Chapter Text
A pair of petrels drifted in lazy circles overhead, eyeing the glittering schools of fish drawn to the trailing jetsam in the Boadicea’s wake. After long minutes one peeled away, its feathers a dark smudge against the sky as it headed for some unknown place. The other wheeled about to follow, crossing the sun and sending a flicker of shadow whipping across the jolly-boat’s bow before disappearing into the distance.
Jack lay back with his eyes closed, the scent of the salt air in his lungs and the warm sun on his face pleasant enough for him to forgive the total lack of wind. Their tiny craft rested peacefully on the bright mirror of the sea, a good distance away from the great white cloud of sail. The placid weather often allowed for leisure between training the crew into something approaching man-of-war’s men, and Jack was able to take his daily trips out to bathe in the milk-warm sea. Stephen, grateful for the company and the chance to observe marine life in situ, frequently accompanied him. Jack let the drone of Stephen’s familiar voice wash over him, a steady flow of remarks on the peculiar nature of some barnacle or other found affixed to some drifting seaweed, and couldn’t keep a smile off his face. They’d travelled together these ten years and more, yet Stephen could always find some new creature to examine, and Jack was pleased to indulge him when time could be spared, which it often could not.
The steady murmur of Stephen’s voice changed to a note of piqued curiosity. “Oh, well, that is curious.”
“What is it, joy?” Jack asked, hoping for the continuation of his earlier monologue.
“Why, this looks to be Anguis platuro, or that fellow Daudin’s Pelamis platuros, as described only recently—”
Jack hummed, only half-listening. He stirred only slightly, not terribly interested in the movements of the majority of sea creatures which Stephen found endlessly fascinating, save those which appeared on his table steamed or braised in a sauce.
“Can they be et?” he asked, not really expecting an answer, happy to continue as they had been.
“How strange to see one here, of all places; I had no notion they could be found in this ocean.” Stephen briefly paused in his reply, watching the serpent swim just beneath the surface with great interest. Its belly flashed vivid yellow, and it seemed to be peering at him just as closely, its beady black eyes meeting his own pale gaze. “As for your question, my dear, there are those in India and in the South Sea that commonly eat sea-serpents in spite of their deadly venom.”
“Venom?” Jack asked, jerking his arm back into the boat from where he’d been trailing his hand in the water.
“Hush, Jack, you will startle the poor creature.”
He considered the serpent, bold in its coloring and the venom it used to hunt its prey—and the limbs of the occasional unfortunate swimmer—at some length, watching until the serpent slipped away beneath the boat. Stephen shifted his weight to the other side, awaiting its emergence between them and the Boadicea. He trailed his little net in the water, watching the play of shadow beneath green bits of weed. A large, dark shape formed and disappeared just as rapidly, raising his curiosity. A larger creature, perhaps a shark? The shadow rose again, hesitating only a moment before it rippled and quickly passed out of view.
Jack started upright, suddenly keenly aware of a change in the wind, jostling the boat and knocking Stephen’s net from his hand. Stephen clutched at the side, cross at having dropped his net, but he barely had time to open his mouth to grumble about it before his ears were filled with the disturbingly familiar howl of wind shrieking through rigging. Jack went pale as the sound was immediately followed by a clamor of distant shouting. He whipped about and watched in horror as Boadicea rolled sharply to leeward, dozens of men swarming her rigging to cut away sail. A sharp white line of surf raced toward them, whipping the calm blue into violent white froth, and Jack lunged at Stephen in a vain attempt to somehow keep him in the boat. His hand seized Stephen’s ankle, but in the sudden gale and surf the tiny boat broached to, tossing them both into the roiling frenzy of water.
Jack thrashed his arms and legs, trying to orient himself in the dizzying stream in spite of the side of the jolly-boat battering against his head. He was a strong if not a graceful swimmer, well familiar with fetching his doctor out of the sea, but Stephen had slipped from his grasp amidst the tumult, and Jack’s mind raced to catch up. Stephen was widely known to sink like a stone, and if he didn’t act now he’d certainly be lost. Jack reached the surface, drew a large breath, and dove beneath the waves to begin his search.
Once free of the churning froth tugging him in every direction at once, darkness yawned before him. He caught a glimpse of what he thought was Stephen’s hand—ghostly pale clawing against deep blue, somewhere uncomfortably far beneath him—he dove, kicking with all his strength. His lungs burned, but all he could do was watch as Stephen’s hands—hands that could whip off a man's leg easy as kiss your hand, hands that could play a creditable Corelli, hands that had put Jack back together time and time again; battered and scarred, skilled, musical, beloved hands—slipped further and further out of sight.
At once, icy dread gripped his heart. Jack strained against the heaving sea, adrenaline coursing through him at the expense of the despair growing in his mind, when he felt a powerful force wind around his ankle, holding him down. Jack kicked and writhed, churning the water around him with a furious strength for several moments, his lungs burning with the need to breathe. Darkness crept in at the edges of his vision, and at the last instant a desperate instinct took over and he opened his mouth to heave a powerful gasp.
Contrary to all reason, he did not begin to choke. Jack gasped again, pure, clean air somehow reaching his aching lungs, and he stopped moving out of sheer astonishment.
Completely surrounded by water, pitch-dark below and pale greenish light filtering in from above, he could just make out a figure floating out of reach. As he watched, the shape drew closer, and in mere moments a beautiful woman appeared before him. Not his Sophie, as he might have expected when finally confronted by his own mortality, but rather more like the girl with whom he’d spent a very pleasant summer in the Caribbean. She was tall and bare-breasted, with deep copper skin, and she watched him intently through a cloud of hair as dark as ink.
He looked away from her lovely bosom by pure force of will, but not before his eyes flashed down and noticed that in place of her legs was a long, brightly scaled tail not unlike that of a fish. A mermaid? Jack blinked in astonishment. A narrow face appeared in the mass of her hair, and a long blue-and-yellow sea serpent emerged, twining itself around her waist like a piece of jewellery.
A sea serpent, very like the one—Stephen! Surely he would drown soon, if it was not already too late...
“Captain Aubrey.” Her regal voice struck his ears as though they were not under water, and he puzzled over the fact that he seemed to be breathing perfectly easily, and might speak if he chose.
Astonished, he snapped to attention, suddenly and uncomfortably nervous, as if standing before the entirety of the Admiralty on charges he didn’t quite know.
"You have rescued my two nieces from those damned French hunters. Wretched bastards, taking shots at them in the dark.” Righteous fury was writ large on her face, and her amber eyes seemed to glow in the dappled light. He was struck by the thought of a lioness in her den. He couldn’t recall ever having seen such a fearsome expression on his Sophie’s face, but should his own daughters encounter similar insults, he knew now how she might look. He shivered, as if he had suddenly taken chill. This woman was not to be trifled with.
She crossed her arms, the shadows on her face receding to a more neutral expression. “You shall have a reward.”
“Madam, you do me too much honour.” Jack had the decency to look somewhat embarrassed, as he had no idea of his actions beyond the taking of a prize. He also knew better than to trust mermaids, as he had been at sea from the age of twelve, and he had heard all the stories of sailors swept up by temptation and entire ships claimed by the deep. “You pay me a most handsome compliment, but I ask for nothing but to return to my ship.”
Her eyes flashed. “Do not take me for a scrub, Aubrey. My people too have a sense of honour.”
Jack was struck by the commanding strength behind her words, considered her regal bearing, and resolved in his mind the insult that another outright refusal would deliver. He understood that here he was outmatched and outranked, and he could not bring himself to be impertinent. Her sense of honour was a familiar line to clap on to, and he seized it as if with both hands. "I meant no disrespect, ma'am."
She graciously inclined her head, a slight smile forming at her lips. “I will grant you one wish. What is it that you desire most?”
Images flitted rapidly through his mind—a secure living for his dear Sophie and the girls, the commodore’s pendant awaiting him at the Cape, the safety of his men aboard the Boadicea—but under it all, he heard the plaintive melody of a lonely violin, playing one half of a duet copied down by his own hand, and he knew his answer before he truly understood it.
“I would rescue my particular friend—that is to say—the man who was in the boat with me,” Jack clarified, gesturing to the vague dark sea beneath them. “He has never become truly accustomed to the sea,” he continued, allowing his jumbled thoughts to tumble past his lips, “in a storm like this he will certainly drown. The man sinks like a stone.”
The woman looked at him oddly, her eyes narrowing in suspicion. “You do not wish for gold?” She uncrossed her arms and lifted them, revealing a king’s ransom of gold bangles, dripping with jewels that flashed every colour in the filtered light. “All Men wish for gold, and we have so much.”
Jack watched as her knowing smile grew wider, revealing sharp, pearl-white teeth.
“Many ships sink in storms, as I am sure you know. Fat, slow merchantmen, low in the water with treasures.”
The sea grew darker around them as she spoke, and a clear picture of these formed in his mind. Her voice dripped with honeyed promise, and he began to think how Ashgrove cottage might be grown into an estate with a few thousand guineas, Sophie and the girls set up for life. They could be happy there, for a time, and Stephen might come to live with them—
Jack snapped out of the tempting image her words had conjured before his very eyes, and his heart began beating to quarters. I've been taken by the lee. He knew there was no escaping, she was at clear advantage. Should I have wished for gold instead? I could not. It gets so damned lonely being in command with no real friend, no equal to talk to. The void of Stephen's absence yawned before him, and he felt incredibly low. She is testing me, like— His face grew stony; nothing she said would alter his choice.
“I thank you, madam, but I must decline.”
Seeing the determined set of his jaw, she laughed, the storm clearing from her face. “You are a brave one, Captain Aubrey.”
The darkness around them receded some, and Jack once again felt the touch of dappled sunlight. He sensed the immediate danger was past, but he was unwilling to drop his guard even for a moment. He nodded stiffly, perhaps less polite than he would have done otherwise had she not left him so ill at ease.
With a glittering smirk she raised up both her hands, her bracelets tumbling noisily toward her elbows. “You shall have both. But for the messy insult of scraping our reef, you may not like it by half.”
His muscles seized with pain and he doubled over, curling in on himself as spasms wracked his limbs. Jack knew at once that he had been tricked, but as he could not move he was powerless to do anything but accept his fate. She pushed the water forward with both her hands and laughed as he was swept away, tumbling helplessly down, down into the deep as pain lanced through his body like fire.
After several agonizing moments the pain receded to where he could begin to move again. As he drifted lower and lower, the water growing colder and darker around him, Jack made a last attempt at kicking his legs. His muscles cramped painfully but finally flexed, shooting him forward through the water. The feeling was extremely odd; he looked down in confusion and could hardly believe his eyes. From the waist down his legs had knit together seamlessly into a single appendage, covered in scales as yellow as his hair, and where his feet should be his... tail widened into the tail-fluke of a fish. When he flexed his legs to kick, his tail beat against the water in a rolling motion and sped him forward. He tried this several times, and discovered in the same moment that his need to breathe was completely gone.
Have I truly drowned?
The view of Heaven in Jack’s mind’s eye had been much different; Fiddler’s Green was all clear skies and music and fresh canvas, but this was certainly no hot place full of fire and agony either.
He flicked his tail again, and shot upward through the water as though he’d been fired from a cannon. A mad joy built in his heart for this feeling of absolute freedom, of being truly in his element, and he glided forward at an incredible speed, water streaming around him.
At this rate, I might even outpace a cutter, ha ha!
Turning back on himself to swim another loop, he caught a glimpse of a pale, terribly familiar shape drifting not far below him.
Stephen!
Jack dove, his tail thrashing powerfully in smooth arcs behind him, and caught up the doctor’s slight form in his arms. Stephen’s face was quite blue, his body limp as a rag. Jack clasped him tightly to his breast and raced to the surface with all possible speed, his yellow hair streaming out of its queue in his wake.
With an enormous splash, they breached the surface like a strange, misshapen whale. At once, Jack spied the Boadicea off in the distance, still afloat, thank God. The tiny figures of her crew raced about, rushing to repair the damage. Nearer still, he saw the jolly-boat bobbing aimlessly, miraculously, with only an inch or two of water in her. Hauling Stephen head and shoulders up out of the water, he swam for the small craft and heaved the doctor over the side. Stephen's head lolled as he lay there insensibly, and with only a moment’s hesitation Jack kicked his tail and shot up beside him, landing gracelessly and jostling the small craft about.
“Stephen!” Jack cried, hauling himself forward to take stock of his dear friend’s condition.
He was still quite warm, though his face was an ugly grey and he lay perfectly still, not breathing.
“Oh, Stephen.” Jack was quite unwilling to give up, and he suddenly recalled the time Stephen saved a midshipman’s life by suspending him by the ankles from a yardarm and pumping the water from his lungs with a bellows. He despaired at having no way of accomplishing this here, with no mast, no line, and least of all no bellows.
Perhaps instead—and Jack blushed to think of it—he might substitute the breath from his own lungs. The method was not unknown, as a boy he had watched his own nurse save a man’s life from drowning in a stream. Of all the men he’d scooped out of the ocean without a thought, most of them were still conscious and deeply aware of their debt of gratitude. The few that had not were whisked away by their mess-mates and bundled off to the ship’s surgeon, bellows in hand. He’d never needed to do this himself, but Jack didn’t hesitate to pinch the doctor’s nose, leaning in to deliver the kiss of life.
He took a large breath, filling his powerful lungs, and pressed his lips to Stephen’s. His mouth was cool and wet, but Jack exhaled, feeling the doctor’s skinny chest rise beneath him.
It must work, Jack thought with a white-hot protectiveness, the fire of which he hadn't felt since Mahon. It must.
He repeated the action twice, three times, a dozen—and desperation crept over him, filling his whole body with a leaden weight as Stephen’s skin grew cool.
He’d lost his best, most beloved friend, and a void of solitude yawned before him. Not even the sight of the Boadicea, whole and lovely above water, could lift his heart. Jack heaved a sob and slumped forward across Stephen’s body, pressing down with half his weight. At that, Stephen convulsed, vomiting a great spout of water and gasping weakly for breath.
Jack sprang into action, turning him to ease the clearing of his lungs, wrapping him in a piece of spare canvas that by a stroke of incredible luck had not been lost in the tumult. It was only after several minutes of this fussing and careful, affectionate attention that Stephen grew fractious, turning away from Jack’s continued attempts to soothe him.
Nothing could take away the pleased smile that settled on Jack’s lips as he waved to the cutter sent out to retrieve them, and Stephen’s glassy eyes fixed on a pair of petrels wheeling overhead.
When the rescue party arrived several minutes later, they were bundled into the cutter, given space side by side to account for their exhaustion.
“I am only sorry that I did not have a bellows,” Jack murmured, rolling his own bulk close to Stephen’s narrow frame.
Stephen wheezed, but shook his head. “Never apologize, my dear. I had rather the breath from your lungs than the noxious fumigations of a hundred bellows.”
Jack smiled at him. “Still, I might have shipped a mast to suspend you—”
“Never in life. Have not mothers throughout history cared for their babes so? The method recommends itself.” He closed his eyes, ending the conversation as he lay quietly, but did not move away.