Theres Something Hard And Mean And Flinty About Marys Baby Blues Now. It Immediately Sets Anne Further

There’s something hard and mean and flinty about Mary’s baby blues now. It immediately sets Anne further on edge. There’s a sharpness about Mary not unlike a knife, her point and her business end being one and the same and very much focused on Anne right now. That can’t be good.

“Anne.” It’s candid as well as truthful; not like she’s got a fucking alias, anyway. Even if she did, she’s confident in that moment she wouldn’t have given it regardless. Something about this sudden sharpness in Mary stabs at Anne in a way that makes her want to look danger in the eye and dare it to flinch first.

She won’t have to wait long—another fact of the night Anne doesn’t know (yet).

“None taken. Though I’d appreciate a more naked threat goin’ forward. The veiled ones’re often too easy t’miss,” Anne says with a shrug, suddenly dropping the act of drunkenness. That’s not what emboldened Mary, so it’s not serving her any longer. “What’re you called?”

Anne huffs out a laugh at the response she gets; whatever she was expecting to hear, it wasn’t a joke about microplastics and oil spills. Her hand slips down the bottle a little as she does, exposing the line of liquor for a moment. If it’s gone down at all since Mary found her seat, it’s not been by much.

Anne knows she needs to press on in the conversation. She’s only got tonight to prove herself, and she’ll never hear the end of how disappointing and incompetent she is if she spends the whole evening talking and gets nowhere. But there’s something in way the other feck shites fucked off that’s got Anne almost too on-edge to keep going.

So she clicks her tongue and recovers her grip on the bottle before rolling her head Mary’s way. “Bollocks. Mean fuckers tend t’look like mean fuckers. I mean…..” Anne gestures around the room, the cacophony of villainy surrounding them without her actually knowing it, then looks back to Mary. “Who outta these gobshites had done more’n just bully a cop? They don’t got it in them!”

Anne can’t keep eye contact when he goes off and…compliments her? (That’s a compliment, right? When someone says nice shit about you?) She doesn’t feel worthy of it, his protestations aside. But she won’t argue with someone who has something nice to say about her for a change, even if they’re wrong. And she’s sure he’s wrong.

Hearing that Gale—somehow so…morally vanilla as to boggle the mind—had been part of a gambling ring, even a small one, is surprising. Anne doesn’t hide her surprise, nor her interest. She hadn’t gone to any official academy, schooled at home and in the law firm offices, but that hasn’t stopped her from running a racket or two in her own youth. Nothing as enterprising as a homework pool, of course: most of it was petty swindling and a little hustling, usually for pocket change she didn’t need. Usually honestly just for the thrill of it.

But there’s no time to inquire further into the homework pool because he’s doing more disarming shit. After her confession of boiled potatoes and coffee as the only staples she knows how to cook she’d been removed by the others from the cooking duty roster, meaning she was ready to be waved away when it came time for Gale to go cook. She’s hardly “good company,” even with her hackles down, but Gale is smiling and offering her a chore. She’s felt so fucking useless about camp, offering to mend things, wash them, prep them, anything to prove she can earn her keep outside of a fight—but up until now, she’d been turned away. Not because help wasn’t needed but because they remained wary of one another. Despite the standouts in trust like Gale, the rule of the party was still one of distrust and deceit.

Was a lucky game of chess all it really took to be seen as…well. If not trustworthy, then at least useful?

It’s a good damn thing Gale is only asking for a hand and not offering her one up. She would have actually accepted the gesture in the fog of her confusion, and then where would her pride and independence be? (Unscathed except in her opinion, probably.)

“…aye,” Anne says faintly, still stunned. Realizing she sounds like an idiot, she quickly clears her throat and tries again, assertive and louder for it. “Aye, sir.” She cringes when the title slips out, born from years of obedience at sea. She’ll be paying for that one later, even if only in the ways she’ll beat herself up for it. A stupid misstep like that could cost her what little reputation she has among these people.

Hoping to distract from the moment, Anne hauls herself to her feet. “Best not t’leave me alone at the pot, though. John used t’say if there’s a way t’burn water, I’d be the one t’figure it out.” He definitely hadn’t meant it as a joke, despite his laughter.

“What’s on the menu?”

It isn’t until Gale goes a bit pink in the cheeks that Anne realizes she’s won. The gambit taught by her father—the only gambit she knows in chess, truth be told—is a seemingly dirty trick. The only person Anne knew who could stop it was the same one who’d taught it to her, after all; she hadn’t realized she was playing it, unconscious as it was, until she’d accidentally accused the wizard of bottoming for her.

Well. There are worse idiot comments to make. The ghost of a smile haunts Anne’s lips when she’s called clever. She isn’t often accused of it, though she certainly thinks it’s true.

“Pa played, when Ma was still ‘round. He tried t’teach us both at the same time, but neither of us really had the head for it. I only ever learnt the one strategy; more luck than anything else in that win, I’m ‘fraid.” After all, if Gale had played more aggressively and set her on the back foot, it would’ve been all over. “Prefer card games myself. Easier to learn, I think, and definitely easier t’teach.”

❛ you can kiss me, you know. ❜ - @tryckthebard

&. 𝐬𝐮𝐛𝐭𝐥𝐞 𝐬𝐦𝐮𝐭 𝐬𝐞𝐧𝐭𝐞𝐧𝐜𝐞 𝐬𝐭𝐚𝐫𝐭𝐞𝐫𝐬.

“Can I, now?” Rather than looking up from her book—a Laerakondan favorite she hadn’t expected to find so far from home, the fairytale adventure of a dread pirate and the woman he loves—Anne turns the next page. Did she read the last of what Wesley was saying about the stupid oversized rats? No. No she didn’t, having flown into a full panic she’s very keen on keeping disguised. She can only hope he won’t see the way the book trembles in her hands.

Is this…a joke? A prank? The result of a lost bet? It’s so hard to say. Anne’s been with the party long enough to have gotten comfortable with them (clearly: here she sits reading as if that hadn’t still been a hidden guilty pleasure only a few short weeks ago!), but certainly no one’s indicated an interest in her. Or her in them, in fairness. Is he just teasing her?

The silence hits critical mass between them and Anne knows her chance to respond is now or never. After another short second of deliberation, she decides on the obvious best course: make it his problem again.

“Why am I the one doin’ the kissing, hey? I en’t the one sitting about bored.”

Gods help her: for all her nerves and grit, Anne Bonny is not a woman gifted in romance. Truly she is a fighter, not a lover, and with the scars to prove it. She’s been left scarred—literally—by love and romance, and, though her pride would never let her say as much, she’s scared shitless of it all now.

Sex is one thing, love is another, and kissing certainly lends itself to the latter over the former.

“You can kiss me, y’know, if yer taste is shite enough t’stomach it.” She’s a bit proud at the way that puts it back on him, the sudden expectation of action.

Me: I don’t instaship, sorry!

Also Me: shIPS PLEASE I WILL GNAW MY RIGHT ARM OFF FOR ONE

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Anne grunts and leaves the mooring, about to head for the helm when Elizabeth shoots ice directly into her veins using just two words: Port Royale. Wouldn’t that just fucking figure? The cellmate turned partner in crime, helping her pull a legger, isn’t just English but fucking English. And an idiot to boot. Who in the acquaintance of Jack would ever willingly sail to Port Royale, of all places? Anne resumes her walk—it’s a limo, really—back to the helm, setting them on a course that wouldn’t lead straight to the gallows. Port Royale can catch the fucking plague for all she cares; their heading is New Providence. She says none of this, guiding them out to sea without a fuss. It’s more important they leave this place, anyway, than that they agree on where they make landfall.

Anne relaxes into her duties long before Elizabeth does; it’s well evident that they aren’t being chased, or canon fire would have marked their departure. When they’re out of canon shot Anne breathes easier. Well. Except for where she’s been run through on one side. The wind is strong and in their favor; it won’t be more than a day or two on the water before they reach Anne’s destination, by her own reckoning. Chances are good they’ll meet another crew with her same heading before the coast is even in sight—but whether that’s a good thing or a bad one can only be determined when it happens.

Anne waits until Elizabeth’s done fussing to say her piece, ignoring everything the other woman’s had to say since “Port Royale.” Since they’re taking care of the dire needs first, this comes before wound care.

“We’re headed for New Providence,” Anne announces, deadpan. Had Elizabeth suggested any other port it would have been hers—but the port named is one of only two Anne’s sworn to never dock in again. “I don’t know what kind of pirate ye are, are ye think ye are, but I en’t fuckin’ consigning myself t’death for ye. ‘Will’ can fucking well wait: it’s only a bit further from Providence t’the gallows, I’m sure he’ll survive.”

Who or whatever Will is, he isn’t worth dying for—not for Anne, at least. Port Royale is the bloodiest port in these waters, with its rotten, godforsaken docks soaked through with the blood of pirates hanged there; New Providence, on the other hand, is the capital port of that most dangerous of new ventures, the Republic of Pirates. Anne’s wanted poster hangs in both cities, one in pride and one in infamy. Notorious pirates tend to fare better in one of these ports than in the other, though smuggling ships, privateers, and even some fledgling company sail from one to the other still.

“I can find a ship’s doctor in port and you can find passage to hell for yerself.” On Anne’s tongue, it’s less insult and more barefaced truth, setting aside her vanity and letting Elizabeth see the exhaustion naked on her face. She’d been in that jail for weeks before Elizabeth arrived and made escape possible. She simply won’t give up her freedom again so soon.

“We can fight about it, but let’s call a spade a spade, aye? I paid attention when I were sailed into that port, a’cause I knew it’d be on me t’figure out where in the fuck I’d been landed. I figured it out the next morning, in that jail cell, and been plottin’ a route back out t’open sea ever since. Gotta get there ‘fore ye can get t’either of those ports, and I’m willing t’bet you came up the other way—from the opposite coast. Meanin’ ye don’t know which way’s t’sea and which way’s gonna trap ye in the bay here. Means I gotta be the one navigatin’ either way, so it can be agreed that we’re for Providence or ye can feel deceived when we get there. Choice is yers.”

There’s not a single black flag flying in the port, but that’s hardly a surprise. No one shows their true colors in a port like this, swarming with English parasites as it is. Anne follows quick at Elizabeth’s heels, keeping as much in shadow as possible out of pure survival instinct—but when Elizabeth quiet search turns to frantic cursing, Anne knows they’re shit of luck.

The fucker! Even when half-expecting it, the betrayal stings, settling like salt into her half-opened wound. She stumbles around behind Elizabeth, acutely aware that every second spent not gaining distance from the shore is a second closer to certain doom.

Anne thinks of cutting and running, giving the boot to the blonde’s arse and hiding out in a tavern, when Elizabeth insists on the boat at the end of the docks.

It’s fucking perfect. Small, agile, easy to man with a two-woman crew—while Elizabeth doubts its chances at sea, all Anne sees is a quick escape and some easy money. She hauls herself up and onto the ship with no small effort, immediately turning to loose the ship from its moorings.

“Do ye know how t’navigate, or can ye tie a knot?” Anne’s tone implies that it’s going to be one or the other for Elizabeth, whether she actually knows how or not; when they’re further from shore, they can lament the worthlessness of their dinghy and set a course for friendlier waters—perhaps in the direction of New Providence.