Give the girl a shot of whiskey/Set the pirate lady free

[phrynefisher]

How it was that the wind, salt-sharp and quick as a whip as it swept around her did not tear the hat, broad-brimmed and worn, from her head, only philosophers and quantum physicists might be able to say.

Perhaps the rumors of her being a witch were true after all. Certainly she had never done anything to hush up the whispers of exactly that when she had heard them. (She had, in fact, laughed hard enough to nearly upset her glass when she'd first overheard someone informing their friend that the captain of the Thetis was some kind of sea witch). Rumors abounded around any woman who walked in the world of men, she had expected nothing less. Whether she was witch, fallen noblewoman, madwoman or whore, every man had his favorite story to tell of the woman who would dare to captain a pirate ship.

Phryne turned her head from the warmth of the sun to smile at her crew. "The wind is with us!" she called from her perch, standing as she was high up among the topmast sails. She took little note of the precariousness of her position, leaning far out from the safety of the solid wooden braces, kept safe only by the hand she kept wrapped around a rope nearby. "Prepare yourselves, we shall be on them by sunset!"

The Thetis was crewed by a mixture of sailors and strays, a strange combination of men and (shockingly) several women who came from all corners of the world. They were known for nothing more than for their captain's love of hunting slavers as they attempted to return to Europe newly heavy with profit, of the chaos they wreaked in taverns they frequented and the promise that all would share equally in the spoils they tore from merchants' hands before the goods could be traded for new stocks of slaves. What the crew made of their captain was up to each on their own, but were to Phryne more family than those she'd known by blood.

She all but danced down the rigging and masts until she stood on deck once more, eyes returning to the shape on the far horizon as she spoke to the figure nearest her, "Copper and cloth, you think?" Her lips curved, gaze turning to the one she spoke to, "Or might we hope for rum enough to refill our stock?"

Comments

[praiseandglory]

Porthos was, as a rule, the sharing type, all the more so when the person he was doing the sharing with happened to be a beautiful woman, never mind a beautiful woman whose ship he was standing on. He didn't begrudge her the rum commandeering for one moment, and just took another drink from the bottle when she handed it back, as if to seal that state of fact. He'd turned away from the burning wreck of a ship to face her, now.

"It's a good thing you're doing here," he stated, and meant it in ways he couldn't properly articulate. Sinking slaver ships, putting together a crew that might not have been accepted on any other ship, and one that didn't mind the sinking of the slave beads to the bottom of the ocean. All of those good things.

[phrynefisher]

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."

[praiseandglory]

The way Porthos saw it, just because you got something out of doing something right didn't make you selfish. Especially when, he was fairly certain, you needed to do that right thing because it was right - or because not doing it would leave too much wrong in the world. This was almost better than complete selflessness.

"Well," he stated, and held the bottle out to her in offer, his lips curved in a slight smile despite the still muted, solemn look in his eyes, "a roaring fire would be quite hazardous on a ship."

[phrynefisher]

It would have been blissfully ease to live a life of nothing but leisure. She had spent the better part of a decade chasing one adventure after another without stopping to wonder if she might improve the situations she saw around herself, and where she had no regrets over those glorious years, she had found that there was thrill and satisfaction as well in finding justice where it was so very needed. There was no question that she enjoyed the rush of chasing down murderers and loved the feeling of having solved some complicated mystery and picked apart what had really happened beneath all the lies and deceptions.

It had proved to be more than a little addicting. So much so that when offered a timeless world of adventure and possibility, she still had needed to go searching for a place she could tip the scales of justice with a gun in her hand and the wind at her back.

She smiled broadly at his offer, reaching out to take the bottle from him and taking a drink of it, unrepentant. The hand not occupied with the cool glass and the weight of rum yet undrunk caught at his bicep, her gloved fingers curling against the muscle. "But we do have a roaring fire already," she reminded him, her smile cutting deeper into one cheek than the other as she tipped her head toward the burning wreckage of the ship they'd just attacked. "And doesn't it make quite the backdrop."

[praiseandglory]

"Make the most of it while it lasts," Porthos advised her. Soon enough, it would all have sunk, the fire quenched in the ocean. The bottom of the sea was the only place this ship deserved to be, and part of him believed the same to be true of the men they had abandoned on rowboats. But cold-blooded murder was not in his nature.

[phrynefisher]

There were no regrets over the fact that they would soon be able to watch that slave ship as it was swallowed up by the sea, all its records and the goods she hadn't had use of sinking to the forgotten depths. Best it was forgotten. That no one could ever remember what its name was, or who its captain was, save for the embarrassment on that man's record...should he ever be found.

"Well, then," she began, her eyes dropping to where her gloved fingers curled against his sleeve and the firmness of the flesh beneath. "I suppose I will just have to make do with the fireplace in my room at the Nexus."

She looked up at him through her lashes, taking a slow drink from her borrowed bottle. "If you would like to help me there, I don't think I've built a fire on my own for months at least."

[praiseandglory]

Part of Athos wanted to stay here. He wasn't certain that he was ready to return to the Nexus, where there would be no such fighting as the Caribbean offered to exorcise his demons. But it would feel somewhat like hiding, and he wasn't the type to hide. Ever. Perhaps Phryne's offer was providential, and meant to show him the way back to himself, to his friends, to his life.

Besides, he was dirty, and he could use one of those wonderful showers to wash away the blood and grime. He could get used to those, and in fact probably already had.

So he met Phryne's gaze, his smile small but present, in the curve of his lips and the softening of his eyes, as he nodded. "Now, that won't do," he stated, and offered her his arm. If the door he had got here through was still there on the ship, then it was time to head back, yes. And he could imagine no better incentive than the look in Phryne's eyes.