PROLOGUE : This is not what I wanted (aka THE scene we were robbed of - 4.10)

Feel free to visualize the 'Previously on Black Sails' screen :) :) :)

/

"This is not what I wanted. But I will stand here with you… for an hour, a day, a year… while you find a way to accept this outcome… so that we might leave here together. For if not… then I must end this another way."

John knows his hand starts trembling. He knows his eyes are near tears. And yet, he sees it in Flint's eyes: Flint believes John will take that shot.

Recognition. Flint knows his motivation, and he knows what it brought himself to do. Hatred is simple. But Love? Love is a much more vicious motivator. It makes you start a war, to avenge someone. It makes you eliminate a threat, to protect someone. It makes you kill - even those you don't want to kill, if they only dare stand in the way...

The worst, though, is to see pity in Flint's gaze, under the rage and disgust - because even if John has his way, today; in the end, they both know John will be losing anyway.

But of course, Flint won't relent. Always fighting, to the end. "You know I can't. Accept this outcome? You know WHY I can't."

"And that's exactly why I hope you will!" John shakes his head as he realizes he sounds in his despair now like a petulant child.

But Flint's eyes surprisingly soften from it somehow. "You can't change my mind. And you know it; isn't it why Morgan is here..." The last of it ends in a whisper, and what it says, and doesn't say, is a blade through John's heart.

John can only weakly refute, aghast and appaled: "No, it's not!" - because even though Morgan, indeed, must be their navigator at some point, it isn't the primary reason for his presence here now.

John takes a breath. He needs to calm down and stay in control. He's aiming a gun at *James*. He can't afford any mistake.

"This, I swear, is not what I wanted. It was already not anymore what I had originally intended, but it was a simple plan: we would recover the treasure, and then I would tell you, and then the treasure would disappear on my way back to the Island… Why did you have to- Why do you always get what none of the others do… Because now? I tell it to you now, and you won't believe me. But you *have* to believe me."

James looks unsure now. This isn't John's normal way of speaking - even without the stuttering: it's poorly constructed, and all in riddles. John can only hope that James will understand that the growing panick means he is being sincere, actually; just as sincere as he had been that day on that cliff, even when refusing to share his past.

"Thomas is alive."

From the first moment those words had been a possibility, before they turned into a certainty, John had wondered how they would sound when he would say them, and how James would react. But now, they're out, in a single, barely audible breath, and he's not even sure James has heard them at all. He starts again: "Thomas-"

"Don't you fucking dare!"

The Wall, once again, rises instantly. James is nothing but barely contained fury now, and can't refrain from taking another menacing step forward, no matter the gun facing his chest. John knows the warning is real, no hesitation about that. Still, John would be ready to say it, again and again, between the blows he's sure would come; again and again, until James might *hear* the words for what they are, and not for what he thinks they mean. John can't though. Because if they start to fight, Hands will end it, long before James does hear him - John can't see his proclamed guardian, but he's certain he's around.

So. John doesn't repeat himself. He knows James heard him anyway. They eye each other in dreadful silence; and John waits, waits for a sign that the words made their way past Flint's skull and reached James's heart; waits for a sign that James realizes that John has been hinting at this before, that John is not making it up just now as the cruelest weapon ever imagined; waits for a sign that The Wall is crumbling, finally.

"It can't be."

Then only does John lower the gun, and explain.

"When it was just Hands and me… Max tried to kidnap me one night - and told to me later on what she had planned to do with me afterwards. There's a place near Savannah, where she intended to have me locked up; a place where, her words, wealthy London families pay to turn in troublesome family members they wish to make disappear. A place where they're kept, and stop to exist for the outside world. When she told me this… You couldn't bear even the thought of it, and I understood. Hoping would have been too cruel, in case... You couldn't. So I had to find out. I sent Morgan: that's why he's still here - in case my word isn't enough."

"It can't be."

"It was a gift. I hoped it could be a gift. But when I learned my hope was actually truth, Madi was-, and then she wasn't, and then you… Nevertheless, when I unburied the cache, I took some out; because if it was giving me Madi back then it should give you Thomas back too. But now: Rackham came, and turned my gift into a bargain; yet at least, at least, I thought it would save your life. Because Rackham and Max found allies in Philadelphia, to make Nassau as free as it can be, without a war, under a seemingly English rule. But before it may start? You were to go - that was their allies's condition. So the only choice was between bad or worse, and I used my knowledge the only way that was left. I convinced him to let me solve this problem for him, in exchange of him backing me up about getting rid of the treasure. We can't buy Thomas out now; you're to be bought in. And I am sorry that this is the only deal I can offer you. But Thomas IS there, James."

James looks at him as a man whose world has been turned upside down and inside out that one time too much. He surely doesn't even realize what John does realize - that he's just called James by his first name... 'You', or 'Captain', until then, had always been enough. James has never called him 'John' either, by the way... Maybe it's John's despair showing - that he has to insist about the fact that he is talking to him. Maybe it's because he calls him more and more 'James' in his head, as time goes by - especially whenever James looks at him with a vulnerability he barely shows to start with, as right now... Anyway, apparently it doesn't seem to have to mean anything: James hasn't even noticed...

John doesn't even recognize his own voice as he starts begging. "Let me take you there. Please."

"I can't believe you."

"Please!"

"I can't believe you. But I want to. I hate myself for it, but I want to."

And now only does James avert his eyes, declaring forfeit, or seeing things that aren't there before his eyes, who knows…

John feels relief course through his blood, and is oh so thankful for it. "That's enough for me for now. You'll believe me when we get there."

"I'm not giving the treasure up to you though. It is not yours."

John wants to sigh - or maybe laugh: a dark, empty laugh: James just always has to fight. But as long as that chest stays far from Madi's hands, John doesn't really care where it is. He can always tell the men James has sworn to tell its location to him when they arrive in Savannah, and later, well, he'll find something else to tell… Isn't it what it means, being *Long John Silver*?

John still hasn't spotted Hands. There is no time to lose - John has to take profit from James's still shocken state, and have them all leave this forest right now. So John's gun gets up once more, and James, which is devastating, is fucking ignoring it, even when it's aligned with his heart, his head.

"It's not optimal, but I will do without."

The gun pursues his way up. The shot is delivered towards the sky - a call his men can't miss.

"Six days, if the winds favor us. But please keep quiet; I have a show to perform."

/

Six days are long. James turns bitter only a few hours later. He is locked-up and in chains by then (the men wouldn't have it any other way - Rackham's work probably - and James has consented, when John had been the one presenting the manacles). Morgan is the one navigating, and Rackham keep their mixed crews in check on his own as often as John thinks it possible, while John can't help but stay with James in the cabin for much longer periods of time than Hands would like, simply because it's the only way he can think of to ensure that James will keep quiet. Rackham had seemed happy enough to agree to let John secure the less definitive solution; but he had warned John that he would not hesitate to be expeditive if needed...

James doesn't say anything, but John can feel it, each and every moment they share in silence - the accusation in James's eyes, about having been deceived, and by a coward. He probably thinks that Thomas isn't going to be there, and that John has found a way to make him disappear without actually having to kill him - and probably not even because he wouldn't want to have to live with it, but only because it would be a lie less he would have to tell to Madi. John faces those eyes, and only replies with a plea in his own.

So it's a surprise, when at the end of the fifth day, there seems to be something else, something fragile in James's gaze. But John can only nod, and give James a fragile smile in return.

(For the record, it took them 8.5 days to reach Savannah…)