This is currently plotted to go for 16 chapters. It may extend longer/shorter if I see fit.

I decided that I was sick and tired of writing emotional fanfiction that keeps me awake for days, so here's a epic, fast-paced, action-packed historical fic with smut at some point in time. Fun for the entire family!

This is based on an AU I posted to my tumblr under the hardenshipping tag. I kinda liked it too much to just leave it alone. I can't exactly tell you how often I'll update... but I'll do my damnedest. I know, I'm famous for starting things and then not having the time/interest to finish, but hell's bells, I like this a lot and I want to see it through to the end. Someone pinch me if I don't. I'll even set daily alarms on my phone.

I suck.

Growing up, Archie was afraid of the ocean. Its wet claws seemed tender to grasp at his youthful, carefree ankles, dragging him down into the depths, never again to be seen. Being raised in a port city made it harder for him—when he could run away from his mother, who always seemed too preoccupied to keep much of an eye on him, he'd always sit on the edge of the marina, staring out at the lurching aquamarine waves and shrink away when one dared to touch his dark skin. It was almost as if it wished to cleanse him from his curse—as if it meant to absolve him of his accident of birth.

He'd always known that he was a half-breed, even though no one told him. The prim ladies on the streets of Liverpool whispered it, their coarse words hiding behind Pigeot-feather fans and running to hide beneath their lavish hoop skirts. The gentlemen (oh, how loosely that epithet was used!) snorted as they fumbled with pocketwatches and top hats in their pale hands. He knew the scorn in their eyes as they saw him, the heathen, stumble awkwardly beside his African mother on the mud streets, his father and owner high on the horse-drawn cart a few paces ahead. Slave-born and British-raised, Archibald Connell was the very definition of bastard, and he wished that the daggers thrown from the mouths of the people who blamed him would stab him so he'd never have to hear them again.

Deep inside him, Archie held grudges against his parents—his mother for being lucky enough to be one skin color, even though her black hue made her nothing more than a slave in the eyes of the imperialists. Even more, he despised his father for never admitted the love affair he'd had with his mother, a typical pompous man who did not relent to being in love with the enslaved woman he supposedly owned. Archie was here, the product of those lies, and the more he understood it as he aged, the more he resented them and everything around him. Most often, himself.

But once Archie had grown up, he knew that the ocean was the only thing in England that wouldn't judge him. It encompassed the entire planet, from the shores of India to licking the sandstone walls and rotting wooden docks of the Liverpool marina, and it was stronger than any British empire. Stronger, even, than any Queen Elizabeth. He fell in love with the sounds of lapping water and the sea shanties bellowed from a deep, foggy distance by the crews of the merchant ships and the navy sailors. He'd listen to Wingull cry over their faraway songs, and Archie found himself humming along, desperate to break out alongside them. As years passed, Archie's fear dissolved into the ocean's spray, evolving from anxiety into a hungry need to conquer the endless pool before him. And, finally, once he was old enough, he kissed his mother goodbye and fell deeply into it.

After all, no England could control the seas.

The rattling of carriages outside shook Archie from his reverie, the reverberation of the wooden wheels flowing into through the metal bars on his cell window. His turgid blue eyes, sharp and focused, tried to crane up to see, but alas, the small opening to the world outside his dank prison was too far up. Archie sighed and leaned against the wall from his sitting position, the mildew staining the old limestone, chipping and yellowed from age and water stains that he didn't want to identify. He didn't know how long he'd been here—it must have been days since the trial. His captors had told him that he'd be held in Liverpool until they could transfer him to London for his beheading, far away from family and friends to witness his demise. Archie was secretly thankful for that. The last thing he needed were his mother's gaze on him as someone lopped his head from the Tower's execution platform like Henry VIII's queens.

What a queen I would be.

According to the naval officer's court martial, Archie's maritime crimes (of "treason" and "abandonment," he was told) had landed him just that—the ultimate fate of royalty. Archibald Connell had done his job a bit too well, it seemed; so well that when Spanish and French blood did not quell the raging, angry storm within him, he turned on the merchant ships of his home country. The life of a buccaneer for the Royal Navy had served him well up until now, as his heavy complexion and deep resentment for the arrogant British he had the misfortune of being born under made him nothing short of perfect. After all, because of his birthright, there was no way he could stand among the regular naval forces.

Clink. There was a gentle rattling at one end of the dimly lit hallway, the barred door to Archie's cell vibrating softly as the steel entrance clambered open. The candles sitting on the crumbling walls flickered from the outside breeze as two prison guards, clad completely in immaculate white and curly wigs, stepped in. Rifles in hand, they stood in stark contrast against the sickly edifice around them. Archie knew they were here for them—his cell was the only one occupied in this wing, after all, with him being such a wanted criminal. They didn't want him… conspiring. His entire crew had been captured along with him and the navy was aware of how loyal they were to him, so they'd been separated on the grounds that Archie would organize a revolt.

Of course, Archie knew they were right. However, he wasn't going to give them the benefit of the doubt.

As each footfall brought them closer to him, their steps not quite echoing and instead being absorbed by the soggy stone, Archie wondered why he'd picked the Royal Navy, of all things. He could've just as easily assembled a crew and plundered the seas alone, a violent pirate, making everything bleed in his wake. Without a shadow of a doubt, he knew that's the route he would really have chosen. Archie was born with one half of his heart in the ocean and every bit of it screamed to follow it far from the land of his so-called "home."

But, just as the force of discrimination that brought him there in the first place, he was influenced by something. Someone. A someone that had nothing to do with his mother or his father or even anything about how a proper British gentleman should act. That certain someone was a shock of red and had his own passions—and, blindly, Archie had given him the other half of his heart and followed that instead.

I'm a damned fool.

"Archibald Connell," came a sneering lilt from the door before him. Archie snapped to attention, having hardly noticed that the two guards stopped in front of his cell. "We've come to fetch you. You will be sent to London posthaste to face your execution." He hated the snobby whine in this man's voice, and when the door to his cell became unlocked with a slight jangle and swung open, Archie fought the urge to pull at the ropes binding his hands behind his back just to punch the guard. It was now that Archie was able to finally assess the faces of the two bastards sending him to his fate: a doughy, pinched countenance that likely belonged to the owner of the voice, and a glimmering indigo glare, determined and bouncing against a strangely feminine—

Archie's heart stopped. The strangely feminine face, shimmering gloriously in the low dark, smirked at him with their M-shaped mouth and winked. Suddenly, Archie understood, and he quietly smirked back.

"Stop your insolence, pirate scum," the first guard said, again nasally and irritating. He turned to the smaller figure beside him and dropped the keys into their outstretched hand. "Now, soldier, I understand that you are new to this position. May I introduce you to Archibald Connell?" The guard grinned wolfishly at Archie, shouldering his rifle with pompous pride. "The most dangerous traitor to the British Army, and here he is, cornmeal in our hands! This is a worthwhile career, private." Leaning in so close to Archie that he could smell the pig's awful breath, hot on his face, the guard snickered and Archie repressed the urge to spit. "What do you expect from the child of an African?"

Biting his tongue, Archie saw a silent rage flicker by in the other guard's blue eyes as he met their gaze, but the first one did not even give the second time to chime in. "And hear this!" laughed the man, pulling back, just out of lunging range from Archie. "I hear one of his first mates is a woman. And she fights without a blouse and with her top on display. How ludicrous! What are women doing, thinking they can be so vile? A proper lady keeps herself off ships and covered up." The man was too busy listening to himself ramble to hear a slight whisper of metal as the second guard began to unsheathe the sword at their curved hip, the blade of the rapier oddly bright.

"Private, you are too sil—" The guard turned to see his accomplice, sword out and turned against their own chest, both hands on the handle. Without warning—and without breaking the eye contact they'd moved from Archie to the guard—the figure slit the chest of their clean white uniform from the bottom to the collar. Large, full breasts bounced from the fabric, free from their confines, and the guardsman's jaw went slack.

Cocking her head with a coy smile, the newly revealed woman showed her set of sallow teeth. "I believe a woman can do whatever she pleases," she said.

Without even giving her opponent enough time to reach for and load his rifle, she lunged forward and stabbed the misanthrope in the heart, a clean and even slice that grounded the man instantly. The guard fell to the floor and, stunned expression forever frozen on his face, stared up everlastingly at the ceiling, his white uniform stained with a slowly blooming flower of crimson. With a heavy sigh, the woman sheathed her sword and rushed to Archie's side, reaching behind him to untie his binds.

"I felt yeh would never come fer me," Archie said. "But relief is not a word I'd use right now, Shelly."

Shelly shrugged and loosened the rope around Archie's wrists and the buccaneer finally shook his hands free, rubbing the red marks on his skin and regarding his friend gratefully. She tore the white royal wig from her head, allowing her long, flowing black ringlets cascade down her back. "You could thank me," she grumbled, grabbing his forearm to hoist him to a standing position. "Arceus, men are disgusting creatures. First your sort ridicules a woman with self-government and then you require each other to wear horse's hair atop your heads. When will your idiocy end?"

Archie bent down to pick up the dead guard's rifle. He quickly loaded it. "It's not my idiocy, Shelly," Archie said, snapping the barrel into place. "Blame the barnacle on the floor here." He nudged the body with his foot, ensure it wouldn't move. "So do yeh have an escape plan in mind, or are we going down fightin'?"

"Matt has already liberated the rest of the crew," Shelly said. "From last I heard, they already have a ship stolen and waiting in the harbor. The only missing piece was to find you. I find it fortunate that Matt and I were able to escape during the arrest, otherwise you would be another victim to the Tower of London." Shelly clicked her tongue. "I think that is far too cowardly a death for a man such as yourself."

Archie bellowed a laugh. "You got that right," he said. "Aye, I'd rather die like this sea scrub on the ground—with a blade in my heart and breasts in my face."

Shelly rolled her eyes and mumbled something under her breath. "We should leave," she said, "before the other guards realize that my friend here and I are not coming back. Come, Archie. Britian is no place for us any longer."

Archie's eyes were downcast as he stepped over the body, the death face still as shocked as it had been moments ago. "Britain was never a place for us," he said.

"But the ocean is," Shelly said.

With a smile, Archie stepped out the door, rifle in hand.

"But the ocean is."