Don't own a thing, except for my interpretation of Felix's angst after the events of the third book.

I guess you couldn't call this a drabble. A one-shot, then? In any case, here I go. Warnings are, you know, blood and stuff (nothing you can't handle), and pairings (for now) are Art/Felix and Moira/Felix. Er, and maybe a smidgen of Goldie/Felix if you wanna look for it. I mean, it was sorta canon...

So here is my first Piratica story, with hopefully more to come. Enjoy!

Nightmares of the Sweetest Kind

Explosions ripped through the hull of the ship, though which ship exactly Felix was no longer sure. In this dance of vessels it became difficult to see where the Unwelcome Stranger ended and the enemy ship began. Wood splintered and Felix threw himself to the deck so as not to be riddled by shrapnel. He heard cries and shouts and the stamping sounds of the actor-pirates running about, hastily fulfilling the demands of their Captain.

Where was that fiendish devil of a woman, anyway?

He felt himself grabbed by the collar of his once-immaculate white shirt and thrown against the side of the cabin just as a piece of the rigging landed with a loud crash where he had been lying. And there she stood, her hair loosed from its tie and gleaming in the glow of the flames which leapt up from the deck of the other vessel. Everything about her essence seemed to blaze with inner fire, stunning and beautiful and fearsome all at once.

"What is it about staying below that is so repugnant to you, Mr. Phoenix?" she demanded, dropping to one knee and shoving him against the cabin wall to protect him from the crack of gun fire as they drew within pistol range of the enemy pirates. But the ships lurched away from each other, one hull bouncing off of the other, and she drew away to clasp him on the shoulders and frown at him. "Well? You usually have something contentious to say to my direct orders. You aren't hurt, are you?"

But Felix could not speak. His dark eyes stared into her pale as though entranced, drawing in the sight of her as though deprived of it for far too long. Hadn't he lost her once? What was to say it would not happen a second time?

An indescribable sound—a shot. From where Felix could not, at first, say. But Art slumped against him, her silver eyes wide with shock, like his. Her blood—red? Purple? Something in between?—pouring from the fatal chest wound, seeping into his shirt, splashing into his lap. There were no romantic last words passed between them. She slumped to the ground, sightless eyes staring up at the bloody sky.

Felix released a strangled yell, and clapped his hands over his mouth as if he might stifle the agony of his heart by stifling the sound of his cry. Not again. Not again.

And there stood a breathtaking demon, in her hand a flintlock pistol. Short black curls, clinging to her face (when had it begun to rain?), and brilliant green eyes. Little Goldie Girl, vengeance incarnate, daughter of his father's brother.

"What's the matter, Phoenix?" Goldie sang in that beguiling voice to her horrified cousin.

But Felix sobbed and sank down beside his dead wife. "You're dead!" He hollered at Goldie, clutching Art's lifeless hand. "I—I saw it—"

"You saw nothing," snarled Goldie, not quite so pretty when seething. She shoved him against the wall, her arm pressed against his throat, the whites of her eyes startling against her emerald irises and the black lashes framing them. There was mania in her stare. There always had been. "And even if you had, I would still live. In you, your mind, your blood. Your child."

"No!" he choked out.

Another explosion ensued, this time not of the earthly kind. The whole world shattered. The ocean tipped and they fell, all of them, every crewman and woman, into nothingness. Felix looked down—or was it up?—at the churn of green and silver that was the ocean beneath—above?—him, as he fell into the sky. A sky of morve.

He was crying, body shaking violently. He was being held tightly. He clutched back. A nightmare. It had been only a nightmare! Art was lying safe by his side, whole and healthy, embracing her husband.

"I dreamt you'd died," he choked out through his tears. "I thought I'd lost you."

"Crivvens, it must have been some terror to scare you thus, love," said a voice, not-Art's. He tensed up for a moment, before his recollection of the past three years crashed down upon him. He started crying again, harder this time. His dream had come true. Perhaps not exactly how he'd dreamt it—but he had lost her, Art. Even if it had been by her choosing, those three years ago.

But Moira held him to her breast and stroked his hair, shushing his sobs patiently. She had no way of knowing which wife he had been dreaming of.

"I'm here," she murmured in her reassuring Scottish brogue when his tears had ceased their flow. "Go back t'sleep, my Felix. No more nightmares."

And yet, Felix wondered as he felt himself sink into sweet, dreamless oblivion, which was more heart-breaking, his dream or reality? In both Art had left him. But in the dream at least she had not done it willfully. In the dream he had not placed second to the ocean. In the dream she had loved him until the very moment she had died. Once he had thought—truly believed, poor, naive soul he was—that he had been freed from their union as he stepped for the first time onto Scottish soil. He should have known how untrue that was. He would never escape her. Half of his split soul went with her wherever she sailed off to; it always would.

Even if she had looked upon their babe with such scorn and detachment, even if she had stared at the child and swore she saw no similarity between mother and daughter...even if there had been no resemblance, and by some cruel twist of fate the girl had somehow inherited her every feature from that accursed beauty, Goldie Girl...Felix could never gaze upon Afra without feeling memories of his Piratica stirring nostalgically in the back of his mind. It was like a betrayal of Moira and it twisted his soul, but he loved Afra, sweet child.

And though he wished he didn't, he loved her, too. And he somehow, somewhat craved these brief midnight interludes, horrifying as they were, if only to glimpse those eyes again. Eyes silver and dancing like a cutlass in the sun: those of Piratica. Forever the wife of his heart and the ghost of his nightmares.