Fandom: Pirates of the Caribbean.
Characters: Pintel, Ragetti.
Rating: R - for language.
Genre: Mild Angst.
Notes: More Pintel/Ragetti, 'cause they're cute... in that pirate-y, dirty way of theirs. Inspired by that rumor (?) I heard once, about Pintel being Ragetti's uncle.
No Regrets.
He's fucked up now, really, really fucked up. If his poor dear sister could see him now, she would promptly die again. It's not his fault, really, it's just the way things went downhill just as soon as she entrusted her kid - and it wasn't really hers, just another stray she had to pick up on her way back home - to him.
Looking at him, leaning on the rail and watching the horizon, Pintel realizes there's no way back now. There wasn't much hope before, but now? Now there's positively no way to solve this and get out of the mess unharmed.
Ragetti used to be a nice kid, pretty thing, that one, with that strange penchant to ask the wrong question at the right moment and an unstoppable need to know just about anything there was to know. Could have been someone important, Pintel reckons, if given the chance, but there wasn't much chance to give, once the boy had been shoved, literally, into his care.
What was he supposed to do with a kid anyway? He was a drunk sailor without a purpose in life, and shortly after they had buried his sister, they had left the small port town in the first ship that had let them. A pirate ship.
And Pintel thinks, when the moon casts her glow upon them and they are forced to see what they've become, if things would have really been different, if Ragetti hadn't lost an eye because Pintel was too drunk to take care of him, if they hadn't got caught and branded like dogs, if Pintel had cared more about the boy than his rum, that maybe... maybe things wouldn't be so fucked up now.
"Captain says Bootstrap left a kid somewhere," Ragetti tells him quietly, excitedly sharing the latest piece of gossip, "Once we get him, we'll be free."
Pintel snorts, but nods since it's what Ragetti wants to see, and wonders at his words.
"Like stealing candy from a babe, eh?"
And they both share a laugh at the memory, because yes, there was a time they had had to, and now their past misery looks funny. Everything's funny once you're doomed, Pintel thinks, and then grins nastily, shoving the kid playfully and forgetting all that moral nonsense.
They are who they are now, how they came this far is not important, and regrets are just for those who have the hope for something better. No hope, Pintel acknowledges, when the stupid monkey steals Ragetti's eye again, but no regrets either.