The taste of rum on her tongue was a perfect complement to the smell of gunpowder and burning timber. Molasses and smoke, cut through with the cleansing scent of the sea on the breeze. The winds were strong enough to extinguish the flames, but rather whipped up the firestorm built of leftover weaponry and how very flammable those deathtraps were into a brilliant display before them. Even as her fingers were shiny with gun shot residue and her hair had become mussed somewhere in the stream of action, the moment felt too complete to worry about anything that could be taken care of with a hot bath upon her return to the hotel.

She let him pull her attention from the crackling fire in the near, but not too near distance. It did not take much, for all that the sight of something so ugly being wiped off the face of the planet, soon to be sunk and forgotten at the bottom of the sea for all time. Not with the rumbling sound of his voice and the sincere look in his eyes when he spoke, her immediate flippant answer fading away as she instead gave him a small smile. "I would love to tell you that it is wholly selfless-" her eyes slid a moment to the ship before returning to his face. "But there are times when I need this. When the world can be boiled down to right and wrong, and you can make a little justice in the middle of it all."

Her words were too somber in the face of the victory just passed, and so she smiled and added, "Other times I need a stiff drink, a roaring fire, and the company of a handsome man."