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At least the water's not cold, Tommy thinks distantly.
Well not quite; it was warm when they threw him in and the soft turquoise waves glittered with sunlight around him. He'd let himself sink for a bit, until the air in his lungs pulled him up again to bring his peaceful solitude under the surface to a gasping end, limbs flailing wildly as his head broke through into warm summer wind.
He'd pulled himself onto the nearest piece of floating wood, half rotted with time and merciless tides, clinging to the dark brown raft with all his might.
Now, Tommy is cold. His clothes are stuck to his body and he's shaking and shivering on his raft.
He presses his cheek to the dirty wood and closes his eyes. He mustn't cry.
Wilbur looks at him and says “Don't cry, Tom- don't- don't cry!” and Tommy nods frantically.
It's the last words he heard Wil say to him. He'd called him Tom, not Tommy, not Toms, not even a mocking Sunshine, just Tom. There wasn't much time, but it still feels wrong. There should have been more, there should've been time for long muttered words and desperate embraces before they pulled Wilbur away, but there wasn't.
Tommy presses his eyes shut and digs his nails into the driftwood.
There was no need for long words, really, because he always does what Wilbur tells him to.
If he cries he loses water that he can't afford to shed. And crying is halfway to giving up is what Wil often tells him. If he cries then he admits defeat. Admits that all it took was for the Royal Marines to throw him from the cliffs to bring him low. So he won't cry.
He looks up and lets his eyes flutter open, blinking against the sun. Not too far off he can see that very cliff-side, a beautiful facade of greenery against sand-colored stone. The fall isn't as steep as it looks.
To his other side, blue water stretches as far as the eye can see, a light-rimmed horizon in the distance. He wishes Wilbur didn't insist on coming here. He wishes he didn't end up in this position because of it, drifting out onto the open sea.
His head is spinning. His throat feels dry as sandpaper and Tommy can't bring himself to cry out for help. If help comes, let it come, and if it does not, let him die. He breathes in deep, warm air suffocating in his lungs.
Letting his gaze wander he finds the bodies hanging between the rocks, four of them in varying stages of decay. Four pirates, as it's written on a wooden sign beside them, swaying softly.
But it's no surprise that they're pirates. That's not what it tells you, no. The sign means that they got caught. The sign means that they failed just as he did. Their feet hang limp, their heads caught tightly in a heavy noose each.
Tommy stares at them from a distance and can't get closer. He feels sick to his stomach. He feels a strange prickling in his eyes.
They'll never sail the seas again and he may well be the same. This godforsaken driftwood and the sun that shines too brightly against his skin may well guide his last voyage.
He won't call out for any ships in the distance. What use would it be?
They took his weapons, his rapier and his pistol. Wilbur made him that rapier and showed him to use it too and they took it without so much as a second glance.
Tommy sits up further, trying to find balance and slipping. Blood rushes in his ears as he's pulled under.
For a moment he wants to let go.
The water is cold around him now but it's clear and he can see the ground somewhere, sand whirling in soft circles.
Swim with the fishes, he thinks. I'm so exhausted, Wil.
But he can't give up. Wilbur told him not to cry and that's really just a plea to not give up.
The water is pulling at his limbs and filling his lungs but he begins to push against it. His driftwood is gone when he opens his eyes again, coughing up water and gasping for air. His driftwood is gone and his arms are weak but he can't let Wil down.
Don't cry, Wilbur told him, because if he cries he's weak.
So instead, he screams. It gets lost in the wind but Tommy screams until his voice is gone and his throat is raw. Whenever he sinks he pulls himself back to the surface again with nothing but spite and a will to live.
The horizon is alight with fire, golden and red. The sun is setting and leaving the water a glittering, burning mess. He's drifting aimlessly towards the rock where they hanged the pirates.
Tommy should be there beside them.
Wilbur had told him that they'd get treasures immeasurable. Tommy would plunder the moon and steal the stars to make Wilbur proud.
So he doesn't die. They threw him out to the sea to drown but he won't give them that satisfaction. Tommy holds out.
He stares at the pirates hanging between the rocks and wonders if he'd be hung right beside them had Wilbur not said he was a child.
“He's just a kid,” Wil had said. “He never hurt no one.”
Wilbur had said those words in vain it seems, and Tommy's shouts for help must have been in vain. The sun is setting and he's lost.
He stares up at a pair of pale feet dangling there, stripped of their heavy worn boots.
Tommy stares up at the pirate that the Navy men killed and resigns himself to drown and lets himself be pulled under.
.
.
.
He spits out water all over the boat and someone claps him on the back.
“You're gonna be alright, mate.” A voice says, sounding much older than Wilbur and much kinder. “It's a wonder you're still with us.”
It really is, isn't it. Tommy coughs up more water and straightens up into the man's grasp. He wants to cry. But Wilbur told him not to. Wilbur told him not to because if a pirate sees him cry he might just throw him overboard again.
The man smiles at him in a way that's meant to be reassuring.
“You okay now?” Tommy nods, but his eyes are burning. He doesn't trust himself to speak.
He can't cry, right?
But really, why shouldn't he... Wilbur can't be disappointed in him.
Not when he can't see him, can't speak to him, can't hold him, can't reassure him like he used to.
They hanged him between the rocks and his feet are swaying around pale and lifeless, and his face that had laughed and cried and told so many tales before had gone blue and then black, his neck all bruised up and his eyes open and empty. His head's all twisted to the side and so wrong.
Don't cry might as well have meant don't be sad. But if so, Wilbur had been stupid. Stupid and careless and now he's dead.
Tommy stares up at the body that swings and sways against the burning sky, a stark silhouette of a man who was his friend and his brother and who they hanged at noon that day.
There's tears on his face and he hasn't spoken a word to the strange kind man who has rescued him. He cries and he stares and keeps his eyes on the hanged men until they disappear from his view.
He'll never see Wilbur again. Even if he'd stayed by the shore all that'd have remained would be a corpse slowly decaying and rotting away until only bones remained and the memory of laughter, of soft smiles and teasing words.
The flag on the kind man's ship is a pirate's flag, but Tommy doesn't mind. He's a pirate who got caught and lived.
Perhaps he'll return one day and take down brittle bones from a windswept rock. Or perhaps this ship is the one he dies on.