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elwynten · 1 year

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Chapter 33

Remnant: week 21

The week was highlighted by Professor Port taking the class to Beacon Cliff. "Headmaster Ozpin want's some of the Grimm cleared out of the Emerald Forest. He says they are becoming a problem in the forest." Professor Port told us. "So today you get the pleasure of taking care of the overabundance of Grimm. Won't that be fun!" Professor Port said.

"It's a lot more fun than listening to your boring stories." I said just loud enough for those near me to hear.

There were a few chuckles and some coughs as if they were trying to cover up their laughter.

Professor Port cleared his throat and went on. "Each of you need to kill two average size Grimm in order to reduce the number of Grimm in the Emerald Forest." He grinned at the students as if he was handing out candy to us. "A giant Grimm is equal to four Grimm. You will be dropped off by airships in groups of two Teams. You can work together or separate into your own Teams. When you have completed your task, you can either head back to the cliff or wait for the air ship to pick you up."

Professor Port called out Teams putting them into pairs. My Team was paired with Team JSMN.

Once all the Teams were paired up. "Well, since we're teamed up with Team JSMN, we should find them before we head out." Jett said to us.

Being the tallest, Willow looked around and spotted Team JSMN and pointed to them. "There they are." She informed us.

"Lead the way." I told her.

Willow headed off in the direction she had been pointing. She waved her arm and called out to them. "Jyll! Over here!" Willow turned to us. "They're coming this way." She told us while still waving, so Team JSMN could find us.

Shortly we were all standing in a group waiting to board an air ship.

An air ship landed, and we headed towards it. As we were boarding the air ship. "We're going it on our own, once we land." Jyll told our Team.

"That's fine with us." Jett replied.

Sunflower walked over to me. "Do you really have a recording studio in your house?" She asked me.

I chuckled. "Yes, I really have a recording studio in my house. As well as a bath house, craft room and a library." I told her.

"WOW! You have a bath house IN your house?! That's wild. I haven't been to a bath house since I left home to come here to Beacon Acadamy. Can I use it? I'd love to go to a bath house again." Sunflower said excitedly.

"The bath house is there for anyone to use that wants to use it. So, you're quite welcome to use it when you visit this weekend." I informed her.

"That's great! It's going to be like being back home." Sunflower replied as if she were going on a holiday trip.

Over the intercom. "Teams JWCE and JSMN. This is your drop point." Looking out we could see that the air ship had stopped moving.

Crystal looked out the door of the air ship. "And they mean 'drop point' literally." she said and giggled.

"Let's go Team JWCE." I told my Team and looked to see if they were ready to jump out of the air ship. I looked over to Team JSMN. "See you on the ground." And I stepped out of the air ship

Willow, Jett and Crystal followed me out of the air ship. We were at least three hundred feet up in the air when we stepped out in mid-air. Even though I could fly, I used my Semblance to alter gravity and slow my decent to the ground. With my Team following right after me, they were above me. They were able to use the gravity well that I had created and was using.

"Using your Semblance is cheating!" Mousa yelled laughing as she dropped down, about fifty feet in front of us. The rest of her Team dropped down right behind her. Team JSMN dropped like a lead balloon while my Team descended as if we were on an elevator. It took us longer to reach the ground than Team JSMN, but our landing was less… hectic.

Once on the ground Jyll called out to us. "We're heading this way." She said pointing off to her right. "And we're going to circle back to the cliff." She informed us.

"Then we'll head that way." Jett replied pointing to the left. "Keep in touch." She finished as Team JSMN started walking in the direction Jyll had indicated.

Sunflower looked over her shoulder. "Will do." She said, waved then turned back around.

Jett led us in the direction she had pointed. I don't believe she had a real path for us to take, just a general direction.

I believe Professor Port wanted us to work in larger groups for times when we may need to work in groups of six or larger. And it would have been interesting to fight on a team of eight, but I wasn't going to argue with Jyll about it.

After walking for ten minutes without seeing any Grimm. I started calling out. "Here beasty, beasty, beasty come and eat me. Opps! I lost my shield… Here beasty, beasty, beasty come and eat me. Opps! I lost my sword…"

Willow interrupted me. "What are you doing?" She asked.

I chuckled. "It's an old DnD thing. If your character can't find a monster to fight you start calling that out. It works unless your lawful good. If your Lawful Good, then you have to drop all the things you are saying you dropped." I explained.

Willow started laughing. "You're using a Role-Playing Game strategy to find Grimm?"

"Yes and no. It's more of a joke then a strategy and I'm doing it mainly for fun. But by making noise it might attract Grimm." I said.

"You don't think we'll run into any Grimm?" Crystal asked.

It's not really that. With as many Grimm that are in this forest we'll run into Grimm sooner or later. But, we're not likely to bring Grimm to us because of fear, anger or despair, because of our abilities. Thus, we will have to bring Grimm to us by other means, and right now, the means to attract Grimm, is making noise." I told her.

"Our abilities doesn't stop us from getting angry or feeling despair." Willow said.

"True, true. Although, y'all's lives are at a point where there is little reason for you to be angry about anything. Y'all are intelligent enough that your homework is fairly easy, so there's no anger or despair. Y'all's lives are, if not great they are at least good enough that you're happy. Again, no cause for anger or despair." I told them.

"I'm more than happy where I'm living and what I'm doing." Jett said.

"I'm having a wonderful life living with you and all the girls. Working at Tel Aviv Hold and learning to be a Huntress here at Beacon Acadamy. It's great to be able to travel between the different universes and see different planets." Willow added.

"And because of that, we're not going to attract Grimm." I said grinning. "So, we have to find a different way to attract them."

"That makes since." Crystal replied. "Here beasty, beasty, beasty, come and eat me."

"Oops! I dropped my shield." Willow said.

"Here beasty, beasty, beasty, come and eat me." Jett Started.

"Oops! I dropped my sword." Crystal finished.

"Here beasty, beasty, beasty, come and eat me. Oops! I dropped my armor." I said.

We all started laughing.

Willow stopped laughing. "We have company!" She warned us. Her 'Third Eye' or Danger sense, letting her know there was danger close by.

"GGRRRAAHHRR." Came from behind some nearby bushes.

Another "RRHHRR." Was heard off to the side.

"Whoa! Looks like it worked." Willow said.

Several Ursa pushed their way through the bushes. There were a total of six Ursa facing us.

"Willow, Cristal and I will take the closest three. Eilwyn hold the back three at bay." Jett gave us our instructions.

This would be easy for me. I increased the gravity under the three Ursa in the back to the point they could not move.

Each girl already had their weapon in their hands. Jett ran towards the middle Ursa. The ursa swung a paw at her. Jett dove to the right and rolled, coming up on her feet to the ursa's side. She charged her Kusari-Gama with electricity, using her weapon's electrical rune then swung her right Kusari-Gama at the ursa. The Kusari-Gama's blade sunk all eighteen inches into the ursa and released the electrical charge into the ursa, sending electrical arcs over its body. The ursa fell away from Jett as she pulled her Kusari-Gama from the ursa's body. The ursa turned into a cloud of black smoke.

Willow brought her shield in front of herself, then hit the front of the shield with the side of her war hammer, making a clanging, banging sound, to attract her Ursa.

The noise seemed to irritate the ursa. "RRRAAARRR!" The closest ursa to Willow roared and charged at her. Willow raised her war hammer up, but in front of the ursa a wall of stone rose out of the ground. The charging Ursa slammed into the stone wall, not having time to stop. Lowering her war hammer the stone wall sunk back into the ground. Willow ran up to the prone Ursa and slammed her war hammer onto the bone plate on its head. Killing her Ursa. It turned into a cloud of smoke and drifted away.

Crystal extended all four of her extra arms. Her Ursa took a swipe at one of her front arms and knocked it out from under her. Since Crystal had been standing on all four arms it didn't knock her over. Crystal created a thin jet of water, using it to cut through the ursa's neck. Cutting its head off. Crystal's ursa fell into a heap right before it evaporated into a cloud of black smoke.

With the last of the first three Ursa dead, Willow called out. "Release the krakens!" And giggled.

I looked at Jett and she nodded her head in agreement. I released the gravity on the last three Ursa so they could move again, and I backed out of the way.

"Same as last three." Jett said.

"On it." Crystal replied.

"Easy peasy." Willow said, and advanced on the closest Ursa to her.

Crystal reached up with her top two arms, grabbing two different trees, pulling herself fifteen feet off the ground. She looked like a giant spider. At the same time, she reached down with her two bottom arms. Wrapping the arms in opposite directions around her ursa's neck several times. The next moment Crystal retracted both bottom arms at the same time. Using them like saw blades, cutting the ursa's head off. As the ursa's body hit the ground it was turning into a cloud of black smoke.

"Remind me to not piss you off, Crystal." I told her.

Crystal looked down at me and grinned evilly, right before she dropped to the ground.

"I haven't thought of using the arms that way." I told her.

Crystal blushed. "I just thought of it and thought I'd give it a try. I thought I would use the Ursa's own weight against it." She told me.

"It worked. Well done. You came at it from a different angle. Both literally and figuratively." I told her smiling at her.

Jett created ice under the Ursa in front of her. Her Ursa fell when it tried to take a step on the ice. Jett then struck the Ursa with both of her Kusari-Gamas killing the Ursa.

Willow's Ursa charged at her. Willow took a fighting stance with her shield held in front of herself, and her war hammer held back ready to swing. She brought her war hammer forward and down to strike the Ursa. Willow had decided to use extended range, so as the war hammer came down there was a shimmering image of the head of the war hammer ten feet in front of Willow following along with the head of the war hammer. The shimmering image hit the Ursa and knocked it to the ground. Willow jumped, coming down bringing her war hammer down again and striking the Ursa a second time, killing it.

Willow watched as the Ursa turned into a cloud of black smoke and drifted away.

"That's it. Y'all have your quota of Grimm while I have 'none'. I'm odd man out." I said jokingly.

"You're always the odd man out, on this Team." Willow said. Willow had obviously been around me too long, she was picking up my since of humor.

I stuck my tongue out at her.

"We will find you some Grimm to kill." Crystal offered, with a smirk on her face.

"How kind of you." I replied sarcastically, grinning.

Crystal giggled.

We started walking again towards the cliff.

After a half hour, Crystal was true to her word. They found a Grimm for me. It was a Giant Death Stalker.

"There you go." Crystal said pointing to the Giant Death Stalker. "There's your Grimm. It's even big enough to count as four Grimm." She said grinning.

"OH, how kind of you!" I said fairly loudly and sarcastically. Probably loud enough for the Giant Death Stalker to be able to hear me, which was my intention.

"What's wrong? Don't you think you can kill it?" Willow asked with a small grin on her face.

"That's right y'all got to fight," I held my hand up with my index finger and thumb almost touching. "Itsy bitsy Ursa, and you give me this, HUGE," I spread my arms out wide. "Death Stalker!"

Most anyone watching us, would think we were arguing, when we were just playing around. The girls and I were teasing each other.

"Well, if you can't take the Death Stalker all by yourself. Us little girls can help you with the Big, Bad, Death Stalker." Jett said teasingly in a baby voice.

The Death Stalker had turned in our direction and started walking towards us while we were talking. Attracted by the sound of our voices.

"Ha… ha… ha." I fake laughed. "Since it will make you feel like you're actually, doing something. Keep it distracted." I said as I jumped into the air and drew my weapon.

Willow, Jett and Crystal looked at each other then turned to the Giant Death Stalker.

Jett created and shot ice shards at the Death Stalker. It backed up and shook like a horse shaking off a biting fly.

Willow drew shadow tentacle out of the ground to entangle the Death Stalker. The Death Stalker came to an abrupt holt, the shadow tentacles stopping it in its tracks.

Crystal hit it with a bold of electricity stunning the Death Stalker for a few moments.

While all of this was going on, I came down throwing my Naginata. As it left my hand, I made duplicates of it, so there were thirty-one Naginatas flying towards the Death Stalker. I recalled my weapon to me just before the duplicates hit their target. The Death Stalker screamed in pain as the thirty duplicate Naginatas impacted it. As I reached striking range, I thrust my Naginata into the Death Stalker between its eyes. The Death Stalker dropped to the ground then turned into a cloud of black smoke, as I landed beside where the Death Stalker had been.

"See… You couldn't have done it without our help." Willow said, giggling.

I turned to Willow and wiggled my head from side to side and said. "Ha, ha, ha."

Crystal and Jett broke out laughing.

Once Jett had her laughing under control. "The Giant Death Stalker counts as four Grimm. That gives us ten kills, which means we can head back to the cliff." And with that said, we headed back to Beacon Cliff.

Team RWBY beat us back to the cliff, but then, they had been dropped off closer to the cliff than we had been.

"Hey Blake, how'd your hunt go?" Willow asked.

"We did good. We ran into a pack of Baowolves and were able to get our kills all at one time." Blake replied. "How about your Team?"

"Crystal, Jett and I made our kills with a pack of six Ursa. Then we helped Eilwyn take down a Giant Death Stalker. So, we got two extra kills." Willow told her.

Blake looked impressed. But I had to speak up and tell the whole story. "I held off three of the Ursa while they took out the first three." I glared at Willow. "And with the Giant Death Stalker, I had the girls distract it while I went in for the kill." I started. "While 'some' try to make it look like I needed help to take out my Grimm." I finished and stuck my tongue out at Willow.

Blake laughed. She had been around me and my Team enough to know how we tease each other. "You four work so well together. I'm sure you each had an equal part in making your kills." Blake told us.

Willow looked like she was a little reluctant to admit the truth, but she gave in. "Ya, Eilwyn did as much as the rest of us. Maybe a little more than the rest of us." She said sheepishly.

"A good leader makes sure each member of their Team does their fair share." Ruby said grinning as she walked up to us.

"And Jett is a good leader." I said.

"Yes, Jett's a good leader." Willow agreed.

Weiss and Yang walked up. "Team JWCE took out a Giant Death Stalker." Blake told her Team.

Ruby's eyes grew big and round. "You did?! I hate those things."

"If I remember correctly, you like riding Nevermores." I responded.

Weiss had walked up as I talked to Ruby and Blake. "Don't remind me. That was awful, and you" She pointed at Ruby. "Left me up there all alone."

"I told you, to jump." Ruby replied.

Weiss shook her head, turned around and walked off.

"She should have made a slide with her glyphs and just slid to the ground." I suggested. "But then we were all nervous that day."

#RWBY #Remnant #Vale #Beacon #Beacon Acadamy #Ruby #Weiss #Blake #Yang #Grimm #Emerald forest #Pern #Dragonriders #Dragonriders of Pern #Dragons #CYOA

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1800titz · 5 months

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Hi friends! I’ve been sitting on this for about 3 months now and had the spontaneous urge to share. More lengthy authors note is over on wattpad. ٩(◕‿◕)۶

This one is going to be a long, chaptered fic, and here's the first chapter!

Also, big thank you to Miss @freedomfireflies for her help brainstorming <3

WC: 6.5K

Harry thinks that prissy, pretty little princesses stowed away in his cabin, tied up with ropes like haphazard, shibari interpretations, outweigh all chests, upon chests, of dainty sapphire emblems and chunky pendants of gold. This particular …treasure, in fact, is worth far beyond her weight in pure gold. A sight for sore eyes, too. Still sopping from the sea, her low-cut neckline clinging to her flesh and her skirt sheerly draped over her parted thighs.

It’s a nice view.

Seren doesn’t know how she’s ended up strapped to some horribly uncomfortable stool in a rocking room that’s wood, ceiling to floor.

Well.

She knows that the boat she was on was a victim of piracy. She knows that the ship, aimed for Holland, met an unsightly demise at some point, in open ocean, between Rotterdam and Harwich. She knows she’d been in a cabin of the Mary when the first strike landed, when flames erupted over the forecastle, when the deck turned to screams and a beautiful morning of calm skies, wisps of white she’d admired minutes prior, meant virtually nothing to the tightening in her chest.

The pirate leans back against the wall. His eyes, like emeralds, wind over her shape. She grits at the balled fabric between her teeth, chest heaving. He’s a man — a man’s man, unlike in appearance to the men she’s used to spending her pastime around, back home. The kinds who wither at the sight of the wrong fork at the dinner table or something, and turn their noses up at the thought of carrying something heavier than forty pounds. The kind whose hair coils pristinely, seemingly solidified rock in place. The kind who carry umbrellas to ward off the glaring rays of the sunlight as they stroll through the courtyard of shrubbery in their fancy shoes and fancy garments. This man is not that type of man.

He’s different, she can see it just in the way he carries himself. He’s not scared to get his hands dirty, he’s not scared to do the work. The crest of his left cheekbone wears a scar, a nick, so small she wouldn’t see it had he not stepped into the buttery beam of the daylight cast through the little window on the precipice of wall and ceiling, particles of dust dancing in the makeshift spotlight. His fingers, adorned with chunky rings, his hands — they’re calloused, like a laborer. She can see it from her view. His garb is simple, clad over his skin for purpose and comfort, solely.

But simple isn’t the term she’d deem best to describe him, not with his myriad of accessories, from the trinkets glinting from his holster, to his plethora of rings, to the mysterious, rusted key that dangled in the glen between his pecs. That one’s highlighted against bare skin in the vale of his haphazardly unbuttoned shirt. From there, she can see ink over his torso, carved in shapes over swarthy flesh. All sorts of pictures; beaks, and wings, lines of careful shading and others of jet emphasis; thicker, deeper sketches in contrast.

He’s clean shaven, which is unlike any pirate Seren’s ever heard tall tales of. His mouth is pink, cushiony in shape, and when the corners of his mouth turn up, dimples wink awake beside the curl. An even slope of a nose, and jade irises that brew with mischief. Seren can almost see the way that the flinty shade would brew with a storm, like the sea. If he wasn't a pirate of the boat that’d throttled her own, sent it spiraling into the ocean as nothing but husks of chipped wood and dying ember, maybe she’d find an alluring quality to him. But it’s not food for thought.

“Should we try again?” he prompts, in his tantalizing cadence.

When she’d heard him speak, for the first time, she was floored. An Englishman. An Englishman, youthful and spry, sailing a pirate ship, and pillaging when so much more could be in the books for such a man. So much potential, wasted. What a crying shame. She’d heard of pirates, of brutish criminals from her homeland, but they were always, for some reason or another, older, unprepossessing, scarred and crude with unkempt beards and a lack of morals, too far gone to redeem. They had eyes much too hungry for riches, and lewd, groping hands that were much too focused on flesh. Seren eyes his hands. They’re colossal. He hasn’t touched her in that way, not like that, but the lazy smirk over his plush mouth, the way his irises rake over her neckline, down the meshified front of her dress — that practically urges her not to count her blessings too soon.

When he squats just ahead of her, watching her in pause, his eyes glinting with this sort of condescension, because she’s indisposed and at his whim, Seren wishes her legs weren’t bound to the legs of the chair. She’d kick him, if she could. She’d scream, and kick, and claw, and—

“Are you going to start shouting again? Is that what you’re thinking about?” he murmurs, the corners of his mouth buckling. When she’s unable to respond, for obvious reasons, the man cups his palm over the shell of his right ear and twists his head a tad, leaning towards her a smidge.

“M’gonna need an answer, if you’d like to me to un-gag you. M’specifically gonna need a no,” the pirate prompts, a jesting air to his tone that Seren would love to crush. Her chest is still heaving from the last screaming fit, from the first time he’d tugged at the rope pressing to her cheeks and pulled the smushed fabric off of her tongue. His mouth twitches wryly.

He plants his forearms onto his thighs, casting his gaze to her as he weighs out the options, lips crooked, but eyes narrowed, just a bit, in a way that wordlessly suggests she comply.

“Let’s give this another go.”

When the man digs his forefinger under the abrasive rope and yanks it down, over her chin, and then plucks at the outside of the makeshift gag, Seren doesn’t nip at his fingertips. She’d tried that, the first time, but he’d retracted before her teeth could come into contact, his mouth jolting at the fire within her he’d underestimated. She expected a smack, she’d expected her neck to twist as her cheek bruised in response to the attempt, but he’d just stuck his tongue against his cheek, all mirthy, until she’d started to scream. Then he’d gagged her again.

So.

That was a failure.

The second the back of her throat meets the air, rather than the garbling cloth, the young woman starts screaming. Again. He’d kind of expected it. It’s a very lovely attempt, she’s quite loud, and all, but unfortunately, her efforts are sort of moot. That kind of thing tends to happen when you’re miles, and miles, and miles out in the open sea aboard a ship of men who work for the opposing team. Harry would clap if he wasn’t putting on a show of tucking a finger into his ear at her shrill cries. Eventually, he just watches her, letting her scream for a bit, and she holds seething eye contact as her help rises in pitch.

“Okay— alright,” Harry shakes his head, balling the cloth, daubed with her saliva, and shoving it past her lips haphazardly. She attempts to spit, but can only wriggle as he presses the rope back over her mouth like the task is effortless.

For a moment, neither of them say anything. The princess can’t. Harry tuts.

His tone carries notes of amusement when he tells her, “You’re quite pitchy. D’you know that?”

Seren stares him down.

“Have you got rocks in your head?” his lips nearly jolt up at the blunt nature of his own inquiry. They don’t. “I tell you not to scream,” he waves with an arm, “you scream anyways. I say, let’s try one more time, because— you know. Maybe you didn’t get the memo, the first time.”

The princess watches him talk, bemused. He gestures with his arm like a tired parent, stressed and lecturing a menacing, little child.

“And you yell again. So I’m wondering, have you got rocks in your head?”

Seren says nothing. She does wriggle in the restraints, like his question has insulted her enough to launch at him. But she stills when he squats ahead of her, once more, her heart hammering behind her ribcage.

“Who’s going to rescue you?” the pirate asks. It’s obviously rhetorical, and he knows she can comprehend that much. When the roll of her chest slows and she settles back, he can see it in her eyes that his point has left her crestfallen. His mouth quirks, and Harry presses again. “Who?”

When he knows that the message has sunk in, when she stares at the wall behind him, blankly, the only evidence of her consciousness being her glazed over gaze and the flare of her nostrils on every inhale, Harry sighs down at his palms and shakes his head.

“I’d just like a chat.”

Seren twists her head away. As much as the binding over her neck and face allows for, anyways. Harry tuts.

“So glum. You’re alive, aren’t you?” he cocks his head, voice low, “You’re not at the bottom of the sea. Not like your little boat.”

Those words hit a nerve, he can see it in the way she side-eyes him, the flame reignited, kindling in her scorching gaze. The pirate nods down at his hands, twisting a ring with a ruby red gem, like a shitty mockery of a moment of silence.

“It can’t possibly be comfortable, sitting with your mouth full, like that. And you must be thirsty, what with all that saltwater you were gargling,” he raises a shoulder, a coy reasoning to his speech.

Seren doesn’t want his stupid water. He’d probably poison her, have his way, and roll her off the ship, back into the raging waters he’d pulled her from. Harry blinks. She doesn’t offer an inkling to show that she’s willing to comply, but he stands and reaches for the rope, digging the pads of his fingers under the binding, over her cheek. His forefinger brushes the corner of her parted lips.

“Third time’s the charm.”

Though, he doesn’t sound the least bit convincing, not even to his own ears. He cradles the square of cloth between his fingertips and listens to her screams for a moment.

And then he startles her when he starts to harmonize with her screeching pleas. The first one is enough for her vocal chords to stutter, for her to jolt back in her seat, alarmed.

“HELP!” Harry calls, stretching the vowel outweighing her own scream in volume as the young woman’s own dies off, and the princess balks, startling in the ropes at the sound. He takes a pause for a deep breath, and screams again, “HELP!” banging on the wooden beams over the ceiling, bumping with his palm loudly, in an outrageous display that’s clearly meant to taunt. The sound of him striking it, alone, causes her to jump in her restraints.

He’s unhinged. Seren is convinced. Her spine straightens out like an arrow, and her shoulders square as she ogles the bizarre display, watching him strike over the ceiling, the walls, stamp the soles of his boots against the floorboards. After a second, he settles down. His hand is crooked against one of the beams overhead, and his gaze roves over her slowly. Purposefully. The corners of his mouth curl up sardonically.

“It’s not a very nice sound, is it?”

He’s deranged. His screws are loose, Seren decides, her eyes still wide as the racing pace of her heart settles in her chest — but any man who sinks ships for fun, in the open sea, who sails and pillages, and murders innocents with a hunger for riches, has screws loose. These aren’t insightful revelations. Maybe she’d just expected him to be less …bizarre, in their interrogation. He was going to get his answers out of her — they were his, they were going to be, and there’s no kidding about it — but the young woman is unsure of what answers he’s looking for or why. Why, why, why. Why did these pirates sink her boat? It was nothing but a small ferry in comparison to the opposing monster of a galleon. It wasn’t even a merchant ship, there were no riches to be stolen. Ironically, the pirate reaches a hand out, and Seren fidgets until his fingers clasp over her ruby pendant. He lifts it from her skin with prodding fingertips and a gaze of scrutiny.

She won’t give him answers, the princess decides. Whatever dialogue he may want from her, she won’t comply. She doesn’t know what he has in store for her lack of subservience, but she doesn’t care. She will not bend her will for this mangy brute.

“This is a pretty piece.”

Loose tendrils, clumped wetly, sway as she jerks her neck to tug the pendant from his grasp. She fails. His digits twitch and flex over the pendant, and the chain digs into the skin at the back of her neck with the faulty motion. The corners of his mouth quirk up as the princess makes an mmph.

That’s a pretty sound.

“M’not going to steal it. What kind of a man do you take me for? We’re good men here, on this ship,” the pirate declares, a sort of vehement passion to his statement, but the crook of his mouth says it’s an unlikely story.

So do the remnants of her boat, somewhere at the bottom of the sea, Seren thinks dryly. Maintaining eye contact, he lets the pendant settle back between her collarbones. It is a pretty piece, Harry wasn’t lying. Real gold, too — no princess would wear something less. But he’s got no need to pilfer it from her. Every molecule of her being, every cell, will pay out tenfold the cost of the necklace. It’s with that thought that he fixes the gag back into place and leaves her, trussed to that chair in the cabin.

“Ta,” the pirate bids in his slow roam towards the door, a glance aimed over his as he tucks his fingertips into the belt holstering his array of daggers, one handle bejeweled. The look he fixes her is sure, the kind that’s relaxed, but showcases that his word is final and will be the outcome. “Chat soon.”

Fun fact; being tied to a shoddy, little wooden chair for hours on end fucking blows. Especially when your hands are bound, in such a way where the rope weaves through the pegs of the back of the chair, keeping your joints wrung together tightly. It’s really aggravating to have a coarse rope, its weaving splintered with pinprick-y tufts, stuck up over your cheeks to hold some sordid rag in place between your teeth.

It’s safe to say that the experience is not one of Seren’s most favorite past-times. She’s not sure how much time has passed before that heavy wooden door creaks open on its hinges, again. Only a few hours, it must be. The crack of a window behind her hasn’t broken with nightfall, though the light cast through its opening has dimmed, if only a little.

It’s the same pirate as before. All glimmery jade and the bare vale of tanned skin from the unbuttoned sector of his shirt, where she makes out a faint dusting of chest hair, between his pecs.

The princess is still a gorgeous view, in Harry’s opinion. Her thighs are still splayed, but her cream dress has dried some, now, and so has her hair. It’s wild, mussed and frizzy. A half-soaked clump rests over one of her eyes.

“Hello to you, too, darling,” he says in response to the glare she fastens him with through the one that’s visible, like instant daggers. The corners of his mouth crook. He ambles toward her with a steel cup of …something. Something mysterious, something unknown, something she eyes warily up until the point where he’s towering over her. The young woman tears her gaze away, casting it up to his handsome face, instead.

He pries and tucks his digits up under the rope that’s settled over her cheeks and drawn ruddy hues, but he pauses before he pulls it down.

“Y’gonna get loud?”

Seren doesn’t say anything. In fact, she sort of can’t, which is quite nice, Harry thinks, but she doesn’t even make a garbled sound to appease or amuse him. The captain is thankful for what little fragments of peace he’s been granted before he’s forced to endure her ludicrously grating screeching. He weighs his options for a moment, but ultimately, tugs.

Of course, the second he’s pulled the cloth out, the young woman is screaming, of-fucking-course she’s screaming. And at this point, it’s so obviously a ploy to irritate him, and Harry would laugh if the whole display wasn’t so vexing. There’s a tick in his jaw when he sets the lip of the tin cup to her parted, strawberry mouth, roughly — and he wouldn’t be so rough if she wasn’t so fucking loud — and tips. Instantly, that shout is garbled by liquid. It morphs into a cough and a much more tolerable string of sputters, as water leaks over and drenches down her chin, her chest, the front of her dress.

“There we go,” the pirate says, the smooth baritone of his cadence louder over the fit of her coughing, “Attagirl. That’s much better.”

He doesn’t tip more of the beverage into her mouth — a ransom on a princess who’s drowned in her own lungs is worth virtually nothing — and lets her cough and sputter a little longer. She strings together a sequence of breaths he deems good enough, before he smushes the rim of the metal cup back against her bottom lip.

“Drink,” Harry advises and nudges the tin back in a way, again, so that the liquid sloshes and spills out into her open mouth.

This time, she doesn’t cough. She expects it, the water. The princess affixes her top lip lower to siphon the beverage and takes a few swallows. Harry watches her throat bob, and he watches a little rivulet escape, too, dribbling down the corner of her mouth in a little streak. It drips down her chin, down her neck. His pupils follow the trail. He gives her a little break part-way, once the tin is close to empty and her neck is craned back with the swallows. He draws it away. Good. That was good, nice and easy. As easy as it could be, given the circumstances.

Except she fixes him with this horrible glare, again, as he pulls the cup away. This glare that speaks volumes, this glower that should warn him of his error before he lets it happen. Harry doesn’t catch the drift. Only a glimpse of her cheeks puffing before she puckers her lips and spits the remnants at him, coating the bottom-most half of his linen with a mist of the water. His belt too, and a bit of his trousers.

And then her mouth is empty and she’s just scowling at him, head tipped down in a way so that the chunk of her frizzy tendrils settles back over an eye. Harry doesn’t waste a second before angling the cup, miffed, and flinging what little water is left in the cup right back in her face.

And the way her eyes screw shut, the way her lips fall open in silent appall the second he returns the energy, (except, he’s far more polite, in his humble opinion. He doesn’t spit at her like an improper animal), when she’s doused in the chilled liquid, and it coats the face-framing layers of her hair, her lashes, and drips down her chin — that’s the highlight of his day.

He doesn’t instantly fix the gag back into her mouth, or slip the rope back over her irritated skin. He watches her, his jaw set, and when the young woman opens her eyes, she sees that storm brewing, manifesting — the kind she’d only imagined prior, in the flinty green of his irises. Like he’s harnessing his own composure. But then he takes a step back, and just. Leans against the closed door. Like he’s scoping her with his gaze. Like she’s just this shiny thing for his sight to pore over.

And Seren thinks that feels worse than if she were to face the bite of his skin against her own, the swat of his palm against her cheek. She’d rather that, honestly.

Her skin is cold from the water. She’s still sort of reeling that he’d done that, to begin with. He’s drumming the pads of his fingers against his bicep, over the nearly-sheer, cream sleeve of his shirt when he asks, a serious note of authority to the molasses of his speech, “Do you know who I am?”

Seren curbs parroting the question wryly. As much as she’d love to tell him her father will torch the ship he rides upon and hang every member of his crew, him and his stupid fucking dimples included, she’s sure that all she’ll receive in response is a grating twitch of his pink mouth.

“Hm?” he prods, making a show of cupping a palm behind his ear and steering his torso forward a smidge, half-expecting her response to be a series of shrill cries, for the hell of it.

Her answer is not one he expects. Frankly, the man doesn’t expect an intelligible response, the history of her opting for incoherent shouts, considered. But she speaks, afterall. It’s soft in decibel, feminine, and pleasant — her voice, unlike the aimless yelling he’d become accustomed to. Even still, it carries that undeniable note of derision.

Seren tells him, “Someone …terribly disturbed.”

Harry almost can’t help the way his cushiony mouth quirks.

Almost.

“Disturbed?” he scoffs, sardonically mirthy, “She spits at me like a fucking …filthy animal, and I’m disturbed. Aye, I’m disturbed.”

The princess makes daggers with the gaze she sends in his direction. He lets her simmer in the wake of the light insult, for a moment, just drumming over his bicep, his mouth twitching in a kind of way that doesn’t quite reach his eyes.

“I’m the captain of this ship,” Harry supplies softly, jade narrowed.

There’s a twitch to her face then, something that slots by and withers in the blink of an eye. Something like recognition. And, fucking finally, Harry thinks — he can practically hear the angels croon at the crumbs of reception, from her, to his authority.

“That means,” he motions out with the cup, his other arm still crossed, fingers wrapped about his waist now, “I’m in charge.”

His voice is soft-spoken, a croon that spells it out for her, if she hasn’t already caught the drift.

“I’m in charge of this ship. This crew,” he takes a step forward, ducking his chin as his eyebrows tip up a bit, “And you. And that means I’m in charge of what happens to you. So don’t you think it’s in your best interest to behave?”

If he expects her to bow down and kiss the toes of his scuffed boots, the young woman doesn’t bite the bait.

“You’re nothing but a mangy sea brute,” Seren declares, then, her chin held audaciously high, despite the ropes binding over her breasts and the foreboding ocean that sways beyond, with ravenous threat. He could lug her off onto the deck and chuck her off the plank, tied just like this.

He doesn’t.

He just stays leant against the wall, arms crossed over his bare chest.

“Mangy sea brutes,” the pirate weighs her words, nodding slowly as he purses his lips in deliberation. And then his brows pinch together, “that’s quite insulting, actually. I take pride in my appearance, I’ll have you know.”

“Mangy,” the young woman confirms, venom in her tone.

The pirate props himself up and off, taking a languid step, each syllable of his cadence laced with condescension, “Now, rugged—“ and open mouthed smirk, a nudge with his chin, “I’ll accept. You don’t think I spend time in front of the mirror, darling? Mangy. What a rude word. I wasn’t aware that Siren, Princess of Essex was so abrasive.”

There’s a flicker of something in her eyes when they flash to him — something like sharp surprise, mottled with pique. Like she didn’t expect him to know who exactly he was harboring upon his ship. The corners of his mouth crook. She’s seemingly appalled that he’s done his research. The glint of shock is gone, as soon as it shows itself.

“Oh,” the captain takes a slow step forward in this sort of way, as if his body language is entirely meant to taunt her, hand in hand with his tongue, “I see. You thought I didn’t know who you were. Just some nameless, pretty little thing on my ship.”

It’s a purposeful dig — the mispronunciation of her name. It’s only a vowel off, it could be chalked up to simple error, but it’s blatantly to mock her. Really, it’s a funny little dub since she enjoys spending so much screeching like the nuisance of a blaring alarm that just won’t shut off. It’s meant to demean her, to belittle her, because not even her name, blue-blooded and all, is worth correct pronunciation. That’s what she seems to hone on from the whole revelation, Harry finds.

“Seren,” she corrects with bite, that same glower she’d worn prior reincarnated.

The man takes another step. He cups behind his ear, and Seren promises herself that the moment she’s freed, she’ll personally chop off his stupid fucking ear for all the times he’d cupped behind that shell of it that way, so condescending. “What was that?”

“Seren,” the young woman scowls, “Seren, Princess of Essex.”

He pauses, a cinch in his brows with this patronizing nod, like he’s weighing her correction, and then he tells her, motioning with an arm as the cinch relaxes, “Siren, Seren. Tomato, tomato.”

He motions with his palm nonchalantly. She wants to bite at his fingers. She doesn’t.

“How dare you?” the young woman says instead.

Harry’s mouth quirks. How dare he? What a pompous inquiry, molded by prissy lips.

“How dare I?” the pirate repeats, and then just lifts his shoulder in a casually apathetic shrug. He takes a third step forward, raspberry lips smug and curled, “I just… dare.”

And before the princess can voice her obnoxious protest, he shoves the cloth into her mouth and tugs up the rope, plucking a garbled sound of anger from her in the process.

The silence is wonderful.

By the time Harry returns to her for the third time, it’s well past nightfall. Light stops leaking from the crack of the window. Seren watches the shift, the way it rolls as the hours tick by, in the room. It morphs from behind her, its bright gold slipping into a darker orange, mottled with pink, and then dimmer, and dimmer, and dimmer, as minutes leak away, until all that’s left is dusk and the glow of the moonlight.

The door creaks. She almost doesn’t see it, but she hears the pad of his boots over the wood and twists her neck to catch the sight of his legs as he steps through the threshold.

“Honey, I’m home,” the pirate calls.

Her eyes strain their sockets to catch the moonlight cresting off his cheekbones as his head dips, the dimpling that rises awake beside the corners of his mouth as they turn up at his own jest. He’s holding something. The captain winds around her, through the coat of darkness, and settles somewhere she can’t see. A thump, like something being set onto a table. Then, soft breaths fill the void of the silence. A strike of a match. Her eyes are forced to adjust to a warm, buttery glow as the little beam of fire, merged to a lantern, and then another, sends gold bouncing wall to wall.

That’s when Harry sees that she's managed to make a home for herself on the floor, the chair she’s been restrained to tipped on its side. He almost doesn’t think anything of it, for a split second, but then, as the pads of his digits work buttons through their slits to disrobe, the pirate casts his gaze up for a double take. A twisted coil of satisfaction blooms in his chest as he observes her, the thought that whatever faulty maneuver she’d made to escape had resulted in this, and, well. That makes something joyful and mean bud.

Seren listens to his boots, the step of them slow against the floorboards, until she sees him towering over her, in her peripherals. Her pupils shift.

“Comfortable?” his brows climb with emphasis. The work of his fingertips over the buttons on his shirt are sluggish. Tired. She notes that motion, too — that fact that he’s actively shedding clothes. Nonchalantly. And it must show in her eyes, then. Something vulnerable, something uncomfortable, something raw, and petrified, because, yeah, she’s a petulant, little princess strapped to a chair in his cabin, against her will, and she fights him tooth and nail in every instance that he comes to visit her. But she’s a princess strapped to a chair, against her will, and it’s nightfall, and his skin is growing more bare, square inch by square inch, as the seconds pass.

He must note that — whatever that shows, because the quirk of his priorly mirthy, strawberry mouth slips a tad. And then his features shape something relaxed. Something tired, again. Like he’s too worn.

The sarky comment has those same traces of exhaustion seeping into it as his dismissive gaze disengages, honing on the work of his digits as he loops the final button through, “Don’t flatter yourself, sweetheart. You’re not my type.”

The cloth slips apart, showcasing more skin. A line of hair from below his belly button, in soft, dark wisps that melts off behind his belt. Sturdy muscles of his abdomen that ripple as he moves, chin ducked—

His palms cup over the belt of holsters, and that clinks as he discards it, too, winding around to, she assumes, set it somewhere. And then, more skin to pore over when he returns, the sharp cut of a V, decorated with laurels, emphasized by the low hang of his trousers. He cocks his head down at her, like he’s contemplating. Contemplating what, Seren’s unsure. He moves out of her line of sight again.

Her arm aches. She’d tipped over onto it what felt like hours ago, and it’d taken the brunt of the fall, lodged against the side of the chair with the situation of her joints being married in the bindings, behind her. She’d managed to roll forward on her shoulder, just a tad, so that the press against it wasn’t constant, but it still fucking hurt. Her palms, down to the tips of her digits, were numb, she had this heinous crick in her neck, and she’s sure that the moment she’s able to stand her tailbone will hurt like hell. If she’s ever allowed to stand again. Maybe he’ll hurl her into the open ocean, strapped to this godforsaken chair, afterall.

For now, he just hauls her up. His touch — warm — skims the opposite arm before his palm wraps over the beam over the back of the chair and tugs, leveling her with ease. The young woman squeaks against the gag as she hovers, terrified to drop straight onto the limb again. She doesn’t. The pirate sets her straight with a tired grunt. His sight scales her arm, the one she’d toppled onto, and Seren can’t see, but she assumes it’s not in the most pristine condition. And then his touch smooths over the ache, a crease over his brow bone as his eyes pry, and she bristles.

His mouth twitches, but it’s tired. Tired after having to deal with her, tired from whatever he’d spent his time doing beyond the cabin. Tired after sinking her ship and taking her hostage, Seren thinks bitterly. How exhausting. And Harry takes his hand away.

From her new, upright view, she can see that little metal cup — the same one he’d brought her hours earlier. He’s set it onto the table, and she knows it wasn’t there before, which means he’s brought it with new water. Seren turns her head to face it. It’s the most she can manage given that she can’t tell him what she wants, what with the gag and all.

“Thirsty?” he notes, chin over his shoulder in her direction as he shimmies the sleeves of his shirt off. Seren eyes the expanse of naked skin as it expands, from cuts of muscle to ink sunk into the flesh of his arm. Certainly, if she wasn’t before.

The princess doesn’t answer. She can’t, and she’s not going to resort to a string of pathetic hums to get his attention. The captain sets his shirt onto the table in a pile of disarray, beside his belt, and takes the cup. When he makes his way over to her, Seren’s eyes don’t follow his figure. And for a moment, there’s only a deliberative sort of silence. She doesn’t look until he talks, until his tone is far more serious than she’s heard thus far.

“If you spit it at me again, I will personally make sure you lick it back up, off the floorboards.”

And wisely, she doesn’t spit the liquid back up at him when he tugs the gag free and tips the rim of the cup against her mouth. Seren doesn’t doubt he’s the type of man to follow through on his words. But that’s not why she drinks — she drinks because she’s fucking thirsty. Her tongue’s gone dry, and the back of her throat pinpricks with an uncomfortable soreness, and because the lukewarm liquid feels good spilling down her throat. She cranes her neck back, throat bobbing, and doesn’t stop until he’s pulled the cup away himself, and a little rivulet of water dribbles down the corner of her mouth. She takes a big gulp of air and expels it.

And then, with angry sorts of eyes, the princess declares, “I’m hungry.”

“You’re hungry,” the pirate mirrors, but it’s only wryly amused — his tired, sardonic smile doesn’t reach his eyes, and he sets the cup back onto the table with little urgency to get her food. “We don’t offer room service.”

“You haven’t fed me once today,” Seren declares indignantly when he winds behind her, out of sight. And then there’s a sigh and a creak, the kind that seeps from mattress springs compressing. “This is— this is cruel, I’ll have you know. This is torture, this is—“

“Thank you for your honest review, we’ll make sure to take your feedback into account,” Harry chimes at her in true, facetious fashion, scrubbing over his eyes with a palm as he knees his way onto the bed. And then the pirate tells her, with a more serious note to his drawl, before she has a chance to interject with another complaint, “If you’re going to talk all night, I’m going to put your gag back in until the morning.”

Seren doesn’t say anything. Finally, she doesn’t say anything at all, and it’s splendid. It’s peace and quiet, and all he hears, for a perfect moment, is the creak of the wood and the subdued roar of the waves.

“I don’t want to stare at the wall,” the princess speaks, eventually, like a petulant child. “Why am I staring at the wall?”

“Because …that’s the way the chair’s facing,” Harry responds, matter-of-factly and almost instantly, sure that a note of irritation has managed to teem into the words despite his best efforts. He will not let her know that her efforts of poking are chipping at his composure, he won’t.

And for another moment, Seren doesn’t say anything. He lets his eyes drift shut.

“I want to face you,” the princess says, eventually, and her tone implies she’s taken the bridge of silence to build the phrase up into something more demanding, something royal and authoritative. If he wasn’t so fucking tired he’d laugh.

“You want to watch me sleeping?” she hears the pirate from behind her, his honey-smooth drawl grown raspy and lower from, seemingly, exhaustion, “That’s an odd request.”

Her brows furrow as a scowl paints her mouth. The bed creaks in the gap of quiet. Every hair stands on end when, suddenly, he’s inches from her, his presence looming and warm from behind, with calloused fingertips brushing the side of her neck in their venture towards that godforsaken gag.

“Just turn me!” Seren shrieks, “Just turn me, and I’ll be quiet!”

He doesn’t put the gag in. He winds around her, hand still on the rope, his features shaped with apathetic seriousness, “If I turn you because you want me to turn you, what good am I at putting my foot down? Hm?”

Seren blinks up at him.

“Please,” the princess tells him, hushed and earnest, “I don’t feel …safe.”

His brows twitch. There’s something that blooms in the jade at her admission, but it flits by, gone as quickly as it’d appeared. And then his brows furrow, and he looks absolutely exasperated, the subtle downturn at the edges of his mouth emphasized with the roll of that same jade. The pirate scoffs, and his boots stomp over the wood, each step an inclination that his frustration has leaked into his body language.

“I told you—“ the legs of the chair screech against the floorboards — he doesn’t even grunt as he maneuvers her with ease, the motion rough like it’s a chore, “—that you’re not my type. Not everybody wants to fuck you, your highness.”

Seren blinks, pupils poring over the priorly unseen sight of the opposite end of the room. A slit of a window, brushing the edge of the wall that merges into the ceiling. A bookshelf of literature and knickknacks. A dresser, a queen-sized mattress on the floor. The pirate still looks absolutely miffed when he walks toward the table with the lantern, bare shoulders squared and the muscles in his back rippling. He sets the light out, kicks off his boots, and falls into the bed unceremoniously.

It’s a victory.

And for a moment, Seren thinks he’s just going to wordlessly roll over to avoid her prying gaze. He doesn’t do that. They bask in the crash of the waves outside, the darkness, and their quiet breaths. He’s got this knack — Seren’s learned. This skill of morphing from sarcastic and teasing to broodingly serious, and it’s mercurial, sort of. She wonders if this brooding side’s what’s brought him to lead an entire ship.

“Be quiet now,” the pirate drawls from the sheets, in that broodingly serious cadence, “If I hear another word, I’ll personally carry you out onto the deck, and you can sleep in the chair out there.”

The man rolls over to face the wall. Seren doesn’t say another word for the rest of the night.

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