Silver's Bargain
This is a one-shot. Hope you all enjoy!
When I met Silver on the crest of the great hill, I didn't know what I really expected. Maybe I expected him to laugh and tell me this was all a cruel joke. Maybe I expected Morph to glare at him too.
Maybe I expected him to apologize…but he didn't.
Morph floated over to him instantly and snuggled against his badly shaven cheek, cooing and purring like nothing else in the world mattered but that they were together once again.
"Ah, Morphy!" he chuckled, tickling the little blob gently with one forefinger. "I wondered where you was off to!"
He sat down heavily on a nearby boulder and I heard his cyborg leg hissing and groaning every time he moved it. "Oh," he groaned, inspecting it before stretching it out, "this old leg's been downright snarky since that game attack we had in the galley." He chuckled and glanced hopefully up at me, as if thinking I would laugh, too, thinking maybe we could still be friends, kindred spirits, even…
I pressed my lips together. It was his fault that we weren't.
When he realized I was still glaring at him, unsmiling and silent, the smile slid off his face and he looked at the ground. "Whatever you heard back there…at least the part concerning you…I didn't mean a word of it." He said the words quietly, like he was afraid of confessing this, afraid of who might hear. He lifted his dark eyes to me hopefully, as if thinking I could forgive him after hearing what sounded to me like a pretty pathetic explanation.
"Had that bloodthirsty lot thought I'd gone soft," he hastened to add, "they'd have gutted us both."
I didn't believe him. I didn't believe anything that came out of this despicable man's mouth. I was angry with him. I was furious with him. I hated hi—no. I didn't. I stared into his lined, aged face, and I knew I couldn't hate him. After all the hours we'd spent together on that ship, all the days we'd laughed together, the long nights where I went to bed happy, not angry or nervously anticipating the nightmares sure to come, I couldn't hate him.
"Listen to me," he said quickly, dropping his voice and beckoning me forward. I leaned forward and he began to speak again, quieter and faster than ever. "If we play our cards right, we can both walk away from this rich as kings."
"Yeah?" I asked, trying to play it cool. I didn't believe that he really wanted me or anything to do with me at all. I was an annoyance to him. He didn't care about me at all. My heart hurt with the desire to believe differently, but after everything I'd heard him say about me in the galley, my heart hurt even worse to even look at him.
He laughed lightly. He sensed he was reeling me in. "You get me that map, and, uh…" he hesitated, as if thinking over a bargain. "…an even portion of the treasure is yours!" He slapped me on the back, laughing a little. And then he extended his great cyborg hand, waiting for me to accept it.
I smiled serenely down at his hand, before shaking my head disdainfully, struggling to be calm, to not yell or scream or vomit or, even worse, cry. "Boy," I whispered and it was an effort just to say that, instead of letting a sob escape. "You are really something, you know that? All that talk of greatness…" I walked around behind him, spreading my hands wide, letting him know I was taunting those pretty words he'd told me just last night. "…light coming off my sails…" I whipped around to face him and I was pleased to see he looked rattled. Angry, even. Good. I was making him angry. He deserved to be angry.
Let him hurt for once.
"What a joke." I whispered.
"Now, just see here, Jimbo," he began angrily, but I interrupted him, coming back in front of him, my back to him, standing tall and straight, even if I felt like falling to my knees, collapsing.
"At least you taught me one thing, stick to it, right? Well, that's just what I'm gonna do," I told him. "I'm gonna make sure you don't see one drabloon of my treasure!"
He looked even more pissed off now, and I smiled inwardly. Let him be angry. Let him be hurt.
"That treasure is owed me, by thunder!" he cried, looking ready to throw a tantrum.
"Well try to find it, without MY MAP, by thunder!" I yelled, turning on him suddenly. The man in front of me, who had once been so close to being my father, had become my worst enemy.
"Oh," he muttered, as if he was so angry, he couldn't form words, but with the next few he said, I became aware of just how deeply he was hoping to cut me. "You still don't know how to pick your fights, do you, boy?"
A spasm of hurt rippled through me with such suddenness that I was almost certain it showed on my face, but I tried to control my expression, keep everything about me neutral and cold – aloof and detached.
"Now mark me," he continued angrily, "either I get that map by dawn tomorrow, or so help me, I'll use the ship's cannons to BLAST YOU ALL TO KINGDOM COME" he roared, standing up and getting right in my face. I didn't flinch. I glared angrily back.
"Morph," Silver turned away, glancing over his shoulder, only to see Morph hesitating, flitting between the two of them, "hop to it."
"NOW!" he added, but when Morph continued to waver, he roared, "Oh, blast it!" and limped away, leaning heavily on a walking stick I never recalled him having before.
He walked away and I did, too, both in opposite directions, so much like our lives, both of us going down different paths, whether good or bad, dark or light, we may never know until we reach the end.
And just like in real life, I glanced back at him, a temporary, brief moment of weakness, only to see that he was looking back at me, too, both of us bound by this inexplicable moment of weakness, however brief and temporary it might have been.
And then we turned away and we were separate once again, going down different paths, never to look back.