did you end up on this ship?”

“In a similar way to you,” he said, “The Wanderlust was nearby when I was looking to run away. They were kind enough to pick me up and protect me for a while.”

“Are you staying? Permanently?”

Yeosang nodded once. “I’m staying. Often, it’s the unexpected things that end up the most important.” He looked at Yunho with fierce intent as he spoke, “Besides, once Wooyoung and San get attached, it’s hard to leave them.”

It wasn’t the whole truth, Yunho could tell. But he took Yeosang’s coy smile and let himself huff a light laugh too, softened by the light of the rising sun, until the silence lapped again between them in a way that suited the golden yellow, the approaching clouded blue.

Yunho took in a deep breath of sea air. “Were you conflicted, at the beginning? About staying. About the crew. About how they were reacting to you and the… protection they were offering.”

He caught the moment Yeosang realised what he knew.

“Yes,” he said. The rest was slower, a touch hesitant. “They knew where I’d come from as soon as they picked me up, I couldn’t avoid it. I’d heard a lot about pirates and how they would kill for what they wanted and use anything of value. I thought they were deceiving me. Wooyoung was the one to change that. Enough offhanded comments that I realised he couldn’t be lying, because he was spewing them out so quickly, and I was laughing more than I ever had. They made me feel as safe as I could be and didn’t want anything for it at all. I give them what I can in return for my own conscience.”

Yeosang’s gaze skimmed the waves wildly sprawling out before them. “I thought I could never have safety or freedom. I longed for it until breaking point,” he said. “Yunho, you do not have to feel guilty for wanting to keep it close, now you are beginning to find it, even though it did not happen as you expected. Sometimes you must betray yourself in order to save yourself and realise that the betrayal was the part you left behind.”

Yunho let out a shaky exhale. Maybe, just maybe, this was something he could allow himself. It didn’t take the doubt away, not even close, but it made his heart a little less heavy, and his head a little less pained. Easier. He could have it easier. It was a gentle dream.

He didn’t know how they managed to divert the conversation from Yeosang and from the enormous buffering question mark in Yunho’s mind to him, but he found himself reluctant to shift it back. There was a difference between offering implications and admitting blunt fact. The idea of crossing that line sent Yunho’s pulse racing to such a level that he was could not be sure whether he was exhilarated or panicked, entering territory he did not belong in. Making a habit of it, in fact.

Yeosang’s words built up thickly like the air itself was buzzing around Yunho’s body and preparing to burst, taking up the space around them, stretching into the sea.

But it didn’t burst. Yunho acknowledged for the first time that it wouldn’t. He was on a ship in an ocean that extended far beyond Hala borders, on a giant, floating rock. He was so very small; he could allow himself this.

He skimmed the fine edge of the horizon one more time, catching on the burning sun until there were small dark spots in his vision, imprinted in his mind.

Yunho turned to Yeosang, “Have you told them about your suspicions yet?”

A shake of the head, downturned eyes.

Yunho sighed, pity and dread all mixed up in a heavy weight on his heart. “I’ll have the map done by tonight, then we tell them.”

Yeosang caught the intensity of his stare and nodded, a twitch running through his hands before he clasped them smoothly behind his back, out of sight. The knowledge of his anguish, his bright light dimming, tugged on Yunho’s heartstrings like nothing he had ever known.

He held the spark of determination it produced tightly in his chest as he turned away and followed the planks to the workroom, held it tightly in his fist as the roughness of his parchment and pencil edge scratched under his fingertips.

Chapter Text

Sometime later, Yunho stretched, looking down at the map in front of him.

His fingers were smudged with granite and charcoal, on his hand as much as it was on the paper, and his head throbbed with his efforts. He didn’t mind it, not when his cartography skill could be worth more than a mere means of survival. Besides, he’d made substantial progress, and this was the easiest of the work he had to do.

Scrubbing his clean hand over his face, he rose and slipped from the workroom, shuffling down the corridor to get some fresh air.

To meet with the crew.

Yesterday it had terrified him. He’d laid there for hours, his head void of anything but doubt. For himself, for the crew. For the people he’d killed and the people he’d chosen to protect. It still terrified him. The deaths he’d caused sat heavy on his mind, on his body. He kept seeing their faces. The people no longer alive, but worse, the strangers in the windows, running from him on the streets.

He could reason with himself that the fighters knew what they were risking, many of them approaching him first, he could rattle off lines about self-defence and how people had done much worse, really, the situation could’ve been much worse, and it held just slightly more than the guilt did, the question that maybe he should’ve been the one to die, instead.

But he could not shake the others. He hadn’t seen them in the moment. Seen through them, like they were ghosts, bystanders who were unable to do anything, not real people with real minds, not able to see him and his violent actions and violent intentions laid out in front of them, far more so than he’d seen them. They came into the picture afterwards, the blurred edges of a lens sharpened into focus. He would be known in their memories as an anonymous killer, and he hated that. Nothing about why or how could shake their perceptions. He would never see them again to be able to correct it.

It came crawling over him in the darkness, rattling him with shivers; the thought that he was like no better than the sailors in the Navy tormenting him and joking about the pirates they’d kill, that he could be like Sun-young, the parts of her that had stolen away the rest, gnawing him from the inside out. The violence he’d spent his entire life trying to separate himself from.

As long as the blood on his hands was replaced by shading pencil stains, he could convince himself that he’d be able to keep steady and keep his head out of the dark, and that was what mattered now. There was nothing he could do to change the past.

Yunho strode with his head up and shoulders back, from the corridor to the deck, carrying with him a sense of purpose he’d never quite managed before.

The Captain and his right-hand were sat on two stools, talking quietly, sorting through a pile of what looked to be small blades and bullets mixed in with an assortment of mechanical parts, copper wires and nails and clips, all littered on the top of a crate. Smaller separated collections sat on the deck around their feet. Seonghwa noticed Yunho approaching first and greeted him, pushing one of the spare stools in the corner towards him.

“Come and sit with us,” he said, soft in the quiet hanging over the ship. “I’m glad to see you outside. Yeosang said you were out this morning, but I was close to coming and checking on you anyway.”

“And that’s putting it lightly,” the Captain huffed, giving Seonghwa a fond side-eye before turning to Yunho. “You’ve only been here a few weeks, and he’s already adopted you like a mother bird constantly chirping about her missing baby chick.”

Seonghwa gave him a light glare, but they both saw how the tips of his ears reddened.

“Ah,” Yunho replied, scratched behind his neck as he sat down. He shifted on the stool in an uneasy middle-ground, not quite comfortable enough with them for small talk but trying to pretend he was. Learning how to walk the ground in this strange space between their care and their violence. “I needed some rest before more plans, that’s all.”

“No need to excuse yourself,” Seonghwa said. “You’re not used to this, after all, since yesterday was far more pirate-style than I imagine you’ve faced in the Navy.”

“You could certainly say that,” Yunho muttered. They truly had no idea how out of his depth he was, just being on a boat. He steeled himself and looked between them. “Could you fill me in, please?”

Seonghwa smiled widely, like he’d been waiting for this moment but couldn’t believe he had reached it, and Yunho could hardly see the cold steel of the man he’d first been faced with even though he knew full well it still existed. That knowledge was more protective than threatening, once he let himself have it.

The Captain stared at him, smirk smug and a twinkle in his eye, unsurprised. Yunho had expected nothing less and couldn’t work out if that expectation unnerved him or not. “We plan to head East for now, and stay on the water,” he said. “Wooyoung and San are organising our food and maintenance stock in the hold now. We didn’t manage to get as much as we wanted, given the interruption, and a fair amount was abandoned on the dock to lift Mingi.”

“Staying in the water for as long as possible is the best strategy, even if it took a lot of con-vincing certain members of the crew,” Seonghwa explained, shooting a significant look to the Captain, who shrugged without shame.

He took on a dark expression, hand clenching around a piece of shrapnel. “If it was up to me, we’d hunt down every last soul who’s associated with the High Mage, on the off-chance they’d come for Mingi—”

“And that is precisely why I am your second-in-command.”

The Captain sighed mournfully and let the metal drop to its pile on the floor. “Right you are, darling.”

Seonghwa’s smile was satisfied for a moment before he fell back into a sterner monotone. “Depending on how much we have Wooyoung will ration food slightly for now, as the time we’ll spend at sea is unclear. We’ll need Mingi back to full health, at minimum.”

Yunho cringed. It was a bad plan, with a fundamental flaw, but one that he was not responsible for pointing out. Yeosang had agreed to telling them that evening, observant enough not to argue with Yunho’s silent insistence, even if they both knew how difficult it would make things. That thought only led him down his own dark tunnel.

Yunho hummed absently, let his eyes drift to the door to the Captain’s quarters instead. Then, casually, “So, how is he?”

He pointedly ignored meeting the eyes of the pair beside him, despite their stares. They were being too friendly for Mingi to have told them about his escape attempt, but it didn’t stop that silhouette on the ship’s ramp reflecting over and over like his head was a room of mirrors. He was worried that if he looked at them while he said it, they’d be able to see straight into his brain somehow and know that he hadn’t intended to be there at all.

Although it wasn’t a wild concept given the kidnapping, it still felt too dangerous to be out in the open now he was in pirate’s clothes, on a pirate ship, and discussing future plans as though he was part of a pirate crew. Yunho had made his choice and would hang onto it desperately, even if that meant gripping onto a singular piece of thread.

“Recovering. Wooyoung thought he’d have to stitch him up or mix up something for pain and he was going half-mad, but so far, he’s only mixing up soup, so by all accounts it’s a bloody miracle,” the Captain replied, shaking his head in disbelief.

Seonghwa nudged a leg against Yunho. “Would’ve been a lot worse if you hadn’t done what you did. None of us would’ve known enough to do it. He talks about the bombs, the machinery, but never anything with magic in it. Did he teach you?”

Yunho tried to ignore the flush rising up his neck. “No, I just… paid attention to what he was doing. It was a coincidence, really.”

Best, he thought, not to share the true incident of his almost burning through the ship.

“Whatever it was, you did well,” Seonghwa said softly.

Yunho ignored, too, the way his breath hitched, the sting it created at the back of his throat. He gave a jerky nod of acknowledgement.

A thundering of footsteps came from behind them, growing louder, echoing through the wooden planks. The three of them turned to watch San and Wooyoung appearing from the stairs down to the hold. Wooyoung walked straight into San’s broad back as soon as they reached the surface, and he floundered, searching for a grip on San’s shoulders, furrowed brows and mouth opening to speak—closed, again, slowly, once he’d followed the line of San’s gaze.

“You both okay?” the Captain called out, scanning them up and down. It was impossible not to notice the tense set of their bodies, and the speed at which they’d become that way.

Wooyoung took his hands from San’s shoulders and gave a smiling nod, pulling a hand up over his eyes like a shield, back to normal in an instant. “Ah,” he let out, exasperated, “I wasn’t expecting it to be so bright out here. Been counting for too long. We got… a lot less than we wanted, but I can ration it. You might just get sick of soup.”

“Not great, but manageable. You, San?” the Captain replied.

San approached too, eventually, shaken out of his stupor by the address and following in Wooyoung’s footsteps towards them. They’d been down there for a long time, it seemed, though while Wooyoung had slipped back seamlessly, the harsh hunch of San’s shoulders and the dense muscle straining there remained, and he hung back behind, his nod jerky.

Yunho watched, questioning. There was something else at play here.

“Enough for regular sea damage,” he said.

“Not enough for a storm?” asked the Captain.

He shook his head.

“What about an attack?”

“Maybe.”

The Captain hummed. “Okay, thank you.”

Yunho could see Seonghwa watching the exchange closely, from the corner of his eye. Wooyoung, too, though with less surveying, less confusion in his features. The Captain and Seonghwa shared a glance. Their communication was open enough, their expressions similar enough, that Yunho could tell what that glance meant. Something was wrong.

“Wooyoung,” Seonghwa said, lightly, “give Mingi his meal, but after that, the two of you go and rest for a while, okay? There isn’t anything to do here, anyway. Hongjoong and I will be done soon.”

The moment the words let his mouth, San was turning, stalking off inside. Wooyoung’s head followed him, looked back at the others in silence before his feet followed too. The light taps of their boots trailed off, leaving the first three back at square one.

“They are not usually like that,” Yunho said aloud, though it was mostly an observation to himself, and sounded somewhat like a question.

“No,” Seonghwa agreed, “they’re not.”

The Captain sighed. “I’ll talk to San later.”

The calm mood between them, that Yunho had finally allowed himself to enjoy, had dropped flat. He found himself staring at his shoes, shuffling them against the floorboards, unsettled. “Maybe… I could go check on them? I wanted to talk to them at some point, anyway,” he suggested, slowly.

It wasn’t a whole lie, but part of one, considering he hadn’t planned to talk to them until a vague later time. But he wanted to be helpful. To prove something to them, that he would work here, that he could add something that wasn’t pencil and paper or the result of clumsy guesswork.

When he looked up, he met Seonghwa’s smile. “Good idea,” he said.

He was inherently wrong, of course. It was an awful idea. It was high on the list of the worst ideas Yunho had ever had, and of those there were many.

As he rose, he glanced back towards the Captain. The infamous man who was declared the Pirate King, one of a royal pair. Yunho knew better than to make it a long, significant look, but it veered on the edge of one anyway.

Every willing step towards the crew and their business and their moods added to the growing pit in Yunho’s stomach that had begun the second he climbed aboard of his own accord. It terrified and angered and saddened him more than his mother and the damned Hala Navy and his vengeful capture ever had.

Was peace too much to wish for?

Chapter Text

Yunho scooted back and rose from his chair, his feet light on the stairs, heading down into the corridor in the ship’s belly.

He slowed as he reached the galley doorway. A low voice, Wooyoung’s, with its fierce, passionate tones, was spilling out from the room, loud in the surrounding silence.

“I know I won’t be able to understand, I’ll never truly know what it was like! But I do know this isn’t helping anyone, you have to be rational here. We’re in this together—”

“I don’t know what to do, Wooyoung! I can’t—I can barely even look at him without feeling like my head is going to burst, and then there’s Hongjoong, and Mingi—” San cut off Wooyoung’s speech with his own, before cutting off that, too, with a frustrated grunt. “I need to—I need to think. But there’s too much to think about,” he said.

“I know, I know—”

“You don’t!”

“No, I know I don’t but I—San!"

Yunho threw himself back against the wall as San swept from the room, all hunched shoulders and furrowed brows. They furrowed further when him and Yunho came face to face in the small space between the wooden corridor walls. Yunho simply stood blinking at him, unable to tear himself from the barely concealed fury in San’s eyes and battling with it against the contradiction his deep frown posed. Wooyoung burst from the room behind him, eyes widening comically before San stalked certainly away from them both.

Wooyoung scrambled and made to follow him, scrambled backwards again, his eyes flickering between San and Yunho and the faint light of the sky, obscured by clouds, held in the stairway ascended. He made a split-second decision and backed into the galley, returning a second later with a bowl.

“Take this to Mingi, please,” he said.

The bowl was thrust into Yunho’s hands, and Wooyoung was gone. Yunho stood there motionless even after his footsteps has faded until it was clear that he’d meant it and he wasn’t coming back and no one else was coming to take the burden of the bowl from him either. It weighed heavy in his hands.

He knew he couldn’t avoid Mingi forever, though he’d at least hoped to drag it out until they were back in the safety of the workroom and could pour over maps and metal instead. However, maybe being able to run at any point while the other was stuck bedbound could work in his favour. The thread pulls on the woollen sleeves of Yunho’s coat dragged against the inside of his arms, suddenly conscious, somehow painful.

Yunho turned on his heel and walked out onto the deck and through to the door of the Captain’s quarters. He opened it before he could hesitate. Let it shut behind him. Placed the bowl ceremoniously down onto the Captain’s nightstand, beside a curved, golden hourglass, all its sand gathered at the bottom. Only then did he turn towards the bed Mingi laid in, having taken over the Captain’s room on his and Seonghwa’s insistence that they could easily share one of the bedrolls in the regular cabin, anyway, and they’d struggle to sleep regardless, if they knew Mingi wasn’t as comfortable, and—

Mingi’s eyes were open. That cold stone wall behind them gone. Like a fool, Yunho softened.

His hair was a wildfire, tousled and messy on the pillow, glowing over especially pale skin. But the long-sleeved shirt adorning his torso was loose enough to reveal his collarbones in too gentle a manner, the white sheets only pulled up to his hips, and Yunho was burning up far more than Mingi’s hair ever had. It felt wrong, too vulnerable, like he was not supposed to be there, nor this close.

He stared blankly at Yunho like he was seeing straight through him.

Mingi didn’t necessarily look dazed. The rest of the crew had been saying his condition was improving, that the antidote really had worked, that he just needed to get used to moving again after the soreness faded. Perhaps it was Yunho, then, who had the hallucinatory fever. There was no tense anger nor defiance in Mingi’s jaw. No chilling warning, no hint of what he knew, what his intentions were. No stone wall behind his eyes.

Yunho entirely forgot about his plan of immediate evacuation and stared, motionless, for far too long. Mingi didn’t seem to mind, if their eye contact was anything to go by, but Yunho’s skin was buzzing like there were bees under the surface again as they seemed to be doing increasingly. Waiting for an accusation. For bragging. For blackmail.

Except Mingi said, “Come and sit with me,” plainly, when he finally broke it off. Calmer than Yunho had ever heard. Mingi glanced towards the chair, which had been pulled from the Captain’s desk to his bedside.

It wasn’t a harsh command and he’d be perfectly in his right mind to reject it, and yet Yunho found himself inching closer until he was sat, anyway.

There was no light in the room save for the pale grey sky looking in from a small circular window, and it made the distance between them feel smaller. Quieter. When Yunho’s gaze found Mingi’s again, there was a dangerous glint in his eyes that couldn’t have come from that outside glow but from somewhere internal.

“Can I ask you something?” Mingi said. Yunho didn’t think Mingi asked questions.

He gave a curt nod and braced himself. It would be something about his attempt at escape; Yunho had seen Mingi there at the top of the ramp, looming down with his shadow draped over the wood, watching him leave. It was bound to catch up to him.

“Why did you turn back?”

Yunho startled. “Not—not why did I leave?” he blurted, before he could stop it.

Mingi shook his head, “I know why you left. I want to know why you’re still here.”

“I…” Yunho began, nodded slowly like he’d known Mingi knew, trailed off, shifted rapidly through his thoughts.

He knew the answer. He didn’t want to give Mingi that, though, especially when he had not yet processed it himself. Every thread he pulled at for a cohesive answer tumbled from his grip when he registered Mingi’s intense stare, which was always. It wouldn’t leave him alone even when he shifted to glare down to the end of the bed.

“It was as you said it would be,” he settled on. “These… these people attacked me in an alley, trying to take my bag, and there was just more of them everywhere, so I realised you were right and figured they’d leave me alone if they saw I was with the Pirate King.”

He wasn’t lying, exactly. The sour taste of it on his tongue was the same as it would have been if he had admitted to the truth, anyhow.

Mingi only nodded, both to Yunho’s relief and disbelief, as he was sure that the other did not believe him in the slightest. He still hadn’t smirked, tensed. Hadn’t reacted to praise. It was throwing Yunho off more every moment; he couldn’t get used to the emptiness there.

His stare dropped to his lap and the swirling pattern of wooden knots on the chair beneath his thighs. “I lost them in the alley, the first ones, but then there was these two outside a bar on the corner and then they followed me into the street, and this figure was all dark and brooding and that didn’t look great so I thought I should deal with that, and then she said there were more, afterwards, so I…”

Yunho glanced back up. Blinked. Again. Mingi’s mouth remained unchanged with each one, the corners of his lips smoothed upwards. Too bewildered by the mere idea of a smile directed at words from his mouth, Yunho stared. Revelled in it, maybe, just a little. Eventually his body deflated against the chair, slumping away, a pale pink rising high on his cheeks.

“How did you know to use the antidote?” Mingi asked, quietly.

Yunho shrugged. “It’s just a chemical reaction, I guess?” he replied. “The dark figure, she had one too, and it did the same as what happened to the wood so… I didn’t know it would work, really. I didn’t think before it was in my hands.”

“Well, it worked alright,” Mingi drawled in his deep tones, “and it was the only thing that could’ve. I invented it, after all, as a fail safe.” He paused. “I would be dead without you. If you hadn’t come back.”

Yunho failed to reply.

The Wanderlust creaked warily every few twenty seconds or so, and Yunho had become too used to it to hear it each time until that moment, where those twenty counts were obvious to the point of painful. Like the ship itself was hesitant to break the silence. Yunho’s breathing shallowed without him making the choice to shallow it, and quiet acknowledgement floated in the minimal space of the Captain’s quarters.

Yunho thought it ought to feel suffocating, and yet the only word that came to mind was wonder.

Then Mingi was moving, the sheets rustling as he shuffled up higher, and reached slowly down to his hip. His hands were covered by those same black leather gloves Yunho was yet to see him without. Yunho said nothing at the small expanse of skin he revealed, the scar marring it, circular but spiking outwards too like an exploding star. Mingi grazed his thumb over it, delicate.

He hummed, a noise that sounded foreign from his lips, too loudly for the room they were in. “Most of the other healing draughts I have leave gaps, inside and out, to let the body do its work but they wouldn’t have been enough. It’s not as bad as I was expecting. Hurt like hell, but the spot isn’t too bad. Would’ve hit my chest or throat if you hadn’t warned me.”

He pulled the shirt back down and the sheets back up and Yunho forced himself to clear his throat. “I can imagine,” he replied. “The woman I fought had a vial and it exploded against her chest, in her pocket, and it was… not nice to watch. And you’d have no idea, so they’d choose the target on you, and I—”

“She mentioned me.”

It wasn’t a question, Yunho noted with curiosity. “Not her, but… one of the men at the bar, yes,” he said.

Mingi made no reply for several seconds, before nodding decisively and offering nothing else.

“It’s… you’re the one the High Mage is after, aren’t you?” Yunho asked tentatively.

Yunho assumed Mingi was searching his face, his eyes, but that stare did not so much as twitch to give it away.

The High Mage hadn’t been the first to own nor manipulate magic. They had, however, been the wealthiest, the most egotistical, the most powerful. Before, they’d been a mayor, and people had known their name. Greed had wiped it and their identity from all known records and replaced them with a title. They’d used money and magic and countless hired criminals to take out the first mage, a chemist on some distant land, and more to make sure she was the last.

Unsurprisingly, that was also how they evaded the Navy. Yunho had witnessed countless petty thieves and murderers who took the brunt of execution both in foolish error and blatant sacrifice, though none had suggested skill in the magic side of things. Now, knowing what Yunho did, he supposed that if such an understudy did exist and did not wish to join the sacrifices and wind-up dead by either by the Mage’s hands or a Navy Commander’s, well-kept secrecy would be an obvious priority.

Perhaps at first, Yunho could’ve believed Mingi an opponent, a rival. It would be enough to warrant a target on his back. But the way Mingi behaved… Yunho could see himself in it. This was no choice.

Mingi’s voice lost its previous softness, something steeling, but not quite back to being cold. “The men you fought will be working for the High Mage with the intention of either killing me or taking me back,” he confessed, and in doing so confessed so much more, “depending on whether they believe they are able to handle me. I suspect after this they will lean towards the former.” Then, as an afterthought, "It’s never been this close to success or with so many hands.”

The High Mage and his ghosts had been responsible for failed Navy and government cases. Numerous break-ins and breakouts from the prisons. For the deaths of thousands, innocent and not. And yet, Mingi laid alive and breathing and unknown in front of Yunho’s very eyes. Did the crew know? The Captain? He must’ve, but Yunho could not imagine it, in that same way he could not make sense of Mingi’s calm ability to cope.

He had chosen to leave, and the past was following him anyway, inescapable. That was what Yunho saw. Not a murderer, as perhaps he should have done, but someone holding up under more pressure than anyone could fathom. He had already called Mingi a dangerous man to his face, after all. That aspect did not shock him enough to become the focus anymore.

Mingi turned to face Yunho directly. “I’ll teach you. Once I’m back to the workroom, I’ll show you the basics. Some to identify and some to use. Then, if I am killed, the knowledge does not return solely to the Mage.”

Yunho’s brows knitted sharply together. “You really think they could.”

Mingi ignored him. “I am not the only one they are after now,” he said. “You will need any help from me that you can get.”

The dismissal was clear. Finally, Yunho’s stomach turned. Twice-over.

The first, because of course Mingi was an understudy to the High Mage, a figure even further beyond Yunho’s fears. Of course, the High Mage would target him now too, and the helpless reasoning for that fact had shaken Mingi more than he would verbally let on. Being targeted, despite knowing equally that Mingi meant it in an entirely different way to the reason Yunho jolted, was a shock even though he’d been preparing for it. He thought he’d been preparing for it. If he was on one radar, it was only a matter of time before he lit up on several.

The second turn of his stomach dragged, slow, as he figured Mingi’s protection meant, in some twisted way, that he’d proven himself. He didn’t know what to do with it.

Almost breathless, Yunho must’ve opened his mouth and mumbled some agreement, as he received a nod of reply. Mingi’s stare wouldn’t let him go, the dark pools of his pupils, the high points of his cheekbones tinged with pink, the ridge of his Adam’s apple bobbing at his throat.

Perhaps it was a good thing that it was ripped from his grasp so forcibly, otherwise he never would’ve let that moment go, that distraction, unravelling Mingi’s story before him and forgetting entirely that he had been playing with fire of his own all along.

Chapter Text

A great clatter resounded through the silence as the door swung against the wall, rattling on its hinges. The rusty swinging lantern hooked on the wall was sent careening to the floor, and the glass shattered over the wood and skidded to Yunho’s feet like a thousand shining knives. He didn’t have the chance to watch it happen.

His head snapped to the doorway as the Captain stormed through, missing his cane but ignorant of his limp and his lopsided steps, striding forwards in a stubborn rage. He came to an abrupt stop at the end of Mingi’s bed. From the moment Yunho met the Captain’s furious eyes, his one-track mind, he could do nothing but recoil into his seat and stare straight back with his heart in his throat. Though Mingi laid in bed between the two, there was no mistaking who he was here for.

Without the flourish of battle and command and helpless invisibility, Yunho was struck by the Captain exactly as his opponents would’ve seen him, and understood whole-heartedly, irrevocably, why they survived as pirates after all.

When he spoke, the Pirate King’s voice boomed.

“Do you take me as a joke? Did you plan it, to find me, to worm your way into my crew on my ship?” he shouted, spitting every word, each of them with their own blunt stop.

Yunho shrivelled up in the Captain’s chair and wished the room had a larger window he could use to hurl himself into the ocean. His reaction only made the Captain louder.

“Don’t look at me like you have no idea what you’ve done. You’ve known who I am since the start, haven’t you? She probably bragged about it, a little story before bed, did she?”

The edge of the chair rattled against the floor with Yunho’s shaking, though he hadn’t been aware of it starting. He flinched at the Captain’s volume, suppressed the urge to cover his ears, and sat and shook and tried not to scream.

The Captain took another step closer, as hard as the last, almost moving to launch himself across the room in blind rage. It was only by watching so closely and recognising his own that Yunho could see him shaking, too, his fists trembling at his sides, his shoulders wavering where his breathing went ragged. He scanned the floor and went to round the bed and Yunho scrambled, his boots scratching against the floor, hands skittering for the desk to grab onto. Pain coursed through his fingers where they slammed against the wooden edge, and he pulled them back to his chest as Seonghwa burst through the doorway, eyes alert and darting.

Yunho gulped down one breath, two, in preparation for the fury on his face. One alone was enough but to see the leading pair of the Wanderlust together—Yunho’s pulsing hands flurried and curled tightly to the closest surface he found in front of him, and when it held firm beneath his grip, grounding, he did not question the softness under his fingers.

Seonghwa, against all odds, wrapped a strong hand on the Captain’s shoulder. “This is not the way to do this, Hongjoong,” he said, blunt.

When he looked towards Yunho’s wide eyes, his stare was not sharp but big and rounded, his face slack with concern. The Captain allowed the hand to stop him. Yunho choked out some inverted gasp of relief.

It did not remove his glare, however, and that chilled Yunho to the bone. The Captain spared no glance towards his second-in-command, only having eyes for him. Yunho’s heartbeat hammered in his head like it was bursting to get out. The Captain’s breathing cut through it, filling the silence.

Mingi cleared his throat. “Who, exactly, are we talking about?” he drawled, as though bored. The scratchy edge of it reached Yunho through his rising panic.

The Captain scoffed. “Yunho knows,” he replied.

A tentative voice at his shoulder, “Love, I’m not sure he—”

“I certainly don’t know, considering I’m the one bedbound and locked in this room, so if you’d care to explain—”

San threw the door open, then threw himself into the room to Mingi’s other side. Wooyoung appeared after him. Yunho was keenly aware of the soup sat behind him, cold. A vicious shiver racked his body.

San’s shoulders were stretched wide, his chest pushed out, and his hand sat firmly on the handle of a dagger at his hip. His eyes were blazing, as though he’d sucked all the anger from the Captain, taken it into himself. As fixed on Yunho as Yunho was on the Captain, and as Wooyoung was on him. Entirely different to the kind, hyperactive man Yunho had grown accustomed to.

“We had to tell him—”

“Yunho’s mother is the Pirate Queen.”

Both Wooyoung and the Captain spoke at the same time.

This is what it felt like, Yunho thought, to have your soul drained from your body. Not from the top of your head to the tips of your toes, but from everywhere inside to everywhere out. His body sagged and his mind emptied. He had known it would happen, at some stage. He could not have gone on ignoring the past forever. But Yunho reached out anyway and tried to catch that tendril of smoke, possibility, a whisper of an alternate life on the Wanderlust, and it was as devastating to watch it drift and disperse between his fingers as it would have been acknowledging it for the first time.

Yunho forced a shaky breath through his lungs and valiantly ignored the way his heartstrings tugged in his chest. Ignored the twitch of his hands squeezing into flesh.

Their tones—and he would know, given that they echoed in his mind in the silence—could not have been more different; Wooyoung trying to hold them all steady, hesitant and slow, pleading, the Captain barely holding himself from bursting at the seams. Violent. Spitting. Under no means up for negotiation. Yunho wished he could be angry at that.

Mingi’s arm shifted in Yunho’s grip until it was no longer hovering as a support but back against his stomach like a shield, unflinching despite the nails digging into his skin.

Outside, a seagull let out a repetitive squark, growing distant. Wind whipped against the sails. The ship lurched beneath their feet for a harsh second before righting itself again, a loose end of rope skidding across the deck with an audible scratch outside, small copper and silver coins shaken on the desk and clinking against each other. The golden hourglass on the Captain’s desk wobbled in the corner of Yunho’s eye, and he had the sudden urge to flip it over and begin the drain of sand once more.

Wooyoung was the one to break the silence, slowly, dragging out his words, “I think we need to sit down at the table and talk about this. Properly."

The Captain looked Yunho up and down once more, staring over every feature of his face, and shook his head at what he found there. He turned, wrapped Seonghwa’s hand in his own, and lead him from the room.

Yunho didn’t dare to move a muscle.

He could feel them watching him. The instant the Captain had taken Seonghwa from the cabin and the door slammed shut behind them, the three sets of eyes remaining swivelled to him, in various states.

Mingi’s was subtle, somehow, which said a lot for the other two. Wooyoung’s was deep with concern, assessing, in a calm and awfully mature way that Yunho hadn’t been expecting from him, but made more sense the more he considered who he was paired with.

San’s stare was heavy. Like smoke invading the senses, clogging Yunho’s eyes and nose and throat.

Yunho kept his gaze fixed firmly on the floor.

He remained curled up on the chair, stuck recoiling, his body unwilling to relax. His mind wasn’t much better. Yunho had pushed this moment so far back and kept his denial stubborn enough that somewhere along the line he’d tricked himself into believing it, without the willingness to contemplate otherwise. Nor to consider that the Captain’s wrath may not be the only one he would have to face.

Wooyoung glancing at San before he spoke, but the other didn’t react. “We ran a background check on you,” he said, “just to make sure you weren’t going to put us in danger. And you won’t, not… directly?”

“You said that like it was a question,” Mingi said before Yunho could.

Wooyoung sighed. “Okay, fine. Yunho, your story lines up. Asked around some taverns, some popular street traders well-informed on local gossip. Turns out there is a mapmaker who escaped from the Nestone Navy base. One Jeong Yunho, not a threat, but wanted due to the circumstance of his recruitment. Having been taken from the Pirate Queen, his mother, during her execution.”

Yunho squeezed his eyes shut and turned his head away involuntarily towards the desk.

“I won’t ask you if it’s true, because I think we’re past that point. The Navy aren’t too heavily after you, no more so than they were already pursuing us. The main issue is that—” Wooyoung said, paused, until it was as though Yunho could hear him choosing each word wisely, “the Captain has a complicated opinion of your late mother.”

“Don’t we all,” Yunho muttered, though only in Mingi’s earshot. As if he didn’t know. As if Sun-young’s actions hadn’t been haunting him all along, weren’t still following him now.

The words had hardly left his mouth before San’s voice cut through the air like blades of ice. “Your mother killed Hongjoong’s family. Cut their ship to ruins, left their bodies to wash up on the shore, where I found him, half-dead. Revenge made him a Captain, made him choose the name Pirate King, made me his protection,” he hissed. Though Yunho had said as much to himself in his head, the way San looked him up and down sent a shiver through him and pounded his conscience like he’d never considered it before. San balled his hands into fists. “It seems she manages to haunt him beyond death, and if it was up to me, you’d already have joined her.”

“Then it’s a good job it’s not,” Mingi replied sharply.

The room fell shock silent.

Yunho’s head snapped towards him, but his gaze was fixed on San, whose eyebrows twitched down for a split second and only confirmed Yunho’s own assumption. This, Mingi, did not happen very often. If at all.

“Pardon me for not wanting to judge people based on their past, and a past they are not responsible for at that,” Mingi continued, under their scrutiny.

His arm dug harder into Yunho, who had been pulled out of his daze enough to acknowledge it, and he went to release his grip before the harshness of it dawned on him. Mingi wasn’t holding him back. The pressure tightened only when Yunho was being threatened, not the other way around.

Mingi sat up straighter as best he could around the weakness of his body, using Yunho like an anchor, and inched himself sideways until they were closer together, and Yunho’s view of San and Wooyoung was almost over his shoulder.

The spell of both caught glares was only broken when Wooyoung sighed and threw his head back to the ceiling, evidently fed up.

“This is going to get us nowhere,” he said, tugging at San’s arm. “Neither you nor the Captain are in the position to talk about this, let alone make any rash decisions.” He shuffled a reluctant San out to the deck and turned back briefly before following. “I’ll send Jongho in. Unless you want to go elsewhere, Yunho, and be left alone? I can tell them all to avoid the workroom or something, if you’d like.”

Yunho glanced down at the back of Mingi’s shoulder. “No, that’s okay. I’ll stay here. You can send Jongho in, and Yeosang, please,” he said quietly.

The moment he had been dreading had finally arrived, and Yunho could evade it no more. He knew he’d need all the help he could get.

Chapter Text

Especially now he’d managed to send their plan derailing so miraculously.

Neither him nor Mingi moved for several seconds, staring at the closed door like a perfect parallel. Eventually, Mingi let his head drop and pushed out a long breath, Yunho slumping back against his chair, the tension bleeding from his muscles into something much worse. An intense sense of defeat.

Cutting through shock-induced static, a thousand thoughts hit him at once. What would they do? Kick him out? Kill him? Hand him in? He didn’t think so, not if it risked exposing themselves to the Navy and plastering their location all over Hala, but it wasn’t unfathomable. Knowing they could find a method of anonymity, knock him unconscious and drop him nearby. It wouldn’t take long for a solider to find him. The back of his head tingled with the false sensation of a hit there, like he could already feel it, foreshadowed. He clutched at the feeling with his hands, raking through his hair, tugging at the strands and curling himself into a ball, boots up on the ledge.

Should he tell them? Should he have told them sooner? And which part? His full name, his childhood—but why should he, when he could only remember pockets of it, pockets they were hardly going to believe. Would they believe it, if he did tell them the truth? They would have, maybe, before. But it wasn’t before anymore. It was now, and the shining hourglass glinted at Yunho from the corner, and he tugged at his hair until it stung, thudded his head against his raised knees, once, twice.

On the third, his forehead met a cupped palm. Nimble fingers in leather gloves, calloused by smoke and steel, tucked themselves gently beneath Yunho’s own and eased them slowly away.

He let his hands fall from his head, limp on his knees, but it took a few seconds longer to raise his head. When he did, finally, he was greeted by a dark, blockade of blank steel once again, and Yunho was thankful. He didn’t know if he could’ve dealt with the pity he was sure to face otherwise from anyone, let alone from Mingi. Let alone after he’d almost just torn his scalp, a habit he thought he’d gotten out of, years ago. It seemed today was determined to be one spent reminiscing on the past.

Yunho cleared his throat and shuffled to untuck his legs, tuck his hands under his thighs, though having his front exposed made him itch with discomfort and vulnerability.

“Thanks,” he muttered. Scorned himself that he couldn’t manage coherence for anything else.

Mingi was watching him like a hawk. The only indication that he was still weak, that the interaction had pained him, was the way he carefully lowered himself back to the pillows now they were gone. His eyes didn’t waver. When Yunho couldn’t ignore it any longer, he finally met Mingi’s stare properly, searching him the way he was being searched in return, for—

“I won’t let them hand you over,” Mingi said.

Oh.

All the air in Yunho’s lungs left in a rush. Albeit a shaky one. There was a firmness, a strength in Mingi’s voice. Left open and fierce like he wasn’t trying to suppress it. How anyone could truly believe that this man was unemotional, that the blank persona was real, Yunho didn’t know.

He had found his answer, then.

The door to the Captain’s quarters swung open again, this time slowly and not reaching the wall behind it, revealing Jongho with his features scrunched up and downturned, cautious. Yunho didn’t blame him; the state of himself and the room could’ve easily been different. Yeosang slipped in behind, less of an expression on their face, but the two of them were glancing swiftly back-and-forth, once, twice. Whatever they were checking for, they eventually found, and the concern in the tense lines of their bodies eased off. Just a little.

Yeosang moved past Jongho towards Yunho, leaning slightly against the desk. Jongho remained near the door, the other side of the bed, with his hands tucked into the pockets of his Navy sailor’s jacket. The sight of it still, however muddied and torn and altered, cut something sharp against Yunho’s chest, and he had to remind himself to breathe. Tell himself with certainty that he would never wear that uniform again no matter how much more real the risk had suddenly become. And if he couldn’t believe his own words, the image of Mingi’s searing stubbornness was burned behind his eyes.

“I suppose I should confirm it. You truly are Jeong Yunho?” Jongho said, ripping the band aid off. Yunho had expected no different.

A single hysteric laugh burst out from Yunho. “That’s me.”

“I was wondering when you would finally tell us, but I’m not surprised the choice was taken from you. We do have some of the best informants, after all.”

Yunho froze. Jongho’s speech sat suspended in the air like a cloud, falling on unhearing ears. Only one word in a chorus, his neck straining at how fast he’d whipped it to the side. Finally, finally, finally.

“You… you knew?” he said, hardly above a whisper.

Jongho’s lips twitched up into a smile. “Technically, Yeosang knew. They suggested that you were more important than you were letting on. Eventually I put two and two together and realised why you seemed so familiar. Your face was all over the papers back when you were first pushed into the Navy, and you haven’t changed too much with age.”

“I’ve known who you were all along,” Yeosang added gently. “We’re similar. It’s how I knew what to say to help you come to terms with your questions.”

Yunho had to force his jaw closed, picking it up from the floor. It wasn’t unreasonable, he’d unpack it later, unravel the many other questions stretching him out like a neverending string, but that wasn’t what bugged him. “You didn’t tell them. Neither of you did, even though the Captain… Why didn’t you say anything when you realised who I was?” he said, fractured and hurried.

Yunho followed the movement with his eyes when Jongho turned to Yeosang.

Yeosang pulled himself up from where he leant into a perfect straight-backed posture, almost with the air of— “I knew you because it was my duty to know of anyone my parents deemed important, anyone our rulers may need information on,” they said, “which included Jeong Sun-young, and you. In case you happened to be roped into working for her, against us, or if we would choose to rope you in. In whatever way was necessary.”

Yeosang stared at Yunho dead-on and wide-eyed, and he could sense the sincerity in it. “I hated it. That there were suggestions my parents would order for a child too young to understand to be held hostage for their very existence, that I would likely be ordered to do it as a training exercise against pirates, forced into it for the same circumstantial reason as you. I won’t let anyone be punished for the decisions of their parents, nor their parents’ enemies.”

Yunho imagined it. Another outcome, where him and Yeosang did not meet on this ship, quiet and cautious but with a different kind of hesitation, two children sharing the same fear, prisoner and prison-guard. Would Yeosang have looked different, acted differently? Twisted their kindness into cruelty? It was straight out of one of his childhood nightmares, the reoccurring fear that the maids had engrained into him between locked doors and reflected in tinted views through blurred windowpanes.

They’d been doing it for his safety, he knew that, and it was even clearer now. But both as a child and as an adult, looking back with Sun-young’s stories and adventure overall shining beneath a golden sheen of equal parts horror and glory, Yunho could not help but wish he had not been so trapped.

He still remembered the first time he felt rain trickling over his skin, several weeks after he’d learned of her death. But Yunho hadn’t braved it alone, no, he was dragged over that threshold with rope cutting into stinging wrists and his arms pulled taunt at an angle that made his back ache, hands squeezing down on his biceps, the cold barrel of a pistol digging in between his shoulder blades. Every raindrop had been piercing.

The nightmare had snuck into reality, after all, and he’d relived it day in, day out. He was glad it hadn’t been Yeosang. At least, this way round, they both had real enforcers to blame. Yunho partially expected the same far-away look in Yeosang’s ocean eyes that Yunho was sure the rest of them were seeing in his own. What he found wasn’t that, but a steady determination.

He put his hand out, the other held out of sight at the small of his straight back.

“It is nice to finally be able to introduce ourselves, Jeong Yunho,” he said, chin raised high. “I am Kang Yeosang, child of the sea, and former merfolk warrior.”

Yunho did not have the chance to stop himself reacting before his eyes were practically bulging from his skull.

Objectively, the merfolk aspect hadn’t been difficult to work out, when Yeosang had started letting Yunho see it. His siren-like beauty, unusual map requests, navigation role and battle disappearances… they all could be written off individually, but in combination? The mention of merfolk at the port, confirming their existence, had been the cherry on the cake, and Yeosang had been honest in admitting to that when he’d made carefully constructed suggestions.

Not that he’d really had the chance nor the logical coherence to process the idea of merfolk being real. Existing outside of storybooks. He was forced to accept it consciously.

Subconsciously, however, it felt more like avoidance, and he knew he wouldn’t believe anything until he saw one in merfolk form, saw their abilities, even though there always had been something entrancing about Yeosang and he didn’t quite disbelieve them either. But to hear it, see it, have it admitted right in front of him, seriously—regardless of whatever contemplating he’d done previously on the subject Yunho was still frozen where he stood.

He supposed a runaway merfolk warrior, risking exposing the existence of merfolk in entirety to the world and especially the pirate portion of the world, would certainly be one thing to motivate collaborative pirate ship attacks. To capture him or kill him, he wasn’t sure, but either were certainly high on the priority list of things to avoid. The Captain really had managed to pull together a dangerous combination, hadn’t he?

Yeosang’s lips quirked up into a small smirk, clasping Yunho’s numb hand, and they slumped from a warrior’s tense posture to a pirate’s one. “My identity is not something I talk about. Everyone on the ship knows, of course, but very little, Hongjoong and Jongho the most. I’ve only been here a few months longer than you have, when they scooped me up from the ocean,” he explained, “but all of them understand now that it is something I want kept close. It is difficult to explain, when most of the world thinks you are a myth, and the ones who don’t often know for the wrong reasons. My ability to manipulate water, my appearance. It is part of me, but it is not all of me, and this crew have helped me be more accepting of that.”

A sharp burning feeling sat heavy in Yunho’s throat, but the genuine smile on his face was lighter. As was the pressure on his heart.

Yeosang grinned back, the most boyish and carefree Yunho had ever seen him, so unlike the polite observation he was first greeted with. That excitement highlighted his true age, reminded Yunho of the ages of all of them, late teens and early twenties forced into a mask of stability. A breath of fresh air. A moment, despite half the crew likely discussing his fate a handful of metres away, where he thought that he could be safe here, that there were people here like him.

It left a bitter aftertaste in his mouth.

“Thank you, Yeosang,” said Yunho, in a voice as soft and sincere as he could manage. He gave a nod, and Yunho knew he understood, before his expression sharpened. Yunho took one double take at the clench in Yeosang’s jaw and decided this was something he could do to give back.

“We planned to tell everyone now, but it seems the other four must come at a later time,” he said. He glanced to where Jongho and Mingi had been tracking the interaction silently. “Me and Yeosang believe that the merfolk are co-operating with the Navy in the pirate attacks, and that is why they’ve increased.”

Swift panic darted across Jongho’s brows and eyes before it was smoothed into stubborn calculation. He examined Yeosang’s face, and Mingi examined Yunho’s, though Mingi’s jaw did not so much as twitch.

“You’re sure?” Jongho asked eventually, and once he’d found confirmation there, “How do you know that?”

“I’ve been waiting for any sign of attack since I left, because there’s no way they won’t come for me at some point. And during the last few Navy attacks I’ve felt it, in the water,” Yeosang said. “They have been fighting against me when I’m steadying the ship. I didn’t want to say anything until I was certain, but they’re using enough power now that I can’t see any other cause.”

“So that’s the map you’ve been drawing.”

Yunho’s eyes swivelled from Yeosang to Mingi. Mingi hadn’t been paying any attention to him in the workroom. In fact, Yunho was inclined to think he was purposely ignoring his existence entirely. Or so he thought.

“Uh, yes, that’s right,” he spoke slowly, ignoring the rising heat at his ears, the back of his neck. “Yeosang asked me to map any locations of rumoured merfolk activity. I thought he was half-mad at first, but… there’s a pattern, and it seems to coincide with our activity. Around any areas that the ship was headed towards or had just left, a little out of sync. It appears they’ve used the Navy to catch up. That woman I mentioned with the other vial at the port, who told me there were more after us. She listed them specifically. Mage, Navy, merfolk.”

Mingi hummed, low and irritated. Jongho rubbed a hand up from his nose bridge to his forehead, huffing a breath out his nose.

“And I don’t suppose the wealth of the Captain does much to dissuade regular criminals from getting involved either,” Yunho muttered. The scabbed wound on his side and the bruises over his body pulsed with the memory of receiving them.

Jongho squinted at the planks lining the floor. “If the merfolk have the sea influence and the Mage has eyes everywhere on land, with the Navy as a go-between we have no way out of this. The Hala Kingdom is only so big. They’ll outrun us eventually, and we all know Hongjoong would rather die than run, especially if there’s no safer option.”

“And Hongjoong doesn’t even know,” Yeosang mumbled, sullen.

“The timing of everything certainly complicates things further, yes,” Jongho admitted, reluctantly.

“I can tell him tonight, as planned. He can’t do anything about it right now regardless, and Hongjoong knows his role as Captain. Even Yunho won’t come above that if the rest of us are in danger,” Yeosang proposed. “Though, it would be best if Yunho isn’t there—"

“Don’t tell him.”

They all turned to Mingi. Yeosang cocked his head in question.

“Not yet,” Mingi said, certain, “Wait until Hongjoong’s calmed down, then we can use this to Yunho’s advantage. If Yunho is part of telling him then he won’t be able to ignore that he helped us, and it’ll make him rethink.”

Jongho hummed. “It may be a risk to leave it that long. I think you might be right, but—”

“Of course I’m right.”

Jongho gave Mingi a sharp look, and Yunho had to stifle a laugh. He only realised later how strange it was, to stifle laughter in a situation so fragile.

“If anything significant changes over the next few days, we tell the other half of the crew immediately,” Jongho decided. “It’s worth trying, considering we’ve been fighting all of them already and survived. Having the crew fall apart entirely and the Captain remove Yunho permanently would make more of a negative difference than not telling them this would, for the time being.”

No one disagreed, though in Yunho’s case the silence was more so out of surprise, out of not knowing what he could say. He wasn’t sure where the others had gone, what they were doing, as there were no footsteps to be heard out on the deck nor echoing below them.

The smile slipped from Yunho’s face.

He hated it. Hated this. He’d been at the brunt of disappointment many times before—from himself, from others, so many others—but he’d never been the brunt of anything like this, like guilt. Rarely were people on his side, never to this extent. And though it was twisted and fragile and he couldn’t quite understand it, he could just about believe that these people were on his side.

Never had he felt so free and so stifled all at once. Split a functional pirate crew clean in half during a dangerous time, or tear a family into jagged fragments sharp and dull out of loss at his own removal—staying or going, Yunho had wedged his way into the heart of the crew in such an unexpected way in these short months that he would cause damage either way. He was beginning to think that the claw marks he’d left into the surfaces of the Wanderlust had extended to the people aboard it without his notice, nor his permission.

“Are we done here?” Mingi asked, voice stern.

Yunho could feel his gaze on the side of his face more than he could see it, as he stared down at the floor, worrying his bottom lip between his teeth.

“We’re done,” Yeosang replied, far softer.

Oh, if only we were, Yunho thought.

Chapter Text

The days immediately after Yunho’s exposure passed in a blur, one after the other after the other, with nothing but a pounding head and Yunho’s heart in his throat. It was becoming a reflex now, the way he clammed up and tensed and had to remind himself to move whenever he passed the Captain or San.

The Captain was remaining professional, at least, which should’ve surprised Yunho. His anger had been explosive, and he was not only a pirate but the Pirate King after all; Yunho had known of his ruthlessness and ability to use rage as a weapon long before they met. Hell, Yunho had seen it in action in the way he’d fought. But then he caught Seonghwa’s eye over the Captain’s shoulder, noticed the way he remained at his side like he was daring the Captain to try something, to see what he’d get for it. Their dynamic, and where the true power laid, was becoming startlingly obvious by the minute.

Yunho hadn’t yet encountered San without Wooyoung. This was unsurprising, considering he’d hardly seen the two apart since the start unless they were sleeping and sometimes even then, too. But there was a harsher purpose to it this time. That usual glint in Wooyoung’s eyes vanished the second Yunho was in proximity.

Proximity was the wider issue. There wasn’t much of it on a pirate ship, and organised only for seven regular inhabitants, there were limited areas to flee to.

Yunho had crept into the bunk room on the first night reluctantly, half expecting to be sent out onto the deck to sleep. His bunk above San in the centre of the room had been taken over by Seonghwa and the Captain. His bag, now empty of every map he owned—they must've left the bag itself only to be petty, which was almost funny before it just hurt—had been dropped on top of a pile of his clothes by the side of Mingi’s empty bed, below Jongho, shaded in darkness as the furthest from the door. An attempt to separate him from San, no doubt, and to ensure someone would be notified if ever he got up in the night and left the room.

Not that they’d need the precaution to wake them up. Even if Yunho had tried to sneak and leave the room at an odd time, which he had no plans to do given it would raise their suspicions further, he had the vague sense that he was not the only one still awake late into the night. Most nights he managed to get to sleep eventually, engulfing himself with the smoke and orange citrus twisted into Mingi’s sheets, but in the process he had more than enough time to register the absence of San’s snores, of unconscious shuffling, eyes resting on his head as soon as his back was turned. It was something he’d had to get used to in the bunkrooms at Nestone—there’d been numerous occasions of stealing, of wake-up pranks, of threats—so the feeling was too familiar to be anything else.

Once Mingi had recovered, he didn’t return to his own bed in the bunkroom. The Captain had instructed him to take the one he’d been sharing with Seonghwa, to keep Yunho at a distance. That, and to separate the two of them, no doubt. Mingi’s voice held a snapping edge during his explanation and Yunho suspected there had been protest involved, but he was forced to accept it, which certainly wasn’t helping the growing divisions.

Yunho avoided the galley like the plague. He ate all his meals in the workroom, delivered occasionally by Wooyoung when San had detached from his side, but mostly by Mingi. Mingi, who ate every meal in the work room with him, instead of with the others.

It had been easy to write off at first. In absence of Yunho’s maps, an absence which Mingi had openly scowled about, much to Yunho’s pleasant surprise, he had been teaching him. It was almost comically awkward on Yunho’s side of things, trying to memorise the substances that Mingi was pointing out to him on the shelves and struggling pathetically with the irony of how conscious he was about embarrassing himself, but it had improved. Now he could name and explain a good amount of them, and Mingi was starting to trust him to small wiring and connecting tasks too.

He was told with strict instructions that he would not be allowed to handle the actual explosive elements. It was for the best, albeit slightly mortifying.

Other times, Mingi taught him about the ship, their signals, their systems while sailing and routines while docked, enough information that it had Yunho verging on doubting Mingi and questioning the possibility of a gullible quality in the man’s trust in his split-second decision to return.

Either way, Yunho was grateful. He increasingly suspected that Mingi was grateful for him being there, too, in a strange, unexpected sort of way. Yunho had caught his blank mask slipping with small twitches in his face, his hands, every time he stared intently at a stack of especially dusty workbooks that had appeared on the back corner of the desk several days ago. Though he hadn’t touched them once, he turned to Yunho when said staring went on for a little too long. Yunho thought best not to ask.

Lunch and dinner would fall badly timed during a session of tinkering with wires and bolts and glittering chemicals, and Mingi would bring both of their meals into the room so they could continue working while eating. This made sense.

But then they stopped working and started talking. It had been unfamiliar and confusing the first time Mingi took his thin glasses off and put aside his work. Increasingly, he would sit and stare expectantly, until Yunho eventually picked up on the pattern and turned back and initiated a conversation. At the start it was strictly work related, Mingi asking about his progress, testing him on the chemicals, asking for his opinion on what effects he could add to his bombs to make them more terrifying, more shocking. That one, admittedly, had startled him, but it quickly spiralled into why he answered as he did, and their surface level fears, and Yunho talking over a thin slab of cooked meat about how he’d been afraid of what the food on a pirate ship would taste like. Mingi told him that sometimes he missed the food he ate before joining the Wanderlust, that he would struggle to find any and steal until a chef noticed him on the streets and gave him a free meal every day. That he hoped someday they would meet again.

It went on. On, and on. Whether it was out of kindness for Yunho or distraction for them both, the dark and brooding figure who had first kidnapped Yunho suddenly seemed so far away in their small room, their own space.

And once Mingi had admitted to being ridiculously afraid of bugs, well. Yunho had tested it a few days later when they’d taken a short break outside, pretended a beetle had landed on Mingi’s arm, and he’d leapt a mile, losing all of his carefully collected composure. This dangerous man certainly wasn’t terrifying in any way when Yunho was struggling to breathe from laughing so hard at his face.

That, and the blinding grin that had followed, the low laughter.

If Mingi was needed elsewhere to discuss something, to deal with maintenance, to answer Wooyoung’s insistent check-up questions, Yeosang or Jongho would appear in the doorway moments after he left.

* * *

“What are you thinking about?” Mingi drawled, attention still fixed on the jars in front of him, after Yunho had sighed audibly three times over one ten-minute period. The jars contained small scales, teeth that Yunho was scared to ask the origin of, and furthest away, a shorter one of what looked to be spider’s legs. They crowded round a metal pot of bubbling liquid, Mingi hunched over them all like a little wizard.

Yunho sighed again in response, suddenly becoming aware of himself doing it, and set the screwdriver he’d been holding down on desk decisively, flopping backwards over his chair.
Mingi followed suit with his stirring rod, though more carefully, and turned to face him so that Yunho could see his raised eyebrow—or, lowered, he supposed—from upside down.

“When do you think the Captain will decide?” Yunho asked, finally.

Mingi nodded. “He will have cooled enough now to be thinking about it logically. We should tell him about the merfolk soon.”

Yunho’s voice lowered in soft frustration, his eyes closing in a wince. “Do you… do you really think it’ll make that much difference? You sounded so sure, but what she did against his family… seeing me is like reliving his nightmares, surely, and no one wants that. It would be easier with me gone.”

“With you gone, we’d have to find another mapmaker, and that’s—”

Yunho’s eyes snapped open, and Mingi cut himself off. They both knew what Yunho was thinking, considering he’d suggested it enough times, in the first conversations they’d had. You already have the maps.

Mingi crossed his arms, looking equal parts stubborn and ruffled. “Fine, then. Wooyoung asks about you every time I see him. He doesn’t hold back, which considering he’s the more com-posed of our informant pair suggests he cares a lot. Your physical state, your emotional wellbeing, if you’re eating. He demanded I tell him your favourite food so he could find a way to get it for you, and when I told him I didn’t know I thought he was going to claw my eyes out. He was planning to steal some of your maps back for you, and Seonghwa told him he wanted to do it. They’re in the Captain’s quarters. I’ve never seen Seonghwa go against Hongjoong’s orders, not properly. He mellows Hongjoong out, opposes him when he needs to calm him down and keep him rational, but their honesty is why he’s able to.”

He shook his head, mouth twitching at the corners, “Of course, Wooyoung wouldn’t let him. He would never let an opportunity to pickpocket go to waste, regardless of whether he recognises what breaking their honesty would do, which I suspect he does. He mentioned San, too. San asks about you. He keeps going back over your conversation, and it’s driving both of them half-mad. He’s so angry when he thinks about Hongjoong, but he loses it all when he thinks about you.”

Yunho swallowed thickly, which was even harder to do upside down.

“It looks divided on the surface, but we’re all here despite our backgrounds. Nothing could truly break apart our crew, Yunho,” Mingi said. “They all understand what is happening here, and that it is more complex than it seems. We’re on the same side, you included.”

Yunho pulled himself upright slowly, dizzy with the blood rushing from his head, stared blankly at Mingi, who stared back intently despite the flush rising to the tips of his ears like a matching third layer to his burning hair.

“Oh.”

It's the most he's heard Mingi say in one go. He isn't quite sure what to do about that.

Mingi huffed out a rare laugh, jolting Yunho through realisation. “Yeah, oh.”

“I didn’t think they would care that much.”

“Of course you didn’t, but there’s a lot you’re not aware of. That’s where most of the problem is coming from, and why I’m certain Hongjoong won’t kick you out.”

Yunho tilted his head in question. “What do you mean?”

“Do you remember much of your mother? Anything she did, specifically to Hongjoong’s family?” Mingi asked.

The straightforward way he spoke still caught Yunho off-guard, even though it was perfectly normal for him. It was simply strange, being confronted with questions about his mother from others without scorn.

Yunho had spent years battling with fractured memories, cursing Sun-young out for her actions and the consequences she’d placed on him. At the same time, many moments of frustration had been founded on the lack of those memories, on questioning why he should have to suffer for something he couldn’t remember, who he’d lived more without than with.

He’d scoured articles, books, any Navy report he could get his hands on containing a mere mention of the black wood her ship was recognised by, but from inside a base the resources were limited. Yunho wasn’t a fool; he was aware that anything he read would ultimately be biased, the exaggeration mounting up until he was lost inside his horrified imagination and decided it best to avoid them all. He'd never actually had anyone ask what he thought about it, though. They typically saw him as an extension of her, and if they didn’t, it was precisely because they’d expected him to be, and he was never able to reach that standard.

“I’ve heard of the Pirate King in writing before,” Yunho said. “I’ve read about his want for revenge. I didn’t know what he looked like but the first time that officer called him by that title I realised how badly this was likely to end. I know the list of un-young’s crimes in the reports, I can remember snippets of how she and her crew would invade the house between missions but…” he paused, grazing the pads of his fingers against each other. “I don’t know how much of it is biased or real at all.”

Mingi leant forward between them. “Hongjoong doesn’t, either. You’re more similar than you know. He uses revenge as a way of survival and having you right in front of him scares him. He can see you’re equally as in the dark, and he can’t on good conscience kill you, so he doesn’t know what to do about it.”

Yunho considered his words with a bowed head. When he didn’t know what to say in response, his thoughts shifted towards himself. He hesitated with his tongue caught on the roof of his mouth. He stopped hesitating. “I’ll never know for sure, but I don’t think she was too bad to me,” he said. “I grew to resent her in my teens because I was so aware that she was the reason I was in that camp, and the other sailors all knew I was there as a punishment. I was an easy target for them to practice on, and it only takes so many words before they start to stick.”

It spilled out of him like a leaking tap, fragmented in his mind but more composed aloud than he’d expected it. He didn’t look to see how Mingi was reacting. He found he didn’t care. This wasn’t for Mingi at all. But if he had looked, he would’ve taken a longer moment between his sentences, for Mingi’s attention was so intense it was as if he was seeing Yunho for the very first time.

“I am aware enough now to realise she was doing a lot to protect me, even if it stifled me. She always made sure I had maids looking after me, and I survived for years in secret despite her high profile. She was gone most of time, of course, and it was always hectic when she was home due to the quick nature of the visits, but she always came back. I assumed it was because she needed something for the house. But I can’t remember her picking anything up, on several occasions, now that I can think about it in a less biased light. I only wish she’d made it more of a habit. Perhaps then, mother would’ve felt more natural than Sun-young.”

Yunho smiled pityingly, shook his head. “I’ve heard what she did when she wasn’t home. Hundreds of stories like the Captain’s. I was taunted with them for years, with her reputation as the Pirate Queen. But that’s all it was, wasn’t it? She was the Pirate Queen. One of the most notorious pirates on the Hala sea and beyond, the black wood of her ship linked to our family name. She was better at it than the rest of them, but she was still a pirate just the same as all the other pirates and none of them have any higher morals to hold over her, or me. Especially not the Navy, not after they took me from my home and let me suffer in silence for their revenge. They all deserve my anger, the Navy and every other pirate, not her,” Yunho said, hovered. “Except the Captain, maybe. And the rest of you. This crew isn’t what I expected it to be.”

Mingi hummed. “I never knew much about pirates in the general sense, other than names and descriptions and the sounds they made as they died,” he said, plainly, “but after all you have seen and heard, you would be the one to know her best, with the neutrality of either perspective. To be able to see things with both the emotions they require and with an external perspective is impressive.”

Yunho bristled regardless of how monotoned, how uncaring Mingi made himself sound. Mingi locked him into that stare. This small space between them, this tight room dusted orange and yellow and packed with everything the two of them had ever owned—suddenly, all of it was important. Suddenly, Yunho was caught, and he did not want to be let loose.

“You should talk to Yeosang,” Mingi said, eventually. He called back Yunho’s attention, pulling them up together. “I don’t know much about Sun-young, but Yeosang does.”

Yunho’s eyebrows knitted themselves together. He hadn’t missed when Yeosang had mentioned her, him, but—

“He's a merman, and a truly powerful one, and strong merpeople age very differently to us. Time works differently with the tides and their magic. They can live for a very long time, and I don’t know how old Yeosang is, but he’d already been alive a good few years before they were tasked with you. Merfolk had a lot of conflict with the Pirate Queen. Yeosang remembers, Yunho, and he's on your side.”

Yunho sat there, blinking at the man in front him, his mind whirring. “I think I should talk to Yeosang.”

A fraction of that rare but privately familiar smirk remerged on Mingi’s face, not quite mocking but something teasing about it as he scanned Yunho’s face. “I think so, yes.”

Chapter Text

Yunho couldn’t believe he hadn’t thought of it before. Of course, Yeosang likely would be able to remember conflict on the sea, being who he was, may have studied it at least. After all those nights the housemaid had sent him to sleep with stories of mages and dragons and mermaids, hours with his head in fantasy books of his own—he should’ve realised sooner that if the merfolk truly existed, why wouldn’t at least some of their features be inspired by the reality too?

Yunho slipped past the galley and into the outside light, his footsteps a steady march. He was determined to get answers, finally, and perhaps now more importantly, he would find a way to save himself. It filled his veins with rushing fire.

He found Yeosang on the top deck as usual, sat on a barrel, retying the sea glass into his hair from a little pile on his lap that glittered like diamonds in the sun.

“Yeosang, do you have a moment?” Yunho asked as he approached, “I’d like to you ask you about my mother.”

If Yeosang was taken aback, he didn’t show it. He only blinked up at Yunho with a slight smile and a nod, and Yunho plopped down on the floor against the railings with an air of finality.

He hadn’t known what to expect as a reaction. If he was truly honest, he hadn’t thought about it much at all, only in a fleeting moment of hesitation before Mingi’s smug satisfaction became his fuel. If Yeosang hadn’t wanted to, then he wasn’t sure what he would’ve done. Something reckless, no doubt. Strange, that reckless had become the default for a man as previously cautious and clumsy as him in such a sort space of time.

But Yunho took in Yeosang’s low shoulders, the casual cross of his legs; any semblance of tension had been lost, a polar opposite to the buzzing under Yunho’s skin. If anything, the only thing Yeosang’s smile said was relief, and when he asked quietly, “What would you like to know?”, Yunho found himself quietening, too. The overwhelming realisation that he had answers to a life of questions at his fingertips as they stumbled over each other in a frantic rush, and the sudden stop that came with realising that he had immediate access to all of them, just like that. Sharp shock. Stark relief.

Boundless waves weaved and flowed beneath the Wanderlust, steady and slow, the pale sun of a fresh spring hovered in place, and Yunho’s breathing calmed.

“What… what was she like, really?” he asked.

Not the question he’d assumed he’d start with, if you’d asked him before. Yunho hadn’t anticipated that his mind would slip to her and not her attacks, though he knew immediately afterwards why he’d said it. Was it so bad to wish that, somewhere, deep down, the only family member he’d ever known wasn’t the violent criminal he’d been forced to believe she was, even if it was a long shot?

“Her entire presence was… strong. Incredibly so,” Yeosang said, sitting back and twisting his leather necklace between his hands. “I’ve heard her described as a maniac, and that’s not inaccurate. But behind most of that was passion. She knew what she wanted and that was power, and she wouldn’t stop until she got it. There was nothing but fire behind her eyes, and untamed, it was destructive.”

He clasped the turquoise pearl on its string tightly and met Yunho’s eyes again.

“I was seventeen the first time she attacked the kingdom. There had been attacks on smaller strongholds before, out across the Hala sea especially, but not in the centre. It’s the hub where the merfolk rulers are and where all the best training and education was held, where me and my siblings grew up. It’s deeper down in the ocean than the others and both well-hidden and well protected. Most of us thought of it as indestructible.”

Yunho was taken aback, “You have siblings?”

“I do, a lot of them,” Yeosang said, his voice steady but slow when he continued, “but I do not really consider them siblings anymore. I have told you I was a warrior, and for merfolk warriors, superiority is not decided by age or even skill necessarily but chosen. It is incredibly competitive. We hardly knew each other truly, because the strongest physically and in ability were constantly busy, and the others spent as much time away from the family as possible, knowing they were far down the list.

“My parents chose me as the primary sibling. I have the most control over my powers, and though I wasn’t the best fighter, I had the right amount patience and balance that a lot of the others had lost with the nature of it all. I was by no means the prettiest or most alluring, but they emphasised how perfectly stretched I was between protection and a manipulative type of control. They put a lot of their focus onto me, and some of my siblings were outraged by it. Other distant relations joined them as an opportunity to get recognition in the family.

“They did everything they could to make me lose my temper, to force me to make major mistakes. And when that didn’t work, they banded together to convince the King and Queen of the Hala merfolk that I was plotting against them, and to exile me. I left the night I gained confirmation that they had been successful, and I was to be removed a few days later.”

He turned his face out towards the sea, roved over it, and when Yunho followed, he could almost picture the rest of the world laid out over the horizon, an unreal species, families below it. Sea-glass and teal stone bricks.

Yeosang made a noise of contemplation. “I believe the plan of exile may have simply been to kill me, since I would be a threat to the kingdom if I truly was plotting against them, and that is why they would be hunting me. It is either that or they want to capture me so that they can decide what to do with me personally, as I took that power away when I chose to leave.”

Yunho swallowed around the lump in his throat. Yeosang spoke softly, enough for Yunho to recognise that his naturally complex feelings about it were certainly present, that his emotions were being held back. Stifled, whether consciously or not. Yunho stared at him with all the awe and care in the world.

Mingi had recognised the similarities in their stories, their natures. Even Mingi, though Yunho doubted he knew the extent of which Yeosang had suffered. He could not have predicted any of it, looking at Yeosang now. The cool, calm composure, the steady aid to the ship, the quiet contribution. He had far more patience and balance and whatever other heroic qualities that required, because Yunho was sure he’d never been anywhere close to achieving that control, and he’d been trying every minute of every day for a decade.

“You’re… you’re incredible,” he blurted.

Yeosang came back from his mind in harsh blinks. “Oh. Thank you,” he said, a flush rising to his pale cheeks, before he diverted their eyes and cleared his throat again. Yunho didn’t miss the dismissive nature of it, and something in him both questioned and saddened.

“When your mother attacked, it was unexpected, and it was swift,” Yeosang explained, light as a feather. “We’d heard of her from scouts who were sent out to track the movements of anyone in the water. I was out of the palace when it happened, in the city, so I was one of the first to see her and the first entirely to identify her.”

“How did she even attack so far underwater if no one had managed it before?” Yunho asked, brows furrowing.

“We struggled to work that out at first too. The strongholds higher up had cannons and shrapnel dropped on them, and big nets were dropped to pull unsuspecting merfolk up to the surface for a hands-on attack. But Sun-young was walking through the water, breathing like a mermaid, surrounded by crew members doing the same, albeit struggling significantly more. Many of them drowned. One of the royal advisors had betrayed my parents and was using their power to send them down and manipulate the water around the Pirate Queen, so she was able to move and breath. But it could only extend so far, and so the other crew members were relying on water-breathing potions and such, which were unsteady, and some entirely botched, even with her wealth and resources.”

Yunho’s heart stuttered and sunk, one small fragment at a time.

Yeosang looked away from Yunho and back to the cerulean sea, again, caught in a distant haze. It was at once an empty abyss, a black hole, and the contents of another universe with memories swirling over the surface, for better or for worse. “She came at us with these long swords that cut through the water no differently than they would through air, and her crew was huge, all muscled brutes who strong-armed whoever they could grab and blocked their gills, wrapped them in netting. Others were focussing on the buildings, with these metal contraptions punching through pillars and catching a few under the rubble. Most could get away easier because of our tails, but the oldest and youngest struggled and most of the able stayed behind to protect them, so it got messy.

“Other than the few in the area coincidently like I was, the rest were eating their evening meal in the halls, having never imagined anything like this would happen. We train to be sent out to the more vulnerable strongholds that are attacked, or in case merfolk rivals rise against us, not for full-scale invasion. I and the few with me were able to contain the Pirate Queen for a few minutes, and once the others arrived, we stopped the attack by using collective powers to overwhelm those of the traitor. But by then enough damage had been done. Mine and my siblings’ training was intensified. Guard duty was established. Scouts were sent full-time for information, and I was taught everything there was to know about the Pirate Queen, prepared to be sent out to kidnap you at an instant’s notice if it was called for. I wished desperately that it wasn’t, and at least at that time I was granted it.”

He smiled a small, private thing. Not happy by any means. That smile was only a tiny acknowledgement of the danger both of them had been in, of how pitiful it truly could’ve ended. Yunho understood. The half-relief of a near escape from a situation they never should’ve been in at all.

Ultimately, it had been as he always had suspected it would be, and his mother had earnt the name of the Pirate Queen in blood.

Not only the blood of others, though, Yunho hung onto in horror, but the blood of her own people as they drowned. How could she let them do it? Did she encourage it? Had she shed tears for them, mourned their absence on her ship of black wood? Surely she, who chose to dedicate resources to hiding and protecting Yunho, could not in good conscience let people die uncaring of anything they may have wished to protect.

Yunho twisted the end of his sleeve back and forth with his fingers. “Didn’t a part of you… share the rage they felt? Share the idea of some kind of revenge, even if that involved me?”

“Of course I did,” Yeosang admitted plainly, “I’d witnessed a massacre. It was the worst I saw before boarding the Wanderlust. But it was always far more complex than revenge even without the sympathy I felt for you. So many of the other consequences of that attack—the training, the increased politics, the heightened pressure amongst my siblings—were all associated with the decisions of my parents, of our rulers, and I was growing to resent following their command, even if I agreed with it initially. My parents cut me off from my friends in the city, from having my own life, stopped my family being a family. I gave them the silent treatment for a very long time after that day, and I believe they hardly noticed. I felt like a tool to them, not a child. I was also aware that if I was sent to you, it would be my first mission, officially. And then I’d be fixed into that life, with revenge on my conscience, forever. That was the last thing I wanted. If I chose revenge, it would be my own decision, and no one else’s,” he said.

For all the eternal softness in their voice, there was no room for argument.

Yunho picked up a small piece of sea glass, rolling it over his palm, held it up to the light as he contemplated. A gust of wind swept over the ship and lifted his hair over his eyes in a dusty brown wave. Yunho felt more than saw Yeosang tense beside him, but the waves remained low, the ship sailing steadily. He supposed it really did benefit to have merfolk on a pirate ship. No wonder they could be great fighters, with all that power. No wonder Yeosang wanted choice in how he used it.

Yeosang sighed, lightly, as though reminiscing. “I flickered between being angry and being calm more times than you’d assume, when I got here. Anger at all of them, the King and Queen, my parents, my siblings, your mother, myself. But it doesn’t seem worth it to me. I’m finally out, so why should I spend my time getting involved with them again? I knew there would be a time eventually where they came for me, and I’ve had time to think over how I feel about it all."

“I won’t seek revenge against them, not as things stand now,” he said, staring at Yunho with those shining turquoise eyes, and Yunho watched as they hardened to a darker, swirling whirlpool, “but if they try to hurt me again, or hurt any of you, I won’t hesitate.”

Yunho could see how furiously he meant it. Trace it through the groaning structure of the ship, the smooth tilt of the masts, the measured whip of the sails.

Any of you, his mind highlighted in selfishness, over and over, you, you, you. He was one of them. He was, and he would prove it. He was not Sun-young. He did not want power, he did not kill for anything other than self-defence, for the defence of this crew. Yeosang shared that, and he was sure at least some of the others had to.

The Captain—the Captain was the outlier. The Captain he wasn't sure about. He suited his title more than his name, in Yunho's mind, now. Unnatural to sound a syllables that weren't with that same sharpness as the Pirate King's actions themselves rang with. But would it be different, had they met in different circumstances?

For all his new-found perspective, there were still things that none of the other crew members would never understand.

“Thank you, Yeosang,” Yunho said, placing the shard in his hands back on the dwindling pile.

“You’re welcome,” Yeosang replied, because he couldn’t say not to mention it or that it was nothing, not with this.

Yunho watched as Yeosang slipped the familiar necklace into their pocket, looking across towards the other side of the ship. He followed Yeosang's gaze, meeting the dark eyes of the Captain, watching intently. His expression twisted into a glare when Yunho straightened his posture in acknowledgement, but he hoped he wasn’t deluding himself when he saw something curious in it, too. It felt like a challenge, a threat. One Yunho had never been more determined to take.

His conversation with Yeosang was far from over. There were many things to ask, to do. It was just that Yunho had found a bigger priority, after all this time. And when he returned to the workroom to find Mingi unrolling Yeosang’s requested merfolk map, back on his desk… Well, he liked his chances.

Chapter Text

By the time Yunho had completed half of the map, the evidence was enough for him to question whether he could consider himself a conspiracy theorist, or some kind of myth-buster, because perhaps these locations and the patterns they mapped out did have significance.

Once combined with pockets of knowledge he’d overheard, and considering that he’d come face to face with other things he’d deemed impossible—real, outlawed mages and magic potions, a capability to somewhat be helpful using said criminal material himself, and most outlandishly to Yunho, a pirate crew he didn’t feel burning rage towards—it was enough to believe that not only the merfolk species itself was real, but that he had possibly been making casual conversation with one for weeks.

By the time the map was finished, and he’d added every detail Yeosang could remember, then the information collected throughout Wooyoung and San’s past research, the evidence was indisputable.

There were hotspots of inexplicable activity in the ocean, patterns of whirlpools too uniformed to be natural, sudden increases and decreases of currents, disappearances of not all but especially violent pirate ships. The ones who had been recorded when setting off as chasing the myths of merfolk. Only, Yunho knew now there had never been anything mythical about it. He almost felt bad—almost, but after Yeosang’s recounting of their intentions, not quite.

Equally, he was much too busy solidifying the impossible in his own mind.

Most of their recordings were in small, even clusters. One, however, could hardly be called a cluster at all, only a few moments in relative proximity with no pattern, most of them added by Yeosang. “That’s the centre, the main kingdom. That’s where I was,” Yeosang had announced as soon as they saw it. “The smaller strongholds have always acted with less restriction, because it would be difficult to hide activity being close to the surface. They just prepare to be found instead,” he explained, “but the King and Queen are incredibly strict about keeping the centre hidden. The occasions we do have are all mistakes, that’s why I remember them, they were always a cause of panic. I studied the details and how they could be mended.”

Having it all laid out made him wonder in awe at how they’d managed to hide their existence for so long, when some dangerous individuals had worked out enough to go looking in the right areas, but it was the same answer a lot of pirating decisions came to; the more people who knew, the more would seek it. No one greedy would invite others to seek what they wanted, and no pirate wasn’t greedy in some way, whether it be for treasure, for knowledge, for freedom.

Or for Yunho, life.

He only needed the Captain to view it as useful enough, important enough, that he overlooked a lifetime of anger.

“Just stick to the plan,” Mingi had told him when he’d indicated concern over the fact. “Keep it quick and direct. Don’t give him anything he can twist into anger or use against you, because he will. You can remember that for whoever else comes of this, too.”

Yunho hoped Mingi knew who he was talking to. When, exactly, had he ever succeeded in being quick and direct, without anger? When had he successfully followed any kind of instruction under stress?

The words went round on a loop as Yunho and Yeosang strode out into the corridor, away from the others, out of the safety of the workroom. Out of the continuous tense worry it contained. The determined set of Yeosang’s shoulders gave Yunho the strength to shoot down a handful of the thoughts that were certain he wouldn’t walk out of this opportunity alive, but not all of them. The Captain wouldn’t kill him outright, Jongho had assured him it was too late for that, but it would hardly matter if the Captain decided to abandon him to the Navy. The ending would be just the same.

His heart hammered like a drum in his chest, in his ears, in his throat, but his breathing kept its rhythm under force, and each step across the deck towards the Captain’s quarters was steady, as were the three sharp knocks he tapped into the wood of the door.

He knew that both the Captain and Seonghwa would know it was him from the moment the first echoed in their chamber. It was not the playful hand of San or Wooyoung, nor the efficient swiftness of Jongho, nor the softness of Yeosang. If it was Mingi, there would’ve been no knock. Yunho rolled his eyes internally, but swiftly stifled his smile as thumping rattled the floorboards.

Seonghwa opened the door. A small knowing smile flashed across his face for an instant, shielded from his Captain, but it disappeared as he stepped aside to let them in. That calculation left Yunho suspended, his head barely held up above the water the Wanderlust rested upon.

The Captain sat at his desk, the chair back from where it had been at Mingi’s bedside when Yunho had been in it, when the spell had been broken. It was facing them, like he’d been expecting their arrival. He was slouched back in it casually, watching Yunho with his chin raised high, closely enough that anyone could tell he was heavily interested even if his posture said otherwise. Chains dripped from his neck like liquid gold, and he twirled a ring with a dark obsidian stone at its centre between his short fingers so that it clicked and scratched against the others. That crazed hysteria in his eyes lurked just beneath the surface, and he watched like a lion waiting to pounce.

Yunho had been rattled by it, the first time he’d realised who this man was, watched him fight with a limp and a cane and a certainty resembling that of a predator. He wasn’t so naïve anymore, and he was getting greedy, his ambition pushing harder beyond survival.

“What do you want,” the Captain snarled, not a question but a demand.

“Yeosang and I have information for you,” Yunho replied.

“Spit it out, then,” the Captain spat himself.

And so, Yunho did.

He spoke of Yeosang’s map request, his confusion and dismissal, and emphasised his gradual realisation. Yeosang explained his part, the interference beneath the water, their choice to hold it off silently until they were certain of their suspicions. That they believed it to be the merfolk. Tracking them. Tracing their activity. Plotting to steal them away. Yunho watched the Captain closely, chose his words carefully, when he spoke of the port and the woman he murdered. His understanding that the Navy, the High Mage, and the merfolk were working collaboratively, and had gained on them enough to catch up. Added that Mingi and Jongho agreed.

Seonghwa turned sharply to look at the Captain in alarm at their discovery, the movement a flinch of its own, but the Captain didn’t move a muscle. His eyes didn’t so much as change.

Yunho felt his resolve shifting slightly, the edges crumble. He had left a part of himself behind in the concentration of getting the words out, putting them in the right order, in the right tone, but he became aware again of his thumping pulse. Had the Captain known, all along? If that was the case then this information surely would not be enough to save his place on the ship, and worse, it meant that he’d known that they’d been working behind his back, and he would end up dumping the rest of the crew deep into Yunho’s own mess and all.

He didn’t think he had ever watched for someone’s reaction so closely. The Captain’s body moved up and down beneath his fur coat with every deep breath like he was one with it.

Whatever he was trying to contain—he breathed, and seethed, and failed. He slammed a heavy fist down on the edge on the armrest of the chair, a sound likened only to an explosion. Yunho fought off a flinch, and his jaw clenched so hard that his teeth hurt.

“Why the hell didn’t you tell me this before? Days ago? You—” the Captain demanded, pointing at Yunho as he fought not to tremble— “You expect me to believe this isn’t something you’ve manipulated Yeosang and Mingi into magicking up for my approval? To make yourself feel better?”

A stuttered breath forced its way down Yunho’s windpipe. That tight-lipped speech, the seething, barely contained… The Captain hadn’t known at all.

Yunho’s body drew together, tight as a bowstring. Though the opposite would’ve caused him terror, he struggled to feel joy over it. He only registered the pit in his stomach, the solitude it signalled. It was like Yeosang wasn’t even there, beside Yunho, like the Captain wasn’t seeing them, and so Yunho couldn’t either.

Mingi had claimed that fury would melt away into pride, into being impressed. Yunho believed him, though he hoped that it would happen before he was scorched into a pile of ash or torn into ribbons.

His speech spilt over his lips in a rush. “I needed time to create the map, and to work out how to approach you so that you would take this information seriously with evidence without it being overwhelmed by my involvement—”

“And you thought you’d put my crew in danger, within that time? What if they’d come for Yeosang? Are you suggesting that I wouldn’t have taken it seriously, that I’d be selfish enough to put my crew in danger?” the Captain’s voice took on a fierce edge, his posture tightening, leaning forwards.

Yunho scrambled for a response, feeling himself thrown onto the fringes of panic, though he willed his body not to display it and steeled himself. He refused to let it go far. It wasn’t a case of consideration, begging his mind to tip one way rather than the other on this metaphorical tightrope, this physical plank. He simply couldn’t. He wouldn’t.

He held the map straight out in front of him like an offering.

The Captain looked at it briefly with disdain, but then snatched it from his hands like he was scared he’d be infected by Yunho’s fingers. He unfurled the parchment, looked it over. His expression didn’t change. He gestured to Seonghwa, who was watching for his reaction as intently as Yunho was, to join him with the tilt of his head. Seonghwa did, and they hunched over it together.

It felt like years had gone by when the Captain finally looked up, his face simultaneously furious and tense and furrowed, and his eyes startlingly cold. Calculating. His gaze swept down Yunho like a cloud of rolling smoke, taking in his tall form, all straightened and certain bar shaking hands clenched at his sides. Flickered to Yeosang, pulling them back into the room, but only to their eyes. Back up to Seonghwa, hovering at his side. Seonghwa gave a curt nod of encouragement.

Back down at the map, back up to Yunho. “Don’t take this as me letting you go easy,” he said, verging on a snarl. “Trust me, I’m pissed, and I have a very deep desire to put a bullet through your skull” —Yunho failed to hide his wince— “You stay for now. But mark my words, you do so much as stand in the way of any member of this crew, and you’ll be gone before you even notice the gun. Get out.”

Only when Yunho was outside, the door firmly shut behind him, did he take in a deep inhale of fresh air and attempt to soften the dryness of his mouth. He closed his eyes and felt the sway of the ship beneath his feet.

Yunho didn’t particularly enjoy having his life threatened. It had lost its familiarity, during his time away from the Navy, and refreshed memories stung him at the core. But at least this time, it meant something.

At once his heart soared like the sails of the Wanderlust, and his stomach churned with trembling, soul-deep fear.

Chapter Text

“I was right, wasn’t I?”

Yunho stumbled, almost tripping over his own feet and falling out of the conflicting stupor he’d been caught in. His contemplation swiftly dropped into a scowl at the man leaning outside the Captain’s quarters.

Mingi held the most intentionally performative ‘casual’ slump Yunho had ever seen, his uncaring attitude by no means preventing the true smugness underneath it from appearing. As if he hadn’t been waiting at the doorway, a hand on one of his pistols. Yunho caught it a moment before his hand dropped, and brown leather swung forwards over the top.

“Ah, so I was,” Mingi said, in response to Yunho’s silence.

Yunho only scowled more. “No, you weren’t,” he lied.

“No need to pretend, Yunho, you can admit that I helped you.”

“You quite literally are the reason I am dealing with this problem at all, considering you kidnapped me, so I’d be more offended if you weren’t helping,” he grumbled. “Besides, you—"

Yunho opened his mouth again to continue, some weak protest that would only serve to dig himself a deeper hole, one he couldn’t resist—but Mingi let out a low chuckle, and when he glanced over on instinct, the rare smile he was met with stole the words from his head, and only made him glare sharply on in silence.

You just had one of the most powerful men on the Hala sea threaten to kill you, twice, he had to remind himself, and then shook it off and berated himself for even having to think it in the first place.

“Oh, I’m quite glad I kidnapped you. You’re proving quite entertaining, in a clumsy deranged sort of way,” Mingi assessed, narrowing his eyes at Yunho like he was giving a genuine examination.

Yunho scoffed, “Deranged? I can show you deranged—”

A cold rush of air and a loud bang cut off Yunho’s speech, sending his shoulders hunching in a wince.

“Crew meeting in an hour!” the Captain growled behind him, centimetres from his ear, before the door slammed loudly shut again and sent his hair flying into his face.

The three of them were stunned into silence.

Yunho did nothing to move the strands, only stood with them tickling the reddening apples of his cheeks.

“I think he might still be a little angry?” Yeosang suggested.

They glanced between each other, pursing their lips, and moved swiftly from the door, thundering down the stairs like children and into the workroom before the snickers could erupt from their lips.

* * *

From the second he stepped into the galley, Yunho could feel eyes on him.

He followed Jongho in, with the weight of Mingi closely behind him, like a shield at his back. Except as soon as they sat, he was more like a sword, placing himself directly next to Yunho at the foot of the table and glaring opposite to the Captain. Declaring quite openly that if it was necessary, he had a clear line of fire, however literal either would take that.

It reminded Yunho of the first few times he had sat at this table, with these people terrifying strangers. How different it was, now, Mingi’s sweeping eyes checking him over rather than judging. Yunho scared not for himself but for whoever tried to hurt him.

Mingi hadn’t so much as said anything, and Yunho was certain he never would, but he wasn’t oblivious. Since the moment Yunho had saved his life, Mingi had been attached to his side, his back, keeping him in his sights. Presented himself outwardly as a weapon.

Whether it was because of some life debt, the realisation of Yunho becoming useful for him, or because Yunho knew too much already to be let loose, he wasn’t sure. Any one of the three seemed distinctively ‘Mingi’ in their logical reasoning. It was most likely to be all at once. If he thought about it too much, guilt bogged up in Yunho’s mind, and he found himself almost avoiding looking at this man-turned-sword. Why should he be the reason Mingi turned on his own Captain, on this survival he’d built up for himself? There was such a difference, between Mingi’s full, silent presence in the workroom, and this sharp-edged, empty state of control.

However, at a table that felt so tense and divided, Yunho hung onto that safety like a lifeline.

The Captain was a hawk, tracked him like he was trying to pick apart his brain, his intentions, his biology, and Seonghwa and Wooyoung’s heavy mixture of pity and hope grated on him just as badly. San seemed to be the only one actively trying not to pay attention to him, and even he was sneaking glances round Jongho’s body, his body tucked in and hunched and leaving Yunho at a loss to work out if he was lost in his thoughts—whatever they were—or simply brooding over Yunho’s returning appearance.

Yunho was growing so self-conscious that the ships’ groaning and the lanterns’ shrieking and the hollow rush of the waves were developing characters, lives in his head, his own internal cacophony, and he was genuinely grateful when the Captain started talking. It dragged him back down to the ground, to reality and to the contents of being, which had become all but smoke and mist.

“Right,” the Captain started, sighed, “you all know what this meeting is about save for Wooyoung and San, which is such a remarkable feat in itself that I can scarcely say anything for the insanity of the growing issue.”

The aforementioned pair looked up at each other sharply.

He flattened his voice into harsh command. “Yeosang, Jongho and Yunho have gathered enough evidence to confirm that we are being tracked and targeted by a joint collaboration between the Navy, the High Mage and the merfolk.”

San’s head shot sideways so fast it made Yunho flinch. “Merfolk? What?” he said, voice cracking into a comically high-pitched squeak. He shook his head in disbelief. “But they don’t do that, it always remains in their territory—”

“It did, until one of their best warriors ended up on a pirate ship, and that same pirate ship is currently housing the son of the Pirate Queen and the rest of us, who could expose them whenever we feel like it,” the Captain mused. Yunho bit the inside of his mouth and traced the swirling indents in the table.

Wooyoung was far less visibly shocked, only slumped back. “The Navy wants Yunho, the High Mage want Mingi, the merfolk want Yeosang, and all three of them would be keen to get their hands on Hongjoong’s wealth, plus wipe out the informants stealing so much of their information—” he cursed. “I should’ve seen this coming. It makes complete sense.”

Yunho could see the frustration rising in the hard line of his jaw, the deathly stillness of his body. Similarly, the Captain’s jaw tightened at the end of the table. The insinuation, or the reality, that Yunho had been a major part of this discovery before his informants or he himself had, was no doubt bubbling in him in a bitter temper.

He rolled Yunho’s myth-made map out across the table. “Each marker represents one moment of merfolk activity, from factual documents to childhood fairy tales,” he explained with a hard line to his mouth.

“The strongholds—these are the strongholds,” Wooyoung exclaimed. He stood up, his chair scraping back, and leant over the parchment, thin chain necklace hanging down and grazing the surface. “The one with the statue, there” —he prodded his finger down— “There was an attack to the south of it that San got out of someone last week.”

San blinked up at him. “I—Yeah, I did. I didn’t get much out of the guy, but they were aiming for some treasure, and they didn’t even reach the location before they were attacked. It sounded like he was one of the only ones to return from it.”

Yeosang turned sharply to Jongho, who had been observing the interaction with a solemn expression. “Isn’t that where—"

“That’s exactly where we were, a week and a half ago, yeah.”

Jongho’s realisation settled over the room like a blanket.

Yunho himself hardly processed it. He’d already began plotting a mental timeline. They’d missed a full-blown attack by mere days, and if the merfolk attacked a pirate ship, and said pirate ship happened to be of similar shape, or similar size, it was likely it had been mistaken for them. They were no longer being simply tracked towards land. They were being actively hunted across the ocean. And not only that, but they weren’t far away.

He could hear the time-bomb as though it was real. Tick, tick, ticking away.

Seonghwa started muttering. Yunho didn’t catch the start of it, only the hesitant end. “We’ll have to go offensive.”

“Offensive?” Yeosang asked, equally quiet.

Seonghwa had already trailed off again, speaking to himself, but in the contemplative silence they all heard it clear as day. Whether he’d been aware that they would hear it or not, he was certainly aware that it was not something any of them wanted to hear.

“He’s right. If the three plan a joint attack and take the initiative, they’ll be able to execute their plan in full, and there’s no way we’ll survive it,” Jongho reasoned, though he didn’t sound remotely happy about it, “or resist whatever it is they plan to do with us, anyway.”

Yunho cleared his throat as his heart sank, anxiety gnawing at his insides. “Well, I expect the Navy will drag me back and execute me as elaborately as they did Sun-young. It’ll only give them an excuse to make the comparison, so I’m thrilled.”

He tried to make it sounded lighthearted, added a slight sarcastic smile to the end. But his gaze was fixed on a crack in the wood of the table, and the only response he received was a long blank stare from Mingi, and in Mingi’s empty state Yunho had no idea what that meant. The rest just deflated further into their chairs like they wanted to be sucked into them.

Yeosang released a resigned sigh, though it sounded as though it took a great amount of effort to push out. “It’s me the merfolk alone are after, and if they’re willing to ally for it after centuries of refusing, then they don’t mean to simply wipe me out. They could find a way to do that without aid,” he explained, “so they’ll bring me back home. Use me as an example of the consequence of rebellion. They’re more desperate than I expected, and that gives us our answer as to why they’re involved for the first time.”

Yunho winced. Jongho face scrunched up in physical pain.

As the silence rolled over them again, Yunho looked to Mingi. Mingi was already staring back at him. Every emotion Yunho had seen gradually emerging from him, that cockiness, that smug satisfaction, that violent protective determination—all of it was gone, his face smooth slate. Yunho could tell plainly now that what he had interpreted as a low level of zoned-out, distant thinking had truly left Mingi far, far away from this room, these people, further than he’d expected of someone constantly watching so closely. Though he said nothing, the complete lack of emotion, the unblinking eyes boring into his own made Yunho’s blood turn cold.

Mingi offered nothing else.

“We’ll make use of the element of surprise, since they don’t have any indication yet that we’re aware of their collaboration,” the Captain announced, looking between the group and the map, his voice strict. “Attack the closest merfolk stronghold as a warning that we won’t hesitate to strike back, cause enough damage to make them reconsider if we’re worth that loss, give them a reason to pull out of the alliance. Though, I have suspicions over the extent of calling this an alliance at all.”

He narrowed his eyes and sat back in his chair at the head of the table. “I don’t like it, but it’s better to isolate one group than wait for all three to annihilate us. We’ve been dealing with the other two well enough for over a year now, even if they were less coordinated.”

“And we have an extra crew member now, too,” Seonghwa added, with a soft smile.

The Captain sent him a swift, meaningful look, though Seonghwa was facing Yunho, turned away from him. It was less of a glare, though, somehow; his brows furrowed with alarm, his lips drooping to a frown. It only harshened into a glare a moment later when he forced it so, when he became conscious of Yunho’s eyes flickering between the pair.

To the left of him, miraculously, came another small voice.

“Yeah, we do,” San whispered. If it could even be called that, it was so faint.

Yunho stared at him in bewilderment, but the Captain sighed loudly and began again as soon as the words fell from his mouth. “Everyone, we aim for an assault as soon as possible. Jongho, get us there on an indirect path, we don’t want the route to be picked up. Yeosang, give us a minor boost but save your energy. Aid Mingi with targets once they appear, since you’ll be more informed than the rest of us. San and Wooyoung, set up the weapons stores as usual for battle, and keep your drills sharp. Seonghwa will stay on strategy with me. Mingi, set up the explosives, and keep any counteractive potions close in case they’ve been given anything by the High Mage,” he said, paused. “Yunho, I trust that you’ll follow his instruction.”

Yunho deflated.

Mingi, he could deal with that, Mingi was fine, knew a little of what he was capable of and how he could be of help. He glanced up. The rest of the crew were looking at him. Yunho became keenly, obnoxiously aware of the fact, his brain catching up, that he’d just visibly slumped against the table and let out a dramatic sigh, and now they were all smiling at him in variations somewhere between fond and smirking, and even Mingi and his dead eyes were melting down a little, and he’d never let Yunho live this down, would he?

“This meeting is over,” the Captain announced, finally, “everyone get some rest and get to work.”

Mingi was the first to rise from his chair and leave the room swiftly, and Yunho followed.

He left his map across the table, rolling in on itself without anyone to hold it down, and as the curling penmanship was hidden beneath the parchment’s underside, he wondered not for the first time what kind of person he was becoming.

Chapter Text

They had three days. That’s all the Captain would allow. All of them passed in a flurry of constant activity, and Yunho relished in it in a way he never had before.

Maybe they were preparing for a fight, an onslaught, facing something they had never faced before, but Yunho hadn’t known merfolk existed a few weeks prior. He couldn’t be blamed for an edge of excitement, could he? Being part of something, however dangerous it was, made him feel alive. Him, Jeong Yunho, in a team. It made him dizzy to think about.

It broke his heart a little more each time, too.

Wooyoung and San were running laps around him constantly; rolling barrels across the deck, tossing sacks of food and bullets and at one point a handful of spare sheathed blades straight across through the air to each other. San tugged himself swiftly up the rigging time and time again with the grace of a spider in his own carefully constructed web, and Wooyoung was below him, checking the knots and retying loose ends before the former swung out over the open sea. Wooyoung was quizzing Yeosang on merfolk, their weaknesses, their strengths, pulling stacks of leather notebooks and loose parchment sheets from various hidden nooks and crannies, juggling them in his hands and skimming pages as he cooked. He ran mealtimes like a full-scale operation, sending Seonghwa round on deliveries to make sure everyone was eating on time.

When they weren’t on specific jobs, they were messengers for the Captain to and fro, between the Captain’s quarters and the workroom and the galley and the upper deck. Wooyoung, Yunho quickly found, was always the one to deliver anything to him.

Yeosang could hardly find a moment alone. Yunho knew it well enough from how often him and Mingi were slipping away to find him in turn, for questions on targets, depth, entrances, weak spots, anything and everything to guarantee the best plans for approach, for explosives, for the preparation of various chemical concoctions.

And maybe Yunho’s curiosity was a little at fault. He tried to hold off asking Yeosang questions about his identity, but it didn’t last long. Sue him. He had to make the most of his time, didn’t he?

Suddenly, a lot of past actions and words made sense. The Captain’s requests to boost the ship, to steady it, Yeosang’s exhaustion. The reason they were not only making so much progress now but had managed to before they had Yunho’s maps for proper navigation hadn’t been luck, but Yeosang. Yeosang’s power over the water. He’d been quiet and humble about it, but given the circumstance of Yeosang as a target, Yunho was constantly wondering exactly how much stronger he was than most merfolk. He was sure Yeosang had noticed how often Yunho watched him, as though he could see the power in him, but he was kind enough not to point it out.

It was rare that him or Mingi found Yeosang alone when they approached, either. He was always with Jongho, but that was assumed. The pair were huddled over Yunho’s maps, instructing one another with directions, evaluating the waves, the wind, the route, Yeosang’s timed nudges sending them steadily on their path. Wooyoung was there often too, for any additional information he could load into what seemed to be his infinitely expanding memory, though at times it was unclear whether his intention was more so just to irritate them, to joke around; Yunho found Wooyoung playfully poking and prodding and jumping around them on several occasions, Yeosang swatting him away but concealing a small smile all the while.

Seonghwa kept popping up everywhere like a wandering ghost; one moment Yunho was alone, and then the next kind, doting eyes would appear beside him, and Seonghwa would ask if he needed food or water or supplies, if he needed to relay any messages, if he was getting on okay. Sometimes without talking at all, watching from a distance close enough to notice but far enough away not to feel imposing.

Yunho learnt more in three days than he had in years. A new world was opening in front of him, the seams of the old one tearing apart and hidden layers appearing underneath. He hadn’t realised how mismatched everything had been before, tacked together haphazardly with patches and trailing loose threads, but now he tugged on each one and watched it unravel in his hands.

One of his greatest joys had always been in learning. A past time encouraged by the maids, a distraction within the Navy base in Nestone, a way to make himself feel as though he was progressing and a reminder that he had something over the sailors around him, even if they did not see it. He scoured every book he could get his hands on, both fiction and non-fiction, literature, history, science, art.

Perhaps he couldn’t out-muscle anyone in a fight, but he knew every recorded strategy of combat, every pressure point and weakness, and maybe he’d never stepped foot on a Navy ship, but he could reel off the full history of the Hala Navy and the development of their vessels until he was blue in the face.

When he’d plotted his escape, the acquisition of knowledge was one of the losses that had left him most uncertain; Yunho could find more books, more people to learn from, but he’d have to experience the wider world outside of his bubble of knowledge to do so, and do it alone. Some days it thrilled him, some days he would curl up in the map-makers office scratching away with his charcoal late into the night and resigning himself to remain in that position forever.

Instead, Yunho was scrambling back and forth across the deck juggling glass bottles and metal scraps, huffing his hair from his eyes to meet Mingi’s as he collided with a door frame for the fourth time that day.

In other words, having the time of his life.

He had memorised the appearance, ingredients, purpose, and creation process for approximately thirty different chemical potions, created a map and a plan to attack an empire beneath the ocean, could identify various metal parts and thing-a-ma-bobs and thread them together until they caused an explosion. Mingi had been assaulted with so many questions he’d started adding in small quips and sighs to every reply and removed them again once he realised Yunho could not be deterred.

If you asked Yunho, he would suggest that Mingi was enjoying it. They were both as nerdy as each other, and with the increasing length of questions and answers, an element of enthusiasm could not be denied. When Mingi taught him before it had been begrudgingly, somewhat out of what Yunho assumed was spite against the Captain, giving Yunho skills in order for him to be able to stay out of practicality. It was different, now. Whether he was hunched over Yunho’s maps with him and Jongho and Yeosang—and during a handful of unnerving times, the Captain—being in-formed of their plans, or drafting stores of healing potions, or constructing water resistant bombs, all were accompanied by commentary, instructions, tips and tricks slipped into conversation as though he was trying to disguise them.

Each instance of preparation wrapped together into a nice, neat parcel, when they gathered for the final storm.

“We’re coming up to the first drop point, about ten minutes off!” the Captain called from the top deck, voice commanding. “Positions!”

Yunho could make out most of him from below thanks to the thick brown fur swallowing his figure, but the air between them was thinly veiled with fog. It had been growing for several miles, trailing them, thickening on the horizon and now enveloping the ship. It sent Yunho shivering in intervals, convinced he could feel it tickling over his arms and legs and face.

He received a nod from Mingi and began hauling himself up the ladder onto the higher deck, on the opposite end of the Wanderlust to the Captain and Jongho. Yeosang was already there, waiting beside the heaviest bombs brought up by San earlier in the day. Mingi was shortly behind Yun-ho, and they lined up either side of the first explosive, the biggest of them all.

A gust of wind picked up through the fog, sending their matching long coats sweeping out to the side and their hair as wild as their eyes. Mingi’s blazing fire, and Yunho’s beginning to lighten to warm hazel shades from his time beneath the spring sun out at sea.

They watched the commotion below them settle as the Captain and Seonghwa slipped down the stairs to the centre of the deck, San and Wooyoung to their sides to create a cross back-to-back. Jongho remained up with the helm. Mingi and Yunho were to remain with Yeosang, to move the bombs into position and drop them over the ship’s sides for Yeosang to manoeuvre in the water, and they were to stay with one of the pair at all times. Four above, four below. A perfect spread.

Yunho swallowed around the lump in his throat. He could not help but observe it not as strategy, but as a divide of his own creation.

They waited, the ship continuing steadily on, the sails shifting in the wind. Creaks echoed from the wood with every wave upturned, and icy sea spray splattered audibly against the outside. Besides that, nothing. Grey skies and tinted open air.

“Yunho.”

Yunho’s head slid towards Mingi. Mingi’s voice was low, a mutter under his breath when he said, “Remember what I told you.”

Yunho huffled a little. He replied just as quietly, as though not to disturb these few minutes of supposed tranquillity. “Yes, I know. Keep the potions close, bombs off the side as quickly as possible.”

Mingi brows and lips twitched downwards, like he wanted to frown, but his voice remained stern. “No, that’s not what I meant.”

“Mingi, Yunho! Ready!” the Captain’s yell boomed in the silence.

Yunho went to search Mingi’s eyes for a few seconds longer, but the other was already moving, and said no more. Yunho crouched and gripped the side of the bomb, heaving it up onto his shoulder, following as Mingi did the same with the other end in the corner of his eye. They stood together, poised to launch it over the edge.

Yunho took a deep, slow breath.

“Drop!”

The Captain’s voice cracked through the cloud like a whip. The metal container broke the sur-face of the ocean with a heavy slap, spitting salt water back where they’d been stood. But neither had the brunt of it hitting their skin; they were already moving, dropping the next in their size order into the water, Yunho managing just about to tug them up into his arms with his muscles aching under the strain.

The bomb hadn’t only broken the water surface, but had fractured the air, the moment, and boots hammered against the floorboards.

He hadn’t the time to check on Yeosang behind him, each bomb a step further away, but it didn’t worry him. Yunho trusted Yeosang, and with every unit tipped over the ship’s edge, he grew more certain. The containers were dropping in one after the other uninterrupted as they kept up a slow sail over the structure, and none resurfaced.

They got into a rhythm, him and Mingi, one and two and one and two the metal fell from their grasps, until all Yunho knew was the tempo chanting in his head and the damp hair tumbling over his eyes, wetting more and more as he leant further over the side with each smaller package, coming to the end of his neat row.

He had been so focussed, in fact, that he gasped and choked when a scorching arm hooked around his waist and tugged him from the path of a spearhead, a hairbreadth from his nose. It lodged in the floor of the deck and the plank splintered in a jagged split. Transparent, green-tinted sea glass. It began fogging up in the mist.

Merfolk. They were no longer alone.

The arm was gone as quickly as it had appeared, but the firm chest against his back, the exhale against his neck, the intake of orange and smoke—he knew who to thank, after this was over.

Yunho lurched forward, eyes flicking from left to right, dodging another crystal blade aimed at his head. Dropped down hard to one knee, low enough behind a crate that that he hoped he’d be covered.

Each of the Wanderlust’s crew were easy to spot, all spinning and slashing their way outwards in a ring, backs to each other. That, and because they both looked and fought very differently to the merfolk soldiers in their scaled armour and to their previous encounter with the Navy.

Yunho paused, biting into the inside of his cheek, stare skittering. He hadn’t realised the daze he’d fallen into and, pressingly, how much had been cut off from his conscience while dropping the bombs. It clung to his senses like the fog clung to his lungs, suddenly suffocating, trapping them into a tight pocket unconscious of the sprawling seas beyond. He winced at the first heavy thud of a knife indenting itself into the surface of the crate behind him and pushed his feet firm to the floor.

The Captain was the roughest, hooking onto the armour’s edges and dragging through flesh with the head of his cane, or latching on deep as he buried bullets in their foreheads with the gun in his opposite hand. Though it meant that his cane did not have time to rest with Seonghwa also occupied, and he leant heavily on his right leg. Every moment was rushed, wobbly with unrestrained rage, violent and tearing.

Seonghwa was fluid like water, unperturbed with this supernatural onslaught. Wooyoung twirled daggers between deft fingers in flashes of silver, quick jabs to the throat, the head, the heart. Killing blows only, easily. The drift of their bodies said otherwise. Beneath Yunho’s bird’s eye view the cross was moulding into a three-person ring around the Captain. Seonghwa and Wooyoung made up for each other’s mistakes as they shielded him. They hardly seemed to be fighting their own opponents, but each other’s, and merfolk slipped through the gaps to reach the Captain after all.

Slowly, slowly, Yunho’s eyes widened, and his stomach rolled.

San had left his usual place on the rigging and dropped heavy to the deck, his size and bright blonde hair striking against the merfolk around him. A few loose ends of rope draped down from above him, and he propelled himself from them at speed, sweeping closer to land hits when he had the chance. A balance of brute strength and light agility. The waistcoat on his torso was torn and his arms and legs were all littered with cuts weeping red, and he was plucking and shaking off ice blades every few seconds, unable to get back in the air to avoid them.

As Yunho watched, each of them seemed to dim and blur at the edges. He leant further over the railing, squinting through thickening fog. It was no longer settled over the Wanderlust like a blanket as it had been, but weighted and alive, impeding on the ship, close and claustrophobic.

The four below separated from the four above.

Every one of their opponents wielded daggers and spearheads either made of chiselled sea glass, tinged blue and grey and muted green, or of water itself, drawn together mid-air into projectiles in front of Yunho’s naked eye with enough magic and intention that they held the same sharpness as any knife. Figures shot up through the waves one after the other, and Yunho could only catch glimpses, the silhouette of an arm breaching the water’s surface for an instant before vanishing to the deep.

There were too many of them, far too many. Mingi’s bombs couldn’t have met the stronghold yet, far beneath the waves, even propelled by Yeosang’s ability. They couldn’t have been reacting to his destruction.

Thick, heavy guilt flooded Yunho and filled his lungs until he felt as though he was heaving for breath.

He flew sideways at the sound of splintering wood behind him, the crate shredding into two, but he wasn’t fast enough. The blade sliced along the apple of his cheek. Hot blood gathered at its tail and dripped down his skin. Yunho wiped over it with the back of his hand, smudging the crimson over his face as he scrambled to stand. He’d been sat idle for too long, and now they’d found an angle to get at him, and they—they were far, far too early.

He spun just in time to sweep the legs out from underneath the merwoman charging at him, to slide and stumble away, to bury a discarded silver blade into her ankle with a thump and run from the scream that followed. It stopped, eventually, relieving his ears. He didn’t know or want to know how. Only kept moving, pivoting, dodging and striking where he could.

Though, perhaps he would’ve rather seen it with his bare eyes, had it imprinted on his memory forever, than have the full capacity of focus to watch as a much larger, wider figure emerged from the waters. Yunho couldn’t tear himself away from the glinting crystal tip of their spear. Nor could he unhear their words, harsh and booming and slightly distorted by a foreign accent. “Hand over the prince, Pirate King!”

Prince?

Yunho’s blood ran cold. Suddenly, it did not matter that the icy blade had but grazed his skin, for the mere presence of them shooting through the air around him lodged deep in his sternum. This was no surprise. They knew exactly when the Wanderlust would arrive, who it was carrying, even when Yunho himself had not. Previous conversations connected in his mind in an instant, demanding it true, demanding the reality.

This was an ambush.

His gaze darted upwards to find Jongho staring towards him in parallel from the other end of the ship. But their eyes didn’t meet, not exactly.

As Yunho turned and watched the wall of steel appear behind him, he realised how foolish they had been.

The naval ship emerged steadily through the fog, fading in to draw up beside the Wanderlust, close enough that Yunho could see the sailors lined up with swords drawn along its edge. They could’ve been trailing the ship veiled by the distant fog for hours, one step ahead where Yunho had assumed they were behind.

His maps, his plan. The crumbling thought that he had been the one to fail them all punched at his throat.

Jongho seemed to be the first engaged by the sailors when they jumped ship, pouring overboard, but that might not have been strictly true. Yunho couldn’t look away from him, staring straight ahead, frozen in the middle of the deck. If he’d been conscious enough, he would’ve been more cautious about being skewered by glass spearheads, and yet he did not think at all. He couldn’t find any semblance of Yeosang in the crowd.

They were no longer attacking but defending with everything they had, disjointed, uncoordinated, and Yunho had enough of a window to panic and stagger unsteadily before there was a sailor coming for his life. He felt so small as the larger man approached, wielding a jagged cutlass and a face of fury, unbalanced where he stood. He whipped his own cutlass from its sheath at his hip on instinct.

Yunho knew nothing but the rough leather pressed against the pads of his fingers, the tinny ringing in his ears of resounding steel blades, the insistent weight of one name in his head—Yeosang, Yeosang, Yeosang. His arms shook under the force of each hit he defended, but his legs were shot with that same furious steel, unmovable where they stood, and the words grew louder and louder in his core until he could hear his own voice in his head screaming it strong and strained.

You will not get to Yeosang.

The sailor used his weight more with every swing and sweat beaded along Yunho’s forehead at the effort to keep himself upright, down his neck, his back, the black woollen coat sticking to his body. He was still grateful he’d worn it, though, when the sailor’s sword cut a slit in the fabric rather than the skin of his stomach. They went back and forth, Yunho getting in nicks and cuts to the man’s thick tanned skin until each small dash of blood stood out scarlet in his vision. He could feel the insistent sting from several of his own.

Their swords caught head on, metal against metal, shrieking as the edges scratched. Neither moved away, only pressed and pressed and pressed, until there were grunts forced out through gritted teeth, and Yunho realised with a start that several of them were his own. His knees shook, and his shoulders burned.

Snap.. Pain burst against Yunho’s skull.

He hit the deck like a rock, thrown to the floor, though the pain racing up his side was nothing in comparison to the thumping of his head. As soon as the hilt of the dagger hit him from behind, his own was strewn across the deck, his hands coming up to the injury.

His fingertips came away hot and wet. The metallic scent of it bloomed in his nose. His hearing fell muted and dull.

Yunho’s mind was aware enough to realise the danger he was in, to anticipate the shadow falling over him, the final strike to his heart, and realise there was little likelihood of getting out of it. He forced himself up on his elbows, one knee, two. And yet, all he caught was a sliver as a body vanished over the side, another alongside it. No one rose to replace them.

Yunho shuffled to the centre railing, overlooking the lower deck, slumping against it. If he squinted, he could survey the deck through the veil of fog, to find the rest of the crew down or wobbling where they stood. Panic struck Yunho through his pain.

He found Jongho opposite him again, watched his eyes dart over the ship’s sides frantically, but he was too slow to react to them widening when Jongho’s gaze turned to meet his own. That and a faint cry catching the edge of Yunho’s ears were the only warning he had before the ship lurched.

For a moment Yunho assumed it was his own body, succumbing to his injuries, his vision causing his gradual lean to go unnoticed. But then he heard the thuds echoing around him, had to struggle out of the path of a loose crate slipping to the ship’s other side, grip blindly onto a rope which draped low just within his arm’s reach. His feet hung, suspended. He refused to look down, understanding the tilt of the ship, knowing the bottomless pit he’d find. The roll put his back to the lower deck, and his eyes towards the front of the ship, where Yeosang had been stationed, and where they laid now, skidding against the wooden surface.

Yunho’s heart jumped at the sight, and his palms burned.

Blue, webbed veins stood out from beneath Yeosang’s pale skin, and his sapphire eyes flashed bright, glowing, between each slow blink. His hair was in disarray, all dried out from its usual soaked appearance, sea glass coming loose and scattering in shards as the texture changed. Scales had begun to raise over his skin, small teal ridges at his temples, his shoulders, stacked against each other to overlap, a few scratched and torn away as Yeosang fell.

Beneath them, a handful of silhouettes bobbed in the water, waiting to reel in their catch.

Yunho flexed his hand around the rope once, testing, and began assessing the tumbling crates stacking up at his feet through his blurred vision as stepping stones. He swallowed the gasp in his throat and propelled himself blindly, sliding down towards the ocean’s grasp, one hand grazing the planks and acting on touch to search for the front railing beside Yeosang’s head.

Mingi’s cursed arm latched round his waist and pulled him tight against his firm chest, and it didn’t let up, even when Yunho clawed at his fingers, his grip, like a wild animal, a strained scream ripping from his throat.

No, Yunho was forced to hang dizzy and suspended and watch as three blurry Echos were pulled beneath the waves before his blinking slowed, and his and Mingi’s bodies skidded as one unit against the rough wood down, down, down.

Blind, vicious rage, deep, tugging guilt, and all-consuming darkness.

Chapter Text

Jeong Yunho.

Up, up, up, Yunho jolted, flinging his body from the ground before his eyes had the time to open, raising his hands to scramble for something, anything to hold onto, bracing his feet against the floor—

The dusty, solid stone floor ridged and chipped but horizontal and flat against his soles, not diagonal against his side.

When he peeled his stiff eyelids open, he found himself in a murky space between three thick walls of brick, and one of tight silver bars. Their outlines were lit only by a warm glow drawn from elsewhere down the corridor, creeping in beside the shadows, revealing the copper rust gathering around each thin pole. Yunho’s breathing slowed against the foul damp smell clogging his lungs, though the taste in his mouth soured regardless.

He went to scrub a mindless hand through his shock of hair and met the dried blood on the side of his head. Sank against the rough cell wall.

Thick fog. Merfolk. Fighting a Navy sailor. Watching Yeosang fall to the deep a moment before he and Mingi fell, too. He cursed aloud, a fierce, hushed thing that tore from his tongue.

Yunho didn’t have to stop to work out where Yeosang was. He’d practically delivered him to the merfolk, into a waking nightmare, and the thought made him drag his legs up and drop his heavy head against his knees with a solid thud. One new, unexpected word, the shape of a graceful hiss, shot through his mind on its own individual train over and over, and he knew it would not halt any time soon.

He knew where he was, too. A blessing and a curse. The steadiness of the surface he sat on was unnerving after weeks at sea, and though his mind rocked he was aware enough to recognise that the floor beneath him certainly didn’t. Even if he’d never seen these depths, he knew keenly that he’d passed the doorway countless times. It could’ve been another Navy base in appearance perhaps, but they would not have taken him there—he was no doubt back where he started, with the same aching stomach and empty pockets, only lower down. Alone, save for the bout of groaning that filtered from a few cells away, which rather violently gave him the opposite of comfort.

The last thing he remembered was the warmth of Mingi’s body, but there was no warmth here.

Yunho’s eyes snapped to the metal bars, their rusting patches, the space and solid wall of the Nestone Navy base beyond. He was moving before he could think otherwise, reaching for them, the freezing temperature jarring against his fingertips and yet no match for the urgency holding his hands there.

“Mingi?” he called out, tentative at first, then louder. “Mingi, are you here?”

“Yunho?”

A fragment of tension bled from Yunho’s raised shoulders. Simultaneously, he gripped the bars tighter.

Prince, prince, prince.

“I tried calling for you earlier, but you didn’t reply. I was starting to worry they might’ve killed you outright,” Jongho said, his voice as much of a breath of fresh air as could be managed in a dungeon.

“No, no, I’m here. I just woke up,” Yunho replied, his voice a deep scratch against his throat, dry and sore. It was hard to think, to string it together, when his mouth only wished to follow one strand, and it weaved into every word. “How… how long have I been out?”

“I’m not sure, exactly. I believe I woke a few hours ago, but it’s hard to tell down here. There haven’t been any visitors. I’m not surprised it took you longer to wake up, though, after seeing you hit the water. I managed to hold on, so they took me from the ship by force and knocked me out onboard.”

Yunho exhaled, closing his eyes. He braced his head against the cold bars. “Did you… did you see if Mingi fell with me?”

He counted the seconds of silence, one, two, three, four, before Jongho replied. “You were still attached to him as you hit the water. I was taken then, so I’m not sure when you were separated, but it must’ve been afterwards,” he said. “He would’ve woken before you if he was here.”

Yunho responded with a hushed curse. A shiver racked his body, dark and trembling. He couldn’t keep the rest at bay once his thoughts started racing, overlapping with theories, each worse than the last, and while wrapping his own arm around his own waist he admitted: Mingi would be far higher on the list of executions than me.

Mingi had made that clear himself, in what he refused to say more so than what he’d admitted to. Yunho had the inside knowledge to know he shared the Mage’s very public spot on the Navy’s radar no matter how well he covered his tracks, no matter what he alone had done.

Not that the thought of Mingi’s actions alone gave him much reassurance, either.

Yunho pushed his hands deep into his hair, the salty, dried out edges scratching at his skin, and gripped desperately at the limp strands. Far enough back, and his fingertips found the patch of dried blood matting the back of his head, felt along the ridged bruising. He was so busy thinking of the rest of the crew that his own injury was nothing to him; he tugged his hair anyway, and it worsened his headache, but at least this pain was something he could control. He wanted control in this moment more than he’d ever wanted it in his life. It had fallen through his fingers like water the second he’d tried to cup it in his palms, tried to manipulate their passage through the ocean like it had been one neat, winding river.

He should’ve noticed. He should’ve noticed that it was strange he was standing openly, that the merfolk could’ve taken shots at him when he was out of it and didn’t. They knew he wasn’t yet dead and wouldn’t die from his injuries. He should’ve realised that they were readying something else, maybe then they would’ve been able to take some of the merfolk out the equation, before they had a chance to control the current so readily and bring the ship to such a tilt. He should’ve realised that one silent soldier, having given them no trouble for months, would not have warranted such a chase. How did he think he could master the Hala seas, outsmart the merfolk, the Navy, when he’d hardly been able to sustain a small stream of survival from the beginning? When he could hardly aid the people he cared about?

The Captain must despise him.

Tales of the great heists of the Pirate Queen were carried through the crowds with swift currents, all loud and dramatic with stormy backdrops, no riverbanks to restrict her possibilities. And Yunho… Yunho had heard each of them in glimpses, weeks, months, a lifetime later, trickling down in loose newspaper trails, his very existence the runoff of her flooding. His life determined by his attachment to Sun-young, and both how significant and insignificant that attachment was.

His own plan failed. There was nothing else.

A sharp bang bit through the corridor of the dungeon and Yunho leapt backwards, flinching, tearing his hands from his hair. His scuffed, Navy-issued boots, more part of this place than he was, scratched against the stone as he tumbled backwards and collapsed against the back wall in three clumsy steps.

He did not move from the position for a very long time. Only watched the dripping water from the leak in the corner of the ceiling. Dragged his palms to his ears and dug them in until they ached and he wanted to claw at his eyes and tear open his skin and take his brain out, because maybe then he wouldn’t be able to hear it.

Drip, drip, drip.

Chapter Text

Choi San.

The moment he opened his eyes and recognised the scratch of the sand on the bare skin of his lower stomach, his arms, San was up, legs spread and firmly planted, poised to fight. Choking up mouthfuls of salty water that burned his throat and coughing on the salt in his lungs, body thudding with his racing heart and vision spinning, he did not stumble.

He didn’t loosen, not even once he’d scanned the beach, the tree line, found the entrance of a small worn trail through the leaves, found no living thing but the gulls swooping overhead. No, his solitude only made him see red.

He snatched up the largest rock he could find in the sand and lashed it far, far, into the ocean, forcing out a curse so loud and strained and aggressive that the rest of the flock of gulls broke through the trees and scattered to get away from him. It gave him no satisfaction. His breath was deep and panting in his ears, and it drowned out the sound of the waves, of the wind, his fury one of only two things on his mind.

San hadn’t been alone since he’d found Wooyoung.

They’d promised repeatedly, under the cover of darkness and twisted in thin sheets, bare in dingy tavern rooms with Wooyoung’s thumbs smoothing the divots of his hipbones and Wooyoung’s heartbeat beneath his ear, that they would never be alone again.

San seethed, and seethed, and seethed.

The sand shifted with every step beneath his feet no matter how hard he stomped down on it, back and forth along the tide. No one appeared amongst the trees no matter how many glances he gave them, how many times he ripped his eyes away and sighed through grinding teeth like the pain was physical.

He scratched the sand off his face once he noticed it, but then he couldn’t stop clawing, scraping his nails down his sun-beaten cheeks, through his platinum hair. They came away with fresh, red blood layered over the dried brown already there. Most of it was not his own, but some of it was. Slashes sat clotted and scabbing along his legs, his arms, but he barely felt them. It was as he had planned it; San built his muscle for strength, yes, and to make himself imposing to others, to make them think twice about crossing him, but initially it had been in defiance of pain. If he thickened his skin, his body, if he got used to being sore, the pain inflicted on him would not affect him so much anymore.

The one on his forehead wept, and the drop of blood slipped down past the outside corner of his eyes like a tear.

Physical strength did nothing to protect against the pent-up rage, the frustration that tore at his heartstrings. He had fallen to the water disorientated but awake and alive and unharmed enough. Still, he had not saved Wooyoung. He had not saved Yeosang. He had failed his Captain, and Seonghwa, and Yunho and Mingi and Jongho would see the last of him in violence.

He had achieved nothing.

San did not look up at the ocean. An unconscious refusal. His mind could not take the rolling waves, the empty ocean, the stark acknowledgement of what it could contain. What it did contain.

All he had learnt unravelled from within, until he was not San, warrior of the seas and threatening informant of the Wanderlust, as soft towards his family as he was aggressive against his targets. This figure pacing the beach was a damaged teenager, distrusting of the world and everyone in it. All he knew was fear and violence. He would fight until every bone in his body was broken, and then until the world was as broken as he was.

San turned his back to the sea and narrowed his eyes, glaring at the small opening in the bushes off to the right. His feet were pounding towards it before he had actively made the decision to run.

He was back where he started, forced to scramble and fight for food in unknown territory to survive. Only this time, the Captain was not waiting on the shore for him, the image of Wooyoung’s pure, panicked face as he was submerged by the ocean was vivid in his mind, and for both San was willing to wage a war on the universe.

Chapter Text

Kim Hongjoong.

“This is not the end, you know?”

Seonghwa’s whisper went in one ear and out the other, like a ghostly tendril, there and gone without a trace. Hongjoong made no reply.

He had made no reply for several hours. Only laid back against his lover’s chest, stare fixed on a nail in the wall, motionless on the white sheets and as mindless as the delicate hand sliding between the strands of his hair.

“As long as the Wanderlust stands, its crew will stand with it,” Seonghwa muttered, pressing a kiss to the top of Hongjoong’s head.

They had been laying in the Captain’s quarters, on top of bloodstained covers, for the most part of a day. Neither had washed or changed. A whirlwind of activity, securing sails and tying ropes and checking for leaks, of which there were—surprisingly or unsurprisingly, depending on who was asked—few once the merfolk had left and the ship had been righted. And then Hongjoong had sunk to the floor of the deck, his frantic efforts dissolving to… nothing.

Seonghwa had been there to pick him up, as he always was, despite his same anguish.

No matter what Seonghwa said, none of it stuck.

Hongjoong was eternally grateful for his patience. For how deeply he knew him, how he had been waiting there to catch him, knowing he would fall. Seonghwa continued to mutter sweet reminders and reassurances even though he received no reply, knowing they were helping Hongjoong from caving.

They both knew it was better to remain numb for a while than to irreversibly become nothing at all. He held on to Seonghwa’s voice like an anchor, as he had done before, and as he would do again.

It was late into the night when Hongjoong spoke. His voice came out rough and coarse from disuse, and from the tension he’d been holding in his throat. “What is left for us now, Seonghwa?”

Seonghwa sighed. A short, mellow thing. There was a bittersweet, fond smile playing on his lips. “What there has always been, my love. Courage and trust. They are fighters, we all are. We have to trust that they will come back, that Yeosang will find a way out once more.”

A pause, rocking of the boat on the waves.

“And,” quietly, “if they don’t?”

“They trust that you will believe in them. The rest is up to them, and out of our control,” Seonghwa said. “But I can tell you one thing with absolute certainty. With you as their Captain, they will believe in the impossible. You have proven just how possible seemingly impossible things can be.”

Chapter Text

Jeong Yunho.

Yunho woke to the slam of the dungeon’s door, the metal grate rattling on its hinges, keys clinking against each other. It was not like the quiet, casual entrances of the low-level staff who had been delivering their slops these past few days—this visitor was trying too hard to be casual, trying to have their nonchalance noticed, showing off that they could afford it.

Whistling echoed down the corridor, growing louder, and Yunho only had a moment to blink the sleep from his eyes before a blurry figure was stood with crossed arms before him, taking up the width of his wall of bars.

They had puffed themselves up all big and imposing, as though they needed to appear threatening to the boy sprawled half asleep and dirty on the floor of a prison cell. It was this observation that gave Yunho an inkling of who he was facing even before they spoke, before the silhouette sharpened at the edges.

“Oh, Yunho, I’ve been waiting for this for a very long time. I didn’t believe the guards at first when they said you were on the run, but it shouldn’t have surprised me. You’re the only pain in my ass who’d be stupid enough to try.”

Commander Sullivan’s voice was as thick with anger and smug self-satisfaction as it always had been. He’d been the Commander of Nestone for a year before Yunho had arrived, though now he was significantly greyer, with silver-white streaks in his tuft of dark hair and wrinkles creasing the scars marring his tanned, leathered skin. Before that, a successful sailing career, rising through the ranks. The other sailors saw him either as a threat, or a role model. Yunho had only ever seen him as a bully.

He said nothing, only looked up plainly from his position on the floor.

Sullivan smirked down at him, like the silence amused him. “The only thing that shocks me about this is that you managed to get in with pirates, and the Wanderlust no less,” he said, “without winding up dead. You’ve always been the type they go for when they’re bored, you know, entitled boys who’re too weak to stick out even the mercy they’d been given.”

Yunho’s neck reared back as his brows furrowed, before he could mask either. “The Navy was never mercy,” he replied, “I was a child.”

The Commander scoffed, “And a child you always seemed to remain, no matter how much we gave you. Do you want to know how I found out about your little escapade?” —he gave Yunho no room to reply, of course— “The sailors were late to training because they were celebrating, the lot of them. Not one was impressed by your rebellion. I feel sorry for ‘em. They all had to watch as you failed the training, scrambled through the drills, ignored the sailors trying to help you like you weren’t damned from the start. Sure, you got a bit roughed up along the way. But that’s just the pirate in you, ey? It’s only natural they resented you.” He let out a short, curt laugh, “They’ve been betting on how you’d die the moment they found you gone. Might have placed a bet or two myself.”

“I’m sure you did,” Yunho muttered, mellow.

He raised himself to sit up against one of the side walls, staring straight opposite to the other. Avoiding the Commander’s gaze. Yunho could not face him, a little out of fear, of cowardice, he could admit that. The reminder of his teen years at the base and their continued existence, trailing behind him despite his physical separation and swiftly catching up to him once more, made him flinch away.

More so, though?

Yunho sighed, inspected his nails, dropped his head back against the chipped stone wall. Listened with one ear turned to the cell entrance and raised his eyebrow at a few words.

He was tired. Tired of having to listen to the same words he’d heard all his life as though he hadn’t lived them. Of escape plans and foiled plans and the image he held in these people’s heads. He was all too aware of Jongho in the cell beside him—one of the only people who saw him without the past hanging over every word, every look, every impression—a mere metre away. Hearing it all relayed from the booming voice that stretched along the row from end to end.

Sullivan crouched, pulling at his trousers as he dipped to the floor, a little closer to Yunho’s height. “Bet you think you’re something, now, don’t you, with your little act of rebellion?” he spat, “But you’re not. You won’t ever be. You’re nothing, boy.”

The scratch of shifting fabric as he rose again and laughed heartily with his chest, rattling. “A pirate crew? You thought yourself truly a pirate? As if you’d have the gall to scavenge and kill as they do, look at yourself. And after years of insisting you were as far from a pirate as a person could get, too. You’re a joke, Jeong. You don’t even deserve that surname, and you know well how I detest it.”

Yunho kept on staring at the wall in front of him with pursed lips. Listened to the scuffing of boots and the scratchy jangle of keys, metal fighting against each other.

BANG.

Reeling, Yunho met the glare of the Commander as he threw himself at the bars. His fists, curled around the metal and white with tension. Sullivan’s crazed eyes sent him shrinking a little into himself, the bright, wide stare swirling with a much darker rage. Skin scorching scarlet and veins bursting to the surface of his forehead.

A flash, in Yunho’s mind, back to the mirror image he’d faced as an eleven-year-old. The child buried inside of him trembled with grief. It reached up and up to choke him, stealing the breath from his lungs and squeezing it back down his throat, for forcing him to be at the end of this rage again. For failing to cut the Commander off. Yunho let it happen, accepting with remorse that current him too had failed in cutting off his own reactions, even after time away. It was pathetic how familiar, how right, it felt.

“Talk before I make you,” Sullivan demanded, hushed and blunt, verging on a seethe.

Yunho had to steel himself and straighten his back with the strength of bitterness before he replied, “What do you expect me to say? I am not my mother. That remains as true as when I told you it the first time.”

His voice was steady but quiet. The first time, the day he’d arrived at the base and realised he belonged there even less than he’d belonged in Sun-young’s home. Old habits lingering on the tip of his tongue.

Sullivan huffed, his teeth bared in frustration like a wild animal confronting its prey. “You’re naïve. You are plenty more alike than you care to admit, no matter how much better you think you are.”

“I am not Sun-young,” Yunho repeated. His toes curled in his shoes.

“Feeling spiteful, after all this time. Even after your grand escape to the seas, messing around with mermaids and magic experiments, you’re still stuck on her neglect, aren’t you?”

Yunho couldn’t restrain himself from muttering with fury, “It was not neglect.”

Sullivan coughed out a hoarse laugh. “You’ve winded up here trying to get closer to a dead woman, to prove you knew her, thinking it’ll make you feel better? She’s dead, lad. She’s not gonna rise from the grave because you’re playing dress up.”

“I’m not trying to prove anything to anyone, Sullivan,” Yunho replied, finally lifting his head. “My mother was both good and bad. I may be her child, but I am not the Pirate Queen, and I do not want to be her, nor to associate with her crimes as you have forced me to.”

He wished he’d kept his head lowered when he watched Sullivan’s face change. His lips curled into a knowing smirk, brows twitching, stare fixed with far more confidence than a man of Yunho’s past should’ve been allowed in his present. “Don’t worry, we’ll be saving you from that fate very soon indeed.”

Yunho swallowed thickly and dug his nails into the palms of his hands.

“The list of Mingi’s crimes is far longer than hers,” Sullivan said, “I can promise you that. And we assume most of hers were recorded in confession during the torture of the Jeong crew, whereas his… well, we don’t even have a last name.”

Longer.

A small, ironic smile quirked up onto Yunho’s lips. He’d known it, really. A explosives master of a famed pirate crew with the knowledge of mechanics and weaponry and magic infusions, chemicals that dissolved through wood and flesh with equal readiness. Yunho would’ve been naïve if he hadn’t wondered where the myriad of ingredients lining the shelves of the workroom came from, where Mingi came from. He’d seen the effects of his past firsthand. And what he hadn’t seen, laid hidden behind a wall of steel in his eyes.

Yunho knew he could not refute the claim no matter how much his heart wished to. He averted his glare from Sullivan back to the floor.

The Navy had Mingi. His stomach heaved and twisted and tied itself in knots and Yunho forced himself to gulp down a deep breath before he spewed its contents over the gravelled stone.

The older man was watching him with a self-satisfied grin and shaking his head, and Yunho could hardly comprehend it. “Listen,” he said, and his voice warbled in Yunho’s mind, “I’ll do you a favour and give you a recap. I’m sure there are some, after all, that he has deigned not to share with you.”

He cleared his throat and at once Yunho desired to tear that grin from his face with his own bloodied nails. A phantom of Mingi’s arm pressed hard around his waist—they have Mingi.

“Hundreds of chemical killings, gunnery murders with two distinct pistol signatures, abduction of both adults and children and their subsequent torture and death, arson…”

Anger burned through Yunho in a rush, and suddenly he was breathing short and heavy, clenching his jaw tight. Heart pounding in his ears and blood racing hot against all rationale. He pulled himself from the floor of the cell and stalked towards the bars.

“… and then there’s large amounts of theft, blackmail, bartering with magic, tampering, compromising military action, his loyalty to the damn High Mage and illegal use of magic, that one’s major enough…”

This kind of anger had only run through him twice in recent months.

Once, when Yunho had registered the gloved hand at his waist and the cloth over his mouth. Again, when those same gloved hands were clambering over the cobblestone ground of a port, dropping limp.

“I’ve seen the bloody floors and splattered walls in rooms he’s used, discarded limbs. I’ve watched your boy’s hands sever heads clean from their bodies without flinching. Lungs burnt away from the inside out because of magic-infused chemicals that never existed before he showed up, he’s a madman, he’ll leave you in far worse a state than an absent parent, he’s—”

Mingi.

When he thought of his private moments with Mingi, Yunho did not feel rage. His mind stumbled over their jokes in the workroom, the small smiles his mindless rambling received, the way they verged a little too heavily on fond if Yunho was feeling delusional enough to allow it. After all, Mingi was hiding. He refused to teach the others, and enacted little pieces of his vengeance through Yunho instead. There was something valiant in that.

He shivered, his torso struck with cold in the absence of Mingi’s spare woollen coat, taken. Yunho glared at the Commander’s shoulder, recreating Mingi’s silhouette between them, the scarred arm braced against his gut, the last time they had been faced down. Even injured and threatened, Mingi had placed himself in the firing line, knowing who was more at risk. It set him alight.

“Jeong, you’re into all this too…”

Sullivan trailed off when Yunho met his eyes. Head on, blatant, catching the instant his brow twitched in slight intrigue, noticing that something had changed.

“Too deep?” he asked, eyes wide and innocent, that same small ironic smile twisted towards danger, playing around his words. “I think I’ll be the judge of that.”

The man’s stare narrowed. His voice dropped low in the dark. “Mingi will be executed in a week. Posters are already being prepared for the city, and we suspect it will draw quite a crowd. If you’re lucky, I might allow you one of the best views in the house.”

Yunho’s head rang long after he was gone.

Eventually, it gave way to an incessant buzzing. Quiet at first, then growing, racing with his heart. He scanned his cell with renewed determination.

No matter how bad of a person Mingi had been, Yunho realised, they had been saving one another back-and-forth all along. And, as it stood, Mingi had taken his turn with the Captain. Yunho simply would’ve been a fool to let a brooding pirate beat him in this game of protection.

He had no choice but to settle the score.

Chapter Text

Choi San.

The Crying Siren was a worn, shadowed establishment, tucked between a bakery and a blacksmith on Utburgh’s main street, its crossed windows lit by the orange glow of lanterns and black beams lit by the moon. San had passed three other taverns on the way, but they were too quiet.

This one was plenty loud enough, with drunkards loitering outside still singing slurred tavern songs fracturing around the ever-opening door, layered with jeering and slamming tankards and thumping boots. He likely would’ve chosen it even if it hadn’t been. San paused under the stars and glared up at the plated sign hanging from two metal chains, looming down on him like a cruel joke. A mermaid with dark hair and turquoise scales, slumped over a shipwreck, the paint chipping away.

His shoulders hiked up to his ears, torso itching under the cheap leather of his waistcoat, rubbing at his neck and setting his skin on fire. The outside air was cool, his arms and chest exposed to an occasional whistling breeze, and yet San ran hot with anger.

There was not a single thought in his mind when he tore a hand through his shaggy blond hair and slammed the tavern door open against the inner wall.

San marvelled under the weight of their eyes. He stalked towards the shadowed bar, snatched someone’s drink from the surface uncaring of which glass bottle it came from, and glared at every figure in his path until they shuffled to let him through. A weak protest from the bar followed him, half a word, before he turned his stare to their face, into it, dull and bored and emotionless, and it cut itself off. He didn’t miss the following whisper of his name. Of his Wanderlust. Of his Captain. It made him stand up a little straighter, flex the muscles of his arms.

There had been no seats in the busy centre when he’d entered. Since then, a few had made themselves available. He sat smoothly onto a glossy wooden chair, satisfied by the way it groaned under his weight. Downed his first drink in two long gulps, slammed it down in front of him. Met the harsher of the stares he could feel head-on.

This is what he was there for, after all. To be watched. Evaluated. To be known, and to be known as a threat. The ones with the harsher stares were the ones he needed to see him, and so make them see him he would.

After one firm sweep, the noise of the tavern picked up again.

San sat and observed for a long while. Anywhere not under a chained hanging lantern were dowsed in shadow, save the stretch of wall surrounding the caged fireplace. Dark corners, dark booths, dark tables resting on worn barrels. Everything carved oak and pine. The rest shrouded in a deep orange; the glow of fire hindered by dusty glass cases. Those, San noted, could certainly be helpful, in the absence of beer bottles and weak metal cups. Many sat along the bar, which lined the entirety of one wall, straight opposite to the door he’d entered.

No back door, it seemed. No additional doors other than the one behind the bar, and that would mean cornering himself. Too risky.

Some groups, tucked away along the outside, laughed together and leant on each other. San tore his eyes away from them involuntarily, before his heart squeezed in his chest and rendered him unable to breathe.

It wasn’t difficult to pick the ones he was here for out, though, amongst the rest filling the place. Ragtag groups huddled close around tables, but they eyed each other warily, kept their hands on their pockets. The smarter ones had no obvious pockets in their clothing at all, hid them in folds of draping black fabric. Kept their posture slumped backwards or forwards, depending on how keen they intended to come across, feigning relaxation as though their thighs were not tensed perfectly in position, as though their hands weren’t itching for a catch or a fight or both. San would know.

He was taken back to his youth, when taverns like this were his life. They still were, in a way. It was only he had gained a separate, greater livelihood, a reason to watch and interrogate and steal, beyond four walls and cigar smoke and the sweet scent of stolen rum. Nab a few tankards of cheap beer, act a little drunker than you truly are, a little older, a little scruffier, and they’ll laugh and egg you on instead of noticing the disappearance of the food you shovelled into your pockets, your mouth. It was just as it used to be, except he was different. The same desperation, a new fury. A skill rather than scrambling attempts. No more flirting, or lying, or manipulation. He would take, and take, and take, until someone managed to take him.

Usually, people looked at him with suspicion, thrown off by flirtation and dimples and wide, charming grins, but having heard of someone tricked, something stolen, the strange habits of the mismatched Wanderlust crew.

This time, the blurry face of one of his crewmates was posted up against the stone wall outside, above a headline detailing capture in bold, black ink.

His mouth remained hardened in a flat line. They needed to learn to look at him with fear.

San latched his gaze onto one of the more decorated visitors of the tavern, who had hardly deigned to glance in his direction, had not given him the attention his rage required. Powerful enough not to feel wary, naïve enough not to watch. A tailored coat with golden thread, pockets weighted against his chest, hips, stretched over considerable strength. A perfect target.

Once, he would’ve offered a coy smile and asked if anyone could spare their seat, slid onto the wood while sliding a hand into a low pocket. But Wooyoung had always been better at that than him, anyway. He rose from his chair and stalked across the tavern in long strides, then leant over the table and lifted the stranger by his collar.

The man’s back slammed against the wall easily, San’s forearm holding tight against his stomach, his arms trapped and hands left scrambling at San’s thighs. Scratching his skin through his slacks like a feral animal. San quickly tired of it, for he never had been patient, and he forced the full weight of his body down until he had the man wheezing and stuttering in his hold.

Ignoring the gasps and indignant stares, San had eyes only for this target. Dark, dark eyes, like pools of sprawling midnight; to the naked eye, empty and endless, but to anyone who took but a second glance, brimming with the stunning complexities of a universe. They stopped the incessant twittering from the man’s mouth, the words dying on his tongue, unable to look away. Their noses were almost touching.

In his peripheral vision, San could pick out his opponents, watch their interests piqued, their bodies slowly closing in.

“Evening, Sir,” he said, voice as smooth as melting butter. “This isn’t personal, I’m just after some additional finances. Hope you don’t mind.”

San raised a closed fist and sent it square into the man’s hooked nose, following the blood streaming to his chin with a dazed smirk like it was liquid gold.

The pursuers around him broke into action. A hook aimed at his gut, a sweeping leg, a hand reaching for his shoulder. San dropped the dazed man from his grip and spun, kicking out before the hand made contact and swiftly hopping over the leg and catching the fist in his own, smeared with blood-red. His weight landed with a heavy thud, satisfying to his ears, and uncanny its distant familiarity. No rope or stealth to hold him back nor guide him. Their snarls became a blur, his only focus on his own body, his flexibility, his fluidity.

Wooyoung had always said his fighting style was beautiful, and Seonghwa and the Captain had agreed. A combination of grace and control and precise, blunt force.

All the world would hear of it now.

He moved like a whirlwind, shaking off the hits to his torso, the snap of his head sent sideways. Someone launched a tankard with alarming precision, catching him on the side of the face, opening a cut that dribbled red at his temple. Rude, he thought bitterly, before he found the culprit grinning, and took a generous moment to slam their head into a table. Stole the lantern swinging in its docile motions over his head and thumped it against the skull of other stranger behind him. One by one by one, they fell to the floor like dominos, bodies draped over each other like a perfect painting of grief.

They reminded San, coincidentally, of the swinging sign outside and the painted, fallen mermaid, of loose chipped sea glass and clinking golden chains.

Someone sent a glass bottle to the floor as they went down, and the shards clinked and shone with the sunset flames of the fireplace, as though they held pockets of the blaze burning inside them. A couple of the larger opponents still standing grinded them into the wood with their shoes. Bandits, likely, or pirates themselves. He didn’t care to find out. Saw only the movements of their legs and hips and fists and blurred faces in a narrowed frame of dodging and hitting out and sending them smoothly—or, as he took the jagged, circular bottom of the fallen bottle and lodged it into a forehead, not so smoothly—to the ground.

He didn’t want them to die, not really. Not all of them, at least. A few would maybe be helpful to someone, somewhere. But there had to be enough only temporarily unconscious that they would live to tell the tale, that they would echo his name, and that they would seek revenge.

Ironic, really. The way the cycle went on, and on, and on. Hongjoong seeking revenge on the Pirate Queen and picking him up along the way, the crew seeking revenge on the Navy and the merfolk, him, here, and now these strangers, too, against him. Round and round, in a way they would never understand without the full picture. Round and round, in the way this wiry body span across the room, launched from San’s calloused hands when he allowed himself to unbalance.

His head throbbed, his vision dizzy, but neither overwhelmed the motivation of seeing red.

San fought another two who rose together, clattering tankards and sloshing beer down his chest, sticky fingers tearing lanterns from their metal fixtures. They went down like sacks of potatoes and did not rise again. That was the issue, San found, with being muscular and big and irrational and not having the mental capacity to match it: physical losses hit hard every time, and the anger was very rarely enough to outweigh the shock. None of them had the resilience to get back up, raging helplessly below.

In the end, San was the only one left standing in the low light of the tavern.

For a single, fleeting moment, San considered the patrons. The groups who had arrived together, like he would have a mere few days ago. Then there was a punch to his gut, of the physical kind, a last-ditch attempt by one of the distinctly pirate-looking men he’d left conscious at his feet that sent him hunching, and he remembered that he no longer had a group, had anyone, and stomped one boot down flat on his head. The floorboard beneath it dented and splintered.

Chest heaving, San surveyed the room. Rusting chains hung limp from the low ceiling. Scattered rubies, crimson blood smeared into fractured glass, beside loose chair legs and a collapsing round table. Half-eaten meals and wasted drinks.

San swept up a near-full bottle and chugged it, then another, then piled food into his mouth. He wrapped a thick slab of meat and a pile of vegetables neatly in napkins, emptied an abandoned messenger bag save for the cash and placed the napkins inside. Swung it up, over his aching body, over a stinging cut.

“Thanks, I’ll just be taking these,” he said around the food in his mouth, as he sauntered over and dug both hands deep into the pockets of his still groaning, head-lulling target. He was impressed, truthfully, at the man’s ability to maintain an aimed glare.

A collection of silver coins and the watch from his wrist, the chain from his neck, all fell into the opening of his new bag, and a few lucky gold pieces fit snug in the pocket of his black slacks.

San whistled and swayed to distant music on his slow meander out the door, thrusting a middle finger to the sign of The Crying Siren in the cold, deserted street as he went.

Chapter Text

Kim Hongjoong.

In the golden hour of the morning, Hongjoong placed a hand on his cane and rose from his bed.

He stood watching Seonghwa for several minutes, in nothing but a thin, worn V-neck shirt and cotton shorts. A smile was etched on his face. The first smile that had graced his features in days. It came to him comfortably, easily, when he could look towards his bed, a stream of sunlight pouring through the small, clouded window above his desk, only the squarks of distant seagulls and slow, sombre waves to interrupt them.

Their space. Coated in sheets of dust, salt in the air, cluttered with papers and coins and trin-kets, and a bronze hourglass sat on splintering, faded wood. Hongjoong’s entire life, snapshots of his best moments, his worst, in this room, in these pieces.

Truthfully, Hongjoong thought, he had always been in pieces. Was that so bad?

Seonghwa was sprawled out, his chest bare, smooth pale skin twisted in tattered, beige sheets. They’d sustained more than a few cuts between them, but Seonghwa had bandaged everything up alone, and not a single marred inch was on show. The older scars only made him more beautiful. Each with their own story to tell. Each story leading here, to lay under a stream of sunlight in this golden hour of dawn, and to one bigger story yet to end. His chest rose and fell slowly, steadily, in restful sleep.

They had always laughed about their similarities, and their opposites. Hongjoong, with his lighter, scruffier hair, his burning anger and raging revenge, his softer, beaming moments quick and hot and half-hidden by cloud; he was the sun. Seonghwa was the moon. Cold and haunting, smooth like silver, alluring and glowing and dangerous all at once. It had started as a joke, before Seonghwa had agreed that Hongjoong was the only one who could make him shine, and then looked at him like he held the universe in his hands and told him that the crew of the Wanderlust were Hongjoong’s planets.

We will be your planets as long as we live, he’d whispered. Said they’d fallen perfectly into place, following their leader, and would remain orbiting him forever. That night Hongjoong had cried like a baby for the first time in years, fallen apart in the middle of the rolling sea, in the familiar darkness of the ship’s storage hold. Let the burning nature of himself melt to the floor in a heap.

Though he would never confess it, often Hongjoong disagreed. It was Seonghwa who made him feel like he was burning from the inside out, his touch that lit his skin on fire. Seonghwa who made him shine, or perhaps more importantly, held him together.

Hongjoong grazed a gentle hand over his lover’s forehead, over the black halo of hair fanned out on the pillow. He looked so soft and peaceful in sleep, without the wide eyes of concern, without sharp tension in his jaw. Hongjoong had decided long ago that one day, he would create the perfect place for the two of them, a place where he could look this way in his waking hours, always.

He slipped barefoot from the Captain’s quarters onto the deck of the Wanderlust for the first time since their loss.

His gaze roved over the masts, the rigging, knotted by the skilled hands of his companions. The metal head of his cane, the cold ridges of carved rope embedded in the surface, was familiar under his swiping fingertips, every bump smooth with wear. His socked feet padded lightly over to the side of the ship with a barrier remaining, and his arms folded over the edge.

Hongjoong could lie and pretend he didn’t know why the Navy had left him with a working ship save half a railing, but truly he was not at all surprised that he remained alive and awake and sailing on the open sea undisturbed. After years of profiling him, facing him and his stray crew of misfits, it was unsurprising that they knew with certainty that this would hurt him more than any prison cell or the barrel of any gun. It was the failure and the not knowing that would kill him, if anything ever could.

He was, for the same reason, surprised and appalled that Seonghwa remained.

Hair windswept over his forehead, braids and rattails undone, no coal along his waterlines. Chains and rings and earrings discarded, without the weight of gold. Only sun-beaten skin and loose bed clothes. One man, in one ship, in one ocean, standing in some place in the world.

The two of them, Hongjoong and Seonghwa, had always been something bigger than themselves. Compared their personalities, their looks, their habits to otherworldly masses. Rarely people. Never just themselves. Their lives were so fast paced, even when they weren’t, always on their way to some other place to meet someone or fight something or to pick up supplies for the next grand expedition. Hongjoong couldn’t remember the last time he’d slowed down, let alone the last time he’d stopped. Floating aimlessly on the Hala sea.

No matter what he did, there would be people on this earth who would never hear of him, his crew, or a single thing he did. There would come a time where not a single person alive had seen his face, heard his voice, and even now there were very few alive who knew him. It made him laugh, then stop laughing. Who did he think he was, feigning control in this world? Claiming and acting as though he had the weight of the world on his shoulders? Then, a long time afterwards: who was he, really?

A boy once given the name Kim Hongjoong.

It made him feel unstoppable. Who was he to define what he could be, what he could do, to define anything at all, when someday the world could be so different that these words and thoughts themselves could have a different meaning entirely?

He was reminded of his crew, seven faces, one after the other.

Hongjoong took in a long, deep breath of sea air, savoured the salt on his tongue, and ran his gaze over the horizon and the rising sun. He blinked away the white spots in his eyes and the skies lit up in front of him, in oranges and yellows and pinks, blending softly into one another. Once he’d had his share, he pulled away from the railing and ducked down into the ship’s inside corridor, stole the rolled maps once more from the barrel beside Yunho’s table.

It seemed to him that he had forgotten who he was. That he had taught his crew to defy expectation, to plot and scheme and think for themselves no matter the risk, but was hardly doing it himself.

Seonghwa found him an hour later, legs crossed, fingers tapping at his chin. Parchment overlapped across the deck floor. “You’re… You came out of your quarters,” he said, quietly, a barely restrained smile following his wide eyes.

Hongjoong looked up at him and hummed. “I think I’ve decided what we should do. What do you say to going back to the beginning?”

Chapter Text

Jeong Yunho.

Commander Sullivan left shortly after rant ended. Stalked away like he had done his work, achieved his goal, a firm weight in his steps. But Yunho knew better after so many years of watching his body language, gaging what wrought his approval and later what signalled his rage.

Never had Yunho seen doubt.

It wasn’t quite fear, but something close. Hesitation that Yunho was sure he would try to talk himself out of, kick himself for, the moment he was out of Yunho’s immediate space. It wouldn’t matter either way. It had been there, simmering in his fading words, his flickering stare, his steady retreat, and Yunho would not forget it. The man did everything irrationally. Threw his anger around wildly and watched for the proof of how much power he held. To see him rational meant something or someone had shocked him into his head, into a need for calculation.

Yunho picked up the sharpest piece of gravel he could find and carved a single unsteady line, vertical, into the right wall of his cell. He struggled to look away from it during the hours he paced. If they thought him dangerous now, they thought he had the ability to do something powerful. He deigned to prove it.

Proving it, however, was equally difficult.

He checked the metal bars again, tugged on them together, individually. Tested how far he could slip his arm through until it pinched his skin enough to concern him. Not far. Poked at the ceiling, the corner where the water was dripping, looking for a weak spot. Picked at chips in the stone walls. Prodded at the rusting flap in the door they pushed measly slop through, found that it would be near impossible to reach the sailors on the other side without them simply pulling away. The tray he sent back every day was metal, but it wasn’t sharp, wasn’t malleable.

A frustrated grunt fell from Yunho’s lips again, and he kicked at the bars. Winced and clutched his foot and regretted it. He sighed and finally dropped down to the floor, declaring a temporary defeat. Because it absolutely was temporary, he insisted, letting his body hit the floor but leaving his mind spinning rapidly away from him.

He tried to think of what Yeosang would do. What Mingi would do. But the two of them had the power of the sea and the power of science tight in their clutches, and Yunho had nothing but scratched, lanky limbs, and an injured head. There was probably a brain in there, somewhere, but it wasn’t responding.

“Yunho?” Jongho’s voice echoed in the corridor between them, muffled. He’d stopped trying to get a response from Yunho a while ago, shortly after the pacing had begun.

“Jongho,” Yunho curtly replied, this time. That infuriating drip, drip, from the damp corner grated on Yunho’s nerves.

“Are you okay?” Jongho asked.

Yunho snapped his head from the wall and towards the bars, rolling his eyes to the ceiling. Of course he wasn’t okay. Nothing about any of this had ever been okay. He wasn’t sure if he’d ever been okay, truthfully, now he thought about it, not when he was in his mother’s house, not when he was in the Navy, not when he was kidnapped and fighting and floating around with the threat of a plank hanging over his head and an endless deep loitering far beneath him. It made his blood run hot again, bubbling with anger, and his reply ripped from his chest, “If we get to Mingi before his execution, I’ll kill him myself.”

Jongho sighed, loud and audible despite the solid wall between them.

“He stopped me going after Yeosang. He’s—he sacrificed himself, like it wasn’t costing him anything, as if he isn’t blatantly aware that he’s the most at risk of execution out of all of us,” Yunho ranted, quick and violent, “It should’ve been me. Me only. It would’ve been, if he’d let me join Yeosang in the water, and we would’ve been fine, if he hadn’t—”

“Can you blame him, truly?” Jongho asked. His voice was twisted, suggesting, but never hesitant.

Yunho huffed a bitter laugh. In return, his tone was mocking and picking away at the edges of himself and what he knew. “I think it’s quite clear that I can.”

“And you can honestly say you don’t understand it? That you expected him to see you falling and do nothing about it?”

“Just because he did, doesn’t mean he should’ve. There was more to consider than me,” Yunho said. He forced the true answer, one certain three-letter word, off his tongue. It glared from the forefront of his fractured mind like the face of a full moon at its brightest, beaming down onto the Nestone courtyard and paling his skin in ghostly white.

“He kidnapped you and derailed your life, but you would’ve done the same if it was him,” Jongho said. “He weighed the risk and took it anyway. Sometimes should doesn’t matter.”

Yunho sat silently in his cell. His lips slid open, closed. He tipped his head against the wall.

“You know,” Jongho began again, the words soft and yet all too loud against the muffled movement above, “when Mingi returned to the ship with you in his arms that night, the others were panicking and questioning him, but all I remember thinking was how brave you must be. I knew firsthand how terrifying it was to run from that place, knowing if you were caught, they would not hesitate. I went out on missions. I saw what they do to people they encounter, how they laugh over life and death, acting like gods. It was worse facing them in here than it was fighting them at sea, somehow.”

Yunho listened to Jongho shuffle, the scratch of his body against the rough floor.

“I didn’t recognise you that day. I couldn’t understand why Mingi, of all people, had plucked you from the streets, considering that we vowed never to take hostages, and he had never disagreed. He could’ve stolen the maps from you, and instead he chose to abduct you, to repeat actions he’d promised Hongjoong he’d move on from? I couldn’t make sense of it. Hongjoong couldn’t either. He knew the most about Mingi, and still I’ve never heard Hongjoong shout at his own crew like that. But Yeosang understood, I can see that now. He insisted you were more than you were letting on, and I denied it, wrote you off as Mingi’s prize because that much remains obvious. I would’ve been permanently convinced he was overthinking it if I hadn’t seen the awe. He was amazed by you, more so than he had been by me,” he huffed, a faint thing by the time it reached Yunho’s cell. “I was jealous, truthfully.”

A bittersweet smile crept onto Yunho’s face, and he hugged his knees to his chest, laying down his head. The image of the Captain telling Mingi off amused him, felt like his own little piece of spiteful satisfaction, for the Yunho whose plans had been flipped upside down. The rest—that was the bittersweet twinge. He stared at the stupid cell bars until they were blurred and warped and multiplied like if he batted his urge to blink away for long enough, they would remain that way.

Yunho wished, fiercely, that he’d asked Mingi why once more. Perhaps just before they clambered to the surface for the final time. Would he have answered truthfully, then?

In the end, Yunho was forced to blink his delusions away. No, he doubted that Mingi would’ve. The damage inflicted evermore by the past was too great, too lasting.

“When I ran from this place, I was terrified,” Jongho said, knocking his knuckles against the stone between them. A short rhythm vibrated through the wall to meet Yunho’s back, so recognisably Jongho that even in his longing stupor he settled into it rather than flinching away. “I was a nobody, escaping with barely any risk. They wrote me off as dead in battle because I ran when we were visiting a port on a mission, even though there hadn’t been any fighting yet, and they didn’t care enough to chase me unless coincidence allowed them their punishment.

“But you,” he said, paused. A thud echoed down the corridor. Jongho’s voice dropped low, wistful, though even if Yunho was in some other place in some other mind he wouldn’t have recognised the awe in it. “You were risking everything, and you didn’t even want the recognition for it. Hardly seemed to recognise it yourself. You knew they’d do anything to use you as a scapegoat, use your running as an excuse to kill you, and you didn’t seem nearly as scared as I was.”

A laugh jumped from Yunho’s throat, rebounded harshly in his small rectangular space. “Oh, I was scared. I was terrified. My fear would’ve got me killed, I think, if Mingi hadn’t taken me. I would’ve had to stay underground, and I’m sure wherever I ended up, the people there would’ve been the type to sniff it out on me.”

Jongho was laughing a little back, despite the distant rattling, a harsh complaint from down the row. They’d both blocked it out by now, as they had done the smell, the damp—or convinced themselves they had, anyway. “Most of the pirates I’ve met at sea are no better, trust me. You seem less scared now, though?”

Yunho hummed. “I think I’m just… tired of being thrown around.”

He paused, but Jongho didn’t speak. Yunho’s mind ticked away as he ran through his mind, fought to fill the silence. “I was always tossed between maids, when I was younger,” he confessed, “Someday they would just vanish, and a new one would be in the kitchen offering me breakfast the next day. I think Sun-young killed them after a while so they wouldn’t get too familiar and learn too much. I think I’d realised that when I was a child, too. After that, it never stopped.”

The ceiling dripped steadily in the corner, and there was a banging a few cells away. Clank, clank, clank. It stopped, then resumed. Clank, clank, clanking away.

“You are more than they tried to make you, Yunho,” Jongho said. “It’s obvious to me, but I don’t think you see it. Feeling down about being thrown around, it’s… you were doing what you could to survive. And you did.”

Yunho huffed. “What, to end up back here at the bottom again and probably be executed? I still have the scars on my back, they follow me wherever I go, and this whole mess will still be there as part of me no matter how much survival I manage—”

His foot slipped against the gravel where it had moved to brace against the ground, and he stopped abruptly. Sharply inhaled. Sighed it out like a raging bull. His mind was running away with itself, charging at the walls, nowhere to go, his body unfeeling save the pale lines burning against the skin of his back like scorch marks. Yunho held his breath. Inhaled. Exhaled. His hands were trembling, locked up in claws in his lap.

Suddenly, he found his throat aching, tears welling up in his eyes, blurring his sight. He closed them, but one snuck down his cheek, and he couldn’t quite bring himself to wipe it away.

“Yunho?” Jongho asked.

“Yeah?” Yunho replied in a whisper, voice strained.

“We’re getting out of here,” he said, firmer than before, certain. “Whatever it takes. We’ve done it once on our own, and we can do it again together. There is a life waiting for us on the Wanderlust, beyond survival.”

Yunho was silent for several moments. He contemplated. He decided he wanted to be brave. “Will the merfolk kill Yeosang?” he asked. “Will his family?”

Jongho sighed. “It is difficult to know. His parents, the King and Queen…they are largely controlled by their children. Yeosang is not just a prince, Yunho. He told you it all through the warrior system, didn’t he? That was not a lie. He was chosen as the best, hated for it. Yeosang is, or was, the Crown Prince. I fear that the other royal siblings will do anything to take that role.”

When Yunho’s eyes opened, a few delicate minutes later, it happened slowly. Eyelids peeling back, slick eyelashes slipping apart. There was nothing remaining in his eyes as he stared out through the bars, hollow. Then, they began to sharpen.

His eyebrows furrowed with focus, lips pinched. His gaze flickered smoothly around the interior of his cell—the damp corner, the rusting bars, the jagged lines carved into the wall, lessening in size as time passed. “Jongho,” Yunho called out, not a crack or a waver in his voice. The tear on his cheek was drying cold over his skin, stiff as his features shifted. “Do you happen to have any spare pieces of gravel? Sharp, ideally.”

Chapter Text

Choi San.

Icy wind whistled down the alley, and San shivered violently, his body racked with the cold of night.

It wasn’t that he hadn’t felt the cold out at sea. In fact, he possibly felt it more than the others in the winter, with his jagged self-cropped and sleeveless shirts and allergy to jackets, despite the muscle on his bones. But on sea, he had not been alone. He was constantly distracted, by jobs, by people, by practice, by his own playful nature. He had a room, and blankets, and a warm body to return to.

Deep into the night, there was nothing remaining of the hints of summer scattered throughout the day. Every gust of wind twisted into a spiralling needle, like knives digging into his skin. It chipped away at his anger, froze him up, mellowed everything out until there was nothing left but to sit, and wait.

At least he was fed, San forced the reminder down his throat with every mouthful, at least it was not as bad as it used to be, at least he could hold his own, had done. He had rum and beer by the bucketful to warm his insides, to give him liquid courage. But that did not unclench his chattering jaw, nor reheat the meals in his pockets. It did nothing to heal the cuts on his hands and arms and legs or repair the clothes on his back.

San dropped against the wall of the tavern behind him, sitting stubbornly still as though it would stop the world spinning beneath his sprawled legs.

The alcohol was failing him. His heart rate had slowed to the point of exhaustion, and his vision blurred anew with every blink. It had been effort alone to get into the alley tonight, being just bigger than the width of himself, and he wasn’t yet certain he would resurface from it even if he did survive the night.

It had been like this for three days now. Each day, he slept fleetingly, shivered in the dark without the ability to see his own hands nor to make out the small brown mole of Mingi’s blank face on every damned wall, then rose and stumbled and drank and fought and repeated the process again. As if his head wasn’t keenly aware of the days counting down regardless, a glaring number five plastered in his mind. His body got bloodier and increasingly tinted with purple bruising. His platinum hair dulled with grease and caked in the dust crammed in the cracks of the alley walls.

Truthfully, he was surprised he was not dead. Truthfully, he was surprised he could still recognise the difference between life and death, when ‘not dead’ was as much as he could manage. Truthfully, this night was not the first he considered with far too much feasibility that he would prefer it if he were gone from the world. When had it got this bad?

What have they done to me? San’s thoughts poked at him as he clutched at the fabric of his trousers, stretching the tear at the thigh, the edges rimmed in brown. And with a little more drunken, disastrous clarity than other days, he whispered, “What have I done to myself?”

When he had struggled before, he had been naïve. It was far worse to have experienced life, to have everything from his wildest dreams beneath his fingertips, and have it torn from his hands and replaced by the dirt and dust of his past.

San was so stuck in his floating mind that on this day, the day they finally did come to get him, he hardly startled at the footsteps echoing down the mouth of his alley.

People passed it every night, upright or stumbling, some even settling in the opening for a few seconds before moving on, but he was yet to be spotted tucked down in the depths at the end. He’d dealt with alleys enough times to know how to shroud himself in plain sight even if his more genuinely acquired skills in social camouflage were of no use now, thrown out to the wind in favour of intimidation the moment he arrived. A foolish mistake, and he knew it. The rest of the crew never would’ve done it, not with his temperament. But he had his reasons; San would rather go out making something loud and violent of himself than lay resigned to a fate he’d long since moved past. That, and because he knew he had never had the same stubborn hope as the rest of them. The option of trying again, starting over, did not exist.

The Wanderlust had been lucky. Stumbling upon one boy on the sand and realising something big had happened, wanting to be the first to know, the first to use it. He had used up all his luck when that boy had become his future Captain, instead of lopping his head off for every moment of audacity in the years that followed, before he understood permanence.

San was too stuck in his head to realise that the footsteps had not passed on, and the sound of each rustle and scuff was not ricocheting off the walls to reach him but growing physically closer to his body. He didn’t notice until the toe of a boot collided with his knee and sent his head snapping upwards.

The fist caught him square on the jaw and sent his head reeling.

Blurry, tilting figures in front of him. Three of them, maybe a fourth, certainly more than one. Laughter, low and rough, like he imagined Mingi’s laugh to sound aloud if he let more than a breath escape in amusement. No, they weren’t tilting; San was, sent sideways, pain flooding his face as he tested the movement of his jaw. He stumbled to his feet, a mess of himself, retreating for a moment before meeting the grimy back wall firm against his back and remembering there was nowhere to go.

It was too late after that. They’d seen his attempt at running. They could see the way he faltered, a hand thrown out to the wall for support, his other arm automatically defensive over his ribs before he could pull it away.

Taking one single step forwards, forcing his skin from the rough stone indenting it, San shook his head frantically and willed the exhaustion and the drunkenness and the cloudy haze from his sight. It did nothing. He was too far gone. His breath hitched in his chest. Was this where he died? Truly?

It struck him then, the reality of it. That he did not want to die here, in an alley clogged with dirt and smoke and alcohol sour on his breath. That the hole he had dug himself didn’t have to be the end, that he could make other choices, choices that could carry him back to the ocean and back to what was left of his crew, that he was no longer a boy with no skills and no knowledge whose only option was to be lost.

The next hit made contact not because he was unprepared or drunk or exhausted but because floods of tears rose in his eyes. His heart wept, his body desperate to keel over his chest. All he could think to do was hide and cry himself into death, to lay soft, to have his last moments at least be closer to his true nature than to this angry brute he’d invented.

He tripped over his own feet, clutching at his side, ears ringing with overlapping jeers and laughter and cruel satisfaction. Shivers struck him in waves, jolting him out of his skin. Warmth leaked from his thigh, and his arm, and it was sharp against the sudden rush of cold on his chest, the remnants of his waistcoat torn open. Boot after boot indenting his stomach, with no strength left in his body to tense against them.

Years of work and struggle, but all it took was a handful of minutes caught off guard and San was crumbling.

He fell onto one knee, the gravel biting at his shins and forearm braced against the brick in front of him, coughing blood from his mouth and breathing in the metallic tang. His eyes squeezed shut involuntarily, though from pain or anguish or weakness he wasn’t sure. The ground rocked beneath him in a way that was all wrong, fractured and disjointed, without the rhythm of the tide. San leant his forehead on the rough stone. Inhaled, exhaled, against the rush of air from another leg, swinging back.

One sharp whistle that ignited his ears, and three heavy thuds. One by one by one.

The alley went quiet. Suddenly San could hear his own heavy breathing, the crunch of the gravel under his knee. An almost silence, just himself and his teetering state. It took him several seconds to recognise that the laughter had been cut off, and the blood hissing on his tongue remained, and he was not dead.

That, of course, was impossible. For a single, fleeting moment, San reasoned that maybe this was what death felt like. That he had been too far gone to feel the killing blow, cut off from his senses before the thugs did it for him. Convinced that the instant he opened his eyes, the pounding in his ears and the touch of brick, of mud, would fall away. The darkness of his eyelids loomed in front of him like a curtain, in place for his final call, and he did not want to raise it.

But San’s desperation for something else, something better, was greater. Always had been, in his heart. Pulse beating soundly in his neck, his wrists, he peeled his eyelids up and tracked down the chipped, uneven bricks, stared at his bloody knee, up to his exposed chest. Marked with sooty prints and grazes and red patches ready to bruise. He pushed through the haze to focus on the ache of each mark under his skin, and the pain pulsed through him, burning with agony, until he was stifling grunts from his lips. Real enough.

San inhaled sharply and snapped his pounding head towards the alley entrance, gaining frightening awareness, lungs stuttering with a hitch at what he found.

Three bodies, draped at awkward angles in a mess of limbs, crisp, shining dagger hilts protruding from their foreheads. One thin silhouette, a couple of inches shorter than his own, backlit from a distant streetlight. San didn’t think he imagined it when the figure jolted as much as he did at their assessment of one another.

Then they were moving, stepping tentatively towards him, faster, and San was blinking through shock and pain. Glossy black hair, swept back by a plaid bandana. A billowing shirt around a small figure, draping open at the collar. A walk that still managed to strut slightly, even in panic, even surrounded by death.

Dark, narrow eyes lined with wings of smudged coal, and a grin that San would recognise anywhere. In life, in death, in a drunken haze, in pain, and in the darkness of a narrow, bloody alley in a seaside town in a mixed-up heap of himself.

“Ah, I knew they were talking about you,” Wooyoung drawled, coy and smug and smirking, slumping down to his knees onto the cobblestones, “There’s not many who match your description, you know, you giant oaf.”

San stared up at him, the world spinning around them, with an ache turning his body inside out and his heartbeat pounding steady in his chest, in his hands, all the same.

“Are you real?” he breathed, the words falling from his bloody, crimson mouth.

Wooyoung scoffed and gripped his upper arms tightly, clawing, a real, tangible grip, “Of course I’m real, idiot. Do you really think anyone could manage to dream me up?”

San collapsed against the solid body in front of him, more familiar to him than his own, and squeezed it in his arms as the last of his mind shattered, and shuddering, gasping sobs shook his frame. Wooyoung caught his body and his pain and his exhaustion and pressed kisses into his hair, and he wondered why he had ever thought he would be alone.

Chapter Text

Kim Hongjoong.

Hongjoong moved swiftly across the deck, the new plaits twisted within his shaggy hair whipping around his face and clean fur coat open wide against the wind. One ringed hand came to rest on the wheel again, checking against the compass in his other, and he rolled it slightly to the side until they were righted on their course once more.

The Wanderlust was due to reach the next isle within the hour, the land mass hovering in the distance, a blur of brown and grey.

The dining table in the galley was overwhelmed by maps, a mess of overlapping paper pinned against each other. Their hardest task had been working out where they’d drifted to, having been taken by the current beyond their mappings of the merfolk stronghold, but Seonghwa’s brief assessment of wind direction taken during initial repairs had been enough for a rough placement when the maps were spread out in front of them. Though the navigation had been off by a fair way, it was easy enough to redirect once an isle had risen in the distance. They’d found its place on Yunho’s maps and reset themselves from there.

Hongjoong levered his cane down the steps once more and returned to hammering down the next pillar in the railing. He had been putting it up over the course of the last few days, with overpriced wood they’d traded several precious chains for. They could’ve stolen it, especially as he was aware they were overcharging him based on the desperate appearance of his prized possession, his home. He’d been one rational thought away from skewering the man on the spot. But he’d paid for it nonetheless, and his neck was no less heavy for it, his pockets no lighter. Maybe somewhat to prove he still could, even after being attacked by the two largest opponents possible, and to retain that feeling of power he’d lost while they kept a low profile.

He was the great Pirate King, after all. For better or for worse, no spite or pride could wash the memories from his head.

That last isle they’d traded on was the second they’d been to so far. Hongjoong was beginning to recognise Seonghwa’s constant observations of him as the calculations they were, gaging how to suggest to Hongjoong that they may not find the crew this quickly, when to draw the line before they ended up travelling to different isles until the end of time and their repeated appearances sparked the attention of all of Hala again. That they may not find the crew at all.

As though the possibility was not looming in the back of Hongjoong’s head all the while and hadn’t been fuelling him on this search in the first place. The terrified, fractured final images he had of each of his crew members, his family, the idea that they could be final, drove every trade negotiation and swing of his hammer and strict cane snap against the planks of the deck.

Neither him nor Seonghwa had stopped moving since Hongjoong suggested they go back to their old ways—sailing seemingly aimlessly across the blue, keeping a low profile and the Wanderlust’s golden crown flag down low, bartering for deals instead of taking. It had certainly felt unnatural, back to taking repair jobs Mingi and San and Wooyoung usually took care of, scampering around ports, skirting around those trying to take advantage of his weakness. Young again. But he could not deny that something about it was freeing.

It reminded Hongjoong of when he was a boy, running errands, on his parents’ ship without their deaths and the pressure of becoming a Captain too soon laying over his shoulders. Seonghwa could sense it too, he knew, and their fond smiles had become easier, stripped back.

Hongjoong had not had the time to think like this since San had found him, throwing up salt water by the bucketload on the shore, blinking at the strangely imposing child above him through the itching sand painting his cheeks, his lips, his eyelids. He remembered being terrified like it happened yesterday, shock-still as San tugged him up to stand and his weakened body stumbling straight into his chest, until San’s mouth had torn open into a laugh and his features lit up and those dimples had indented his face like craters in the moon.

He'd met Seonghwa several years after at around sixteen, when he intercepted a fight breaking out between Hongjoong and San and a man who was trying to rob them of the money they’d saved for a ship. He’d felt bad at the time, having this calm, composed stranger save them with smart, pretty words and face their prideful anger as though they hadn’t stolen the money in the first place. It was only several days later Hongjoong had learnt that Seonghwa had known, had tracked them before with hopes of leaving the island. His intercepting had been his way to make his face memorable, Seonghwa confessed, as though a young Hongjoong would have been able to forget him.

Their dynamic had been the same ever since that first meeting. Hongjoong raged and fought, and Seonghwa saved his skin. Then that protection had turned into something closer to fondness, to care, to adoration, both of them along a joint timeline. The Wanderlust would not have existed until a long while later if Seonghwa had not protected them, allowed them to buy the ship, and it was the same with the rest of the crew, appearing one by one each with their own reason to climb aboard.

Hongjoong had become Captain Kim Jr. for one reason and one reason only; to find those lost like him and give them a place to belong. It was easy to forget in the chaos, but it came back to him in these quieter moments, as Seonghwa came to stand by him at the ship’s edge. They gathered ropes across their palms, ready to tie them to the dock.

They arrived near enough to midday, bright sun peeking through the clouds in short bursts and loitering over the town’s streets. By now they had a routine, with Seonghwa laying out the thin ramp and leaving the ship to converse with the locals, his lone sword fastened firmly to his hip and almost unfamiliar without its lost twin. Hongjoong would remain with the Wanderlust until Seonghwa returned, and then he would shun his coat and jewellery and go out to search himself.

He caught Seonghwa’s flying kiss of farewell and clutched his hand to his chest. Settled against the railing, Hongjoong watched him slip down the street towards the market, until his love was out of sight and his gaze was left roaming the throng of people who passed. An old woman with a green shawl and a netted bag of fruit. A child following after a father, or perhaps an uncle. A young, short man with big shoulders and a shock of platinum blond, skirting round the edges. All with different lives, different stories.

He would search every last one of them, either until he found the faces of those he loved, or until he and his ship laid at rest at the bottom the Hala sea.

Chapter Text

Kang Yeosang.

Flickers of life and death. Tumbling between worlds. Darkness, never-ending, all-consuming.

Occasionally, a face. Slurring words, all inaudible. Hours, days, years. Awake, or asleep? Fleeting consciousness. Pain, blinding, staggering, exhausting, tugging from the chest. Choking pressure and lack of breath.

One question, blaring like a siren and slipping through fingers like dry grains of sand. Have I done enough? Have I done enough? Have I done enough?

Chapter Text

Jeong Yunho.

At the first sound of footsteps, Yunho was up and alert in the back corner of his cell. Watching, waiting. He knew Jongho was sat doing the same through the wall beside him, but it did little to calm his nerves.

Seven equal lines laid in the wall beside him. Six vertical, one diagonal. A separate chart to his original carvings, and one much more important.

Part of Yunho cowered in the dark as he waited and resolved to remain there, evading the staff who brought his tray. It wouldn’t be Jongho’s fault if their plan fell through. This was a risk entirely of his own making, and the first that directly affected more than himself, a choice rather than a circumstance of his birth as the split that had landed them here had been. It felt intense, pulsing, different at his core. His heartbreak quickened with every step, growing louder, until he could not wait anymore, and the moment was now, and with now was momentary panic. What if he had overestimated? What if he was searching for aid where there was none? It may be the last nail in his coffin, and the coffins of two others. At minimum.

A muted, mousy figure stalked across the front of the bars, avoiding his eyes, and slid Yunho’s tray of food through the thin metal flap as a different figure did every day, until he had no choice but to reach for it before it fell to the floor. He heard them do the same to Jongho, though if Yunho had not overestimated, the contents of their deliveries would be very different.

Yunho waited with a keen ear towards the corridor until the final slam of the door to their block of cells shook through the air. A second, two, a feeble attempt at security, and he was frantic. With shaking hands and his senses twitching at each slight groan and bang of the inmates and the thumping in his own body, Yunho slid the tray towards him, and separated the lumpy pile slopped onto the metal.

A round, grey key sat on the bottom, staring up at him.

Yunho’s eyes went wide, and his chest seized, adrenaline bursting to the surface and buzzing to escape. He took the key into his shaking hand and wiped it clean with the hem of his shirt, regretful and cringing as it smeared, his fingers trembling but grip deathly tight. Pulled the long sleeves beyond his wrists, the metal key in his grasp, and stumbled towards the lock of his cell.

Steadying himself into a fighting stance, muttering prayers, Yunho tipped his hand through and round the bars. He’d spent a concerning amount of time evaluating, testing, in attempt to convince himself of feasibility if nothing else, but in the moment it was a blind and shaking struggle. The slim space his aching hope depended on threatened to claim his forearm the further he pushed. In the end, it was brute force and a risky frustration that won, as it always did with Jeong Yunho, pure determined ignorance as he grazed his skin against the rust until it was red and raw with friction. Fumbling, slipping, catching on the edge of the hollow shape, the key, by a minute margin, slotted into the outside lock. He held his breath unconsciously as he turned it with one rickety clunk.

Yunho pictured his great escape as a hefty kick to the metal frame, two hands attacking the door’s surface like the structure was alive, an almighty screech given off and perhaps a bang against the next cell’s edge for good measure. Instead, it was a tentative, anxious thing. One hand then another, the pads of his fingertips pressing lightly, then wrapped beside each other with interlocking thumbs around the edge he silently revealed. One forced deep breath, and three—two, really, given his impatience—precious seconds. No one came running.

Yunho slipped from his cell to the front of Jongho’s, finding him hands to the bars and meeting his sure, proud eyes with the awe in his own, and then the key was in the lock and they both sharpened to quick, flitting observation. It was almost unreal.

The corridor down the centre of the cells was as gloomy as he’d expected. Stretching out either side of them, longer towards the entrance than to the ending brick wall, a few dim, stuttering lanterns offering light only to small spots in the ridged, stone floor. They’d been locked away somewhere beyond the centre of the row, and no sound echoed from the other side. The pair stalked swiftly down the corridor in tandem, without so much as a glance.

Time merged into a steady stream of disjointed parallels within Yunho, like he was seeing double, quadruple, him and Jongho at once themselves and a pair of younger, terrified boys, cautious and disbelieving and watching their lives crumble into the unknown. True then, true now, but with so many intricate details different that Yunho wasn’t sure if he was imagining a stranger or an eternal, long-lost friend.

Where he may have done before, Yunho did not flinch at the clanging of other prisoners as they moved through, intent on his target in a way he had scarcely experienced before. He reached the exit ahead of Jongho, dropped a little further into a fighting stance, and this time when he unlocked and tugged the door open to find the square guard room he did so without hesitation. They had no way of knowing how much time they had, though both knew enough of the numerous rotations to assume that it would be a very short, one-time window, if they had been granted any window at all.

Much to Yunho’s loud, open sigh of relief, it seemed they had. On the two chairs either side of the door sat slumping guards, their eyes closed and torsos rising and falling steadily. Stacked neatly on the narrow table against the wall beside them, amongst a disarray of papers and mugs, were two slightly muddied sailor’s uniforms.

Yunho caught Jongho squirming in his peripheral, though his hands reached for them none the less. Yunho, in contrast, could not have been more desperate to take them.

Before, his mapmaker’s uniform had meant something criminalising, a sentence to a special realm of hell. He had gone through the motions of dressing every day and picked bitterly at the too-loose hems, scorning himself for never quite fitting into Navy clothes, for fidgeting with the rough material rather than resting comfortably as the others did. But as Yunho slipped the regular sailor’s jacket over his shirt and fixed the cap onto his head, his mind roared to life with renewed urgency and courage. He was no longer a helpless boy alone in a cage of lions, but a character, an under-cover spy, with an aim and a plan and enough stolen audacity that impossible seemed nothing but a word. Yunho relished in the idea of taking Nestone down from the inside out, to whip it out from under them. To be the thing they least expected.

Once they were ready, both stood shoulder to shoulder in front of the final door. The last barrier between the cells and the rest of the dreary base, its equally dreary inhabitants. Several floors and crowds and what felt like a world away from any guesses Yunho could make about Mingi’s location.

Seven stupid, stubborn lines.

Though Yunho had been clear in his request, he didn’t know how much support would be waiting beyond this door. Hadn’t known from this side of the door, either, but he was painfully aware that aid was far less challenging when dealing with only two guards and holding a valid excuse for visiting. He’d seen a cook sedate sailors without suspicion, minute doses in evening meals when they were getting too rowdy. It had been a small mercy, discreet.

This was not discreet. Regardless of whether Yunho had gone through with it out of confidence or desperation, he knew how much the staff and lower-ranked sailors would be risking if they chose to help him. He knew it when he first took Jongho’s tossed gravel shards from the floor and scratched his shoddy message into the underneath of the metal tray, and he knew it as though the weight of that responsibility was embedded in the fabric of their stolen uniforms and sticking to his skin like sickly orange syrup.

A short request to get to Mingi only, and a promise to help them in return.

In some, paradoxical way, Yunho hoped the staff had been rightfully cautious and left him to his own devices. But as he worried his bottom lip between his teeth and moved for the door anyway, he knew he was not the only one who was willing to act in rebellion, who would take the risk. He had learnt the risk of execution from somewhere, after all.

Today, today, today.

This time, he did meet Jongho’s hard stare, then at a nod took the second key hanging from the belt of one of the guards. He unlocked the door, mimicked Jongho with his best imitation of a slightly slouching, overly entitled Navy officer, relishing in the success of a finished shift. He may, secretly, have taken immense joy in overdramatising the performance, but if he did that was between him and the private, truthful edge of his feigned smirk.

Yunho drew up a map in his head as they stepped out. To the left, the barracks, with the sleeping areas and the dinner halls, and the training grounds beside them. To the right, the rest. Areas for mapmaking and navigation, the library, the rooms of senior offices, the higher security criminal chambers. Mingi. They began a casual stroll off to the right. Yunho scanned his surroundings, the people they passed, forcing himself to slow down despite their urgency.

The Nestone Navy base was a dull, stone building. It gave Yunho the impression of a gravestone. Plain walls were littered with thick metal doors that reflected a brief shine like polished slate, and the plated room signs were its sprawling inscriptions. Horizontal windows were spaced out in a strip along the top with lanterns between them like the gumless teeth of a skull, and each light was tinted a brighter orange by white glass. Neither did much to dissolve the deathly atmosphere of the place overall.

Though, he supposed he was biased, having his mother sent to her own grave within its walls. As far as he knew, Nestone could’ve qualified as her gravestone, which means to say she did not have one at all.

Yunho and Jongho passed several sailors, one of which had been a regular tormentor of Yunho’s in their dinner hall. He refused to shrink out of necessity for the ploy and feared recognition with a single hesitant step, but the man was far too focussed on himself and his swaggering march towards their barracks to pay him any mind.

Most of the bigger, higher ranked sailors had the same approach; a certain nonchalance, wearing their uniforms like a badge no matter what disorganised or dirty state they were in, uncaring and unseeing of who they faced when they turned each corner. The average Jongho-type and the Yunho-type were equally easy to spot, their uniforms constantly pristine just in case, their feet a little hurried, something that needed delivering in their hands. Heads bowed or awkwardly upright. Yunho did his best to hold himself like one of the first, but it was hardly in his nature, even after so long on the outside. All he felt was pity.

The sailors were somewhat casual, drifting down towards the barracks after finishing their tasks, or on their way to submit what remained before doing the same. Their helper had timed it well with the key, allowing them to blend in without needing the excuse of being out of some shift or training exercise. Yunho shuddered at the thought of having to face one again. Jongho kept pace beside him, and they managed to keep moving smoothly as a pair, turning the corner before the stairwell.

Lieutenant Matthews materialised in front of them like a brick wall.

Yunho froze, his body going rigid, his breath held in his chest. He felt the need to gasp for air. Her tall shadow fell over their bodies like a cursed blanket, and Yunho forced his head straight, and it was a good job there were always a few stricter sailors that would allow him a pass, whose obedience stilled them against the officers in the same way his fear immobilized him—Matthews leant down towards them, peering over the end of her nose, and his mind fell into crackling static, tipping on the edge of blank.

Jongho was beside him. Jongho, maybe at least would be able to blag himself away, lie about not recognising him and sneak off to Mingi before they remembered that he had been locked away with another. He willed it desperately. Willed it with everything in him. Run. Go. But of course, Jongho could not hear him. Jongho did not understand.

A lick of rum curled from the Lieutenant’s tongue. “Where are you both off to, hm?”

Though Matthews cared very little about Yunho himself, she had laughed merrily along to criticism from the rest. Laid back while Yunho stared remorsefully up at her for help before landing face-first in the thick mud churned up over the training grounds.

Yunho’s imagination span away from him. Images flashed like a revolving slideshow of nightmares in black and white and navy blue. In them he was roughly handed around, dragged away, clothes slathered in brown, and then they changed, and he was not wearing a mapmaker’s shirt but a sailor’s hat, his hair longer and tinted and tousled, and he was being forced back to the cells, all attempts and escape and collaboration folded. Seven lines on a stone wall. His breath hitched, an excuse ready to roll off his tongue from rambling panic if not experience, and he opened his mouth—

“Apologies, Lieutenant. I’ve been instructed to escort these men to their first guard shift at the interrogation unit, but I was late receiving them. Blame me if you have found them impertinent.”

Yunho’s mouth slid silently, automatically closed. It was not in sharp shock, but a dreamlike, unbelieving thing. He restrained himself from looking towards the newcomer at his side.

The voice in his ears was one he had heard enough times that it was recognisable in an instant. Of course, it took several more after that to connect the meaning of the words to the woman choosing them. Yunho stuttered over the remainder of his lungful, then the next, his tongue tied in knots. He feared greatly that the responsibility for exposing them had been moved along by one especially large margin, but why? How?

Nathalia Graves. Officer in charge of training new recruits. In other words, the first to push him down, and the first to know he was supposed to be very firmly in a prison cell.

He kept his head down. The weight of the Lieutenant’s assessment sat heavy on the crown of it. The weight of Jongho on his right, and Graves on his left. Mingi’s—everywhere. The chipped corner in front of them glared so fiercely that Yunho was sure the sharp edge of it would haunt him in death.

Eventually, Matthews hummed, distant and reluctant and a screaming livewire in the casual normality of the corridor’s activity. “Don’t let it happen again, Graves,” she said, gruff. She stalked off past them towards the barracks, but it didn’t loosen a thing in Yunho’s tight chest.

He spared a glance at Jongho and furrowed his brows almost in betrayal at the tension seeping from his lowering shoulders. When he looked back, Graves was staring straight at him. It was the sort of strong stare that was meant to communicate something with insistent certainty, though why Graves thought they knew each other well enough for Yunho to be able to decipher what is was she was trying to say, he wasn’t sure. He stood still as she swiftly surveyed him, his strict posture, the uniform adorning his frame. There was no telling if it was in approval or threat.

Truly, Yunho did have the worst luck of anyone he’d ever known.

“It seems you have started the journey without me,” the officer said, nodding once, then moved from Yunho to Jongho to ask, “Are you ready?”

Jongho shifted into full height beside him. “As ready as we can be,” he said, a playful lilt in his tone. Yunho caught it with great confusion more so than he did great interest. “This shift was certainly unexpected, so early on.”

Officer Graves let a soft-lipped smile slip through for a moment, tapped a hand of greeting against Jongho’s back, before she schooled it back into neutral as they began walking. They did not wait for Yunho. He was left dazed, following a step behind, eyes swivelling between his old tormenter and his crewmate, taken from either side of his world. They were talking in code. Which meant she knew. Which meant she was helping them. Which meant she knew Jongho, in a way different, kinder way than she knew Yunho?

Yunho missed a step in his footing and shifted from blank confusion to scowling at their backs. It didn’t feel right. How was it that even during his plan, he was always missing something?

By the time they reached the interrogation unit, one of several areas Yunho had never been allowed entry, he’d just about come to terms with the fact that this officer, despite her rank, despite her damned character, was in fact leading them there and nowhere else. This did not mean he was convinced entirely. Yunho had seen and read and heard far too much to be convinced of anything entirely. He followed for Mingi and Mingi only—how else would they get close to him without more potential risk, but this?

The only reason he came to terms with their position facing the interrogation unit entrance itself was because he was resigned to the fact that someone was about to lock them into one of the blocks for their own executions, planting them a cell away from Mingi to keep up their lifelong cruelty streak, and was plotting every possible scenario at breakneck speed. Risk was almost all he could register. Nausea tugged so strongly at his stomach that Yunho feared he looked too pale and sickly to be succeeding at playing pretend.

His smug satisfaction over mocking the Navy sailor attitude faded to somewhere very far away.

As Graves let the three of them into the interrogation block, as she dismissed the guards waiting outside the only occupied room on the end with a nod and received the key, as they pushed open the door to the small, conjoined watch area, Yunho decided firmly that he would not try to fight or act as a sailor ever again, and he would save Mingi as himself.

He scanned the room. A long table along the edge, two chairs. Paperwork over the surface, Mingi’s long coat draped haphazardly. Beside it, two small, yellow-gold shimmering vials. On the furthest wall, a door and a thin, horizontal window with a metal shutter, left up.

“I trust you will be able to work the rest out on your own. Remember that there are eyes everywhere. Good luck,” Officer Graves said. Or something like it, anyway.

Yunho heard the clouded words as though he was underwater, and though he cared little for what Graves in particular had to say, he was sure he would’ve cared the same limited amount in that moment no matter whose mouth they fell from.

The sound of the door slamming shut behind them was nothing but a distant thud, echoing through the deep. For all Yunho’s rapid-fire plans of dashing heroes and magical explosions and hopefully a new-found skill in martial arts, he did not feel a twitch of panic at the bang, did not stop to listen and question whether the lock had clicked behind them.

Through the window in the opposite wall, in a blank, white room brighter but not unlike the underground cells in shape or size or harrowing emptiness, was a bloodied, near naked body. Shivering, curled in a tight ball, limbs folded and chained to the wall. A yellow-orange blur hung between their knees.

A shell of the man Yunho knew to be Mingi, turned inside out.

Chapter Text

Choi San.

San was the calmest he’d been in days. Laying on his back, bandages wrapped tight over his body beneath fresh clothes and real, comfortable sheets, staring up at the dark wooden planks of the ceiling.

Even the constant laughter and clanging and thumping of the tavern below could not disturb this moment of peace, not when Wooyoung was settled halfway over his body, breath fanning out in the crook of his neck. The bed beneath them was hard and lumpy and would certainly make San’s back twinge with Wooyoung’s added weight, but it could’ve been the bed of a king, his mind was so content. Like this, he could forget that the Wanderlust was not waiting for them outside, that several of the crew were likely dead.

Or he could feign ignorance in the attempt, at least.

The morning visitors to the tavern were beginning to get rowdy as the clock on the wall of their small room ticked towards midday. Wooyoung let out a bitter sigh against San’s skin and pulled their bodies closer, coaxing a curling cat-like smile onto his face, then left a kiss to the small space where his neck met his shoulder and pulled away.

“Need to get up,” Wooyoung yawned, rolling over to his other side. “By the time I get to the blacksmith for your knives they’ll have run out.”

San hummed, reached out to comb a hand through the underneath of Wooyoung’s hair. It was due a cut, a black oil-spill over his collarbones, the top layers pulled up into a bun that reminded San of a small, sweet cherry on top. He could hardly stand to pull his hands away, staring and touching like the other would vanish before his eyes. Several days of recovery and fading back in from drunken delusion, and he was still unsure that each of these seconds were real.

“Come on,” Wooyoung said, definite, rising from the bed and dragging San up with him.

They both straightened out their clothes silently—San in a new oversized shirt given to him by Wooyoung that was pointedly not his current style, taking him back to his youth, he suspected on purpose—and strapped Wooyoung’s minimal weaponry securely to their bodies. His jewellery, too, was shared, though San was sure he would do so with no one else, for value’s sake.

Each of Wooyoung’s belongings, and therefore also many of San’s, had been gathered through years of pickpocketing. They knew how targets were chosen. Wooyoung’s favourite ring, his only gold one, he’d stolen from Hongjoong before they’d known each other. The Captain had caught him taking it, of course, but saw the skill and the audacity before the crime, let him keep it in exchange for boarding the Wanderlust. San caught Wooyoung rubbing his thumb over it, back and forth, repeatedly. There was more than monetary value at stake.

The blacksmith was a short way from the tavern, overlooking Utburgh’s harbour at the end of the cobblestone road. Smoke puffed up from its chimney, and the metallic clanging grew louder over the crowd’s daily chatter as San and Wooyoung approached.

San limped along the harbour-side, Wooyoung at his elbow, still sore after several days of attempted rest. Wooyoung had done his best and berated him until he had no choice but to lie quietly and sleep his time away, but on the move, thinking of new knives and having to defend himself again, he would’ve done just about anything for a vial of Mingi’s golden healing solution.

Then he remembered that he was lucky to be alive, and soon Mingi would not be, and suddenly his pain did not matter anymore. San swallowed thickly. He forced each step stronger into the ground until the wall of wares could be made out in front of them, Wooyoung’s evaluating, knowing glances like pinpricks to his cheek. To be understood so readily was at once a blessing and a curse.

San ran his fingers over a few of the remaining knives, their ridged hilts, curled and straight, tried not to picture them made of ice. Picked a few up and found comfort in their heavier weight, their solid, brittle handles, but none stood out to him, not when he was used to fighting with a hooked cutlass. San squeezed his eyes shut, opened them again when it only made the image in his mind clearer—him, Jongho, Yunho, slashing and swinging, matching blades in their hands. Dread, guilt, and regret all festered in his gut. He turned his gaze away, looking over the cutlasses beside them and then anywhere else, the broadswords, the long swords.

The dagger in his hand clattered to the floor, barely missing his foot.

San ignored the shrill noise it made, as he did the grumbling complaints of the man working the stall, and placed it back on the wall. Numb, without looking, only staring, fixed, on a thin longsword fixed to another display with two slim brackets.

“Hey, Wooyoung,” he said. “Wooyoung.”

In Wooyoung's silence, unable to turn away, he motioned to the stall keeper, “Do you know if this one was made by the blacksmith? It looks… different,” slow with the effort of trying to keep his voice level.

The man grunted at him. “One on the end washed up a few days ago. South beach.”

San snapped his head from the stall.

He expected Wooyoung’s face at his shoulder, frantic with him, but all he met was a thin back. San closed the several steps between and reached for him in one quick swoop, tugging at his waist, urgently enough that he did not register what Wooyoung was doing, what he was staring at.

Until he did, and the movements of his fingers and his feet ceased.

“Please, please tell me I’m not seeing things,” Wooyoung whispered.

The town seemed so small, so insignificant. The noises of the harbour, nattering people and a ringing bell and a gentle, sloshing sea, all fading into the background. It took Wooyoung’s hand blindly reaching for and clasping his own to rip San from his stupor.

He tore his hand from Wooyoung’s and turned back to the wall, pulling his stolen leather coin pouch from his pocket. He dumped over half of it onto the table the man sat at, silvers and coppers raining over the wood and spinning to the floor, and tugged the thin sword clean from the wall. The brackets cracked and shattered.

But San was already moving, rushing straight back to Wooyoung’s anticipating stance, until the two of them were breaking out into a run towards the dock with the world blurring around them.

Chapter Text

Kim Hongjoong.

Hongjoong hadn’t yet finished sorting through the barrels to note what he needed to collect on Seonghwa’s return, his first task, when he was interrupted by pounding footsteps.

He turned at the noise, readying for a fighting stance, faltering when he found Seonghwa heaving on the ramp, cheeks flushed, eyes darting until they fixed on him in the deck’s corner. “There’s posters of Mingi all over the city,” he panted, swiftly stepping closer until their hands were reaching for each other, Hongjoong’s concern boring into him. “He’s—they’re executing him in Nestone tomorrow night.”

He inhaled sharply, near choking on his breath, and Hongjoong’s hands moved to his waist, holding him steady and drawing him in. The barrel behind Hongjoong digging in along his spine was the only thing holding them both up when Hongjoong’s knees gave out and exposed his equal instability.

“I don’t know how we’ll make it in time, I don’t think we will, not without Yeosang—"

“Seonghwa—”

“Do you think we can? It’s… they’ll make Yunho watch, won’t they. I can’t get the image out of my head—I can’t—"

Hongjoong’s gasp, a rare, feeble thing, cut their hysteria short. Redirected it.

Seonghwa stopped. Stared at him, brows furrowing. But Hongjoong could only see it in the corner of his eye, his gaze fixed over Seonghwa’s shoulder, the ridged lip of the ramp on the opposite side of the deck occupied only moments ago, occupied again.

All he processed was a flash of black before a body collided with the two of them, pushing them all into the barrels as one unit, kept together by tight fists balled in the back of his shirt. A high-pitched shriek in his ear, making him wince out of his daze and flounder and fight instinctively.

Stood a little way away, in the middle of the Wanderlust deck, stood a weary, mummified man, cradling a long sword to his chest as tears glistened in his eyes.

Hongjoong smiled, softly, painfully, and held out an arm as much as he could manage, it being squeezed to his chest by the smaller of the pair. San placed Seonghwa’s missing second sword on the planks and glided forwards with the grace of an acrobat until he was settled close into Hongjoong’s side.

Both he and Wooyoung hung off Hongjoong and Seonghwa like puppets with their strings cut, clutching at each other with such a fury that Hongjoong wasn’t sure they’d ever let go. He didn’t mind.

As the Captain of the Wanderlust, after all, he was incessantly aware that they needed as many hands to aid them as possible for the most important mission so far. He inhaled comfort and love and care and relief, and exhaled the self-made fury of the Pirate King.

Chapter Text

Jeong Yunho.

Yunho’s hands hit flat against the glass and balled into trembling fists.

Several crawling seconds afterwards, Jongho came to stand at his side. Creeping like he was afraid Yunho would shatter under the weight of a controlled hand on his shoulder. He was wrong. Yunho wouldn’t shatter. The glass his fists rested on might’ve done, if he hadn’t been sure that it would do more damage startling Mingi than it would’ve done good for his own rage.

Mingi sat motionless. Didn’t move a muscle, his head to the floor, unaware of them in the window. Mingi who, though silent and secretive, Yunho knew was aware of everything. For him not to notice movement, aggression, the pressure of being watched, it would take rewriting reactions and habits that he had taught himself for survival. They were similar in that way.

They were lucky it had only taken close to an hour for Yunho to write out his request on the tray out of pure brutal need. If he had been weaker, lacked that fire instilled in him by one certain flame of a man, it would’ve taken days with stumps of gravel and his own stubborn fingernails, and the damage may have been too great by then to reverse. If the damage done to Mingi here was not great enough.

Yunho, for two, three moments, considered that he had failed him.

Cuts and bruises, untreated, uncovered, littered the expanse of his body. His torso entirely bare, multitudes of old scars exposed across it, overlapping with red, open wounds, patched-up shoddily. The trousers on his legs were hardly more than draping fabric, shredded to get to his skin in thin slits. Blood marked the centre of the room and the wall at his back as though he’d slumped against it. Yunho knew what interrogation meant. It was different to see it in front of him, and to know that the physical pain was hardly the worst of it. To see that the physical pain wasn’t the worst of it.

“I think… you should be the one to go in there,” Jongho said. His tone made clear that there was no ‘I think’ about it.

There was hesitation, but Yunho nodded. He knew it was best, even if he had too many emotions swirling in his head to separate them, even if Yunho didn’t think he’d spent nearly enough time with Mingi or with any person, for that matter, to handle him tortured. Especially as the short space of time they had ticked away.

One feeling he could identify above all the rest was plain, awful fear. Fear that he would make something worse. That he had already made everything worse by being in their proximity. It made his chest ache.

Mingi’s delicate frame glared at him. “No time to waste,” he muttered, almost absentmindedly, mostly to himself. It was the only sense of urgency he could muster aloud, even though his mind whirred with the horror of awareness; the silence in the small room was much too fragile.

Jongho held out the key from Graves, and Yunho took it between his fingers, taking the other rusting one from a hook on the wall and feeling through the rough edges. He moved to the door and fitted the first into the lock. It turned with a shuddering click, and he winced as the noise echoed sharply. Pushed open the door before he had the chance to hesitate.

Mingi did not have the time for him to doubt himself. As Yunho quietly settled the door closed behind him and stepped into the chamber, he could make out the shakes that racked Mingi’s body, shakes that hadn’t been there before.

Yunho fell down to one knee a short distance away from his body. “Mingi,” he said, hushed, testing, “Mingi, it’s me. Yunho.”

A whimper.

Yunho took in a sharp inhale at the noise, so uncharacteristic of the man he knew, and fought the urge to clench his eyelids shut against it. He tried again, “Mingi,” but Mingi only tensed, pulling himself into a tighter ball in the corner, burying himself between the grey stone walls. “Mingi, please, it’s me,” he verged on begging, hands twitching, “Yunho, from the Wanderlust, from the workroom, and Jongho’s here too, it’s just us—”

Yunho’s throat squeezed until he could scarcely draw breath.

Mingi was shaking his head, tentatively at first, then harder until he was frantic, muttering between his knees, inaudible. Using his own voice to block Yunho out.

Hands clenching the fabric of his Navy uniform, Yunho’s stare flickered around his figure, the chains around his wrists, the blood on the wall, back to the door, the window, searching, itching for some kind of clue to what he was supposed to do save wrenching Mingi’s head from his knees, which was a sure way of screwing this up. He found Jongho, watching through the glass. Yunho’s panic must’ve been evident on his face, eyes wide and lips pursed tight over gritted teeth, because Jongho nodded twice, three times, encouraging.

The time-bomb ticked away in his head. He had to be faster.

Yunho glanced to the floor, then towards Mingi again.

“You’re afraid of bugs,” he said.

“You’re afraid of bugs,” Yunho repeated, louder, certain. Mingi’s muttering stuttered to a halt, and he almost smiled. “Especially beetles. You told me, in the workroom, do you remember? I tricked you, pretended there was one on the deck, and you leapt a mile. I haven’t laughed that hard in years.”

Nothing but tick, tick, and the gentle clinks of chains swinging towards a stop.

But Yunho was too far in, now, bright eyes skittering back across the ridges in the floor. “I always wondered how you did it, considering you have jars of the things behind you all day. How did you even get them, anyway? I can’t imagine you doing it yourself, not after that leap,” Yunho cut himself off with a shudder and noise of disgust. “Is it because they’re already dead? I feel like that makes it worse. Creepy. If you find one alive, or a spider, or anything, I can take it out, but dead? Not a chance, I would just—”

Looking at Mingi’s face was like looking at a ghost.

His eyes were bloodshot and dazed with exhaustion, hours of forced unconsciousness providing no real rest. Around the right, a swollen ring, a black eye beginning to bloom like thick smoke. The usual tanned colour to his skin was gone, replaced by a thin, pale white, almost transparent. Red-purple bruises along his jawline, like his head had been sent spinning, gripped between harsh fingers. A cut across his cheekbone. Another, a suggestion, in a straight, horizontal line over his neck.

Mingi’s eyes skittered around Yunho’s face. Intense and clear and questioning. His rising hand twitched under the weight of the chains. Reaching for something and using all his remaining energy to do it. Yunho’s brows furrowed.

On his right hand, Mingi only had four fingers. His pinkie was only a tiny, scarred bump. Yunho wondered with a start how he had never noticed it before, but he realised, of course, that he’d never seen Mingi without his gloves—was that why he wore them? To hide yet another element of his past?

“I… I have the key to undo your cuffs. I can” —Yunho withdrew the rusting key from his pocket, but the instant it was in his palm, Mingi was peeling away again, leaning backwards— “No? I won’t—I won’t. Not until you let me, okay?”

His shoulders slowly slumped.

Yunho forced himself to act as if they had all the time in the world, because he knew at that moment, intrinsically, he would’ve given Mingi that and more. He wondered when it had reached that point, this strange thing between them. Growing slowly, unnoticed, right under his nose. It hadn’t been the teaching, the guidance, the protection, that had lightened his affections towards Mingi. It had been no active thing.

Yunho thought that perhaps it had been the honesty.

Honesty with Mingi was complex. He was so secretive, about his past actions, his origins, his skills. His thoughts most of all. And yet somehow, it was present enough there in small, blunt pockets that he’d found himself understanding, drawn in, regardless of the mystery.

Kneeling on the cell floor, Yunho remained still, watching Mingi’s arm straining as he lifted it.

Mingi was honest in that never shied from the reality of things. Said what he meant, how he meant it, and only raised a brow towards complaint. To most, he didn’t even afford that much. Yunho had spent the first weeks trying to puzzle him out, sort through some deception in his behaviour at every meal, but he realised now that there been no deception. Despite being an enigma in his bluntness, his nimble fingers, his ticking gaze, he was the only person Yunho had ever met where he did not need every thought and intention outlined to care.

There was a mask of neutrality pulled over Mingi of his own making, but Yunho could see it for the mask it was, and watched it slip with every smug smirk, every lick of sarcasm, every quiet detail shared in conversation in that dim room. Yunho had found himself watching Mingi every time he neared the end of a project or tested something new, just to catch the flickers of childlike wonder over his face, the way his eyes opened wide like a doe’s and his silent smiles lit his face up like he was experiencing the expression for the first time.

Yunho caught on to what Mingi was reaching for when his eyes flicked upwards.

Mingi was a criminal. He’d killed against his will and with it and done far worse than that. Yunho didn’t doubt it; the man had kidnapped Yunho himself without remorse, after all, and it had unsettled him, rightfully so. But only a small portion of those actions had been with malicious intention, and he hadn’t been wrong to claim that Yunho wouldn’t have survived long on his own. If that had been part of the motive for bringing him onboard, some layered care, would it really be such a reach? The Wanderlust was built for people like him, after all. Someone as watchful as Mingi would’ve spotted him a mile away.

Mingi had used his only window of opportunity to remove himself from harm to stop Yunho darting after Yeosang, sentencing himself to a promised execution, and saved him instead.

Yunho pulled the sailor’s hat from his head and ruffled his hair out, smiling fondly.

He placed the image of Mingi’s cold, calculating stare against the one in front of him, both equally him, though it was all too obvious which of them was more real. Mingi’s eyes were swiftly blown wide open, and his brows drooped, and he stared up in amazement like the final piece of the puzzle had clicked into place. It was pure, elated relief. The tension drained from his shoulders, and then he was falling forward against Yunho’s body like a phantom untethered.

All the air left Yunho’s lungs in a rush. Mingi pushed his forehead into the space between his shoulder and his neck, so firmly he had but a second to brace against the floor before falling backwards. Deep, strong puffs of air danced over Yunho’s skin, and he brought his hand up to fiery hair, burying into the strands until Mingi was boneless against him.

“Yunho,” Mingi croaked, his voice hoarse and strained, the word overflowing from his mouth like he couldn’t hold it in.

“I know,” Yunho replied. He pressed his face into Mingi’s hair, muffled, kept close between them. “I know.”

Chapter Text

Choi San.

The Wanderlust remained docked for an hour, maximum. That was a relief in two, disjointed parts: setting off towards Mingi as quickly as possible on Hongjoong’s eternal stubborn hope they’d be able to do something, and San being able to register the length of time again.

Hongjoong and Wooyoung slipped back out into Utburgh, gathering what they needed, and after a lot of gentle reassurance and wandering hands and finally a stern talking to by their turbulent Captain, San remained behind on the ship with Seonghwa. Loitering out on the deck, staring both longingly and with anxious need out to those same haunting streets while the older fluttered around him and tried to coax him inside.

It continued even after the pair returned and the Wanderlust set off. Seonghwa pestered him over how his injuries were doing, about moving too much, about needing to rest and to remain in the shade, and just about everything else under the sun. San let it happen, nodding along, despite knowing Wooyoung’s keen eye was already following him and ensuring he could not honestly give Seonghwa a negative answer. He felt as though he owed them that much.

He couldn’t disagree with how reckless he had been, after all. It tugged restlessly at his core with every small, golden mouthful he swallowed from Mingi’s vials.

Slipping into panicked rage and earning several new scars and new enemies hadn’t been his intention, but they all knew how it had happened. Shame had rushed over him as soon as he’d been too exhilarated to hang his head, hot and demanding, but he refused to hide.

San Choi was a fireball, a raging storm, and none of them were strangers to his bouts of anger. Traces of that past rage from before they met lingered still like greying clouds, dense with waiting rain and thunder. Despite how real he was now, a personality in his own right, there was something catching about his quick impulses, and he struggled to pull their claws free from his mind. It was no longer all of him, but it was there, an unlit fuse tucked away, and it would return with crackling sparks the moment those he loved were threatened.

San could withstand caring criticism if it meant the air around them remained salty and clear, without the haze invading his mind, and he could go on protecting them like he was born to. Besides, he knew Seonghwa was doing it at least partially to get their soon-to-be reality out of his mind. The older had been stress eating through their strawberry stores.

Mingi would be executed today. And they had found out about it too late to do much of anything at all to aid him, save be there, and the chance of that was dwindling with every strong gust pushing against the Wanderlust.

Hongjoong hadn’t slept a wink. San recognised it in Seonghwa’s pacing before he even laid eyes on the Captain himself. His face was hard and thin and shadowed, dark eyebags imprinted on his skin. No doubt he’d stayed up making sure they were constantly headed for Nestone, on the opposite side of the isle. The fur coat still rested on his frame, the gleaming golden chains around his neck, the dazzling ruby and emerald on his fingers.

That torture—working for riches, having what everyone seemed to want and yet struggling anyway, missing the true want that was family—San wasn’t sure he would be able to handle it as well as Hongjoong seemed to. He would’ve abandoned the jewels miles ago, years ago. There was no wonder Hongjoong had no desire to sleep beside a slowly leaking hourglass at a time like this.

What would happen if neither Yunho, Jongho, nor Mingi came to meet them?

San wasn’t sure. He was trying not to think about it.

The others, he guessed, had been doing the same, and he’d known all three of them long enough to see in their movements when it wasn’t working. Seonghwa and his pacing and his pink, strawberry-dipped fingertips. Wooyoung had near talked San’s ears off. And Hongjoong—they’d practically had to shake him to tear his attention away from the skyline and get him to talk to them, to stop all the trial and error and impossible strategical math driving him mad. Even Wooyoung had given up.

The sun shone down over the ship, tracing out the shape of the masts, the new railings, in shadows over the planks. It was bright, warm, especially under layers of tightly wrapped bandage and a fresh waistcoat. But San had shuddered three times in the past five minutes and found himself squinting against the sharpness of the sun, despite having not noticed himself needing to do so in years.

The waiting was getting to him, pulling agitation back to the surface. He sighed and tipped his head back against the wall, where he sat beside the door to the Captain’s quarters. Closed his eyes shut to stop them straining, as though it would be able to shut him off from the world and the tentative atmosphere around them. He was still rocky from his own turmoil as it was. The knowledge of Mingi’s execution and their hopelessness about it hung over any recovery he’d gained at their reunion, but no one would acknowledge it outwardly, and he couldn’t help but shrink away from the perfection of the weather and his recovery and his Wooyoung and the irony is shoved at him.

“You okay?”

The brightness behind his eyelids lessened, and San opened his eyes again, finding the dark silhouette of Seonghwa in front of him, ringing his hands. “I didn’t take the telling off too far, did I?”

San shook his head, “No, no, you’re fine. I’m just… thinking.”

“About?”

A seagull swept over the deck with a distant squark. San sighed, turning his head from Seonghwa to the sea, to where he knew he would find distant land and people and produce and cobblestoned paths if he travelled far enough, though he could only see blue sky stretching above the ship’s edge. Land was far away, and endless ocean rolled on. “This feels like an ending. Why does this feel like an ending?”

“Ah,” Seonghwa said, drawn out in understanding, “that’s where we’re at, is it?”

He slipped to the side and settled down beside San, stretching his legs out and straightening the pleats of long black skirt he wore, crossing his ankles. They both stared straight ahead, towards the opposite side of the ship, the little corridor leading to Mingi and Yunho’s room, laying empty.

“If we don’t find them. If they don’t show up. What happens then? You’re telling me that doesn’t feel like an ending to you?” San confessed, after some time had passed. “No matter what we do afterwards. Whether he even get Yeosang back, or not. Our time as eight will have ended, forever.”

Then, as an afterthought, “I… I don’t think I can live like that. It’ll feel too different.”

Seonghwa hummed. Contemplated. Stared down at his lap and his clasped hands. “We’re not there yet though.”

San spun towards him. “Yes, but—”

“But what if?” Seonghwa interrupted, glancing over, sending San’s gaze away again, disgruntled at the small quirk on Seonghwa’s lips. San picked at a splinter in the wood beside him.

“I understand what you’re saying. I think we all do. But it’s important to remember that it hasn’t ended, not yet,” Seonghwa said, voice gentle as rich white silk. “You shouldn’t force an ending. It would be like dooming them before they’ve even had a chance, and I know for a fact that people have tried to do that to all of us, at some stage.”

He took one of San’s hands in both of his own and squinted into the sky. “Maybe they won’t be there. But I am certain Jongho and Mingi and Yunho will do whatever they can, and we will do everything we can to be there with the intention of meeting them. That is all you need to think about now. Not the future, no what ifs. Pay attention to what is right here in front of you rather than using up our chances by overthinking.”

San turned towards him, tracing Seonghwa’s side profile, the unmoving, calm confidence in his tilted head and soft jaw. Always so opposite to himself. Sometimes, when he talked with such sophistication like this, San thought that Seonghwa was as much a prince as Yeosang, or perhaps a queen. He would do well to be a little more like Seonghwa. Substitute rage for rich and royal.

A few days of release had been nostalgic, but also highlighted how different he was now to how he had been growing up. How much he’d gained. He’d still never be royal; San was much too rough and smirking and inclined towards labour for that, he was not destined to be cooped up and stuck in rounds of pleasantries. He only used them when he wanted something, and besides, he’d miss his minimal leather outfits too much. Not that he’d achieved his goal of being the trendsetter of them, either, given that it had become too much of a personal trademark for others to catch on.

But he wasn’t trapped in the dirt and grime of back alleys anymore either. Why should he remain trapped in the same doomed rage?

“Oi!”

A heavy thud resounded through the wood of the ship. Both San and Seonghwa’s heads snapped towards it. Stood in the deck’s opposite corner was Wooyoung with his hands on his hips, though San wasn’t sure when he’d got there. He was pointing down accusingly at the wooden rowboat they’d snagged from the harbour as they left, laying it on the deck upside down.

“Come and put those stupid muscles of yours to use and help me flip and tie this thing!”

San huffed out a laugh, unable to keep the grin off his face. It was hardly threatening, not with Wooyoung’s face was all scrunched up in visible distain for a hunk of wood. “Actually, I think I’ll prefer watching you do it,” he said.

Wooyoung glared viciously even as San and Seonghwa stood to help him, and soon enough all three were fighting against gasping laughter as the rowboat was slowly lowered over the side of the ship.

Chapter Text

Jeong Yunho.

The rusting chains fell from Mingi’s wrists and ankles and clattered to the floor, and his body sagged further against Yunho with each cuff unlocked. Yunho felt as though part of him should’ve sagged too, in relief or exhaustion or anything else, but his muscles refused to relax. Jongho’s gaze was making the skin on his neck itch.

With Mingi slumped against his chest, his back was exposed to Yunho’s eyes. It was lashed red raw. Thick vertical strokes, all crusted with dried blood to varying degrees, bright and brown. Pale pink and white stripes edged out beneath them. He felt the staggering, shattering urge to laugh, or to scream, or to cry, all three pressing to burst out of his chest like a phoenix. It was at once almost and absolutely unreal.

Yunho’s heart clenched hard in his chest. He couldn’t allow himself any more than that with the timebomb ticking away in his head and this fragile, distrusting man relying on him. Yunho was too intrinsically aware that this was something.

How he would get Mingi out of Nestone in this state was beyond him. They would have to be far smarter about it than Yunho had been, not leaping a few fences in the panicked, naïve fashion that was adamantly his natural style. All the while he held Mingi in his arms, he was keenly aware of each idea appearing in his mind and then swiftly crossing itself out as an option. Every solution slashed through was another precious few seconds gone.

No part of Yunho was qualified for this. He assessed Mingi’s wounds as professionally as he could manage, inching towards the risk of shrivelling up at the sight. It was a very near thing, as most things were with Jeong Yunho. The vials they had in the adjoining room would not be strong enough to undo anywhere close to the extent of the damage, and he hated the violent certainty of that statement, although he supposed they hadn’t expected to be left with any vials at all. Evidence, he guessed, or a tool for taunting. Yunho cursed internally.

“Mingi,” he said, softly. He tried to pull away to look at him, resting a hand over his blaze of hair, but Mingi only moved with him. “We have some potions, the golden healing ones. I need to get them for you. Can you… can you let me go?”

Mingi’s hands curled into him tighter, pinching Yunho’s skin until he winced, and then loosened their grip a fraction. Yunho’s second wince was more of a sharp grimace; even now, Mingi was reluctant to hurt him.

Yunho turned to the thick glass of the window, to a dazed Jongho, to the closed iron door. Designed to let little sound escape, no doubt. He refused to risk startling Mingi by calling for help, not when Jongho would barely hear him regardless, mentally if not in audible reach. Mingi’s body would react before his mind.

“I’ll carry you, then,” he offered, decisive against his doubt. “We’ll get you out of this room, yeah?”

Yunho was questioning if he was capable of following through with it even before it had been forced from his tongue, but then Mingi was slowly urging himself back, and Yunho was shuffling his body until he had both arms out and under Mingi’s back, his knees. Well, he wasn’t about to prove Mingi wrong now, was he?

Yunho braced himself and stood, cringing apologetically at the way Mingi tensed up, his head falling into Yunho’s shoulder silently. Jongho held the door open when they reached it.

Yunho placed Mingi onto one of the chairs, careful not to jostle him down to a seated level, even though his arms and knees were screaming with the effort. No sooner did the chair creak under Mingi’s weight, his eyes closing, than Yunho had the vials in his hands and his thumb on Mingi’s pale chin coaxing his mouth open.

They waited with bated breath. Yunho’s pulse hammered in his biceps, and he traced the line of Mingi’s narrow throat as though he could follow the trail of gold sliding down it. Mingi’s eyelashes fluttered. Yunho was reminded of the workroom, their small, private space, the near silent sound of their joint breaths, the smooth glass bottle under his fingertips. Mingi’s eyes peeled open.

They met Yunho’s and slid—smoothly, without skittering, just one steady slide—away.

“Jongho,” Mingi said, tone twisting up like he was seeing their situation for the first time before he wrestled it back into monotone. “You both made it out of the cells,” he observed, nodding to himself after slight delay as though it had been the only feasible option all along.

Yunho had to bite the inside of his cheek to lessen his smile. Staring down at this half-dazed, exhausted miracle, he wasn’t sure whether to be amazed, complimented, or to take Mingi’s shoulders in his hands and shake him until his mind unscrambled.

He settled on handing Mingi his coat, draped it over his shoulders and watched with furrowed brows as the leather sleeves grazed the cuts along his arms. Some of them were closing with magic, but only the smaller ones, and it was evident in Mingi’s gradual movement that most of the potion’s effects had gone to stamina. Which was good, which was what they needed, except Yunho couldn’t help twitching when he thought too much about the pain Mingi must be in, shuddering with phantom feelings like the injuries were his own.

“Yes, with the help of some old acquaintances. Yunho scratched a message into his food tray,” Jongho replied. “Though this is how far we asked them to take us. We didn’t want them to criminalise themselves.”

Mingi did not protest, as Yunho suspected he may have been internally. His eyes flickered swiftly round the room, but there was something more obviously cautious about it than usual, his head not snapping with his eyes. “How much time do we have?”

“Not long,” Yunho said. Mingi still didn’t look at him.

“We’ll have to try it with the disguises again,” Jongho suggested, smoothing his hands down the front of his Navy uniform, the ridges of the bronze buttons. “Hope that all the officers are in their own spaces by now, or that our acting is believable.”

Yunho cringed. “What, with Mingi between us? I’m not sure anyone’s going to walk past without a hell of a lot of questions. We’ll be placing spotlights on ourselves.”

Jongho nodded. “We’ll say we’ve been instructed to transport Mingi to execution, it’s likely they’ve been plotting it anyway. Tell anyone who asks that we’re just following orders from Matthews, and to take it up with him. He’ll be long gone for anyone to catch up and inquire and return, if we move quickly enough.”

Yunho took in a heavy breath. He didn’t like it. He turned to argue, for the sake of saying as much and to have it on record, but the words stuttered in his mouth, and he made the mistake of glancing away and found Mingi. Mingi, who was staring at him so intently he had to stop himself physically recoiling in alarm, blinking several times instead.

“Where is the key you used to let me out?” he asked, voice stern but oddly reserved.

“Oh, here,” Yunho replied softly, his frustration suddenly mellowed out.

Mingi took it between his fingertips. His left hand, though all his fingers remained intact, was pink and rough all over with burn scarring. Parts of his other was the same. Yunho had felt the lump of his leather gloves in the coat pocket, and Mingi must’ve too, but that was where they remained.

Yunho was aware of Jongho’s narrowed stare, ticking between the two of them. He shuffled on the spot. Left, right, on his legs.

Mingi shrugged his coat from his shoulders and turned up the bottom hem, undisturbed by their curiosity. One at a time, he started picking the seams apart. Every pull precise. Once they were all undone, he separated the front and back of the fabric like opening an envelope and reached inside. A thin, rectangular sheet of what looked to be brown metal plating, the same colour as the leather, was gradually unveiled. Big enough that it must’ve been fitted right up to the armpit.

“What on earth is that?” Yunho couldn’t restrain himself from blurting. “Has that been in there the whole time?”

Mingi hummed. “Since I first got the coat. Before the Wanderlust,” he said quietly, examining it, holding it up. “A sheet of condensed magic-infused explosive powder. Should still be okay.”

Yunho inhaled so sharply he almost broke out into coughing and had to swallow it down before he could gasp out a much-too-loud reply. “You’ve been carrying explosives in your coat this entire time?” he all but shouted.

Mingi blinked up at him. His eyes opened a little wider than usual, innocent, a step closer to the expression Yunho had found him with, and Yunho was certain, for a moment, that he had seen apology. “They only explode when they’re in direct contact with magic. And besides, I’ve carried worse.”

“But—you—” Yunho spluttered, exasperated, disbelieving of more than his words, “You always have magic in little—bottles, in your pockets! How haven’t you died yet?”

“The leather’s thick.”

“Well, then, I suppose that works too,” Jongho butted in, sounding only tired, “Can you just… blow the wall out? Now?”

“Yes,” Mingi said, already unstitching the hem on the other side, a little quicker. “Are we on ground level?”

“No, second floor.”

“I won’t be able to jump, so we’ll have to get down to ground floor. An outside wall we can directly exit the compound from, towards the docks.”

Jongho was already nodding as Mingi spoke. “We can do that,” he said, “Try using the disguises to get low and then use the explosive. Right, Yunho?”

Yunho gave some startled noise that he took as assent. His mind was busy, his eyes glued to Mingi’s fingers dancing along the edge of another powder sheet he was pulling from the opposite side of his coat. “There better not be one of those in my coat,” he whispered.

Mingi’s mouth quirked. “No, there isn’t.”

Some shuffling later and Yunho had his hat back on low over his forehead, Mingi’s coat over one arm, and his other held tight over Mingi’s upper back as though it wasn’t electrocuting him. Half to keep up the illusion of shoving him along, and half to keep him upright and supported, since Yunho was convinced that Mingi’s hanging head and unsteady legs were far more real than they were an act for the rest of the base.

“Are you sure these sheets won’t snap?” Yunho asked, looking down at the coat in his hands. They were bent almost in half, hidden in the folds.

Mingi nodded. “If they haven’t broken yet, they’ll be fine.”

Yunho exchanged a glance with Jongho, who stood on Mingi’s other side working out how best to feign holding his wrists together like handcuffs, when they both noted how Mingi’s words struggled through shallow breaths.

Their chances were getting slimmer by the minute, and the reality of their situation was kicking in. Yunho could feel it, deep in his chest, thick in his throat every time he swallowed. It felt like flying. It felt like falling. Any euphoria was stripped, peeled back, and then shoddily patched back together until Yunho had no idea if the rising adrenaline was making him panic or making him feel alive. His hand was trembling beneath Mingi’s coat. The texture was different to the black woollen one, cold and plasticky. His other hand—

Yunho took a pointed breath that failed to clear his mind, as it always did, and straightened himself. Loosened his grip on Mingi a twitch, as though the minute change would make it feel any less real, and his palms any less violently sweaty. He couldn’t tell if it was Mingi’s body that was burning, or his own. After all, fire was catching.

The three of them went together.

They were slow down the corridor of the interrogation rooms, Mingi finding his feet and forcefully walking off the ache. Less off, more through. Yunho could tell in every tensing of the arm pressed along the back of his neck, tearing cracks in that crafted nonchalance. Yunho pulled Mingi’s body closer against his own.

They reached the main corridor. This floor was the riskiest, containing the most guards on shift at a time. The interrogation unit was slotted between the officers’ rooms and other locked doors separating people like Yunho from high-ranking activity, the corridors swimming with their inhabitants more often than not. Hence why he had always avoided it.

Unfortunately, Yunho hadn’t been wrong about the spotlight. Even if the two of them had blended in well enough with the sailors before, Mingi and his slumping form and bare, bloodied chest and blazing neon hair certainly removed any hope of managing it again. The second they stepped out and began back towards the stairwell, Yunho was all too aware of how many eyes were on them. Not questioning eyes, but hungry, curious sailors, keen to feast their eyes on their most renowned prisoner. They stared at Mingi like they wanted to eat him, in a violent, tearing manner than could only come from bitter pride. After all, Yunho seemed to learn every day that Mingi was more impossibly dangerous that he’d thought, and how famous each more dangerous action had made him. Who would not want him to themselves?

They shuffled along. Mingi let out a groan in his ear when one of the sailors got a little too close, and it did the trick, the sailor cringing and leaning away. But the readiness with which it fell from his lips… Yunho was either better at picking apart Mingi’s secrecy than he realised, or Mingi was a better actor than he’d expected.

His arm tensed tighter around Mingi by the minute, and Mingi’s around his neck in exchange. Both were aware of themselves doing it. Yunho was too occupied with analysing how hunched up Mingi’s shoulders were getting, how he consciously forced them back down before they brushed Yunho’s ears. He gritted his teeth and refused to let any of it show on his face. Each step towards the stairwell was a battle with bated breath, until, finally, it was in front of them, and Jongho shoved both doors forward with his free hand. Yunho almost breathed a sigh of relief.

Almost.

The resounding bang of the doors against the wall went unnoticed, swiftly buried beneath thumping boots ricocheting across thick stone floors.

Chapter Text

Jeong Yunho.

They were running. Leaping down the stairs, two steps at a time, a mess of long and short strides and stumbling and flailing like Yunho had never known.

Jongho was the best of them. He looked organised enough, a semblance of what Yunho imagined he used to look like in his own uniform, pumping his legs like he meant it. But Yunho felt like a frantic newborn giraffe unsteady on his own two feet—his shoulder kept grazing the left wall, his arms the cold metal railings, and he was being propelled as much by the pure momentum of flying downwards as by genuine, admittedly panicked, intention. He hardly managed to put the brakes on fast enough to stop his head slamming full force into the wall of the first-floor exit.

It didn’t help that he was battling somewhat with his own body, desperately trying to slow himself down to keep Mingi beside him, so none of them fell behind. Mingi pounded down the stairs with equal stumbling finesse, and their limbs were colliding with each other whenever they weren’t colliding with the surrounding stairwell.

If Yunho had the time to voice anything other than incoherent screaming, he would’ve stalled himself in shock at how swiftly Mingi was moving, driven by the adrenaline. It was impossible. He may have stopped the other man and demanded he slow down before he executed himself, let alone be executed by another hand in these damned grey walls, but even in the moment he was profoundly aware that the skin brushing his was marred with age-old scars. Mingi had been running for years.

Mingi would’ve said it was a noble option anyway, no doubt. All Yunho could think went round and round in his head on loop; we have survived too much and come too far to fail now.

The footsteps following them pounded down the centre of the stairs, a few paces behind. They broke out into the ground-floor corridor and barrelled onwards, barging through the bewildered, drunken sailors in their paths, following Jongho’s lead as he careened right. The roar grew into a raging storm, the thunder of weight rumbling louder with each step closer to their freedom. There was nothing any of them could do about it.

Every sailor was trained to chase, and whether it was someone here or the initial group who stole them from the Wanderlust, it didn’t matter.

They’d be dead regardless.

One sharp turn. Another. Yunho skidding into the wall and being tugged along by Mingi’s hand clasping firmly around the fabric of his shirt like a reflex. Straight through an outer door into the courtyard. They could’ve tried to leave outright from this outside space, like Yunho had managed to, but he knew they wouldn’t. He’d known where Jongho was aiming for as soon as they’d turned right. A risk, one he wouldn’t have taken, but the only thing that gave them an opportunity for time.

Hammering across the stone slabs of the courtyard, Jongho tore straight for the crowded cafeteria. Approached so no one could see them coming through the windows. Barrelled through the swinging double doors.

Yunho flinched harshly at the familiarity of the noise and stumbled. His legs picked themselves back up, didn’t stop moving, but it was like a bright light had been turned on in pitch-black darkness. He could feel their roving eyes. Like tigers, or shadowed panthers, or a flock of crows swarming to smother him. Sailors of Jongho’s days and Yunho’s tormentors and unlucky chore boys, swivelling to find him struggling once more. Yunho was back, back, back. A pattern without an end. Crockery smashed into shards and trays and tankards clanged to the floor.

There were strong, familiar hands on Yunho’s slim shoulders, and they were heaving him through the kitchen doors.

Yunho clammed his hands over his ears as the screech of moving furniture echoed across the tiles, as Jongho began barricading them in with a heavy wooden table nearby. Stacking any metal units he could move onto its surface. Yunho scrunched one hand into a fist, into the rough leather of Mingi’s coat pushed up against his ear, and allowed the crowd to sweep past.

Both his and Yunho’s sailor hats had flown off in the running, exposing their faces. Most of the kitchen staff would’ve recognised him regardless. They were not like the sailors, and they were not like Yunho with his mixed-up speech and fumbled mistakes, but they were the only sympathetic people he’d even known. Wedging doorstops into the space at the bottom. Banding together to shove the fridges and barrels in front of the table haphazardly, until there was nothing left to grab.

The fists and boots and yells of the sailors rebounded through the room as though they were on a speaker, the walls vibrating with the weight of the noise, and the doors shook and struggled open a fraction under their bodies. Yunho stepped back, back. With every heave, every addition to the hoard, the doorstops slid a little more, and his feet slid as though the two were connected.

Yunho turned to Mingi. He’d stormed to the other side of the room on Jongho’s direction, and with an aggressive, calculated flip of his wrist, he flung the golden potion against the section of the wall covered in brown sheets.

“Stand back!” he bellowed, low and rough, throwing his arms outspread like a shield to force the closest staff behind him as he backed away. They all moved to cower against the walls, Jongho and Yunho included, standing out in front of the rest and ready to run.

Yunho peered over Mingi’s shoulder. The surface of the sheets started fizzing, patches of the brown dissolving slowly into grey where the droplets had landed.

Too slowly.

Yunho couldn’t hear Mingi’s curse over the noise of the rampage, but he kept turning his head side to side, and Yunho saw his mouth move in the shape of it. Saw the way his stare scattered over the rest of the room, the doors, the people. He took in a sharp inhale, made louder in his head as he continued to block out the sound outside.

Could it be that young Mingi had failed? That the explosives had been built too long ago?

Dead. They’d be dead. All three of them. The Wanderlust dead with them. Eight fractured lives, torn apart from a fractured whole.

The pounding on the doors thudded along in the same stuttering rhythm as Yunho’s heartbeat, in his ears, his throat. He held his breath and stared towards the spreading sparks on the sheets as they seemed to dissolve into nothing, revealing the wall behind them, like the powder and the magic had never been there at all.

Yunho lifted his hands from his head. Though the outside cafeteria was loud as ever, inside the kitchen not a word was spoken. Nervous glances grazed his cheeks.

The wall blew out with a shuddering bang.

Sharp sparks pinged off the metal of the oven, the pots and pans on the countertops, smoke flooding the room in a thick fog and wiping Yunho’s vision out. Coughing, all around him, a renewed hammering on the doors and the scratch of their barrier edging faster along the floor. Blindly, he forced himself forward, squinting and taking in thin breaths.

He latched onto the shorter, wider figure who appeared in front of him and coaxed him along, began following him through the haze, swiping his hands through the fog and watching it separate between his fingers. Jongho reached the bright opening, yellow-orange sky and condensed streets held between burnt stone edges, and went through. Between them, a blacked-out silhouette edged into Yunho’s frame of view. A familiar tall, taunt body with one foot over the boundary, an arm outstretched and a hand, palm up.

Yunho spun back. Through the fog, he could make out a few human outlines, the features of some closest to him. One of them caught his eye and he stepped aside, wide-eyed, gasping for words that wouldn’t come.

The figure shook her head. Yunho wasn’t sure how he could hear her words, read her insistent pursed lips, but he could. “Go, go,” she was saying, “be free, Yunho. We’ll be okay.”

He refused, shook his head in return, but she was stepping back, disappearing into smoke, the one he owed so much to, safety and this moment of freedom to, out of reach. Yunho took a step away from the wall, into the thicker smoke, but her silhouette was gone.

Across the room, the feet of the wooden dining table gave a mighty groaning scratch against the floor.

Yunho turned and took Mingi’s hand in his own.

By the time the smoke cleared, and the sailors came shouldering in, they were gone. Only a crumbling wall and scorched metal grates left in their wake, and kitchen staff who cowered and lied and hid their smiles behind their hands.

Chapter Text

Mingi’s hand didn’t part with Yunho’s as they launched into the streets.

Townhouses, stacked up amongst each other, a blur of brick and wooden beams. Paving stones solid and ridged beneath their feet. Yunho allowed Mingi to drag him through, weaving into dark, shadowed spots, Jongho leading him out in front with an eye for the people and the alleys and the flooding bars with their dingy lamp light.

The same bars Yunho had passed months ago. Now, he knew better than to shoot down the centre in panicked disarray. He found himself watching, too, like Mingi and Jongho, his mind awake and alive and springing from each gap to the next, clearing in astonishment as the muting fog of the Nestone kitchens was replaced by the smell of salt and sea and citrus.

They ducked into an alley, slowed. An inch past casual. Moved swiftly through the town's maze, dodged groups of drunken men and women through plumes of cigarette smoke, blurred figures sat out on front doorsteps.

Yunho, miraculously, found himself laughing, giddy like a child. It bubbled up from his stomach and his chest and out into the air, and he stumbled and trampled down the streets, like they were playing a game, the wild adventurous type he had always missed out on. Mingi, caught by the noise, glanced back, and Yunho grinned up at him until the other was smiling a true, fond thing with laugh lines and crow’s feet wrinkling up around his mouth and thin eyes. The grip between their hands tightened as they broke out, finally, onto the harbour’s edge.

All three skidded to a stop in a neat line in the centre of the path.

Yunho’s laughter halted. The air left his lungs. His mouth gaped open, as did Jongho’s beside him, though Mingi’s expression only stretched into a knowing smirk. Until he was laughing again. Harder than before. Cackling, like a witch, unable to catch his breath, panting. Gasping in the salty ocean air. It blended with Jongho’s, high-pitched and youthful, and Mingi’s, strained and croaking and wild. Yunho battled for vision against the tears in his eyes.

Hovering unsteadily and rocking back and forth with the equally frantic movements of its crew, a little wobbly rowing boat was docked a short way ahead of them, at the end of the harbour pier. San, with his arms up in the air, waving like a madman, and Wooyoung holding desperately to the boat’s side screeching at the top of his lungs. Welcoming them home.

Yunho was the first to take off down the pier, the rush of fresh air against his cheeks sending the tears flying out of his eyes and running down his neck, sinking into his clothes, flicking off to land on the cobblestones. Adrenaline, or happiness, or relief—they all blurred together, until all he knew was his thumping heart and two wrists, one grasped in each hand, pulling too clumsy bodies after him.

They stumbled over coiled rope piles and loose ends, dodged crates and broken planks left beside small, docked fishing boats, their nets trailing out into the path. Once they reached the end, Yunho turned round and was manoeuvring himself down the thin rungs of the metal ladder before he could think.

The rickety boat rocked beneath his weight, and he collapsed onto a bench along the side with little finesse, just in time to balance the sides out before San and Wooyoung tugged Mingi aboard. Mingi and Jongho both threw themselves down.

Wooyoung untied the thick roped he’d looped to the ladder’s frame, his movement fast and precise, and San took two oars into his hands. And then they were away. Rowing slowly towards the corner on the right side of the island, under the cover of the larger ships and merchant vessels lined up along the docks. Water splashed at Yunho’s back, thrown up by every wave they hit, spray coming up in intervals from the tips of the oars.

Fumbling, he wrapped the leather coat in his hands around Mingi’s shoulders and threw an arm behind his back, gripping tense along the edge of the boat. He chanced a look behind him.

Tall figures, anonymous but for their matching dark uniforms, scampered along the harbour side. The Nestone Navy base loomed in the background, a huge, solid monster from a child’s nightmare.

A moment later, and there was only the rough rock of a bricked harbour corner.

Yunho let out a shaking exhale and relaxed back into rocking of the waves beneath him. He forced his arm to untense, slowly, grazing against Mingi’s back and settling where it laid, and stared in wonder.

Just as he’d known there would be, on the other side of the brick was a thick layer of trees, all intertwined to form a lush green tapestry with vines crawling down the cliff face, leaves dusting the water around them. They were always brightest at the start of summer, having grown anew in spring. In autumn, they blended in with the colours of the surrounding town, a spot of vibrant orange before matching the sullen muddy browns. In winter, a clear path to the Hala sea. If it had been winter, he would have been able to catch sight of himself now out of the window of the base, in the very position he’d watched from year in, year out.

Now, the trees were relishing in the peak stages of their bloom and not a glimpse of the old grey stone peeked through.

At his side, Mingi relaxed. Slowly, almost unnoticeably had Yunho not been overtly aware of every movement the other man made, he softened himself back against Yunho’s arm. Folded into his body, until they were no longer side by side, but slightly in front and behind. Yunho’s other hand gripped the fabric of his own trousers like a lifeline. Every time he tried a deep breathe to calm the way his heart was racing, he inhaled the vaguest hint of orange and sandalwood and was reeling again. It was fine. This was fine.

San kept glancing back at him and no one else.

“So, then,” Wooyoung started, breaking the silence with a wide smirking grin on his face, “care to share how you achieved your little prison break?” He wigged his fingers at them and spread his legs wide like some kind of mastermind, the silver at his throat swinging forwards.

“What, so you can steal our tricks when you inevitably end up in a cell somewhere?” Jongho replied, in his distinct judgemental tone of mocking.

Wooyoung scoffed. “Aish, do you really think so low of me? I’ll have you know I’ve been too busy saving this one,” he jabbed a thumb at San’s back, “from being put in a cell.”

“I would not have been arrested,” San grumbled unconvincingly, barely audible over the slosh of the ocean.

He received a narrowed look in response. “I only found you because the entire market square was raving about the lunatic who was jumping just about anyone who made eye-contact with him. Yes, you would have been arrested.”

San grumbled again, incoherent. Their pace stuttered as his shoulders slumped, before Yunho huffed a laugh through his nose and he went stiff and pushed mechanically up to speed again.

Yunho took a breath as though it would draw the laugh back and traced swirls across San’s back with his eyes. “How did you even end up anywhere near each other?” he asked.

“Oh, we certainly have our suspicions. I’m sure they’ll be confirmed later,” Wooyoung replied. “It seems the Navy left us in the ocean, and we ended up in different coves of Utburgh.”
“Better than waking up in neighbouring prison cells, I bet,” Jongho said.

Yunho shook his head. “Ah, but if we weren’t neighbours, I wouldn’t have been calm enough to scratch out the message. We never would’ve made it to Mingi in time.”

Jongho clapped once, a loud snap, an index finger held out, holding back a smile on his face. He was more youthful, more energised, than Yunho had ever seen him. “Who’s up for telling Hongjoong that he has to start planning a way back into the base we just escaped from?”

Wooyoung let out a shrieking, “What?”

Yunho leant his head facedown on Mingi’s now clothed shoulder without thinking, muffling his voice, “I might’ve promised we would get the rest of those who needed it out of the base in exchange for their help.”

Wooyoung and even previously restrained San both erupted into questions and indignant noises, sending Yunho slipping into laughter at the ridiculousness of it all, another splash of sea water seeping through to the skin of his back as the small rowboat rocked their bodies sporadically.

His shoulders were already shaking with little gasps when Jongho mused, voice suddenly reserved, “I do feel bad that Mingi blew up their kitchen,” and then Mingi was laughing along with the rest of them, wincing and tentative and rattling them both as they slid slowly into each other.

They told the tales of their separation in full on their little rowboat, sniping back and forth with every dramatic reveal, skirting around the cliff face in their own world with no one to disturb the peace. Untouchable. And, as Yunho sat up straighter and relished under Jongho’s subtle applause and Wooyoung’s much louder praise, unstoppable. The world at his fingertips.

He leant back to brush his palm over the water, splitting the wave sweeping beneath them, and reached below it. Somewhere, miles away and deep within, was Yeosang. As they rowed around the tip of the jutting cliffs, breaching a small, sun-lit cove carved into the isle, he believed whole-heartedly they would get them back. Whatever it took.

Out across the glittering ocean sat the Wanderlust, bobbing on the waves under the light of the evening’s golden hour, an equally golden crown rising high above the seas.

Chapter Text

The nerves simmering silently in Yunho’s stomach only hit fully when they pulled up alongside the Wanderlust, a rope ladder dangling down over the boat. He squirmed on the bench, hands twitching. A sudden sickness rolling through his body.

A lot had changed since Yunho had last seen the Captain. Equally, their positions had not changed at all.

Yunho was still the reason the Wanderlust’s crew had fallen apart.

Jongho went up first, assessing the security of the rope, and remained at the top to help Mingi up after him. He’d begun wincing more often, an arm around his abdomen, hardly holding himself up as the exhaustion and the strain of ignoring his injuries kicked in. Yunho had already decided his first course of action was to get more of the potion into his system, even if all it did was give him a little more strength while Wooyoung patched the rest up himself.

They ushered Yunho to go next. It was unsettling to have San hovering behind him, and he placed one foot after the other onto the ladder and prayed he wouldn’t lose his grip with how queasy his body had become.

The arm reaching out to him at the top was far thinner than Jongho’s.

Yunho froze, suspended mid-air. Hanging from the rope ladder, high above the surface of the sea, the rough edges carving dents into his palms. One of his feet slipped underneath him, off the rung, and he gasped, flinching, gripping onto the sides for dear life and grazing the lengths of his forearms on the rope as his lost foot stumbled for a hold.

The gold rings beneath against his wrist were startlingly cold. The Captain’s grip, however, was warm and firm.

In one shift motion, Yunho found his footing and was heaved over the lip of the Wanderlust, wobbling with his landing, steadied upright from behind by two hands on his shoulders. He turned, panicked and dazed by the sudden movement, by the hands burning holes into his skin, shuddering, but all he found was the Captain’s back. Reaching out to pull San or Wooyoung onto the deck, his focus on Yunho gone.

But then San and Wooyoung were in front of him, received by the Captain, Wooyoung darting towards the bunkroom, and Yunho snapped his gaze around the deck, finding no Jongho, no Mingi. The corridor door slammed against the inside wall and Yunho jolted, taking off after him, leaving San and his clenched fists to watch them go.

Taking no notice of the gentle sway and creak of the ship beneath his feet, of the familiar shadowed walkway, Yunho stumbled down the corridor and bypassed the bunks. His boots came down hard as he breached the workroom doorway. Yunho’s stare skittered. Various boxes and crates and piles of wiring and deconstructed metal parts he couldn’t name had been tossed from their places and scattered across the floor, Yunho’s pencils and charcoal, amongst them, thrown across the floor by the ship’s 180-degree tilt.

He grimaced at the state of it, but exhaled a breath of relief. The plating and barriers Mingi put in place for harsher storms had held up along the shelves. The chemicals and potions and ingredients trapped against the wall, the jars unaffected albeit a few on their sides.

Yunho hopped through the mess using what gaps he could find on the floor, wobbling with the effort of not becoming one with it, and snatched the bottle of familiar golden potion from the end. Threw himself back out into the corridor and barrelled into the bunkroom.

“Yunho, there you are,” Wooyoung said from the end of the room, his gaze burning in the darkness, glinting amber within rings of smudged coal under the orange glow of flame. His eyes caught on the bottle clutched in Yunho’s hands. “Good, you found some. He’s going to need it.”

His voice was rough with a dry, pained laugh.

By the time Yunho reached them, Mingi’s coat had been shrugged off and he laid over the sheets, jaw grinding, a shock of dishevelled bright hair on the pillow. The lantern swung from the edge of the bunk above him, over Wooyoung’s array of bandages and a flask of alcohol and his discarded silver rings, as he dabbed damp cotton over the injuries on Mingi’s front.

“Do you think it’ll help? I don’t… it’s only been a while since he had some, and I don’t think it does much for the pain, not from what I remember, at least, but it’s the best I can think of without trying to brew something myself, which Mingi said I am banned from doing, so,” Yunho was rambling, aware he was rambling, unable to stop it as he fiddled and pried the stopper from the bottle.

“I don’t know.” Wooyoung upturned the alcohol onto the cloth in his hands, unnervingly steady as it ran down his wrists. “Let’s hope it’ll speed things along, for his sake.”

He brought the soaked flannel to Mingi’s chest.

Yunho’s face twisted as Mingi’s own did, contorting in pain, a grunt tearing forcefully from his mouth. Yunho scrambled to his side and hastily put the potion to his lips, inching his other hand under Mingi’s head and raising it, to block the sounds of pain from his own ears if nothing else.

Mingi settled back against his palm afterwards, and so it remained there for several long minutes until Wooyoung directed Mingi onto his front. Yunho sat by his side, watching as Mingi’s expression crumbled into sharp inhales and gritted teeth and the occasional slip of a groan, Wooyoung cleaning each cut diligently and wrapping him up securely in bandages. And if Yunho’s fingers found their way to Mingi’s tousled hair again once he was done, coaxing him slowly into sleep, so be it. Even if it meant he had to furiously ignore Wooyoung’s smug, squirming glee.
Yunho let out slow, steady breaths at last, matching Mingi’s own. Wooyoung sat back beside him.

“Well, then,” Wooyoung said, wiggling his rings back onto his fingers. His equipment remained strewn out over Mingi’s bed, and he made no effort to organise it. “I suppose we should join the others. I’m sure they’ll need your expertise with the maps, and I’d rather not deal with Hongjoong’s angst if we dawdle about leaving the cove.”

Yunho cringed. Hongjoong’s scowling face flashed in his mind, and then San’s, and the weighing scales in Yunho’s mind teetered and tipped, sending his previous calm vanishing into thin air.

“I’ll, uh, stay with Mingi,” he tried, “one of should stay with him, right? Make sure someone’s here in case he wakes up—”

Wooyoung levelled him with a look, as sympathetic as it was reprimanding. “He’s exhausted. He’s not going to be awake for hours. You can’t avoid Hongjoong forever.”

I can try, Yunho thought, though he decided it wise not to say aloud.

Taking one last wistful scan of Mingi, he rose and shuffled begrudgingly out of the bunkroom, Wooyoung herding him along.

By the time they emerged on deck, Hongjoong, Seonghwa and Jongho were holding a hushed conversation with hardened faces, and San was sat along the ship’s outskirts, scowling down at the wood. The door creaked on its hinges as Yunho opened it fully, and all eyes swivelled towards them. Towards Yunho and his rigid body, sliding forward like he was a puppet on a string.

Every reason the Captain had to hate him flooded back to the forefront of his mind. He winced, a full body, recoiling thing, meeting Wooyoung’s immovable body behind him. Forced himself to step forward again and still in the deck’s centre, though his firmly planted feet were less self-assured than they were frozen.

He searched for Seonghwa, for Jongho, but they both stared back at him blankly, making no effort to move or speak, poised to watch the scene play out, to sit by and allow it to happen. Yunho wasn’t sure which was stronger, his urge to run to or away from them. Instead, he did nothing.

In the end, it was not the Captain who came for him first.

“Yunho,” San said, stopping in front of him. He towered over Yunho, somehow, despite Yunho holding height over him. Yunho had hardly seen him rise from the floor. “Could I speak to you, please?”

Yunho stared. Wooyoung brushed past him swiftly, made some loud exclamation about Mingi and stole the Captain and Seonghwa’s attention, but he could not pick out any other of the words.

San stood silently, his stare flickering across Yunho’s face. His blonde mullet had lost its volume during their time away and fell limp over his forehead, down the shaved sides, hiding the sharp angles of his face. He watched Yunho’s fidgeting body, shuffling from foot to foot, the floorboards creaking under his weight, though where Yunho’s fingers toyed with the drawstrings at the collar of his shirt, his own body was stationary, his hands clasped neatly behind his back. Yunho recognised it at once.

San had planned this out, steeled himself, but the hesitation was ticking away in the movement of his eyes. There was always something people couldn’t master. Yunho knew it intimately, since he could never limit his to one thing to begin with.

Yunho’s eyes were wide as saucers, but he feared greatly that his heart was elsewhere, and it beat steadily. He cleared his throat. “Okay.”

San all but melted in front of him.

“I’m so sorry,” he said, broad shoulders slumping, a crease forming between his brows, “I’ve been talking to Wooyoung, and to Seonghwa, and to Hongjoong, too, and I want to apologise to you, for making assumptions without talking to you first. I wasn’t seeing you. I was just… seeing your mother. You know, finding information from sketchy sources, trying to be so coy in sensitive situations, it’s…”

He huffed a laugh, avoided Yunho’s eyes as one hand came forward and picked for non-existent threads on his shirt. The shirt, too, made him look softer, younger, than the usual waistcoats did, the deception of his muscle disappearing below it. “Wooyoung’s always been better at dealing with it than I am. Just talking about the Pirate Queen like she’s alive, so close to us again, hearing these people laugh about you running from Nestone… I lost my head. But I understand why you didn’t tell us, and so do the others, and Seonghwa’s been reminding me and Hongjoong that you’re a runaway too, and Mingi’s and—”

He cut himself off and swallowed, his Adam’s apple bobbing in his throat. “Yeosang’s and Mingi’s pasts have been no less threatening, and I don’t think it has taken the anger away entirely, but…” San trailed off as he met Yunho’s stare. “I’m just sorry.”

Yunho swept San’s body, from his black laced boots to the plaid bandana threaded through a belt loop to the sharp cut of his jaw. He’d stopped fidgeting after the first apology. Stood watching and listening, posture loose and awkward like he’d forgotten how to move his limbs, or that he could at all.

He could hardly, beyond even what he’d previously thought about similar instances with Mingi, couple this man red and curled over with sincerity, with the hard lines and blunt aggression of a week ago. It was like an angel and a demon had merged in one person, and he slipped between the heavens and the underworld at the flip of a switch, neither giving the other away.

Yunho nodded slowly and repeatedly for far too long, unaware he was doing it. He had never received an apology for comparison with Jeong Sun-young in his life and could hardly work out what to do with it.

“Oh,” San added, pulling Yunho out of his daze. “And, uh, the Captain told me to give these back to you.”

Wrinkled but perfectly rolled into scrolls, Yunho’s maps shone like the sun in his hands. A peace offering, he recognised, an incentive. They truly believed Yunho would refuse. He realised, in a way he hadn’t quite fathomed before, that if he wanted to, they would accept it and let him leave the Wanderlust unscathed.

His maps felt like relics. The scratch of the rough surface on his palms ancient. Since the last time he’d had a firm grip on them, something deep, something integral, had changed when he hadn’t been paying attention.

“Thank you, San,” Yunho said. “For the maps, and the apology.”

There was a lot to say. Responses, excuses, swirled in his mind. Yunho did not voice them. Once San realised that he was not going to, he nodded, smiling softly, dimples sinking into his round cheeks.

“Are we done?”

Yunho near leapt out of his skin.

Their small Captain popped out from behind San’s figure, leant casually against the hooked head of his cane. His expression mad and mischievous and pirate-like as ever, all wide crazed eyes and Cheshire cat grin. His tone of voice dripped too much of the notorious Pirate King to give anything away.

Yunho blinked owlishly before he remembered he was expected to reply. “Yes, Captain,” he said, then cleared his throat, shifting to study the splinters in the floorboards.

He'd mulled over it for hours in that cell. What the Captain must think of him. How he must blame him. Yunho had managed to land himself on the ship of a man whose life was ruined by his own mother, after all, at no fault of the Captain himself, and split his crew in half scrambling to make up for it. Put them right back on the Navy’s radar. Convinced them of a plan that had nearly killed them all and might kill one of them yet. Several long nights had been spent cursing himself out.

He jolted more so from the shock than from the Captain’s force itself when a hand was clapped over his shoulder.

“Thank you for getting my crew out,” the Captain said, gruff but with his head held high, alarmingly sincere. “Jongho says neither him nor Mingi would be alive without you. You did well. Time for a crew discussion, yes?”

Had he lost more water than he’d realised in that prison cell? Was this the delusion of dehydration? Had the world flipped itself inside out while he’d been too far down in the basement to notice?

The Captain’s searching gaze flipped into a sterner, sharper look, like he could see his train of thought swiftly derailing. “Stop looking at me like that, I’m not taking it back,” he snapped, although the heat of it lost its effect in Yunho’s bewilderment. “I would do anything for my crew, and apparently that includes thanking you. Hence, group discussion.”

His eyes, his cheeks, softened for an instant as he faced Yunho, and then he was turned to the rest of the crew and his cane went thumping strictly away. “Next course of action, rescuing Yeosang. Any objections?”

It took several seconds before Yunho’s consciousness reconnected with his body. He might’ve made some vague ‘huh’ noise aloud, but he couldn’t be sure.

No one objected.

“Yunho, Jongho, I want us heading straight for the merfolk capital, avoiding any Navy strongholds. San and Seonghwa, check the sails are secure,” he continued, eyes narrowed, sharp as a knife, blazing like gunpower caught alight. “Then, we’ll discuss the plan.”

Chapter Text

Kang Yeosang.

In the depths of the ocean, surrounded by thick, slime-covered cobblestone, Yeosang woke.

There were moments like this, few and far between. Breaks in the unconsciousness, eyes flickering open, short bursts of thought. Flashes of the Wanderlust. Of seaweed fastening hands and legs to the wall. Of voices, stilted, somewhere beyond Yeosang’s view. The repeated realisation that none were presenting aid.

Though, he supposed, he’d only ever had hope for one.

Yeosang tried to feel for his arms, his hands, his fingers. A ghostly sensation of nerves that he knew were there, but nothing more. Nothing real. No strength to tug at the restraints. His neck was too heavy to control, though Yeosang knew that even if he could, his vision did not stretch to see his hands.

He clawed for brief sensation, in these moments. But overwhelming anything he could make out, growing slowly, was a dull, throbbing pain pulling at his chest.

“…to the barracks. It still reaches the edge, but it’s running thin. I’m not sure how much longer he’ll be of any use like this.”

Syllables inched into Yeosang’s consciousness as a whisper. A gargle of noise. He had to concentrate and strain to piece any words together at all, after they were spoken, delayed, in a language he had hoped never to hear again.

“Do it, then. If you can’t persuade the others, just take Yeosang yourself.” A different voice from the first. Familiar. One of the princesses. Not one Yeosang had ever been close with, evidently. Not that it would’ve surprised him to find the opposite. “So what if they think Yeosang can’t take it? They’re only saying that to try and get their claim in, you know they don’t care.”

“I’ll push them over the next few days. They should be more pressed to decide, before no one benefits at all. We’ll make absorbing Yeosang’s magic the best option. Find an incentive.”

A pause.

The movement of shadows through dark tendrils of drifting hair, none clear enough to be figures, if Yeosang hadn’t heard otherwise. Yeosang cursed inwardly. His vision was getting worse, even now.

“Do you want to do it, or should I?”

“It was your turn yesterday. I’ll do it, get out the way.”

A shuffle.

A sharp pain burst in Yeosang’s chest, and the darkened world was fading, carrying his dwindling hopes away.

Chapter Text

Yunho re-entered the bunkroom, two mismatched plates in hand, and handed Mingi’s over to him. The metal gadget that had previously been in Mingi’s hands, some plated thing he was gradually screwing together with various nuts and bolts, was tossed beside his body on the bed.

Yunho had given him the parts earlier in the day to entertain him, when he’d woken fully for the first time. He’d stayed in the next bunk over since then, bar a few minutes here and there to collect things for them both.

Mingi was yet to say a word.

Yunho didn’t think it was awkward. He’d been talking, giving Mingi activity updates and check-ins, and Mingi had simply remained silent. He looked over, nodded sometimes. They both spent a lot of time in silence in the workroom, focussed on their own tasks, and it was normal. Mingi didn’t have to contribute to the conversation. Yunho had pointedly avoided asking him direct questions, scared of coaxing him into talking about what had happened, considering it wrong of him to pry.

He also knew he could not stand one more minute of it. Yunho was giving Mingi curtesy, aware inherently that he was injured and rightfully the most scrambled by the events of the past week, suppressing his worry into hundreds of concerned just-checking glances. But he was coiled up like a tight spring with the amount of unanswered questions about Mingi and this situation and how to act flinging against the walls of his mind.

Yunho plopped down onto his borrowed bed and sighed as he pulled his own plate onto his lap, steam drifting up to the ceiling. He lasted two bites of the beef Wooyoung had nabbed from the town’s butchers, before he resolved that he could not simply sit and wait.

“Why is it always you who ends up needing medical attention?” he asked directly, his voice nonchalant even if the grip on his fork tightened. “You know, I don’t want to spend the rest of my life beside a makeshift hospital bed.”

Mingi huffed out a breathy laugh, and Yunho followed the sound without thinking. A slight smile had inched its way onto Mingi’s lips. “I don’t exactly aim to end up like this,” he said, his voice a croak.

Yunho hid his satisfaction with another bite. “You don’t exactly avoid it either,” he grumbled.

“It’s better me than the rest of you,” Mingi replied. “I can deal with the pain.”

In an instant, Yunho’s glee was wiped from his both his face, and his head. “It absolutely is not,” he spluttered, pitch rising. “You’re not invincible, you’re just as human as the rest of us!”

“Trust me, I know.”

“But—”

Mingi’s eyes met Yunho’s, and the words faded on his tongue. He traced Yunho’s face, stare flickering between his eyes, his thin nose, his jaw, his open mouth. “You don’t have to worry about me, Yunho. This is what I’m used to, I can cope. It’s just been a while.”

Yunho was rapidly shaking his head, “What, since torture?” he said, incredulous. He regretted it as soon as it tumbled from his mouth.

“Yes, Yunho. Torture.” Blunt, verging on bored. Grating on Yunho's ears.

Yunho sat up out of bed and turned his body to face Mingi, his plate forgotten. He hardly knew what to say and had the distinct feeling that whatever he did say would come out wrong. “You know, that’s not something you’re supposed to be used to, much less some kind of skill to be used. You’re allowed to… not do that emotionless thing that you do. You’re allowed to have feelings about it.”

Mingi hummed, returned a mocking, self-deprecating smile. He leant back, head towards the distant corner of the room. “A year ago, I would’ve stabbed you through the chest as soon as I regained enough awareness to do so for seeing me in that cell. You’re still here, aren’t you,” he said. Took a piece of beef with his fork and chewed it, slowly. And then, afterwards, quieter, “I’m not sure what to do with it otherwise.”

A beat of silence. The bunkroom, so unlike their usual workroom setting, felt too empty, too impersonal, for such a confession. This atmosphere tucked away in the corner too delicate. “Is that… what you’ve been doing all this time?” Yunho said, “Just not registering any of it? It’s no wonder you—” he sighed, steeled himself. “It’s no wonder I found you like I did.”

Mingi shook his head, low. “I got too used to not thinking about it. Protecting the crew hasn’t been entirely selfless, as is nothing I do. I should’ve been ready for the two to combine, but I was naïve about when it would happen.”

“No, you weren’t. You just hoped you could live for a while first. That’s nothing you should feel bad about.”

“That’s not something I can afford.”

“Yes, you can,” Yunho persisted, “and there’s no shame in wanting it.”

Mingi raised his voice, “No, Yunho, it’s—”

He cut himself off.

Yunho watched, sat leant over with his elbows on his knees, as Mingi shuffled against the headboard of the bed, rolling his shoulders and clenching his hands like he didn’t know where to put them. “I get glimpses, sometimes. Of the bodies, the blood. The looks on their faces. I would run before I could hear their last words, but there was a time I ran too early, and after that beating I heard hundreds. I murdered thousands of people, many of them innocent, to save my own life, and that was hardly comparable. He was testing chemicals on me, tearing into me, even then. He cut off my finger, and I let myself be turned into a weapon, Yunho. Those choices will haunt me forever. My life has been hurting people, and there’s no getting out of it, no separate life afterwards, not even here, with you.” He spread his fingers out evenly on his lap almost mechanically, the odd number starkly visible even in the low light. “Especially not with you.”

Yunho dropped his own speech to match, frowning. “You were only trying to survive, Mingi—"

“Who was I to make that choice? To decide they could die for me?” frustration snapped in Mingi’s voice.

“A child,” Yunho said. “You were a child, and then a teen. With no one to rely on, nowhere to put this… this weight you’ve been carrying. You can’t be blamed for making that choice.”

“My life was not worth a thousand of theirs.”

“No, it wasn’t,” Yunho agreed. “Not like this.”

Mingi stared down at his lap, unmoving. Yunho stared at Mingi’s lap, too, at his scarred knuckles, their ridged surfaces, until his eyes blurred with the focus.

“Like what?” Mingi asked quietly, monotone. Yunho knew he knew the answer. Together, they knew a thousand answers. Yunho hardly knew which one to choose.

“Running. Hiding. All of the—refusing to let yourself think,” Yunho said. “You went through something horrible, and traumatizing, and it’ll stay with you forever, but—” Yunho clasped his own hands in his own lap. Slowed himself down with a long breath. “Your suffering isn’t going to bring those people back. Or remove it from the past. It isn’t going to help anyone at all. Trust me, I know, we’ll be caught in this chase forever. There’s not a moment I’m not comparing everyone to those Navy sailors, those commanders, the possibility that I would’ve been dead by now weighs on me even if I never acknowledge it. That doesn’t mean it has to become your entire life.”

The Wanderlust let out a loud creak, rocking over a wave. Bedsheets rustled criminally, with Mingi’s constant shifting, and if not his, Yunho’s.
Mingi let out a long, heavy exhale.

The power dropped out of his speech, out from him. Yunho watched it drain from his face like a lifeforce. “I… I don’t know. I don’t know what I am if I am not a weapon,” he said, on the verge of being inaudible. “I want to make up for it. I need to do something, to prove that I can use this for good.”

He turned towards Yunho, finally tearing his stare away from the bed again, searching his face with wide, perfectly rounded eyes.

Yunho smiled, a small, pitiful thing. “Or, maybe, if you are so desperate to prove yourself, you could try proving that you are human. No one is telling you to be a weapon, you know. There are ways to redeem yourself that don’t involve a death wish.”

He saw the hesitation in Mingi’s face, his mouth stuttering open. “It’s… I don’t know how.”

Yunho reached out a hand, palm up. “I think you’ve worked out the first step already,” he said. “Talk to me. Not only about this just—about anything. Don’t hide yourself. You’re allowed to take up space, in conversations, in jokes, like the rest of us. You deserve a life, Mingi.” —he spewed out the rest before he had the chance to hesitate, to limit them both— “And… and I’d quite like you to have one, with me.”

Mingi looked up at Yunho with stars in his eyes. Slowly, his cheeks bunched up, small dimples denting the surface. Not a full smile, but an awkward, gentle one, so obviously rare. A smile Yunho decided then and there that he would memorise and keep locked up tight in his chest forever.

“I think I can try that,” Mingi whispered. He reached out.

It would not be easy. They both knew that. Yunho didn’t mind, not one bit. He struggled against his growing grin.

Yunho stared as Mingi placed his hand tentatively into his own, at the way his gloveless thumb dragged over the back of it, trembling, goosebumps raising over his skin.

Together, they would change the ending.

Chapter Text

Hours later, the anticipation of what was to come had Yunho fidgeting.

He placed his hands on his lap. Picked them up again and pulled the bedsheets further over his body, up to his waist. Fiddled with the cuffs of his shirt, rolling and re-rolling until he had each folded perfectly without creases up to his elbows. Decided to unroll it by one. Pushed the sheets back down, off his body entirely, over the top of the map he had laid out.

There was very little he could do with the map, little he could do at all but fidget, after giving the Captain and Jongho and Seonghwa their directions. There would continue to be little he could do with any map for the foreseeable future, with their progress far slower without the boosts from Yeosang’s power.

Yunho huffed, a big, full-chested thing, and ran a hand through his tousled hair, tugging at the strands harshly before he dropped it again.

“Yunho.”

Yunho slid a map from beneath the sheets. Scowled. Its corner had a small bend in it, probably inflicted during its fall from his desk and across the workroom during the fight, which had landed the majority of his unpinned pieces beneath several of Mingi’s things, or from the same movement in the Captain’s quarters.

“Yunho,” Mingi said, a second time.

Yunho hummed absently. If he could just bend it back the other way, and smooth it down enough times, maybe the crease wouldn’t have been noticeable, maybe the whole situation wouldn’t have happened, maybe Yeosang—

“Yunho.”

Yunho’s head shot up at the stern quality of Mingi’s voice. “Yes?”

There was something so painfully soft about Mingi’s expression that Yunho’s heart rose to his throat. He averted his eyes automatically, steeped in the guilt pouring from his thoughts, and rubbed at the back of his neck.

“Why don’t you go and get some fresh air?” Mingi suggested.

Yunho’s response was delayed. “Fresh air? The air’s plenty fresh in here, and I’m looking after you, so—”

“Yunho, I think you should go outside for a while. Clear your mind.”

There was something fond, something slow and pointed, in his words. Yunho’s brows twitched further. “Are you sure? I’m supposed to stay with you,” he replied.

“I’ll be fine. You’re getting agitated.”

Yunho turned back to him, scanning Mingi’s face, his searching gaze and shifting jaw. “Ah,” he said, nodding. “I’m annoying you, aren’t I? I’ll go outside, then. Only for a few minutes, though. You’ll miss my company too much.”

“Yunho, that’s not—”

Yunho sent Mingi a wide, closed-lipped smile that had his speech failing him, and with the rustling of parchment and bedsheets, stalked purposefully out of the door. Hopped up the stairs, two at a time.

He made sure his head was held a little higher when he emerged from the corridor onto the deck. A blanket of thick cloud loitered overheard, painting their portion of the sky a bright grey-white that shone with the power of the sun behind it and made him squint. It hardly deterred him. He swept past San and Seonghwa, chatting together on a pair of barrels with playing cards in their hands, slipped up to the upper deck and slumped over the railing. Exhaled a strong, smiling sigh, taking a breath of chilly air with it, tilting his head up to trace the edge of the cloud and the perfect azure beyond it, so close but so far.

Fidgeting, perhaps, was an understatement. The anticipation of what was to come, the dreadful, unknown, emptiness of it, the fullness of the possibilities running through his head—it had Yunho’s mind spinning, and he hardly knew what do save follow Mingi’s and the Captain’s instructions, and the latter was equally dangerous. They still hadn’t spoken properly. It was not at the forefront of Yunho’s thoughts, didn’t overtake Yeosang, but it stabbed at him when he least expected it.

Which meant that when someone else joined him, less surprising given that the members of the Wanderlust especially now were constantly joined at the hip, he hadn’t expected the shorter body and shaggy brown mullet in his peripheral, the cane thumping along the floorboards.

The Captain sauntered up beside him and stared out across the ocean. Yunho couldn’t disguise the way he tensed up. It didn’t go unnoticed by the Captain, either.

“You don’t have to be so afraid of me, you know. I was never actually going to put a bullet through your skull,” he muttered through a heavy side-eye.

Yunho’s swallow was dry and difficult. “You would’ve liked to, though.”

The Captain hummed. “I’ve spent years picturing the hole I’d land in your mother’s forehead. Perfectly central, like a third eye,” he said with a whistle, making Yunho wince, “but no matter how angry I was, I could never picture it on you.”

Yunho’s brows furrowed, and he opened his mouth and closed it again, gaping like a fish. “Thank you…?” he said, eventually.

It felt like poking a livewire with a perfect fifty percent chance that the electricity was still on.

“Don’t thank me,” the Captain snapped, though he shuffled uncomfortably. “That makes it sound like you’re surprised I have decency, and that offends me.”

Well, Yunho wasn’t going to be the one to tell him.

The waves lapped gently along the bottom of the ship. It was a calm day in the waters, slowing their progress a little without Yeosang’s aid, but fitting for Yunho’s contemplation. A counter-part to his racing doubts. Smooth and settled as far as the eye could see, the sun dusting the top of each curve when the clouded sections had passed.

“She wasn’t that great to me either, you know,” Yunho said. He knew it wasn’t wise. He had to say it anyway. “Based on what I’ve read, she was good at being a pirate. Not so good at being a mother—or, not so good at remembering to come back and be a mother, at least.”

The Captain said nothing, leaving the confession hovering in the silence between them.

Yunho shrugged, smiled a mocking thing. “In fact, I wouldn’t be surprised if you knew more about her than I did. All I had were the news reports from the library in the base and they rarely even mentioned her name. I have more memories of the maids than her, and the ones I do have are of fleeting appearances and wild stories, all of which became rather twisted and ruined when sailors stormed the house and revealed that she was a violent murderer instead.”

There was a little shiver of discomfort in there somewhere, but he elected to ignore it. Traced another wave as it rolled and rolled across in a horizontal line, folding over itself.

“Well, the sailors weren’t wrong about that part,” the Captain replied, quietly. Any lighthearted attempt in tone was swiftly mellowed out by the voice scratch of his pirate’s voice. “As soon as my parents spotted her on the horizon, they panicked. The whole crew scrambled. The toughest people I’ve ever known cried on the deck like they were already dying, and my parents’ ship wasn’t feeble, not by any means.”

He breathed out a long sigh, not sad but reminiscent. “They overpowered us. There were gunners on either of the upper decks,” he gestured with his hands, “picking people off, and then the rest of them came charging on with huge blades and these wicked grins. Like animals, they were,” he shook his head in a twitch and made a noise of disgust, “the Pirate Queen included. Skewered everyone where they stood. I forced myself to lie in a puddle of the blood of one of our navigators and pretend I was already dead. Wasn’t hard, when I was half-dead after seeing the bodies of my parents.”

The Captain held onto the railing and leant back, swinging on his heels like a child, and Yunho stared at where his fingers curled around the wood. “Afterwards, they were laughing. Set a fire down at the opposite end, near our stores, then they blew the ship to bits with cannons. They didn’t even take anything. Did it for fun.”

Yunho hung his head. “I’m so—”

“Don’t apologise,” the Captain cut him off. “Not your fault.”

He looked over at Yunho and cocked a smirk. “Just thank me for surviving, because you would’ve died already if I hadn’t. That, or be stuck in that blasted base. Can’t imagine it would be enjoyable.”

Yunho huffed. “Returned for a few days and blew up a kitchen to get out. So no, not likely,” he replied. He slumped against the railing once more, like a wilting flower, hair blowing in the breeze. “The years before that were certainly long enough. Felt like I was in there for a lifetime.”

“Yeosang told me, you know,” the Captain said. “About knowing you, tracking you and such. Part of that involved you being in the base, and I reckon it was one of the main reasons something in me let up on you.”

Yunho hummed. Searched the depth of the water. Out into the horizon. “It was manageable at times,” he said, a slight tilt to his head. “I think I got used to the comments about Sun-young. There’s only so many times you can be called things, especially wrongfully, before the insults lose meaning all together. The beginning was the worst of it, everyone assuming I was some violent prodigy, and I didn’t even know what half the words they were using meant.” He laughed, a short, sharp thing. “I could still only see her as who she was when she visited, this hero from her stories, wild and loud and making sudden appearances in some secret mission sort of way. All of them are tainted, now. The only thing she represents to me is being forced into that place.”

He could almost see it vividly—Sun-young and her crew stumbling through the doors with rum in their hands, wafting through the house, great tales spilling out the moment she spotted him. Over the years, the roaring laughter from the crew stopped being celebratory, but a mockery of the people they’d massacred. What he’d seen before as legendary storytelling for the sake of his child-like wonder was instead layers of lies and fabrication, a covering up of the reality. The images drifted towards his conscious mind occasionally in snapshots, in nightmares, but it had been a while since Yunho had really acknowledged them as the true memories they were. They felt different, on the Wanderlust. It had taken a long time for him to register it happening, to pick out his real childhood from this resent laying thick over the top of it.

It surprised him that the Captain nodded firmly, seemed to understand in an instant.

“Your house still exists, you know. I almost went to destroy it several times, but Seonghwa stopped me going near. They’ll have gone through it and roughed it up a bit, I imagine, looking for evidence, but it’s still there,” the Captain said, turning to face Yunho, leaning on his side. His arms were crossed over his chest, fitting the fur of his coat against his body. “Perhaps we’ll visit, someday soon. If there’s anywhere the Pirate Queen would’ve left clues about a motherly side, I’d bet it would be in her secret home.”

Yunho scanned his face swiftly but with caution. One corner of his mouth was quirked up, but it wasn’t as sharp as usual, somehow. If Yunho were a braver man, he might’ve insisted that there was a softness in the Captain’s gaze, the same slight bunching of his cheeks and curve to his eyes that were present when he looked to his crew. But that would’ve begged the question as to how he had managed to turn multiple pirates soft. How on earth had they ended up here?

“I’d... I’d like that, I think,” he answered, after a while.

The Captain nodded once, affirmative, and turned back to the ocean. Yunho wasn’t sure how much time passed as they stood together then, side by side, a mirror of one another, until he spoke again. “You remind me a lot of myself,” the Captain said, drilling his fingers against the wood, and immediately afterwards before Yunho had enough time to process the significance of those words— “Call me Hongjoong, would you? All my crew do. Sounds strange if you don’t.”

He left Yunho rooted to his spot on the edge of the Wanderlust, watching with wide eyes as the small, bundled figure swaggered away and slipped into the Captain’s quarters, Hongjoong’s quarters, heels and cane clicking slowly as he went.

Chapter Text

A thump. The thud of a door slamming shut. Several pairs of feet against the wooden floor, their footsteps vibrating through the surface to reach Yunho’s corner of the deck. He ignored them, focussed on the parchment in his hands.

It was likely nothing important, unless they called on him. The entire crew, save Mingi, were all flitting about doing one thing or another, appearing, disappearing, reappearing; no one could contain themselves. For San and Wooyoung, this flurry of unnecessary motion wasn’t surprising. The activity of the others had been for the first few hours, but it had swiftly tucked in orderly along the rest of what Yunho knew about life on the Wanderlust—they gained internal energy from each other. The Captain—Hongjoong, for the first time since Yunho had arrived, had fixed his mind on a goal, and it was infectious.

Not only in them, but in Yunho, too. He took more outside breaks from Mingi, unable to remain cooped up. He practised card games to beat the others, and then him and San and Wooyoung duelled across the deck seeking revenge no matter who won or lost. He’d learnt far more about the navigation process itself than he had ever expected to, after asking Jongho to teach him a few things, needing desperately to do more with his maps than simply stare at them.

For the past hour or so, Yunho had been sat with a spare piece of parchment on Mingi’s suggestion, testing whether his artistic abilities stretched beyond mapmaking by sketching out an image of the Wanderlust.

It had only been two long days since their reunion.

San and Wooyoung and at times Seonghwa enjoyed their games, when the former pair weren’t making repairs or chasing each other in circles or having climbing competitions on the rigging. Jongho was more than happy to oblige Yunho’s whims, seemed to appreciate the help, or at least the distraction, and often the Captain joined in. He knew Mingi was getting fed up with being bedbound too, as he gradually began attempting to confess his feelings in the shape of bitter complaint while his patience waned.

That didn’t mean Yunho expected the footsteps to grow louder, and to find San, Wooyoung, and Mingi standing in the middle of the deck, the latter bracketed between the other two, back in his old brown leather coat.

Mingi squinted against the sun, blinking several times robotically before bringing up a steady hand to shield his sight. His stare latched onto Yunho, sat upright on a stool, a stick of charcoal threatening to fall from his lap.

“Mingi?” Yunho said, voice pitched high with concern. “Are you sure you should be out here yet? It’s only been a few days, I told you your mind needs to recover just as much as—”

“As my body? You know, I think I’ve heard that one before. Several times, actually, in a voice very similar to yours,” Mingi deadpanned, low and mocking, but his lips were sliding into a smirk he chose not to contain, and it almost wiped Yunho’s worry away.

Wooyoung huffed beside him, oblivious to his derailing. “See, don’t worry, Yunho. He’s right back to how he was, I can assure you. All passive aggression and scowling and stink-eye back in their places.”

Yunho and Mingi exchanged a look. A silent, secret thing, a shared thought, a not back to how he was, no. This Mingi was very different to the one before, and they both knew it. Neither were inclined to share.

Yunho smirked a little himself. “Yes, I can see that.”

San dragged over a crate, and Mingi settled onto it at Yunho’s side. For every part of him worried, keenly attached to the way Mingi was having to rebalance himself on his legs over the rocking of the ship, another part of his body relaxed with relief. They were mere days away from hovering over their coordinates for the merfolk palace. Time sounded a lot shorter than it felt, acknowledged like that.

Days away from a battle, from Yeosang, and he wasn’t sure he could manage it without Mingi at his side for confidence, skill, and aid. For the selfish part of him that had decided that if they were landing themselves in a trap, if they were to fail, he didn’t want to be alone.

“Ah, there you are,” a curling voice came from behind Yunho.

They all turned towards Hongjoong, and Seonghwa alongside him, the two emerging from their shared quarters. Hongjoong’s eyes narrowed a fraction on something beyond Yunho and Mingi, but when Yunho followed it towards San and Wooyoung, they only stared back at him with their previous glinting expressions.

Beside Yunho, Mingi’s body had gone ramrod straight. Though it was unnecessary, and Yunho had told him as much, the suggestion that Mingi would protect him the moment Hongjoong arrived sent a small smile creeping onto his face.

“I take it you succeeded, then?” Hongjoong asked, sending Yunho swivelling towards him.

It was Mingi who gave a curt nod, surprising Yunho. “Haven’t had much to test it with, but I believe so, Captain.”

He gestured towards Wooyoung. In Wooyoung’s hands, lifted from where it had been hanging at his side, was another of Mingi’s plated contraptions. Familiar pieces of metal lined up and tacked together, shining rods sticking out of each side like blunt spikes. The shape of it was mismatched, with some faces bigger and smaller like an irregular octagon. The mismatched quality of it had led Yunho to assume the parts were separate tinkering projects, purely something to occupy Mingi’s hands and mind. Evidently, he had assumed wrong.

Mingi reached out and took it from Wooyoung’s hands. “Once it makes contact with water, the magic reacts to activate each of these rods,” he said, touching the sharp tips of a few with his fingers, “combining to create a shockwave which should, theoretically, disable all merfolk without the power to fight it off.”

Yunho sucked in a breath. Judging by the half-befuddled, half-amazed expressions on the faces of San, Seonghwa, and even Wooyoung, who’d been holding the thing, Yunho wasn’t the only one who hadn’t been keyed into this part of the plan, either. Regular bombs weren’t the only thing Mingi had in his arsenal this time, it seemed. Yunho couldn’t help wondering how big his brain actually was.

Hongjoong nodded assertively. “Good work,” he said to Mingi, and then to the rest of them, “this is how we get Yeosang back, and live to see the other side of it.”

“Theoretically.”

Yunho glanced sharply to Wooyoung. San did the same. “What?” Wooyoung continued, “Someone had to say it. I’ve never heard Mingi say theoretically in my life. He’s always confident about everything he has, even the ones that fail.”

Mingi swallowed, his Adam’s apple bobbing visibly in his throat.

The others, Yunho assumed, would be terrified of a doubting Mingi. Yunho still would’ve been, had he not learnt what he knew now, and been the one to see him break and watch the cogs turn as he tried to put himself back together again. To piece an honest version of himself together in the first place. No, Yunho was not scared of the contraption and its possibility, not nearly as much as he feared that bob in Mingi’s throat and the decision to confess his own doubt and what he would say, now, confronted with the perception of it.

It was one thing to decide to show yourself, Yunho knew. It was another entirely to face the results of it, to have it perceived.

“Yes, theoretically,” Mingi began. Incredibly concise and slow. “It is designed to interfere with merfolk abilities. But I made it from scratch, as I did most of the inventions which did fail, and with something as important as this, I must tell you it may not work.”

Yunho released his breath and nudged his leg towards Mingi, brushing against him, watching as though in a trance as the latter’s stare flickered towards it and he gripped the metal tighter between his fingertips.

When had Yunho begun not feeling remotely guilty about his focus on this mystery beside him? When had that aspect of danger, of warning, vanished from his mind?

Perhaps when Mingi had started pushing his thigh right back against Yunho’s own, a firm, warm pressure burning into his skin, he thought.

“What about Yeosang?” Wooyoung tore Yunho’s attention away. “Won’t it hurt them?”

“I—” Mingi turned the thing in his hands, “I don’t know.”

Wooyoung stared. Blinked. It took Yunho tracking his expression to process, before he avert-ed his eyes and absently traced the lines splintering through the floorboards. The previous hope dissipated from his body through every avenue.

“We can’t risk it, then, surely,” Wooyoung said, “we could be damning ourselves.”

“It is the best I can do,” Mingi admitted.

Yunho winced. He took a quick assessment of the others: San, veins pronounced along his tense arms, Seonghwa, glancing between Mingi and Hongjoong—Hongjoong, motionless.

The Captain settled back into the world slowly in the silence, shifting to his other leg, hip jutting out. “Mingi, give me your prediction.”

“Anyone with an especially great ability will have magic at a similar level to the magic this contains, so they won’t be overpowered. It’ll take out the majority and leave only the best few for us to deal with. I’ve talked to Jongho, considering he knows the most about the extent of Yeosang’s ability, and he believes Yeosang should be affected the least. He’s—” Mingi paused, hesitated, and near cleaved Yunho in half— “on board with the idea, out of desperation, I suspect. I expect Yeosang will feel the wave only as a vibration, given the extent of his power. An aftershock. I do not know how painful said aftershock will be.”

Hongjoong nodded. The rest of his expression was wrinkled in contemplation but gave nothing away.

“How about we vote on it?” Seonghwa suggested at his silence, leaning into the narrowed focus of their sight. “We act based on the majority?”

“No.”

They all looked to their Captain. His resolve sharpened, the narrowed pressures of thought on his features smoothing into the deadly focus of the Pirate King. “Not with this,” he said. “All for one and one for all. We all agree to take the risk, or it isn’t happening.”

Wooyoung backed off from his hostility, sitting back on his heels. “Okay,” he replied. It shocked Yunho, that automatic restraint, genuine assent, but less so when he recognised that his own body had eased off just the same. San, too, said nothing, where Yunho could’ve anticipated anger.

“Given that it is my plan,” Mingi began, “I would take the risk. Jongho has also agreed.”

Seonghwa nodded. “I trust Mingi, and Jongho’s assessment of Yeosang.”

“Me too,” added San in swift succession.

Wooyoung, kissing his teeth, gave them a moment of pause, but eventually, “Okay, me three.”

Miraculously, somehow unexpectedly, they turned to face Yunho.

He clenched the lip of the stool beneath him so hard his knuckles turned white under the effort, to keep his body from shaking with the acknowledgement of it.

Mingi’s warmth remained a grounding reassurance at his side, but he found that it was not fear driving him, but a more insistent, buzzing thrum under his skin. “I think Yeosang would want us to do whatever we need to,” he decided, “and besides, none of us would be here if we refused to take risks.”

The Captain’s seriousness ticked over into that wild, wanting smirk of his. “It seems, then, that we have our decision. Let’s show them who they’re dealing with, yes?”

Seonghwa's smile was like a thin sliver of the moon, Wooyoung’s the cutthroat edge of a silver blade, San’s grin a shock of blinding lightning. He shifted, bounced on the balls of his feet with solid thuds, sending his adrenaline outwards until Wooyoung began whooping and clapping at his side. They dispersed slightly, opened out the circle of their gathering, until the shadows of their silhouettes no longer leered over each other but spread themselves large and full across the sunkissed surface of the Wanderlust like giants.

Hongjoong watched on with that fond, youthful gleam on his skin that Yunho was becoming familiar with, catching the edge of during each different observation. The care he held was clear as day, tucked beneath that violent, volatile nature the rest of the world received.

“Oh Captain, my Captain,” Yunho muttered, inaudible to anyone but himself, grinned until the stretch hurt his cheeks. I’m free, I’m free, I’m free.

“Um, guys?”

The crew turned towards Jongho’s voice, quieting, though Wooyoung still hummed aloud and San swung from a rope and they revelled in their movement no less. In fact, if anything it was merely a momentary lending of the ear, angling their bodies, and the bursting feeling in Yunho’s chest grew tenfold instead.

Jongho stood in the corridor doorway. His old, patched Navy uniform was gone.

Instead, a pale beige linen shirt similar to Yunho’s stretched over his shoulders, a white under-shirt beneath it. Tucked into belted black trousers, far looser than the worn, fitted ones he was used to. Between the shirt’s open collar, standing out against the white shirt, sat a turquoise-tinged pearl on its thin rope string. His cheeks glowed a vibrant crimson.

Jongho fiddled with the pearl between his fingers. “How—how do I look?”

The ship gave an almighty creak of approval. Reddening patches spread from Jongho’s cheeks to the tips of his ears. Then Wooyoung resumed whooping and cheering, loud and clear, and San was bounding over to unbutton one more down his shirt and fighting against Jongho’s flustered hands, and the Captain was laughing as Seonghwa tried to shoo San away. He refolded Jongho’s sleeves a little messily, a little more pirate-like.

Yunho leaned into Mingi, unbalanced by glee as he watched them all, beaming as a bonfire grew in his chest, expanding, expanding, a bright glow lighting him up from the inside out.

Chapter Text

Kang Yeosang.

White noise. Noise. Words that must’ve been words but weren’t words. Words?

Hello.

Hell-o.

He-llo?

Darkness. A shadow. A cloud. A dark shadow cloud.

Heavy. So heavy. Light like a feather.

A feather stretched thin. Barbs snapping, one by one by one, falling away.

Chapter Text

The map’s stained edge curled under Yunho’s fingers, a fold marring it’s surface. He did not notice it.

Beneath his body, beneath the ship, beneath the ocean’s blanket of sapphire, was a mystery. Did they have light down there, so far beneath the sun? They had to have light. Magic-fuelled, most likely, or some glowing sea creature like a firefly. Yunho hoped they didn’t capture them, if there was, but he suspected they would. He would ask Yeosang—about the light, not the capturing—when they got out.

Yunho had removed the word 'if' from his vocabulary. But evidently, it wasn’t working, because if still lingered on the tip of his tongue, clawing up his throat and scratching his insides in the process.

The ocean blurred into a blank, shifting blue, unfocussed.

Yunho forced his stare back down to the parchment in his hands and uncurled his fingers and desperately smoothed the crease out with his thumb, though it was too deep, too permanent. He tried to sigh, but the inhale was far too shaky, and it unnerved him enough that he did not dare try to let the breath out again.

“Crossing threshold!” the Captain bellowed out from the helm, on the opposite upper deck. “Hold your positions!”

Yunho’s hands moved without his mind, rolling the map up into a tight scroll, slipping it into the bag he’d pinned to the ship’s railing. Exchanging rough paper for the rough, leather wrapping of a pirate’s cutlass. His cutlass. No longer merely borrowed. The edge of each spiral imprinted on his palm. His breath may have been shaking, but his grip was firm.

It was so different to last time, when Yunho’s fingers had fumbled blindly along the bottom edge of an unfamiliar magic, and yet exactly the same.

He was confident with the sword in his hand. He had an unfractured crew and people to fight for. He had proven himself in a way he had hoped for but never quite expected to reach. He had walked through doors he used to pray would open, and hardly realised until they were long behind him. He was standing of the edge of a ship in the middle of the ocean preparing to face a magical species spat out of his fairytales and hoping to bring the Hala Navy and his past down with them. He was Jeong Yunho, a mapmaker, the son of the Pirate Queen, and somehow just himself.

He may well be gliding straight into his death.

Yunho risked a glance at Mingi, his mind whirring with comparison, past words planted and rooted deep in this moment’s mirror. But Mingi’s glare was piercing the surface of the rolling waves, his device clenched between his fingers, his head turned away for an ear towards the Captain’s commands. There would be no words shared, not this time.

A wave rolled over in Yunho’s stomach. Nausea flooded his system, but he pushed it down, down, stoppered it at his chest. I am a successful escapee of the Navy, the most powerful institution of Hala, twice over. I am a recruit of the Pirate King. I am the understudy of magic and potions and navigation and weaponry. Yunho’s fingers released and re-clenched around the pommel of his curved blade, one by one.

I have already changed the ending, and it is mine for the taking.

One dip in the ocean’s surface, a slight whirlpool, and the ship lurched.

Yunho held fast to the ship’s railing, his body moving with the rocking Wanderlust, feet planted wide. He refused to stumble against the rocky waters as he had done before.

Of course, the merfolk being able to manipulate the ocean wasn’t the most pressing concern.

They came quickly, rising through the surface of the water, their bodies breaking through the waves. Merfolk soldiers dressed in their scaled armour set their sights on the ship beneath Yunho’s feet. Some with spears poised to throw, others with daggers of metal and ice in their pale hands. Countless weapons materialised from the water.

From his higher vantage point, Yunho saw it coming, the blue streaks shooting through the waves crackling like lightning strikes. The merfolk didn’t.

In an instant they were writhing, shuddering in the water, their limbs sharp and snapping and disjointed. Heads dipped under, submerged. Silhouettes disappeared. The ones who stayed up above the waves jolted, their bodies betraying them as they fought, lashing out against the water with vicious claps. The Wanderlust shook and heaved with their efforts, their strength, their magic being stripped away, replaced by sparking magic of another kind. Of Mingi’s kind.

Around the Wanderlust, in a soft, ever-changing oval like a morphing cloud, the Hala sea lit up in bright cerulean. Partially transparent, illuminated across the top layer and reflecting against the ship’s outside to shine rays of gorgeous turquoise. Sparks flickered within the waves, dashing the ocean with glittering sections, as though a smack of luminescent jellyfish had swarmed to their aid.

Yunho was entranced. It was working. It was working. He was near electrified himself with the glee of it, by the pride swelling in his chest.

The sting of metal ringing out through the air behind him stole his attention away. Down on the lower deck, Seonghwa’s dual swords were up, slashing through the air in a carousel. Beside him, San, hand to hand, ducking and weaving beneath an iced blade. Another fighting Hongjoong on the upper deck, spear against cane. The merfolk fought with agility, with seamless technique, against the crew’s vicious physicality.

It’s how Yunho realised something was wrong—there were too many fighters on board, spinning around the pirates, in their precise interlocking circles. Much too many for the current absence where they would’ve been heaving themselves over the sides.

Some of the first soldiers had missed the shockwave, already latched onto the ship.

Mingi had been too late.

Yunho cursed, spun, searching, tracking one of Seonghwa’s swords sliding upwards through a scaled plate, teal blood spraying up between the cracks. Wooyoung’s dagger flying, catching a thigh, sending a solider down to one knee. They rose again, unsteady, their expression hidden behind a shining helmet, but unwaveringly threatening despite the streams leaking down their calf. There were a few, not many, but more than they’d been hoping for, and they kept rising, rising, whether they had landed gracefully like a cat or clattered to the planks, like an invincible army.

Had they underestimated the true strength of the better trained? Underestimated how many there were?

A shot fired with an echoing boom, too close. Yunho flinched, losing his grip on the railing, the bullet grazing his ear and sending it ringing, in a high-pitched, shrill alarm. He resisted the urge to curl up into the fetal position, pushing himself to his knees, fighting for a clear impression of his surroundings through the noise and the ever-shifting surface he kept his boots firmly grounded upon. A dense weight thudded to the upper deck beside him, narrowly missing flattening him in the process.

Yunho pushed himself up, took a peek half in panic to get away and half in preparation to fight, but found the arms and legs of the merfolk soldier sprawled out and too limp to warrant his doing either. Two emerald eyes glaring up at the blue sky. One weeping hole in the centre of their forehead, winking like a third.

Yunho’s heart leapt to his throat. He scrambled backwards, picked himself up on shaky legs, fighting against the current, and raised his cutlass in front of his face. He could not look away, could not tear the image from his sight, so he forced himself to cover his eyes and plant the blade between them.

He scanned the scaled bodies littering the deck and the splattered teal and the rolling ocean, where more lay scattered. Several he could track the blurred edges of, drifting beyond the lip of the Wanderlust from where he kept himself in the centre.

The issue, however, with a pirate ship, as Yunho was begrudgingly finding, was that the vessel was far too slim to remain hidden when surrounded. A small handful of merfolk were still alive and deadly in the waters. Yunho latched eyes with one, and fire raced across the skin of his arms like he’d stood in front of a flamethrower, burning with flustered heat. Dark hair, bright turquoise eyes, a sense of invulnerability. This, no doubt, was one of Yeosang’s royal siblings.

The few remaining were not struggling.

The figure catapulted straight at him.

With a pulse of water and a stream of sea spray, they shot through the air. A heavy thud rattled the deck beneath Yunho’s feet. While he was busy making sure his feet were planted and that he was not about to be thrown out into the atmosphere for an eventual summer dip, the royal was already raising a pair of forged ice swords—he was briefly complimented by the idea that they chose a two versus one, weaponry wise, before he recognised the panicked stupidity of that statement and kicked himself from his thoughts.

Both swords came down over Yunho’s head one after the other. He wedged his cutlass horizontal at the last possible second, and caught the strike, willing not to wobble under the force.

They were a similar height to Yeosang, shorter than Yunho by a considerable amount, enough that he knew to guard his lower body as their swords came loose in a vicious parry. Nicks caught at the skin, along his legs, one at his shoulder, tearing through the fabric of his shirt and sending him wincing. It stung, but not enough to overtake the adrenaline pumping through Yunho’s veins, nor the violent will of one trying to prove themself.

He moved in a combination of instinct, Navy training, and pure stubborn determination, San and Wooyoung’s voices echoing with past comments and tips from their duelling through his mind. His body rapid-fired.

‘Keep their attention’, phantom San said. He swung the cutlass like it was an extension of his arm, pushing and pushing and gritting his teeth against the grunts threatening to spill out until he was level with the royal. If you don’t, they’ll have the time to send icicles to skewer you from the back.

It was motivation enough.

Yunho tensed as another connection between their blades rattled his bones, pulling away straight after to hit again, again, sword against sword. His ears sung with every metallic slash and vibration. Past Wooyoung’s eyes gleamed with a demonic mirth, ‘Do you want to die with your head on a stick, roasting over a fire? Then don’t act like it.’

Again, again, again.

A roar rumbled through Yunho’s chest like a battle cry, and he planted one foot forward and pushed. His cutlass slammed down against the ice daggers, shattering them both into tiny pieces, shimmering like diamond rain. By the time they reached the floor, they’d melted back into tiny droplets of water, beading on the surface, and gone. By the time they reached the floor, Yunho was panting over a dead body he’d lumped against the ship’s side, his cutlass lodged between the scales of a chest plate and buried deep in a royal heart.

Empty, emerald eyes stared back at him. They were identical to Yeosang’s, with the same iridescent quality swirling through the coloured irises, and yet these people had been punishing him all their lives regardless.

Yunho’s blood boiled in his veils. He readjusted his grip around the pommel, testing where it had wedged into the wooden planks behind.

His legs gave out before he had the chance to tug. The solid floor disappeared beneath him, his feet no longer grounded, the edges of his shoes scratching against the wood. One hand dropped from his sword, scrambling along the ridges beside his body, clawing as Yunho tried to stabilise himself. He lied flat on the deck’s floor. Hung flat. Yunho cursed, huffing in exasperation with his face pressed against the ship’s surface. The warmth in his body drained to his toes, unable to get a grip on the ground at such a sideways angle. Not again.

He kept himself huffing, fed up, deep in disbelief and stubborn dismissal, because if he didn’t, his palm would begin to sweat and his shakes unbalance him, and he wasn’t sure how much longer he would be able to cling to the sword, to ignore the dead body slumping over his head, the teal blood trailing down his fingers, slick and cold.

The Wanderlust was on a tilt, again.

Yunho was doing a very, very bad job at ignoring it.

His breathing grew heavier, ricocheting through his chest, and he muttered snarky comments, over and over, frantic. He refused to look down. His hands felt like they were twitching sporadically, but he couldn’t register whether they were twitching or whether his mind had made it so. The ocean roared in his ears, gurgling and crashing like gnashing teeth, ready to consume him the second he fell. And he would fall, eventually.

Liquid was seeping down over his wrists. Getting between his fingers and his slipping into his grip on the blade.

Yunho craned his neck to the left, towards the main deck, failed to find anything but wood and crates and rope and flesh and blue, royal blood dotted with his own crimson, clenched his eyes shut instead. Over and over and over again praying none of the crashes splashing up beneath him were one of his crew, one of his friends.

There was a meeting of metal, the shriek of a collision, the rumbling of another crate dragging down the ship’s surface. Someone grunted, and the sound of it echoed and echoed in Yunho’s head like a backing track to the rest of his thoughts. Thoughts of which were limited, and disconnected, and painfully aware of the crease of his eyes and the ache in the forefront of his head and the agonising sting in his shoulders, twinges in his arm. Leather ridges cut into his fingers, the inside of his knuckles, until he was not sure if the liquid he could feel was coloured more blue or red. Wind rushed into his ears, heartbeat thudding in his feet.

Minutes blurred into a lifetime. His forearm burned, the tight squeeze of his eyes tugging until his temple ached. He forced himself to breathe through it all. To take it in. The scratch of splintered wood against the lines in the skin of his fingertips, tingling gently. The sound of the waves from the outside, splashing up against the Wanderlust, having claimed one of the long sides of freshly repaired railings as its own. His hair curled up, frazzled, by the salty mist. Cold dashes tickled through the thin fabric of his slacks.

An image of Mingi, expression bunched into one of his rare smiles, sparked vivid in his head as his pinkie finger slipped from the handle of the cutlass. Then his ring finger. Soon enough, his middle began to slide, bunching around the curve of the metal guard around his knuckles. The scratch was biting.

A long, rattling scrape grated against Yunho’s ear.

He used the last ounce of his strength to angle his head to the right, through the narrow sliver beneath his numbing arm. He caught the moment Jongho’s weight dragged him down, down towards the water, gasping, grasping one last minute hold on a wedged rope, rough with shredded hair. No, no, no, not again.

A shriek ripped from Jongho’s throat, a sound unlike him in its entirety, and his dangling hand tore at his throat. His turquoise pearl slipped from its leather strip as both fell from his hand, skittered across the deck, and caught the light of the sun once before it disappeared into the deep.

Yunho’s middle finger fell from the pommel. He squeezed his eyes shut.