PREVIOUS POSTED ON AO3. this story is not complete, but i have approximately 14 chapters (43,000 words) finished. i'll be posting every monday. if you're super thirsty for the story and cannot wait, good for you, you can find it on ao3 under the same title and same penname.
alternative tags: hurt no comfort
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You're terrified.
The waves move and you can hear them slapping against the side of the boat, but you can't see them. You're blindfolded and your breath stinks with fear. You're sixteen, and you're terrified. You lick your lips, try to get some moisture back into your parched mouth, try to keep from throwing up. You speak.
"I didn't kill him," you say, your voice cracking, and the boat shifts. The chains around your ankles clank against each other. The rope around your wrists burn. You swallow, your Adam's apple bobs up and down. The thing is, with your sight removed, your other senses seem enhanced. You can hear every shifting of people around you, every rush of waves, and every creak of boat. You can identify each of the five people here to witness this by the way they smell. "I swear to God, I didn't kill him, please, listen to me."
Your mouth is stale and tastes like vomit. The boat lurches, sickeningly, and creaks to a stop. A large hand grabs your arm, hauls you to your feet. You catch the scent of the forge, and you want to cry. So. Your brother will be the one to throw you over. You suppose that's his way of letting you know he cares. He supports you, leads you limping to the side of the boat. You can smell the salt, and your breath hitches in your throat.
You can feel the king's stare. He's piercing you through from the other side of the ship. Jade, though, Jade is closer, all summer and green apples and you lean toward her. You can hear Terezi flipping her coin not far off. She says nothing.
"Jade," you plead. "Jade, please, you know me, you know I'd never kill him, you know I never could-"
Her breath ghosts across the distance between the two of you. Her hand brushes your cheek, and you know her fingers come away damp. "I don't know much of anything anymore, Dave."
Her words hit you like a stab to the side. You can't breathe. Your brother hauls the iron weight at your feet up, tosses it over the side. It hits the water with a splash and pulls, you yelp, but he has your arm and it isn't time yet.
"I just…" she trails off. "I want to know why."
You sob. "I didn't. Jade, I swear I didn't."
She sniffles, and you feel her move closer. You can feel the heat radiating off her and you are ice cold. She reaches behind you, unties the blindfold around your eyes. You blink in the moonlight. Terezi and her mother stand to your brother's side. The king sits solemnly a few feet away. He looks at the floorboards.
At one point, you were like a second son to him. You suppose that time is long past.
Jade's eyes are wet. Her lips tremble and it tears at you. You want to hold her and promise it will be all right but your hands are tied (hah, literally) and you both know it won't be all right. You duck your head. "Tell me that to my face," she says, softly.
You raise your head, tighten your jaw. You only shake minimally. Redglare's boot taps impatiently at the floorboards. "Jade, I promise you that I didn't kill John."
She stares at you and for a moment, a brief shining moment, you think that she might believe you. But then her face crumples and she snarls, so quietly, "I don't believe you."
It destroys you. You jerk back as if you've been struck, and then the king rises, tall and broad and imposing. His pipe glows cherry red in the gloom. Your throat tightens.
Oh, God, you don't want this. You don't want to die, please.
"Enough. It's time," he says, and your brother's grip tightens on your arm. He leads you to the side of the ship, your irons clanking, the weight scraping against the side of the boat. There's a gap in the railing, where a plank would be set, so that one could easily get to and from a dock. There's nothing there now but empty air and water below.
"David Strider," Redglare begins, her voice like razors and freezing cold like the waves below. You can't look away from them, your bare, dirty toes sticking out over the side. In your mind, you're already in the water, and it's already in your lungs. You're already dead, and you hardly hear what she says. "You have been tried and found guilty for the murder of Johnathan Egbert, heir apparent to the kingdom of Skaia. The court has sentenced you to death by drowning. Do you have any final statements?"
"I didn't kill him," you say, and your voice cracks. Your mouth twists into a harsh, bitter line and your vision is obscured by tears. "God, I. Please, I didn't kill him."
The boat is silent, save for the waves and the wind. "Dave…" Redglare sighs. You think she might sound regretful. "May God have mercy on your soul."
She must motion to your brother because there's a sharp jab to your back and you jerk forward and you're falling through the air and the water stings like a sharp, cold slap when you hit it and there is water in your eyes and ears and nose and mouth and there is no air and you are being pulled down, down, down.
.
"John! Wait up," you shout, feet pounding against the floor, bright, natural sunlight filtering through the windows high up, highlighting the dust motes suspended in midair. John stops and sits on his ledge, at least twenty feet above the ground. He grins down at you.
"Hi Dave!" he says, waving delightedly and swinging his legs above the void.
The distance between him and the ground makes you nervous but it's never seemed to bother him. John belongs to the high places and they belong to him. Once he brought you up to the roof. He'd wanted to show you a hiding place he'd made out of an eave and a spare slab of wood. The little alcove had been filled with things glorious to the mind of a six-year-old: feathers from a crow, a broken music box, a pocket watch, a diamond necklace and an old book of piano music. It was a great place but the height and wind had made you sick to your stomach and so you'd descended quickly. John still hides up there sometimes. You call to him from the window, or have Rose or Jade collect him.
You stop below him, and catch your breath. You hold up a canvas wrapped object to him. "I have something for you," you say, and John gasps, rises to his feet, and sprints along the ledge to a tapestry. He slides down it, hitting the ground running. He stops abruptly a foot or so away from you. His brilliantly blue eyes, the king's eyes, shine with happiness. He glows and it warms your heart. "Happy birthday dude," you hand over the canvas, and John cautiously hefts the weight before sliding to the ground cross-legged. He starts working at the twine holding it closed, and goes nowhere fast, his little brow bunched in concentration and lower lip caught between his teeth.
You laugh, and kneel in front of him, shooing away his hands. You take out the knife your brother gave you for your own seventh birthday. "Let me," you say, and cut through the twine like butter. John unfolds the canvas reverently, and gasps when the gift comes into full view.
It's a hammer, iron and beautifully cast. Your bro helped you make it yourself. It's a fitting weapon for a future king. John lifts it and it fits perfectly in his hand. It looks natural, like it's an extension of him, and you know that he can only grow into it more as he gets older.
You smile, small and private, and John launches himself at you.
"Thank you so much Dave! I love it!"
You giggle. "Come on, dork. Jade and Rose are waiting for us outside."
.
You heard once that if a well was deep enough, a man could stand at the bottom and not see the sun, even if it was the middle of the day. You aren't at the bottom of a well and it isn't day, but the moon had been bright on the boat, and you can't see it any more.
The water is deep but it took no time at all for you to sink to the bottom. Your ears had popped and you had screamed with the pain and now there is water in your lungs and you are fading fast. The water in your lungs had hurt going in but you can't feel much of anything now. You're numb, blissfully numb, and you drift. There is no air and you drift. Distantly, you think you should be panicking, struggling, not going down without a fight because, goddammit, you're a Strider and Striders don't just go belly up for death.
It's the rumbling that stirs you out of your stupor. It's a keening sound, both too high, piercing what remains of your eardrums and driving straight to your brain like a nail, and too low, shaking deep in your water filled chest. Something shifts at your feet, something large and cold and stone smooth and it moves, running up your body.
Your eyes snap open as wide as they can and adrenaline spikes through your system. The shadows around you are moving, amassing into great, hulking things and you're screaming, you're screaming out the water in your lungs and sucking in new lungfuls, those aretentacles-
You'd heard stories about the beast that lurked off the coast. Ghost stories, mostly, brought to you by Rose to freak you out. You hadn't given them much credit but now it's staring you in the face and touching you and your chest aches, it's collapsing, your heart hurts your head hurts you're dying and you're going to be eaten.
Just like in Rose's stories. Just another ghost.
Your heart stutters, stops, and stumbles forward. The beast rumble-keens again, and you glimpse ivory-white teeth looming out of the darkness. Your vision swims, swirling black, and your scream chokes in your throat. You slump forward. A new, smaller sound is made, something sharp and angry, reverberating through the water.
The tentacles retreat. A smaller, slimmer figure darts in and out of your vision. There are hands on your ankles, your wrists, and you're floating free of the weight and the ropes, nothing but water keeping you down now.
Your heart thuds once, twice, resonating in the tips of your fingers and throughout your entire being. You turn your head up, looking for a glimpse of light, and then
you're