The Shark Starts A-circling With Nary An Introduction To Be Had. He Must Smell The Metaphorical Blood

The shark starts a-circling with nary an introduction to be had. He must smell the metaphorical blood in the water; her time in the Villa had cut her up and left her bleeding out after all that had happened. The choice was to stay and drown in it all or flee and fight another day—meaning she had no choice. Waiting might’ve only dragged her back into the yawning maw of those terracotta arches. Stowaways aren’t dealt with kindly, but anything was better than the Hell she’d just escaped.

Still. She’d expected a bit of grandstanding. It’s the prerogative of the captain to monologue and gloat, isn’t it?, the same way it’s the quartermaster’s prerogative to administer discipline in whatever way he saw fit.

When the captain apparent finally does deign to speak, it’s…not at all what Anne expected. It’s in English for one, which certainly makes an arse of her for assuming a language barrier. (And to think, she could have called him a bloated whale scrotum this whole time!) For another, it’s quiet. Unsettlingly so. And these two things are only registered after a sentence that stopped her heart.

I knew you would come to me eventually.

Who in their right fucking mind says that to someone they’ve only just met?

He goes on, talks of shitholes and hypothetical anger; though she keeps the mask of her snarl on—her face can be read as easily as map when she leaves it naked—unease drops like an anchor into her belly. There are too many plausible roles he could be filling in this drama: a rival of Jack’s come looking for revenge who never noticed the stupid fuck had left her there to rot, a privateer looking to make English (or perhaps Spanish or French) coin off of her capture, an obsessed stalker, somebody else’s obsessed stalker who’d mistaken her for them, some fucking halfwit James had accused her of selling out back in the day, a psychopath, and on and on and on and on.

It’s the faint brush of his lips (breath?) upon the shell of her ear that drags Anne out of the pit her thoughts had opened. Is it better to be a rat or a bitch? She’s evidently been both, and so far, neither experience has lived up to her standards.

Anne swallows and licks the front of her teeth, bracing herself for what’s to come: on the next breath, she bashes her head back into him, aiming for approximately where he’d been whispering from, but slightly higher. If this strange shark wanted blood so badly, he could have a taste of his own! Her teeth knocked together in the collision, but her expression never shifted in the slightest, wrathful as a harpy. Forget beating, Anne bites at the hand that so much as touches.

This is no fly in the spider’s web: this is a bee. Equally helpless in a spider’s web, perhaps, but not half so useless in a fight, and twice as determined to break free.

“Do I know who the fuck you are,” she scoffs, “do you know who the fuck I AM?! I am Anne FUCKING Bonny,” she’s half-shouting it now, “and I will NOT be FUCKED WITH!”

Christ Almighty, but it felt good to unload that on someone who could understand what she was saying! She’d been seven, eight months ashore locked in her gilded cage if she’d been there a day, and not one of Jack’s fucking so-called friends knew a word in any language but their own. Much like Anne. Figures the first person she’d meet outside the Villa who spoke English would use it to fucking threaten her. Bad luck yet abounds. Had she broken a mirror?

Anne comes down panting and chastens herself, puts her other mask on: inscrutably. A distant, disinterested demeanor. Her voice is much more level, much quieter when she speaks again.

“Hate t’break yer heart, Captain, but I picked this heap based solely on its departure time. I don’t know the first thing about ye.”

@hatigave gave me permission to be a menace

There’s been no shortage of bad luck in Anne’s life over the past almost-year. She’d managed to fall pregnant, be entrusted to the care of strangers interested only in what was in her belly, lose the baby, miss Jack’s last visit to port, and now she’s been found out mid-afternoon the day after she’d stowed aboard another ship. If she didn’t know any better, she might’ve started thinking she was cursed.

She isn’t surprised that the men who’ve found her only speak in Spanish. (She’d stowed aboard in fucking Havana, in the heart of Spanish Cuba: English is less common than wealth in these waters.) What surprised her was how quickly she was found. They had been less than a full day at sea and she in particular had been wedged behind an assortment of crates in the bowels of the hold. If that was a regular check, this is the tightest ship Anne’s ever been aboard, the fucking navy’s included. If that wasn’t a regular check, though, there’s more to fear than well-trained sailors on this ship.

For the time being, the sailors—pirates or merchants to guess by their clothes—have made the halfway fatal error of leaving her alone. Tied to a chair in the locked captain’s quarters, perhaps, but alone. And halfway to making a break for it; as soon as she gets this coil around her thumb and down, she’ll have a free hand and then, oh!, then she’ll be dangerous. Able to get free and get armed, maybe even get into a position from which to surprise them. Anne presses through the screaming pain her body’s in—the birth hadn’t gone well for anyone, truth be told—by imagining the look on the louder one’s face when she gets her hands on him.

Attempts to escape and fantasies of revenge alike shrivel up and die in the sudden light flooding the doorway. Anne sets her face into a snarl and prepares to bark like the mad bitch she is at the best opportunity. Even sweating and pale, even with dark bags beneath her eyes and fever hues in her cheeks, Anne knows how she looks: striking. The one word she’s heard everyone use for her. Striking, with her long auburn hair and unnervingly pale green eyes. Striking, taller even than most men she met and twice as mean. Striking, with her hand balled into a fist and slamming into the first person within arm’s length. And that’s even without her signature hat and long coat, both of which sit in front of her on the desk, alongside her rapier, along with two of her four smaller blades. (Her pistols, alas, had been a casualty of escape from the Villa.)

Stripped of hat and pistol, there’s clearly truth to what Anne’s said since the first day she saw it: the woodcarving accompanying her wanted poster could be any redhead with a hat and pistol. How the artist had avoided any other identifying measure should be a complete mystery—but answers for itself an inch below the face, where an equally generic-looking bosom is presented naked to the viewer.

It was the plausibility of the woman before them being anybody but Anne Bonny that had sent her captors scrambling back to their captain, shouting about a redheaded stowaway armed to the teeth. It was the possibility of her being nobody but Anne Bonny that had lured their captain here. And it was the likelihood that none of them spoke a lick of English that kept Anne Bonny from loudly comparing them to disease-ridden ballsacks.

𝐏𝐎𝐒𝐒𝐄𝐒𝐒𝐈𝐕𝐄 𝐋𝐎𝐕𝐄 𝐀𝐍𝐃 𝐂𝐎𝐌𝐏𝐄𝐓𝐈𝐓𝐈𝐕𝐄 𝐒𝐄𝐍𝐓𝐄𝐍𝐂𝐄 𝐐𝐔𝐎𝐓𝐄𝐒.

All sentences here were taken from different media about possessive love, the thrill of the chase, banter, and competition regarding one's affection. Some have foul language so please beware but most are fun, banter, possessive fun. All of these are made for roleplay purposes. Change names, pronouns, locations as you see fit.

I love you. You’re mine. I’ll kill any bastard who tries to take you from me.

I spend a quarter of every day inside you. 

I have never said this to anyone before.

But the idea of you with child is the most insanely arousing thing I’ve ever imagined.

Your belly all swollen, your breasts heavy, the funny little way you would walk … I would worship you. I would take care of your every need. And everyone would know that I’d made you that way, that you belonged to me.

You want to be free. You also want to be mine. You can't be both.

We can't possess one another.

Just because I can't have you right now, doesn't mean I'm okay with him having you.

I will be good to you, Myst. Please, I promise.

You are mine. And I protect what’s mine.

Of course I won't go alone. I shall take my maid.

No.You will take me.

The purpose of a knight is to protect. Why won’t you let him do his job to me?

I want you all to myself.

I can’t explain to you the joy I feel knowing it’s all mine. That you are all mine, that your body is all mine.

There is something in me that wakes up when I want something, a possession.

God knows he deserved you more than I do. 

Listen well, for you belong to me.

Good grief, you’re such an adorably greedy person.

And when you fall in love with her  just keep in mind that she’s mine. 

 She’s more than you could handle, anyway.

That almost sounds like a challenge.

I don’t need your permission to do anything.

Your hands will touch me and no one else, Meadow. That is final.

You chase off every man that’s ever been interested, and you do it without even trying.

You reject every suitor and yet, you keep entertaining me. I believe you want me too, and you are dying to be touched.

I don't own you, you just belong to me.

You’re my gold, your cunt is my liquid gold. 

I will have your mouth, you will give it to me. Then I will have your spirit, Circe. I will own it. Always.

By the gods you have never been more beautiful than you are right now, spread before me, wrapped in my wool.

Once I take you, you are mine. My woman. No other man can have you.

I do not belong to you, or to anyone else. I will talk to whomever I want, whenever I want.

Not if it’s some ass who thinks he can put his hands on you.

You didn’t have a problem with me acting like a caveman last night.

When it comes to you… I don’t like to share.

Most men prefer to do the eating.

Do you know what passion is?

Most people think it only means desire. Arousal. Wild abandon. But that’s not all. The word derives from the Latin. It means suffering. Submission. Pain and pleasure, Nikki. Passion.

You’re wearing my colors, love.

I’m going to put you on your knees, Ruby. You’re going to hate how much you love it.

He is my king, he is my warrior, he is my husband and I am proud to say above all… he is mine.

You have rare beauty the like I have never seen but you will be more beautiful heavy with my seed.

You are my golden queen. You are my tigress. You are my Circe. 

Never will I allow your gold to be taken from me. Never. Understand this, Circe, and never forget.

Maybe I fell in love with a version of him that didn't exist.

 I would have you right here if you would let me. Fear you? I exalt you. 

You could burn me a thousand times, and I would still want you for my own.

Everything has a price. The price, however, isn't always money.

You’re my scariest hell, You’re my perfect paradise.

Well, I admit my crib is pretty sweet. But a gold cage is still a cage, Harry.

I intend to the last. 

If I win, then you shall be mine. Tonight.

You are so sure of yourself.

The game is simple. The women run, the men chase. If you catch the one with your color. . .well, that’s up to you.

But women have been running all their lives, most men don’t catch that easily.

We are in a maze, lost, and your hand is up my skirt.

Aye, but I don’t hear any complaints. The maze will hide our secret.

Great stones they lay upon his chest until he plead aye or nay. They say he give them but two words. ‘More weight,’ he says. And died… It were a fearsome man, Giles Corey.

- The Crucible, Arthur Miller

For the briefest of moments, it looks like the discomfort’s done with, like she can cajole him into debating the relative merit of making eyes at a few party members like they’re still among the city crowds—and then Tryck opens his mouth again and Anne actually groans out loud. She was going to pick on the wizard or the elf next, but noooo, she’s trapped in a hell of her own creation. Damn her idiot tongue!

She wouldn’t mind Tryck’s teasing if it didn’t feel so…pointed. He gave it out to everyone, sure, but somehow when it turned on her it made her an idiot. It sometimes seemed more intentional than playful, but toward what intention, Anne couldn’t even begin to guess.

“—Fuck’s sake. Ye’re exhausting, ye know that? Ye asked me t’move over, I moved over! What more of an answer are ye looking for?” As if she didn’t know. Although there is reason to doubt that she knew the answer regardless.

Gods almighty—! Anne’s face glows scarlet, the heat coming off of it enough to cool an egg on. Why…why is everything a sexual innuendo in this party?! She’s hardly a prude, but when it’s leveled at her, she doesn’t know what to do with sex talk, any more than she does flirtatious banter without a sword attached. It doesn’t make any damned sense to her why not, but without a weapon in hand and a reason to use it, she can’t find a word to volley back in return.

So Anne scoots over instead, suddenly mute, and hopes in passing that the wriggler in her brain chooses now to sprout tentacles. It’d be awfully convenient if it did bring so swift and end to her humiliation, though, and that’s how she knows the fucker won’t get up to it now.

…damned bard’s going to make it worse if she doesn’t say anything at all, isn’t he?

“Ye can afford t’have better taste than that, y’know. Might be slim pickings out here but even I can do better than a two-but pirate twat.” Insulting herself makes her smirk, puts a weapon back in her hand: her lashing tongue. Even turned against herself she’s glad for the stupid thing.

Fair enough, she could beat Anne with pistols. And her fists. And probably her feet, if Rakatak put her mind to it—Anne wouldn’t begrudge her that. She’s a one-woman arsenal, and that’s all the more reason to learn how to use a cutlass properly, especially on these waters. Privateers were accepted by only the thinnest margin among both pirate and civilian ports alike: the chances of getting caught unawares or even unarmed were high.

Nowhere is safe with so many different flags waving on nearby shores. So one must learn to fight with what’s most common, and what’s most common in these waters are cannons, pistols, cutlasses, daggers, and sometimes rapiers—things of light nature, mostly, designed to move easy with the tides.

And there’s no sense in trying to train cannons when it’s only two of them with no target besides. Anne dodges the blow, but only barely, ducking under and laughing.

“Fucking hell! There ye go!”

Anne throws her weight into Rakatak’s side, looking to unbalance her as she slips past.

“Don’t tell me ye were holding out on purpose there—I thought this were a quick thing, haven’t held back once.” Truth be told, Anne hadn’t sparred ever before. Her training in the martial arts had come by way of secret observation and solo practice; though she was treated better here, the start of her career had been stifled by her peers.

True to the admonishment, Anne is forced to switch hands. She had practiced ambidexterity once, and though she was somewhat out of practice now, she didn’t doubt but she’d relearn it fast.

“Admittedly, I didn’t think ye’d take me serious on the trying t’kill part—glad my death inspires ye so.” But it’s just talk, a poor attempt at Jack’s glib nature. “How about this time, we aim for ‘non-lethally incapacitate’? Sound fair? En’t lookin to die on a friendly’s sword.”

@neverhangd

Oh, well, pardon her for thinking that sparring is about sparring. The tip of her cutlass twitches and jerks downward, as if she's already imagining carving through Anne's flesh, though at the pirate's admonition, Rakatak's only reaction is a barked laugh and an unpleasant smile.

"Big words from a woman who's about to have to switch sword hands with how much you're favouring that wrist! I only need to get lucky once..." Never mind the fact that Anne could have had her a few times while the broad-shouldered privateer didn't have a weapon in her hand. "And I'd have you dead to rights with my actual weapons anyway."

Nevertheless. Anne wants lethal? She can do lethal. In a couple of strides, Rakatak crosses the deck, the gentle roll of the sea aiding a stride intended to be intimidating in its surefootedness. She rears back with the cutlass, same as before... and lunges with a half-step to try and bury her fist in Anne's clavicle.

I absolutely love your Anne. Fierce and sassy, but she's got this amazing vulnerable side that I think really fits especially for a historical portrayal. I love everything I read and I definitely enjoy our interactions and look forward to many more <3

tell me your honest opinion of my portrayal

Thank you for sending this in. It means a lot to me. 💕

Anne has been my obsession for a while now and I’m glad other people see merit to her and to my writing! I worry I overdo her vulnerability and press too hard into the grimdark, especially with regards to her backstory, so it’s reassuring to hear that her vulnerability in particular stands out as a positive! There’s this quote I don’t fully recall, about being the dog that bites out of fear. Even though I still say she’s a street cat, Anne is that dog. It’s important to me that her vulnerability reads, because it tempers the nastiness she can otherwise be/bring.