Forgive Her She Would Not - Tumblr Posts
She’s glad, actually, and maybe even grateful when he doesn’t answer her idiot small talk. He’s a measured man; calm, collected, quiet. The stories never mention that. They mention him killing not just one men but several to join the devil’s crew, among other lurid tales of fires set and navymen cut down, but not his disquieting calm. Amongst the many eccentric pirates sailing these waters, that certainly makes Hands stand out. His approval is exciting, electric—and that makes it worse, somehow.
That makes it worse that he knows she’s with Jack. Like he knows like she does that Jack isn’t worth the spit it takes to say his name, that he’s a fraud taking credit for the work of others, that his are not works of genius but strokes of errant luck buoyed to the finish on the back of his truth-clouding arrogance. Anne stands up the straighter for it, crossing her arms and guarding her expression. She might not like the stupid arse anymore, but that doesn’t mean she’ll throw him to the sharks. He gave her her freedom back, a future, a berth: the least she can give him is a little loyalty in the face of a could-be assassin.
She’s grateful for the physical space Hands reestablishes, the distance she needs to regain her cool and remain cold to a man she’s so admired. “ Something like that, ” Anne agrees, speaking slowly. Jack had been impressed early on, had promised her a chance to run for an office aboard. That was two Articles ago, two chances to be more gone by in an unspoken, one-sides agreement to be “ of better service ” to Jack, to his planning. She isn’t dumb. She knows what’s going on.
But it’s like Jack’s even said before—who else is letting women sail aboard these waters?
“ I en’t a whore—not for cap’n and not for coin. Hope that don’t disappoint. But I en’t quite a sailor neither. ” She probably shouldn’t admit that to him, but…. Anne shrugs and turns her face away, towards the docks again, towards the sea. It’ll be too dark to see the water from this far away soon. “ Crew don’t like having a woman aboard. Waste daylight and energy checking shite I’d already seen to, me on Jack’s orders and them on their own suspicions. ” Anne huffs and looks back down the alley towards Hands. “ Eventually, the Cap’n stopped giving me sailing orders. So. ” Anne begins to count on her fingers, thumb first. “ I’m on his ship. I follow his rules. I earn my keep. But I en’t quite a sailor, no. ” Her hand falls to her side and she shrugs again.
There’s no chance at a career without Jack—not only has he said as much, but attempts to bond with his crew, as well as in taverns in ports, have driven the point home quite handily—but no chance at one with him, either. Anne’s lips twitch up into a sardonic smile despite her attempts to suppress it. It’s darkly humorous, in its way, and sharing her status as a non-sailor-entity has made her feel a bit bolder in sharing the truth.
“ I had a promising future as a lawyer ahead of me, once, ” she says, uncharacteristically candid about it. She laughs a little at the punchline before she even delivers it, angered and defeated by the truth of it all at once: “ And now I can’t even find work where I could steal it! ”
Fucking sad. Pathetic. A waste of potential only capable of blaming herself and fucking up in new and interesting ways. Anne laughs a little more, but it’s a humorless sound. It dies away and they exist for a moment or two in a reflective silence before Anne breaks back in.
“ You’re still with him, en’t ye? They he’s worse than the Devil hisself, twice as black and six times as cruel. And you’re a mate of Lucifer’s, not just his, and yer head can go all the way ‘round. ” Reverence and skepticism creep one behind the other through her tone as Anne watches the devil in the darkening alley, his glowing red tip brighter than the light of the now-absent sun. “ Is that right? ”
It’s hard to find a good place to be left the fuck alone in the Republic of Pirates. Luckily, Anne’s managed just that, squeezing into the small alley and following its blind turns until she’s come back out onto the tiny public outlook just at the hill above the docks. She’s joined a few minutes in by a man who knows well enough to mind his own fucking business and they stand in the amiable silence of two people ignoring each other as flashes of sunlight dazzle the water below. Before she can lean over and really let herself go enough to start figuring things out, though, four new strangers turn up. Four new strangers who don’t know well enough to mind their own fucking business, dumb enough to go sticking their noses where they aren’t welcome—sniffing for crumbs around the “captain’s strumpet” with ugly laughs and lingering leers.
“ Fuck off, ” Anne warns them once, hoarse. One makes a crude joke about fucking but not off. He’s on the ground before the others even have a chance to get a proper laugh in, clutching his gut from the unexpected blow.
If Anne killed every man she fought in this damned port, it’d be half corpses before noon. She fights like the hellcat she is, but never once do her hands touch the sword or the knife on her belt, except to keep other hands off them. She doesn’t grab the knife in her boot, nor the one hidden away in her trousers; she fights with surprising honor in that way. In the ways in which she utilizes literal tooth and nail, actual blows below the belt, feinting and thrusting and letting the broad little idiots use their own momentum against themselves, however, she certainly fights dirty. The one she got in the gut staggers back up just as she fells another with a hard knee to the groin, though he finds himself dazed and in his back almost as quickly as she can grab him.
That’s when the first stranger who arrived decided to step in. Anne hadn’t thought twice about him, wouldn’t have blamed him at all for staying all the way out, for watching, for leaving, whatever he did—this is one of the roughest ports on some of the toughest waters in the world, no one stuck their neck out for anyone else without the certainty of a payoff for it—but here he was.
The man in the ground, clutching his jewels, doesn’t stop sobbing when the first stranger whistles, but otherwise, all eyes find a way to his face. The stranger repeats a familiar phrase—a refrain echoed everywhere in the Republic—but this time, the braggarts listen. The standing two help their fallen companion, one under each arm; their thrown companion gets to his feet on his own, clearly still winded. He glares, and she spits, straight into his eye. She watches their retreating backs as they limp away in shame, only bending to fetch her hat (snatched off in the scuffle) when they began to take the first turn.
This is going to be a problem.
On the one hand, she’s glad to be spared the rest of the fight, having come all the way here for some peace and goddamned quiet to begin with. On the other…not finishing the fight means there’ll be a story now of Rackham’s whore needing someone else to save her. Something that will no doubt spawn a repeat incident in the near future. Anne sighs and brushes the hat off, donning it again without flourish.
“ I appreciate the sentiment, ” she quips, eyeing the man as she does so, “ but I had that under control. ”
Strong nose and jaw. Salt and pepper hair and beard. A short bastard, but no less imposing for it, with dark, piercing eyes and two tattoos Anne knows immediately: the x and the swallow. Eyes so pale a green they seemed almost colorless narrowed to sharp shards of sea glass. She knew of someone, didn’t she?, fitting this description. The details are hazy, but—yes, yes, she knows this man. Shit. The knowledge of that crashes over her like a wave and leaves her struck dumb, almost staggering back with the force of it: Israel Hands. Second to none other than than the devil himself, Blackbeard. Legends she has long stood in awe of, even to the point of chasing sad shadows of their presence—Anne is breathless, and a little star struck, and fighting her every impulse so it won’t show.
Shit. Leave it to her and her thorny, idiot tongue to lash out at the wrong person. Anne winces and belatedly adds, “ …sir. ” But it sounds sour and forced even to her ears. Christ alive. Anne slams her eyes shut in frustration and tries again, although gratitude sounds clunky on her tongue.
“ That is to say—thank you, Mr. Hands, sir. ” And? Surely there’s more to say in this moment than just that, but nothing comes to mind that it isn’t completely idiotic, and Anne refuses to look any more the idiot than she already must. If only she could have stopped her idiot tongue in time. “ I didn’t realize ye were in port. ”
Small talk. Dear God. May the earth open its mouth and swallow her whole before she has to face the consequences of trying to make small talk with Israel Hands.