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#a small twist on pirates of carribean but this time reader gets to go crazy
qierxing · 2 years
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Under the Sea
Yan! Leona Kingscholar x Reader
Halloween AU
CW/TW: Reader is noted with both she and they pronouns interchangeably due to their fluid state of being but is still considered G/N overall
“If you choose to lock your heart away, you’ll lose it for certain.”
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Dead men tell no tales, they said.
Sailing would be easy, they said. 
Did they think about the repercussions of unforetold supernatural problems?
The rancid smell of seaweed and brine makes your nose scrunch as you’re hauled up and thrown roughly onto your knees, shredding even more of your nice clothing. You doubt the cold hands cared though. After all, what is one puny mortal against a whole ship full of undead pirates?
“This one ‘ere’s seems to be the ca’pn, sir.” A guttural growl echoes above you, and murmurs of more crewmates surround you. 
It was a good run, you thought to yourself. You fought till the end, until your daggers and saber were knocked out of your hands, your skin slashed and bruised, and till they had to pin you down from causing more trouble. It was more than what you could say for your own crewmates, the traitorous, cowardly scum, leaving you immediately and trying to flee with their own lives. Didn’t matter though, because they were all immediately slaughtered without mercy. You’d have more pity for them dying in their own pools of blood if they didn’t abandon you first.
A barnacle covered boot tips your chin up, and you’re face to face with a smug man, piercing green eyes, dark hair like coal tied in dreads and braids, tall and lithe figure to boot. The captain of this crew, no doubt.
“You. Herbivore. What’s yer name?”
People back home called you many names. The looney merchant. A superstitious fanatic. Raving madman on the better days. Today, you can now safely say they’re all fitting.
“...[First]. [First] [Last].” You cough up, after the boot digs into the crook of your chin and head, causing an unbearable pressure on your throat. The pressure removes itself and you’re left choking for air while the man hums in thought.
“Well, ca’pn Leona?” The voice behind you asks. A scrawny, weasley sounding voice. Must be the one who binded you. “Dunno why you kept this one alive.”
You could practically hear the grin in the next words. 
“‘Cuz they got some worth to ‘em right now.”
“Have ye heard about the myth of Calypso?”
The name sets you on edge immediately. A pirate asking after the revered primordial sea goddess? That can only mean…
“Who hasn’t?” You shrug your shoulders flippantly. “Every child in a coastal town has heard about how she controls the seas and watches over sailors.”
An annoyed growl is your response. It seems your hunch was correct. “Not that, idiot. I meant about her curse.”
Aha.
“Curse?”
The captain gnashes his canines impatiently. “The one where she curses her lover for leaving her.”
“Ah, that. Yes, I’m acquainted.” You decide to stop teasing him and see where this leads. 
“I need ta find her ring.” Silence reigns. You furrow your brows and cross your arms.
“You mean, the one that so happens to be dropped into the ocean, never to be seen again? The one where Calypso, herself, has been rumored to destroy? That ring?”
“Yes, that damn ring!” The ghost snarls, banging his fist on the desk, causing documents and books to fall off. “I need to find that ring so I can finally–!”
“That ring has been gone for more than a millenia. Scratch that, it’s not even proven to ever have existed.” You interrupt, uncrossing your arms, leaning brazenly on the rickety oak desk. “And yet, you’re wanting to stake your undead life on this trinket?”
A knife is driven a finger’s width away from your hand. You don’t blink as the captain’s face becomes inches away from your own. “What does a mortal know about being undead?! What do ye know of–” He cuts himself off, a pained look clouding his eyes. You only observe as he breathes in deeply.
“Alright. I’ll help you find it.” His head whips up in surprise. “On several conditions.”
He smirks. “Negotiatin’? You’ve got guts. Name ‘em.”
“One, that you promise not to kill or harm me at any point, especially after our deal is over. Second, once this is all over, you’ll return me back to land. Third and finally, you return my belongings back from your loot.”
The captain mulls over your words, deep in thought. Beads of sweat run down your back. It was a daring bluff, but if you were kept alive this long, it had to be for something!
He runs his hand down his face, groaning. “You drive a steep price. Fine. It’s a deal.”
A crack of an incoming thunderstorm echoes as you both shake hands.
You were many things. You were once a privateer. A bartender. Even a librarian at some point, shelving books for hours till the daylight blended to blue darkness.
But never, in your entire life, have you been made to scrub deck floorboards.
The sun beating down upon your aching figure feels like salt on top of many wounds. The biting smell of lye only makes your head spin and fingers burn. 
Worth? Was your worth really amounting to just being a ship’s hands?!
Unbelievable. You end up slipping and nearly falling on your face into the bubbly mess. Left alive, but only to be doing dirty work for ghost pirates. If only the people back home could see you now…
“Shihehehe! Nice work, newbie. Cap’n Leona wants ta see you now, by the way.” The weasley voice! You look up to see squinty gray eyes and sharp teeth, all in a narrow face. There’s something unnerving about the way the ghost leans over you with his smirk, as if he’s a beast ready to devour its prey.
Shaking away the bubbles and your shame, you silently march right past him and into a sturdy chest.
“Oi, watch where ya goin’!” An angry rumble shakes you back to view the familiar face with silver hair and golden eyes that pushed you down back then. You stand your ground as the both of you stare each other down.
“My bad.” The man grunts as you push past him. “What’s their problem?” is the last thing you hear before you’re out of earshot.
You’re in a foul mood by the time you see Leona’s mug, and it seems he is too.
“What’s the hold up on finding the ring?!” He growls. His clothes are a mess more than usual, hair rumpled, and even his desk is near inhabitable. 
You huff. “If I wasn’t bogged down on ship chores perhaps I can work more on that map to get you there, Captain.”
“We’re short on manpower, if ye can’t tell. Also I can’t have ye havin’ enough time to go schemin’ behind me back.” You roll your eyes, walking up to his desk and yanking out a long parchment, causing a rather cute yelp from Leona.
“Hey–!” You unravel the aged parchment, scanning over the red lines and dots that circle the map.
“Wow, you’ve made no progress at all. Do you really wanna find this ring?” The parchment is snatched out of your hands as Leona angrily snarls. 
“Shut yer trap! I’m workin’ on it.” You heave a long sigh, walking over to his desk and starting to arrange the scattered papers and books. 
“What the hell are you doin’?” 
“What does it look like? I’m helping organize your space. Since you’re ‘working’ on it, nothing wrong with making your environment better, no?”
He only grumbles in response, but a strangely comfortable silence falls as you both do your tasks, seemingly in tandem. The sound of the quill scribbling is rather nice on the ears as you put back books and sort papers into neat piles. It’s only when you’ve finally refilled his inkwell that you lean over his shoulder and take a look and whistle.
“Nice work, Captain! Now we’re getting somewhere!” You clapped him cheerily on the back without much thought, making him scoff.
“This much is nothin’, herbivore.” If you looked closer, you would’ve seen how he leant into your palm, eyes softening as his voice resembled one of looking at a lover.
The night sky has always been beautiful.
And as the stars twinkle above, you can hear the pirates singing their drinking songs, raucous and loud, but with whatever soul they have left in their rattling ribs. 
Your drinks were pretty popular, once they found out you could make the most killer mixes out of whatever they had in stock. Ruggie, the silver eyed weasley pirate, became your instant friend as he handed out your brews to other eager crewmates.
“Shihehehe! Think of all the profit we could make outta this! Yo, Jack, come get some of this!” The younger man staggers under the weight of his drunk senior throwing himself onto him, grunting as he looks panicked.
When you break away for some peace, you find that your intended spot was already taken.
“Come ‘ere.” You blink, half turned in resignation at finding another stargazing spot. 
“Are ya deaf? Come ‘ere.” Well, it’s not like you can turn down a command. You settle yourself down next to the lazing captain, looking up wistfully.
It’s a perfect clear sky. You wish you had your telescope with you. From here, you can see a bit of the Crux and then bits of the Centauri–
“We’re close to the ring, aren’t we?” You turn your head to observe a still Leona.
“Yes.”
A long pause.
“Why did ye agree to help me? I didn’ even hafta threaten ye all that much.”
You hum, eyes still fixated on the stars. “I could ask ya the same question of why you spared me, Captain.”
Another agonizing beat.
“I thought ya were a fool.” He shifts, shoulders popping and cracking. “All yer crewmates had the sense to run but ye just stood ya ground like ye weren’t up against the famous dread pirate Davy Jones.
I guess I can admire that kind of stupidity, ya know?” 
You remain silent, throat closing in on itself. Silence returns, but you can no longer admire the stars before.
The shrine is ruined, as you expected. All that remains is a half buried altar in sand and broken shells and rocks around it. 
“What the hell is this?”
“It is what you’re searching for.”
For someone to have been searching for this ring so desperately, he looks furious, enraged even. He clenches his hand around the silver tightly, hands trembling. Perhaps you should’ve been more sensitive than just plopping the trinket into his hands.
“How do I know yer not just trickin’ me with a fake?!” He roars, the cave around you echoing. Water drips from stalactites, plopping down into puddles surrounding your area. 
You gesture towards the shrine carelessly. “Give it a try. It’s what you’ve been wanting all this time right?”
Leona’s eyes widened. “What do you–” “You wanted to be free, didn’t you?” You tilt your head, annoyed. “Well, this is it. Once you do the ritual with that ring and return it to Calypso, you’ll be free of your curse. Your love.”
“No.”
Your mouth purses at the ghost’s retort.
“I want to return to her.” 
Something in you snaps.
“You left me.” It is not you speaking, but the sea. It wails and groans as the wind howls. “You do not get to choose to come back to me, not now.”
Water rises with your temper as Leona begins to comprehend what is going on. The stalactites tremble, ready to collapse under the pressure the water pounds upon the rocks. You slowly reach out your hand.
“Give me back my ring.” Your eyes glow, your mortal veil falling away like sand. This is your domain, where he left you to rot and cry out for him for many nights, until you could only pick your trembling bones up and out into the world. Stripped of your emotions, left to rage and scream at the sky, as you walked along the seafloor. For many moons, you wondered if you could ever live without him. As year by year passed, you wandered dry land to forget the aching pain in your heart.
You will make him regret ever wronging you.
“No.” Leona steps forward against the sloshing tides, now up to his knees. He bares his fangs.
“I won’t.”
“What are you doing–!? Give me–” You howl in rage as your outstretched arm is snatched and you’re wrenched into his arms, writhing in anger.
“I won’t let you go, ever again.” He whispers in your ear, and the last thing you register is the feeling of metal on your ring finger.
“It seems like the ship was ransacked by pirates.” The old man sighs, leaning back in his rocking chair. 
“Really?” The child at his feet frowns. “But that nice sailor told me all sorts of cool stories…”
The old man shakes his head in disapproval. “Loads of tosh. That superstitious lunatic would only fill your head with stuff of fairytales. Forget it.”
The child looks out their window into the horizon, the sunset leaving shadows on the waves crashing onto the shore. He blinks, and for a moment, he swears he sees the silhouette of a large ship in the distance.
He rubs his eyes, and when he opens them again, it’s gone.
“How strange…”
He could've sworn the flag was a skull crossbones.
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