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There are different kinds of hells, Thomas has discovered.
Bethlem was the most like what he imagined Hell to be, save that it was cold and icy where Pandemonium was built upon rivers of fire. Rattling chains, the plaintive screams of suffering souls, the random cruelty – it was like the stories he had heard in Church, as a boy, of the place he would go if he turned away from God.
The plantation had seemed outright heavenly by comparison, but after the first few weeks of sunlight and fresh air, the realization had come that it was yet another prison. However light the work, however merciful the overseers, guards stood by with weapons, walls surrounded them, as he toiled for the benefit of an empire that would eradicate him.
The other prisoners had been in similar positions to him – dissidents, politicians, men whose existence threatened to change England - and he soon found himself a sort of leader, encouraging rebellion, planning escape. He helped half-a-dozen men flee the plantation before Oglethorpe decided he’d had enough.
So he found himself now in Charlestown, the least of his three hells. His life here had many of the comforts he was used to in London. His own private room, books to hone his mind, and oh decadence of decadences, servants to stoke the fire. And yet for all the fires and the sunlight in this southern town, his bed remains as cold as empty as his soul. There are no men of letters here, no whetstone for his keen mind. No happiness, no music, no love.
Yet had there been salons of enlightened men, who would listen to him, a poor outcast with no name or status, inexplicably under the governor’s protection? He has pens and ink, yet if he dared to publish incendiary pamphlets, his style and arguments would give him away immediately, and Peter Ashe would take measures.
So he lives, or rather, he draws breath – for whether it could be called life is questionable, existing on their terms, pretending not to be what he was, erasing every trace of his self and his being.
He takes comfort in the knowledge that James would have wanted him to live. If only James had left some grand vision that he could coax into being and fight for, some way to honor the memory of his love. But alas, the grand vision had been Thomas’, and James had died for it. Cast out, he had sailed for Nassau, had tried to realize Thomas’ dream – and had been murdered by the notorious Captain Flint for it. Thomas’ mad, dangerous dream had killed James as surely as if Thomas himself had plunged a knife into his heart.
With his death, James had sealed Thomas’ fate: to live. To survive in spite of every attempt to eradicate him, to brand him profane and erase him from existence. And so he honors what he knows would have been James’ dying wish, however high the cost.
Occasionally, on his madder nights, when he cannot sleep in the stifling hot air, or when dreams of the freezing cells of Bethlem wake him, he considers finding a way to Nassau, seeking out Captain Flint, and driving a knife into the heart of the man who had killed James. But he would surely die in the attempt, and he cannot bring himself to betray James so.
These thoughts plague his weary days and long nights, each identical to the last.
…..
“What’s all the commotion?” he asks Peter. He can hear the tumult in the town square all the way from the governor’s mansion.
“Oh, Captain Vane is here,” Peter says, looking supremely satisfied. “He will be tried tomorrow, then hanged, as he deserves.”
“Vane?” He’s heard the name. Another pirate, nearly as feared as Captain Flint.
“Yes. A pirate second only to Captain Flint in the fear he inspires, on trial here. It shall be known that it was I who brought him to justice.”
Thomas is unsurprised by the ambition of the man. He has felt its consequences for nigh too long. And this time, he finds himself in agreement with him.
“I was hoping,” Peter suggests, “that you might accompany Abigail. The trial will be public, and I do not want her here. Who knows what lengths the crowd may go to, with this kind of spectacle?”
“Why not make the trial private?”
“You jest. The people would tear the walls down, trying to watch. They want a spectacle. Well, I will give them one – but I will not endanger my daughter.”
………..
“This is wrong,” Abigail says, trying to catch a glimpse of the town square from the windows of the carriage that whisks them away. “To betray Captain Flint like that, and try him – “
“Flint?” He must have misheard, or hallucinated the word. Flint, here? His entire fragile world capsizes. “I was told it was Charles Vane – “
“It is Flint. He saved me, brought me back to my father, asked for no ransom in return, even – “
“It cannot be,” Thomas says helplessly. He can hardly grasp the notion. What were the chances? Was it chance, or had Fate finally smiled upon him, offering him his dream of vengeance on a silver platter? “Flint cannot be your savior. He is reputed to be a bloodthirsty monster.”
“He is but a man,” Abigail replies. “He even told me his name. Captain Flint is but a mask, but the man behind him is James McGraw.”
The words twist a cruel knife in his heart.
“Don’t,” he begs. “Say no more. Captain Flint cannot be James McGraw, for he killed him in cold blood. Now it seems he has taken his name, just as he took his life.” Was there no end to Flint’s cruelty? And he had wished to pardon these creatures.
“Stop the carriage!” he orders.
He wants to see it – to see Flint condemned, and look into his eyes, and know if there is any remorse there, as he faces death for his deeds. He wants to know if he feels fear, in this moment before death, the fear that any man feels, the fear that James must have felt as he was killed by a ruthless monster.
They have not made it far – not even to the outskirts of town – and the walk back is not long. “Drive on,” he orders the driver, for Abigail has no part in this. The driver, a man loyal to Peter, protests until Abigail gives the order. They depart.
Though he does not know this part of town, it is easy to make his way to the town square. He merely follows the commotion, the hoots and jeers and clamor of conversation.
He sees the crowd from a distance. Though the trial is not until tomorrow, they appear excited, expectant. “What’s going on?” he asks a man making his way to the square.
“Flint’s about to be whipped,” the man says excitedly. “Word is, he’s shown himself to be quite intractable so far, so the governor has decided he needs to be put in his place.”
Whipped.
He wants to watch. God help him, he wants to watch. He wants to see Flint hang, but above all, he wants to see him suffer.
Thomas should despise the idea. He wanted to pardon the pirates, had lived by principles and ideals, but he is not the same man. Bethlem had turned those ideals to ash along with James’ letters, burned before his eyes. This man had killed James, and Thomas cannot pardon it.
He makes his way through the crowd, using elbows than necessary. Taller than most, the crowd parts easily for him. He sees that a dais has been hastily erected, meant to be used for the upcoming trial but which now serves to hold this pathetic creature for all to see.
He looks up at Captain Flint, unrepentant, oblivious to the jeers of the crowd. He is displayed before them all, at the mercy of their stares and their jests. His skin crawls at the sight; his time in Bedlam had taught him what it meant to be imprisoned inside a cabinet of curiosities for the idle.
He has no pity for the man.
Flint is dressed much as Thomas thought a pirate would be – clothes dark as the bitter heart they hide, his hands encrusted with jewels he had likely won from spilling blood. And yet for all his finery, he is chained like an animal. What he sees, he thinks, is a man no longer, but a monster beyond all redemption.
He sees James.
The ground shifts under his feet, or at least, that’s what he thinks happens, but he realizes after a moment that it’s himself, swaying in shock.
James is here.
James is alive.
The joy of that revelation barely has time to course through him before other realizations come: that Peter had lied. That Peter had known. That James, his James, would be condemned to a second death in less than a day, and Thomas helpless to stop it.
The next moment, four men come onto the dais, followed by Colonel Rhett; two of them drag James upright while the others watch warily, as if waiting for a predator to strike. Thomas feels a moment of sheer panic – surely they’re not taking him to be hanged, there hasn’t been a trial, surely Peter wouldn’t let him be hanged without a trial? The man is a walking advertisement, he’d want as much publicity as possible about the whole affair. Then he remembers Peter’s intention to have Flint- James - whipped.
His fists clench, and he wants to run up onto that stage and forcefully separate James from the men who dare lay a hand on him, but the lone, quiet voice of reason in the back of his head reminds him that it would do more harm than good. It would not do to make a spectacle of himself; if he has any chance of freeing James from this affair, he has to – God, he has to bide his time while this atrocity happens.
He pushes forward, to the front of the crowd, so that he faces James. Has a front-row view, one craved by everyone in this crowd, but for entirely different reasons.
James’ face remains impassive as the two men haul him to his feet. Then, once they undo his manacles, he launches into action, his movements so fast that one of the men is on the ground faster than Thomas can blink. James dispenses with the second just as easily, and he’s about to down the third when he’s overwhelmed by the sheer force of numbers. He fights with the same ferocity with which Thomas remembers being loved by him – the ferocity of a man who does not know how to do anything by halves.
They haul him up and tie him, arms spread, then tear the shirt down his back and rip it off him. Thomas cannot hold back a gasp at the scars he sees there.
The men are too afraid to properly undress him, Thomas realizes, lest he try to escape again. He feels the slightest bit of sick joy at their fear.
Make them afraid, James, he thinks. Make them wish they could hide behind their mothers’ skirts.
“This fearsome pirate, who would be the terror of our lives, was once a Navy man,” Rhett calls out. “A respected lieutenant, before he became this monster. Shall we give him a Navy punishment, then?”
The crowd cheers madly and Thomas’ eyes fall on the whip. It is a cat-o-nine-tails. James had told him about it – its use by captains to punish any transgression, its agony as it tears the skin from a man’s back. His time in Bethlem had long ago taught him not to be surprised by the cruelty of men, but the cruel bitter irony of it pierces him to the very core. This had been Peter’s idea; no one else here knew James’ past.
James looks scathingly at him.
“Everyone is a monster to someone,” he says, his voice seething with disgust. “If you are so convinced I am yours, I will be it.”
A jolt goes through Thomas at James’ words. Civilization needs its monsters, he remembers. He feels suddenly ill.
The whip slices through the air with a vicious hissing sound, a failed attempt to install fear in the one who had dared speak. Around him, several onlookers gasp and draw back, flinching as if it were coming for them.
James doesn’t move a muscle. He stares into the crowd, daring them to take joy in this.
Thomas, on the other hand, flinches instinctively. The sound is familiar, evoking memories of cold dark cells and doctors who differentiated little between cures and cruelty. He stands at the very front, where the sounds fall sharply on his ears, where James’ gaze cannot help but fall on him – and it does. James stares, shakes his head, closes and opens his eyes several times in obvious disbelief.
He thinks me dead, Thomas realizes. They had told him James was dead; why not the other way around as well?
Thomas stands still, waits several seconds to allow James to accept what his eyes are seeing, then raises his right hand. The sun shines down today, and Thomas angles his wrist until the sunlight catches on the ring he wears – has worn since Peter had returned it to him in an act of cruelty masquerading as kindness. James had given it to him before first leaving for Nassau, his only family heirloom, and the day he received the news of James’ death, he had carved the words “on this day, he was lost” on the inside. The words had burned him every day as he wore it, reminding him that he lived and James had died, for him, for his fantastic vision.
But now the ring becomes a pledge. James is too far away for him to hear words, not with the din of the crowd – they are like jackals [awaiting prey], like the crowd of onlookers James had taken him to see during their first meeting. He knows James sees it, and he brings it to his lips, kisses it, then places his hand on his heart.
He knows James understands.
The whip cracks a second time, and this time the blow falls on James’ back. He makes no sound, only a slight twitch of his features revealing that he had felt the pain of it. Thomas forces himself to remain still, unflinching; it would be an injustice to James to cower when James himself remains still and silent as the blows fall. In fact, a smile fills James’ face, and though each blow tightens the muscles in his face as he struggles to keep his sounds of pain inside, it remains there.
He looks mesmerized, eyes gazing into Thomas’ like a man clinging to life.
He doesn’t think I’m real, Thomas realizes. He thinks he’s hallucinating me.
Well, if James believes Thomas is an angelic vision (ah, the irony of it, for anything kind or pure about him he lost long ago), come to give him strength, a saint come to smile down upon his martyrdom, then that is what Thomas will be. He stands with his hand still on his heart, a smile upon his face, his eyes on James’, though with each sharp crack and hiss of the damned implement, memories rush back into his mind. It becomes harder and harder to stand still as the blows continue to fall. The urge to run, to hide, to cower is overwhelming.
James had always been the stronger of the two of them, able to bear what no other man could. He does not break now, not the way Thomas eventually broke and begged as the blows fell ceaselessly. But he will be strong now, for that is what James needs to survive this. An angelic vision would smile, unaffected by earthly things, and Thomas digs deep down, to that precious space inside him where he keeps his love for James, close and precious and safe. He lets it course through him, stronger than the nightmarish visions that fill his eyes, for there is a waking nightmare before him that James is living.
I’m here, James. I’m here with you, he thinks.
The blows continue to fall, and he becomes unable to keep his sounds of pain silent, the whip forcing grunts and roars from him. He feels every sound to his core, and it becomes harder and harder to remain still. The whip drips with blood, the man wielding it forced to comb it through between each blow as James’ blood sticks the tails together. A puddle of it has formed at his feet.
Gods, will this never end? James’ next sound is a stifled roar that nearly undoes Thomas, but what destroys him more is the smile still on James’ features amidst the pain that lines them.
“Enough!” Peter’s voice rings out. Thomas had been so lost in James’ eyes that he had not seen the man appear. “He needs to be alive for the trial,” he comments, and the crowd shouts and jeers.
They release James. Thomas expect him to fall, as do the men who rush to support him, but he remains upright through sheer willpower. They force him into manacles again, shoving him to the ground where he crumples, wincing as he leans sideways against a post.
Peter leaves, but the crowd does not; they remain to see whether the beating has had its intended effect.
Thomas looks around desperately. There is a well in the square, for which he makes a beeline.
“Sure is hot today, ain’t it?” a bystander comments as he watches Thomas crank the wheel and draw the bucket up. “Don’t relish being him,” he adds, nodding to James, chained in the sun.
It is all Thomas can do to nod without responding.
He mounts the steps, bucket in hand, and hears the sudden hush. The gazes of the crowd crawl across his skin like so many spiders, and he wants to claw at it until he has removed each and every one. Every fiber of his being revolts, telling him to flee until he reaches somewhere dark, to hide where no human sight can reach.
But James needs him, so he forces himself to take step after step onto that wide, empty dais, unsheltered on any side. James is limp and exhausted where he leans, and yet their fear is palpable. Do they think that James will claw his face off like a chained tiger if he approaches? They must think him naïve, unknowing of the ways of the world, one of those idealists who feels pity for even monsters because he does not know better.
He has not been that person in a long time, but if that is what the crowd need think in order to allow him to pass, he will be it.
James looks up when he hears steps, and his eyes widen at the sight of Thomas. Thomas kneels beside him, scooping the water with a cup and bringing it to James’ lips. James drinks desperately, rivulets of water running down his neck and chest. This is not the time or place to think of such things, but the glistening trails they leave remind Thomas of happier times, when they had been locked together, chest to chest. He wants to kiss James now, but he is quite sure the crowd would eat him alive if he does. Like this, granting a mercy to a monster, he is a curiosity; the appearance of allowing him redemption is another thing entirely.
“Thomas,” James whispers hoarsely when he has drunk his fill.
“I’m here, love,” he murmurs.
He empties the remaining water into his palm and wipes the sweat and the blood from James’ face, taking care not to caress it too obviously.
“You’ve been so brave, James,” he soothes. “I’m so proud of you.”
Though it is hard to tell, he is quite sure those are tears in James’ eyes. His smile is equal parts blissful and pained.
“I miss you,” James whispers desperately.
“You won’t have to miss me for much longer, love,” Thomas reassures him. With that, he begins to rise, but James’ plea stills him.
“Don’t leave me. Please don’t go,” James begs.
“Hold on for a little longer, love,” he urges softly. “Be brave for me, and then we’ll never be parted again. I promise.”
This time, James’ smile is pure bliss as his eyes fall closed.
“Thank you,” he whispers.
The steps he takes off that stage are even harder than the ones he had to take onto it. The eyes of the crowd are upon him still, staring, staring at him as if his mercy made him a curiosity for display. He shivers despite the heat and makes his way through the crowd without glancing back, for he thinks that if he did, he would implode, caught between the desire to flee the merciless gazes around him and reluctance to leave James to suffer him alone.
Once he has left the jabbering crowd behind, however, righteous fury, visceral and pure and tangible to his very fingertips, fills him.
He feels the urge to kill.
He remembers the principles he had held once, the ones that told him that human life was sacred and murder profane, that redemption was possible. He had considered himself a civilized man.
Those notions had died along with James McGraw, and yet now that James lives, they prove reluctant to show themselves in the light of day.
Now that he knows James lives, he wants only to spill blood as they had spilled James’.
It is relatively easy to arm himself with a dagger. Peter has a collection of weapons, and no one expects Thomas to attempt to acquire one. Hiding it within the folds of his clothes, he bursts into Peter’s office, unannounced.
“How dare you?” he demands, before Peter has the chance to utter a word. “How could you?” He seethes with boiling fury. He wants to strangle Peter, and only the memory of James, smiling blissfully as Thomas swore to save him, prevents him from following through. “Betraying me to save yourself, that at least I can comprehend. But you lied. You knew he was here, and you sent me away. You let me believe he was dead. How could you do that to me, to James?”
“He is dead,” Peter insists. “He died the day he became Captain Flint. You still call him James? He is no longer James. He is no longer a man. He is a monster.”
“You know that is not true! You, who worked alongside me to pardon the pirates of Nassau, who was willing to give them a second chance. Is there nothing of that man left in you? Have you always been this cowardly, and I merely too blind to see?”
“An hour ago, you would have been glad to see Captain Flint whipped and hanged! You would have taken joy in it, but now that you know that he is your James” – Peter says the words with distaste – “you would pardon anything. Now that he is your James, and it is convenient, you return to your high-minded principles, as if you had not thrown them aside. He could murder his best friend, commit genocide, stain the seas with blood, and still he would be your James. Do you truly not see your own hypocrisy?”
“Do not try to take the moral high ground with me, Peter,” Thomas says quietly. “You lied to me and sent me away, because you knew that the truth would turn me against you.”
“Not because the truth is against me, but because you are too selfish to see beyond your love for a monster! How many men others have lost their lives to Flint, their loves, their fathers, their brothers, just as you thought you had lost James McGraw? But you do not care, as long as you have your James, because you are selfish!”
Their argument is interrupted by cannonfire. Thomas does not react at first; his passions poured so completely into the confrontation with Peter, the boom of it seems like a natural sound. But Peter seems aghast – going to the window and peering out carefully, as if making himself too visible through the panes of glass was dangerous.
Colonel Rhett bursts into the office, breathless.
“Governor - Charles Vane - He’s here, firing on us.”
Vane, actually here this time? And James, chained up in the square, helpless in the midst of the assault….
“And why aren’t we firing back?” Peter demands.
“He’s taken the fort, sir, and turned our own guns on us. It is likely he’s here to rescue Captain Flint.”
Peter’s lip curls in distaste.
“And I had thought the whole lot of them too rotten to the core to care what happens to each other,” he says. “Take five men with you and secure Flint.”
“No,” Thomas says. His voice rings out, cold and clear. Peter stares at him open-mouthed, and Rhett’s gaze flickers between him and Thomas, questioning.
This – this is his element. His moment. Words and cunning and cleverness that shape the world as he needs it to be shaped.
“Our own guns are firing on us. Our ability to secure Captain Flint is irrelevant if there is nothing left standing of the town, or nothing to defend ourselves with. We must use every man we can spare to reclaim the fort, or our ability to secure Captain Flint will be meaningless.”
Rhett looks between Peter and Thomas, confused. Peter is the governor, after all – but Thomas has the right of the situation.
He knows it – knows that his reasoning is sound, knows that Peter cannot countermand his order without losing face.
“Sir?” Rhett asks.
“Do as he says. Reclaim that fort, or we are all dead.”
Rhett nods and hurries out, leaving the two of them.
The glass in the windows rattles, and he hears screams as cannonballs rain upon the town. James is down there somewhere, in harm’s way, but if the colonel had spoken rightly, Vane had come to rescue Flint. Surely he had a plan for not killing him?
Did he dare put all his faith and hope in a pirate captain he had never met?
“Free him,” Thomas orders.
Peter attempts to muster a scathing look, but doesn’t quite manage it while trembling like a leaf. Thomas, however, feels preternaturally calm. The path forward seems clear, free of the debris of inhibitions and principles that had held him back for so long.
“I cannot,” Peter insists.
Thomas sighs and pulls out the dagger. Peter, the cowardly leech that he is, attempts to back away.
“Free him,” Thomas repeats.
“I cannot,” he repeats.
“You cannot, or you will not?” Thomas demands.
“I cannot,” Peter protests. “It is simply not possible. There is hardly a man anywhere who has not heard of Captain Flint; I cannot simply let him go. How would it look, if I freed a pirate out of fear? Let alone this particular one? How could I ever justify my actions to any civilized man? I would lose everything if I gave in to his demands, if I allowed his terrorization to succeed. Civilization would not be able to stand if it gave in to such threats. You must see that!”
Everything becomes clear to him in that moment.
Words have no power here, and to accomplish his ends, he needs not Peter Ashe but Charles Vane.
“I see that there is nothing to deserve the name civilization within you,” Thomas says quietly. “And I see that there is no reason for you to live.”
Peter flinches, more than James had during his entire whipping. Horror fills his face. Thomas cannot help remarking how patently pathetic he is. His James would be fearless even in the face of death.
“Thomas, please! You are a better man than this,” Peter pleads, “a better man than those that would kill innocents.”
“I was a better man,” he says. “You destroyed that part of me when you took James from me. Neither you nor my father were innocent in any way. Do not cast yourself as such.”
So this is what a man looks like when he knows that he is going to die. Thomas had wondered what it would truly be like. James was a killer – Captain Flint had spilled seas of blood, but he had known that even James McGraw was capable of it. A naval officer would have been called to kill, sooner or later, and he had long ago made peace with that.
“I have heard,” he says calmly, “that the most painful way to die is a knife to the stomach. It kills, but slowly, and the dying man begs for the mercy of death as he holds his guts in his hands.”
He follows his words with action, slicing Peter’s stomach open. Peter’s face scrunches up pathetically in pain, clutching at his stomach as his hands fill with blood.
“Fortunately for you,” Thomas continues, “I am more merciful than James Flint.”
He relishes, for one last second, the look of abject horror on Peter’s face before sliding the knife into his heart. His flesh offers resistance, and every ounce of force he has to exert to force the blade in is utterly delicious, every ounce of his fury poured into it.
He twists the knife for good measure.
Peter gives a final gasp and falls to the floor, leaving Thomas standing, blood-drenched, over a dead body, knife still in hand.
He stands there for several moments more as the shock of it penetrates him. The windows rattle around him, and he hears screams and explosions, but they seem a blur, something happening in distant memory rather than around him.
He killed a man.
That man had been his best friend, though Thomas cannot see him now as anything other than a disgusting leech, drinking the blood and misery of others for his own survival. Peter’s eyes stare up at him, glassy and still filled with horror, and Thomas has to force himself to look away, to deal with the situation at hand. He had come here to save James, but now he knew James’ salvation lay elsewhere. Would Charles Vane have already freed him? If so, James would not leave without him, this he knew, but perhaps he was still chained up in the square, helpless. He needed to find a way to get James out of those restraints, some way to arm them -
Two men burst through the door just as he turns, swords drawn. The first is James, swaying slightly and clearly upright only through sheer willpower. Thomas presumes the man with him is Charles Vane, though he hardly has eyes for him.
“Thomas?” James’ voice is shocked, eyes moving quickly between the dead body and Thomas, blood-drenched.
“Who the fuck is he?” The man who must be Vane asks, sounding just slightly impressed.
“You can see him?” James asks. The what the fuck are you talking about on Vane’s face is obvious, and James takes it as an encouraging response. He turns back to Thomas, covers the distance between them in several strides and draws him into his arms. They fall into each other’s embrace, the most natural thing in the world.
“You’re alive, you’re real,” James whispers in awe, cradling his face, running hands over his shoulders, his arms, intent on ascertaining that Thomas is no will-o-the-wisp.
“Yes. I’m here. James, I’m here,” he whispers.
They bring their lips together, passion and desperation and shock and desire and need wrapped up together.
Charles Vane, Thomas decides in the back of his head, must be a smart man, for he offers no resistance to this turn of events. At least, at first, but after a minute passes of nothing but their silent embrace, he breaks into the silence.
“Maybe you two lovebirds haven’t noticed,” he says, “but there’s hell and cannonfire every which way. You can have your lover’s tryst back on the ship.”
James breaks away from him immediately, his stance returning to that of a soldier. He draws a pistol from his belt and offers it to Thomas.
“Stay behind me,” he orders, then nods to Charles.
The pistol is heavier in his hand than the knife had been. Thomas had rarely fired one, was unsure he was capable of hitting a target with it, but he takes it anyway. James turns, and Thomas obeys, staying behind him, which gives him a clear view of James’ back.
The wounds, which had closed in the time James spend awaiting rescue, have reopened with his exertions. As he follows James and watches him raise his arms to fight off attackers, he watches as yet more of the wounds open. The darkness of his shirt hides some of the blood, but Thomas can still see many of the stains.
James’ face is tense, and he grunts with more than just exertion every time he fends off an attacker. Two more come at them; James dispatches one, but is too slow for the other, his movements becoming lethargic in pain and exhaustion. Thomas feels a moment of sheer panic as he raises a shaking hand to fire the pistol, but suddenly Charles is there, intercepting the blow and dispatching the man easily.
Thomas tries to catch his gaze, to thank him wordlessly, but Charles is otherwise occupied; he and James fight side by side, protecting each other’s flanks. Thomas follows behind them, feeling utterly useless.
……
James hauls himself over the side of the ship with effort, stumbling upon the landing. Thomas follows him, Charles bringing up the rear.
“Captain? What are your orders?” A man, extremely tall and more muscular than any he’s ever seen, asks.
“Take us back towards the sandbar. Southwest corner of the bay. We’ll start from there. Ready the guns. Full complement,” James orders.
Thomas opens his mouth to protest. They should be getting away from here, not coming closer. James is clearly reaching the end of his strength – he leans against the side of the ship, holding himself up through sheer force of will, and the tense muscles of his jaw reveal the effort it costs him. He is soaked in blood now, listing slightly to the side, but his determination burns as keenly as ever, and Thomas finds that he cannot take this away from James, so he remains silent.
There is a flurry of activity as the men rush to obey orders.
“What’s the target?” the same tall man asks.
“Their defenses, their weapons stores, their fort, and their ships. Avoid the civilian quarters.”
“Gun crews at the ready!” the tall man commands.
James looks to Thomas. The intent is clear in his eyes along with a question.
Thomas nods in assent.
“Fire,” Flint orders.
Out of the corner of his eye, he catches Charles Vane watching the two of them, a sparkle of admiration in his eyes. Then the loudest sound Thomas has ever heard resounds, and he’s caught off balance by the reverberations of it throughout the ship. He jumps, tempted to run for cover.
James does not flinch, as he had not flinched at the whip. He’s barely standing upright now, but somehow the firing of the guns moves him not an inch. He watches keenly as the cannonballs fall and fire and smoke pours from Charlestown. The gun crews rush to reload, and the boom of cannonfire resounds again, though this time Thomas is prepared for it. He watches the tall proud masts of the colony’s ships catch on fire, tall flaming beacons in the dull daylight. A store of gunpowder explodes, pouring smoke into the air. The stones of the fort crumble into so much dust.
“James,” he says softly, after a few minutes of standing below the hail of cannonballs. James nods.
“Enough!” James orders. “Take us away. Set a course for Nassau. I shall be in my cabin.” He looks over to Vane. “I trust I am leaving the ship in good hands,” he adds.
Cries of “hoist the sails!” and a flurry of men, heaving and hoisting, surrounds them.
“The captain will also require the services of the surgeon,” Thomas says. There is a moment of silence as those not hurrying about obeying orders stare at him. Then Vane breaks the silence.
“You heard the man. Someone find the surgeon,” he orders, and a man hurries off.
James strides toward the cabin, his steps unsteady as those of a man at sea for the first time. Thomas follows him and joins James inside the cabin. James pauses only to shut the door before breathing his name and striding towards him intently, but he manages to take only a step before his knees buckle, and he falls rather than walks into Thomas’ arms.
Thomas catches him, stumbling at the weight. His arms, where they’ve caught Thomas, are soaked immediately in blood.
“Come on,” he urges. “Let’s get you to the bed.”
James clings to him like a drowning man, and Thomas isn’t entirely sure it’s for the simple purpose of not falling to the ground. He half-drags, half walks James towards the bed, James stumbling along with the last of his strength, and lowers him into the bunk. James crumples like a doll and falls the rest of the way onto the sheets. The back of his shirt is red rather than white now, stained in its entirety. God, there’s so much blood. Thomas has never seen this much blood, not even in Bethlem.
He casts around for some object with which to cut the shirt off him, and sees a collection of weapons. He moves to claim one of them, but James’ hand darts out and grips his wrist in a vise.
“Stay,” James whispers with the rest of his strength.
“I’m not leaving, James, but your injuries – they need to be cleaned.”
But James doesn’t let go.
“Stay,” he whispers again. His eyes close, but consciousness remains as his grip on Thomas’ hand doesn’t relax.
“James, your injuries, they’re – they’re quite bad,” he tries to reason helplessly. “Where’s the damn doctor? Is the captain’s life of no consequence to him?”
James mouth twitches just as a knock sounds on the door.
“Come in!” Thomas calls, breathing a sigh of relief. The surgeon shuffles inside and comes towards them, followed by an assistant who carries in a pot of freshly boiled water. The surgeon glances
“I trust your job is clear,” Thomas says. “Get on with it.”
To his surprise, the surgeon offers no resistance to taking orders from Thomas. He takes one look at James (his lips purse into a tight line at the sight of his bloody back), Thomas kneeling beside him, and their clasped hands, and dismisses his assistant.
Reaching into his bag of medicines, he produces a tinted bottle and an explanation. “He will need laudanum for the pain.”
“No.” James’ voice is forceful, expecting to brook no disagreement.
“James, there is no need for you to prove anything here,” Thomas insists.
“I don’t want it,” James says. “I don’t want to close my eyes and find out when I wake that you were a dream.”
“Oh James.” He kneels, covering James’ hand (still around his wrist) with his own. “I’m here. I am no dream, and I will be here when you wake. I swear it. Now please, take some laudanum. For me, for I can hardly stand to see you suffer any longer,” he adds, feeling only a slight pang of guilt at phrasing it so.
“As you wish,” James whispers.
Thomas nods to the surgeon, who pours out a spoonful of the liquid. He helps tilt James’ head back; James opens his mouth obediently and swallows, wincing at the bitter taste.
The surgeon spreads out his small bag of instruments, withdrawing the scissors to cut the shirt from James’ back. Thomas gasps as the fabric falls away. He has not yet seen James’ back – James had faced him during the whipping and after – but he sees it now: a mangled mess, covered in a layer of blood so thick he can barely see beneath it. But where the skin is visible, it is flayed open in deep, dark cuts, crisscrossing his back from top to bottom. In some places, the skin outright hangs off his body.
“Oh God,” he says, feeling suddenly dizzy.
The surgeon doesn’t seem to share his reaction. He merely purses his lips slightly at the sight.
Thomas holds James’ hand as the surgeon washes the blood from his back. Watching him, Thomas is grateful for his steady, careful hands. Still, the slightest touch must be agony at this point, but James reveals it only with heavy breathing and a tightening of his grip.
“The wounds need to be cleaned to prevent fever and putrefaction,” the doctor notes, more for Thomas’ benefit than James’. He reaches for several bottles, and Thomas sees the label of vinegar in a neat script on one of them. He winces at the thought of it on open wounds, and looks helplessly at James, half-unconscious by this point.
“Do it,” he orders miserably.
He continues to kneel by James, their hands clasped, watching warily as the surgeon unscrews the bottle and wets a cloth with liquid, watches yet more warily as he brings it to James’ skin.
When the burning, stinging liquid touches the open wound, James seems to reach the end of his tether. He roars like a caged lion, so loud the sound seems to reverberate throughout the cabin. Thomas flinches, but the surgeon continues, unmoved.
Thomas clasps James’ hand, now holding his in a deathly grip, and listens to the cacophony of roars and grunts. He wonders if this is what it would have been like, had he and Miranda been able to have a child – him kneeling beside the bed of one he loved, listening to their agony, unable to share it or to soothe it.
“I’m here, James,” he whispers. “You’ve been so brave. It’s almost over, I promise you. Hold on for me, James.” He helplessly pours out whatever reassurances come into his mind while James’ grip renders his fingers numb. His skin is fair – he will bruise from this, and can almost envision now James’ guilt when he sees the blue blossoms on Thomas’ wrist. But that is a worry for later.
“A little while longer, my love.” His words are interrupted by another pained grunt as James clenches his eyes shut and sucks in air. “Then all will be well, I promise. I shall be by your side, always, to hold you close. Think of that.”
If the surgeon hears his words, or has any particular opinion regarding them, he does not make it evident. He merely continues his work, painstaking and attentive as if he is working upon a curious mechanism rather than a human body. Thomas supposes he has had practice.
Finally, the surgeon reaches for the bandages. “Help me lift him up,” he orders. James makes a valiant effort to raise himself onto his elbows, but his trembling arms give out immediately. “I’ve got you,” Thomas murmurs in his ear, holding him up to allow the surgeon to wrap the bandages around his torso.
Then it is over.
“I shall leave this here,” the surgeon says of a small bottle of laudanum. “Fetch me if he bleeds again.” And without another word, he departs.
Thomas’ fingers are still numb as he reaches for the bottle.
“No,” James insists. “No more.”
“James, you must rest.”
“I don’t want to be alone.”
“I’m not leaving you. I will stay by your side, and be here when you wake.”
“That is what visions always say,” James murmurs.
Thomas climbs into the bed, careful lest a sharp movement injure James, and gathers him into his arms.
“Can you feel this?” he asks. James nods silently into the pillow. “It is real. I am real. Would I lie to you, even as a ghost or a vision?”
“Never,” James says. He lets his eyes fall closed, and soon his breathing evens out. Thomas shifts to lie beside James, wishing to hold him close but unwilling to wake him with pain.
…..
Thomas is woken by a broken, heartwrenching sob. He stirs, blinking his eyes open. It seems he, too, has fallen asleep after the exhaustion of the day, and in his slumber widened the space that he had left between them, lest he exacerbate James’ injuries with a careless movement. James has attempted to rise, and leans forward now on his elbows, his head buried in his pillow as sobs wrack him.
“James,” he says softly, and James turns awed, tear-filled eyes on him. The relief written on his face is palpable.
“Thomas,” he breathes.
“I’m here,” Thomas reassures him. “I promised I would not leave you. I never will again.”
James buries his head in the crook of Thomas’ shoulder and sobs. It strikes him that he has never seen James cry, but now the dread pirate Flint sobs in his arms like a babe.
When James has calmed, he refuses more than a drop of laudanum. “I will not spend another moment away from you, not even in sleep,” he insists, and Thomas does not have the heart to protest.
“You believed me dead,” Thomas broaches the subject instead. It is the obvious conclusion to James’ shock at his continued presence. “You believed me a vision, liable to vanish at any moment.”
“I believed you my angel of death, come to finally take me from this world,” James confesses. “I was happy to follow where you led, but Captain Flint did not deserve a peaceful death.”
Thomas cannot stop pain from spreading across his features, but James either does not notice – or, more likely, ignores it.
Instead, James tells him about Captain Flint.
He begins with Admiral Hennessey’s words – “too loathsome, too profane” – and Thomas seethes in fury. He tells him about Nassau and Eleanor Guthrie and the Pirate Republic. He tells him about the Maria Aleyne, guilt clouding his handsome features. “Good,” Thomas says, and James blinks. He tells him about the Spanish gold, the Urca de Lima, Gates, the shipwreck and the mutiny. He barely dwells on the gunshot wound, but Thomas stares, trying to imagine James swimming out to a man-o-war with a hole in his shoulder, the salt water stinging with every breath. He tells him about regaining the captaincy, about Charles Vane and Abigail Ashe. He tells him about Miranda’s plan, to take him to England and tell his story, of his insistence that she stay in Nassau while he sailed for Charlestown, and Thomas breathes in relief. He tells, too, of Peter and his betrayal, though this Thomas already knows.
Thomas’ blood boils with every word.
“But why?” He asks when James is finished. “You believed me dead. Why would you suffer so for the dream of a dead man?”
James regards him with disbelief.
“They took you from me,” he says, fury lacing his words. “I meant to rescue you, and then they told me you were dead. I vowed, then, to make the world in your image – so that, despite those who wished to erase you from existence, a trace of you would remain forever upon it.”
Thomas swallows painfully. Oh, to be loved like that. What had he done to deserve it? James had given his devotion to Thomas’ ideal, and all Thomas had done for James is live.
“But I failed,” James adds brokenly. “I have become a monster, spilled blood in your name, and still I could not make the world that you wanted. I loved you more than anything, and yet I was not strong enough, not brave enough, to make a better world.”
“I killed a man today,” Thomas says quietly. “His blood was on my hands, and with his dying words he begged me. A world made in my image would be much darker than you imagine.”
“You are the sun,” James says, “which lights the way and illuminates the dark. No world with you in it is anything but bright and pure.”
For the first time in his life, Thomas foregoes arguing the point.
He cannot, however, help glancing ceaselessly at his hands. He has washed Peter’s blood off them, but still they feel unclean. He rather thinks he understands Lady Macbeth now.
James remarks it as Thomas itches at his palms for the umpteenth time. He clasps Thomas’ hand, gently this time, and brings it pointedly to his lips to kiss – then pauses as the ring upon Thomas’ finger catches his eye.
“You still wear it,” he says, awestruck. “After all this time.”
“They gave it back to me with the news of your death,” Thomas says. He takes it off, shows James the engraving he had managed to make on the inside. James traces the grooves of the words, as if he to confirm what his eyes see. “I have worn it since the day they told me Captain Flint took the life of James McGraw.”
At that, James raises his eyes to meet Thomas’.
“They – “
Thomas shrugs.
“Men are cruel,” he says simply.
“Gods, Thomas, I’m sorry.” Guilt lines James’ beautiful features, fills his voice with anguish. “I’m so sorry I failed you. I could not save you, and when they told me you took your life I believed them. I should have believed in you.”
“I nearly did, on the day they told me you were dead.” James blanches. “I lived only because I knew that would have been your dying wish. Some days, I imagined sailing to Nassau and driving a knife into the heart of Captain Flint, but I knew I would likely not live to see the morrow. So I did not,” he finishes guiltily.
“Thank God,” James breathes. “You, alone in Nassau, unprotected – “
“Had I had the courage, I would have found you earlier and spared you all this suffering.”
“Or died in the attempt,” James fires back. “It is a lawless place. I would rather suffer all this than have had you risk your life there, alone, unaided – “
“Is that not the place you have made your home for ten years?” Thomas asks. “The place you took Miranda, to which we now sail?”
“Now you are under my protection. After the stories spread of what Captain Flint has done at Charlestown, no one would dare lay a hand on you. I will keep you safe,” he vows.
…..
They lie in silence, intertwined so deeply it is difficult to know where one ends and the other begins. Thomas trails his hands through James’ hair, shorter now than the gorgeous tresses he had had in London; Thomas hopes James grows it out again.
If he closes his eyes, he can almost think they are in another place, another time; in London, in the warmth of each other’s embrace as the morning sunlight turns the air to gold. The wide windows of the captain’s cabin similarly set their quarters alight.
“I’m not the man I was,” James breaks into his reverie. “They were right. James McGraw died when they took you from me, and Captain Flint was born in his place.”
“And yet I love you no less,” Thomas says vehemently. “How could you think otherwise?”
“I’m damaged and broken, so different from the man you knew,” James says. “I’ll have scars from this,” he adds quietly. “I’m not – as desirable as I once was.”
“And you think I don’t have scars?” Thomas retorts before he can stop himself.
James stares at him.
“What?” he manages weakly. “They dared – you were a lord,” he insists.
Thomas lets out a bitter laugh.
“I can assure you, Bethlem’s reputation comes from its treatment of lords and commoners alike.”
Anger seethes in James’ eyes. He tries to rise, wincing as the movement stretches still painful wounds.
“Show me,” he demands.
Thomas sighs, but complies, rising and drawing his shirt over his head and standing half-naked before James.
He knows he looks a ghastly sight, his scars as numerous as they are varied. Around his wrists are the marks left by manacles, and up each arm are neat lines of starbursts. Bleeding patients had been one of the doctors’ prime pastimes. He’s survived his fair share of broken ribs from beatings, too, but those leave no visible scars, so it is only the burns from scalding water that James sees, islands of them on his chest and stomach.
He turns.
On his back, the scars are much more prosaic – whip marks to match James’ own, though they were never as numerous or as deep.
“I’ll kill them,” he hears James say, furious. “I’ll kill them all, and burn it to the ground.”
He turns around. James has managed to sit up with great effort, but he holds himself stiffly, the slightest movement still painful. He had refused more laudanum, and there is a hardness to his features because of it. He is beautiful in his fury, like lightning on a summer night, but those handsome features are weary, marred by scars left by time and by steel.
No, not marred, for nothing could mar James, but marked – like a proud cliff that has been beaten by time and tempests. Which stands tall and beautiful, having absorbed every blow without capitulation and complaint.
“Let it burn,” he says with quiet rage.
James gazes upon him with surprise, and with awe, and it is such a pleasant feeling, to bring those emotions to his face. He reaches for James’ hand, kneeling to kiss it.
“A society which calls mercy madness is none that I would willingly be a part of ever again,” he says steadfastly. “Not after all it has taken from me, from those I love. Let it burn.”
James weeps as he kisses him, on the lips, the cheeks, the neck, and gods, but it had been so long since he had felt James’ lips hot against his skin, passionate and loving. Distracted as he is by them, it takes him several moments to realize James’ intent as James’ hand traces over his skin, its intention obvious. They spark memories, of warmth and safety and love, and he is loath to stop.
“James,” he protests reluctantly, “we cannot, you are injured, you will open your wounds – ” but James ignores him.
“James, wait – stop.”
James draws away, obedient, and gazes at him with plaintive eyes.
“Ten years, Thomas,” James says. “Ten years since I have touched you. I do not remember what your skin feels like against mine. God help me, I do not remember what your lips feel like. I cannot continue like this. I am no honorable knight, to chastely share a bed with the man I love.”
“And I would not ask you to place a sword between us,” Thomas says softly. “But I beg you, let me be the one to give you pleasure, after all you have suffered. Let me lead.”
To his surprise, James does not protest, but merely surrenders happily to Thomas’ arms. Thomas coaxes him back onto the bed and climbs up on it himself, so that they kneel against each other. James rests his head on Thomas’ shoulder, and Thomas’ hand curls in his hair. The other he trails over James’ body – bandaged mostly, leaving Thomas little skin to enjoy – and down to James’ hardness.
James gasps, a tremor running through his entire frame, as Thomas’ fingers touch his cock. “Thomas,” he whispers helplessly.
“Let me take care of you, love,” Thomas says. He strokes James, softly at first, and with every movement of his wrist, James gasps, the little breaths of air tickling his neck where James’ head rests. God, how he had missed this – the feel of James’ cock in his hand, firm and powerful as everything about his lover; but even more, the needy whimpers and sharp breaths that he’s unable to hold back. The way he tucks his head into the crook of Thomas’ neck, as if to smother those sounds, yet Thomas feels each one reverberating against his skin.
He wishes he could draw it out, those beautiful sounds of pleasure he coaxes from James, but had he wanted to deny James anything in this moment, he does not think it would have been physically possible. Hardly a minute, and James quiets; his sudden stillness followed by a sharp exhale indicate that James has reached the peak of his pleasure as surely as him spilling onto Thomas’ hand.
Thomas strokes his hair lovingly. “Beautiful,” he whispers, and James trembles again. “So, so beautiful.”
They remain still against each other, with only the distant sounds of the ocean against the ship, and the occasional shouts of the crew. In the cabin, all is still, a moment frozen in amber. Then James rouses himself, his hand reaching insistently, once again, for the hardness outlined beneath Thomas’ clothes.
He catches James’ wrist before it gets there, in a grip too gentle to truly restrain, but James stills nonetheless. He glances pointedly at Thomas’ obvious arousal. “Let me,” he pleads.
Wordlessly, Thomas guides James’ hand to his own cock, but does not let go. Instead, as James wraps his hand around him, he places his own over James’ to guide his strokes, slow and careful lest a sharp movement reopen James’ wounds. Instead, he moves his own hips, thrusting into James’ hand. It seems bigger as he looks down at it, rougher, the palm strikingly more calloused – and yet it is exactly how he remembers, James’ strokes steady and strong and gentle all at the same time. It does not take him long either before he spills over James’ hand.
They still, faces buried against each other. James smells of blood and sweat, but Thomas does not care. Carefully, he lowers James down and forces himself to rise. He finds water to clean them off, and James, sated, lets his eyes fall blissfully closed.
…..
James is asleep again; for all his protests, he had fallen quite easily into blissful sleep after his orgasm. Thomas sits by him, a hand still in his hair – loath to leave, but weary of lying without sleep. He had opened the windows to vent out the sickly-sweet smell that fills the cabin, and now a soft breeze plays over his hair and James’.
It is almost peaceful.
An insistent knock sounds at the door. “A moment!” he calls, then surveys James. He is fast asleep in much needed rest, and Thomas is reluctant to wake him.
The door opens before Thomas can protest, and Charles Vane strides in. Thomas turns to face him.
“What is so urgent, Captain, that you must barge in here?” he demands.
Vane’s eyes survey James’ sleeping form.
“I merely came down to see whether my ally was still in this world,” Vane says. “We’ve seen neither hide nor hair of him.”
“As you can see,” Thomas says pointedly, “he is recovering.”
Charles nods curtly. “Good,” he says, and turns to go.
“Thank you,” Thomas finds himself saying from the depths of his heart. “You came for him, saved him, fought by our side. You are the reason he still lives.”
“I had my reasons,” Charles responds gruffly.
“I’m sure. Still, he is my entire world, and there is no end to the gratitude I feel for what you have done.”
Charles merely shrugs, and Thomas finds himself at a loss for words. Charles seems to be of a laconic nature, so unlike Thomas’ own verbosity, and yet he feels a strange kinship for the pirate that he cannot quite explain.
The silence is broken after several moments by James stirring. Not feeling Thomas’ warmth next to him, he shifts, reaching out a hand and letting out a murmured “Thomas?”
Thomas kneels by him immediately, clasping the reaching hand.
“I’m here, love. Always. Sleep now,” he soothes. James relaxes visibly, and his breathing soon evens into the calm of sleep. Thomas settles by him, on the stool he had found in the corner, his hand still clasped in James’, and looks back up at Charles.
Vane has watched the entire proceeding with interest, and Thomas prepares himself for a condescending smirk, rallies himself for a biting retort. But instead, Charles remarks, simply, “He loves you.” And oh, it does not do justice to what they have between them to say it so simply. It is not enough.
“Being loved like him is like being loved by the tempest, or the raging inferno,” he admits.
Charles looks at him, eyes sharp and steely and perceptive.
“The safest part of the storm is in the heart of it,” he says.
Thomas gazes thoughtfully through the wide windows into the distance, where the sea kisses the sky, lovingly and tenderly as James had kissed him in the midst of cannonfire.
“It is also the prime vantage point for seeing the destruction it wreaks,” he points out.
“When I laid eyes on you, you were covered in the blood of a man whose heart you had cut open. You have something of the inferno in you, yourself,” Charles says.
“I used to think that great change could be achieved with kindness and reason. Now I see that violence seems to be inevitably necessary,” Thomas confesses.
“Men do not like change, and they like it even less if that change endangers their supremacy. Freedom is never a thing willingly given. It must be taken, and the price of it is blood spilled,” Charles says.
His words stay with Thomas after he leaves. He gazes upon James – asleep peacefully now, his wounds bandaged with clean cloth, but he remembers all too vividly the sea of blood upon his back, Peter’s blood upon his own hands, James’ roars of pain, the clash of steel against steel beneath the smoke and thunder of cannonfire. And he ponders.
……..
James appears on deck on the second day; becoming restless in the cabin, he insists upon moving about.
“The men have to see me,” he says. “I can’t be seen to be licking my wounds for days on end.”
Thomas doesn’t like it, but he can see James’ point. He helps James to dress – a shirt only, and a swordbelt, though Thomas winces at the thought of it chafing against the injuries and protests. Still, he looks outright captainly, and when his appearance on deck is met with cheers from the crew, Thomas smiles to himself.
James joins him at the side of the ship, where Thomas gazes upon the delicate line of the horizon, painted by the loving meeting of sky and sea. James takes his hand, and their eyes meet in a knowing exchange.
Then, together, they watch as the blazing inferno of the setting sun quietly turns the sea to blood.