Not One Damn Thing
There was a certain glow about him when you first met, a brilliant glimmer that washed over the muted dimness of your world. It whispered flight from the shadow of your father's footsteps, drew you to this blazing warmth you hadn't known you were missing. It blinded you with shiny promises — a frightening thing, but you followed it anyway.
And he clad in this glow welcomed you with the broken pieces of his life. With sea, with blood, with the piercing edge of a blade. With gunpowder, lead and so many nameless chemicals. He bathed you in them over and over till they carved their marks on your skin. The wounds escaped your notice; they meant little next to the thrill that etched them.
And all that time he stood with you, taking you into his luminescence. That it was his and his alone never once crossed your mind. Standing so close to him, it was too easy to believe you shared his light. For it grew with each day you sailed under his flag, and with hopeful optimism, you had thought it was because you (he, you, all of you) took the symbol upon it to heart, housed it in your soul. In time the symbol became the promise that bound you to him. He had a throne he yearned to claim, and though he barely spoke of it, you swore to take him there, and stand with him on that day, too. For the man who gave you your sweet escape, took you away from the stagnant pool that dared call itself a life, it was all you ever wanted.
Except — his and your vision of the goal had probably never once been the same. Wrapped up in his light and embracing all your new life can throw at you, it was a rare moment when you suspected it. To reflect on it even more so.
But the truth was going to catch up to you sometime. Tendrils of doubt stole into your mind when his light wasn't in your eyes, in those long strange months that you beheld nothing of him save for a promise. It was frustrating entertaining them; you knew your captain would not take glory and riches for himself, that he trusted your skills, that if he needed them, you would be the first he'd call forth, and that there was a reason to being left behind.
Yet for all your defences in his name, you could not deny knowing just what he would shed off his shoulders for his goals - could not deny that you could be one of them. It was hard to swallow, but you weren't so blind to believe yourself indispensable.
The likelihood was one you could admit, but the pain of its truth you would never accept. You dreamt of that moment you finally repaid him, vividly and often, and when it comes, a sea and an oath would bind you to a place where he was not. You have all these plans and wishes, but if he for whom you have dreamt them would be a second closer to the goal without them, they would remain nothing more than wishes and dreams. One moment a great flame of possibility and the next a wisp of smoke in the wind.
And there isn't a damn thing you can do about it.
A/N: So I decided to start another vignette series for the Heart Pirates, except this one will take a hell of a lot more liberties than Heart Log ever will, because when I started writing the aforementioned fic, I promised myself to keep the non-canon characters anonymous, hence generic. But my drive to write is suffering because of it. Since I don't like breaking my own promises, I decided to have a separate collection for my OCs and their stories, especially now that I've decided to drop Hearts of the Northern Seas.
Hope you guys will enjoy this too. :)