Title: Million Years Ago
Category: Television Shows» Black Sails
Author: And The Moment's Gone
Language: English, Rating: Rated: T+
Words: 2,747

Warnings/Spoilers: Written for Tumblr's BSBackstory15. You don't need to know anything.

Official Disclaimer: All Black Sails characters and plots belong to Starz, and Michael Bay, I do not hold stock either the company or the man. Charles Vane, Eleanor Guthrie, and any other character recognized are NOT mine. The title comes from the Adele song Million Years Ago and I don't own that either.

Summary: Eleanor's childhood focused solely around a man who wasn't there. Until he was.

Seventeen years later, the room seemed to be in the exact same position. Only, Eleanor supposed, with decidedly fewer crates. It still amazed her every time she found herself in her father's house that this room was one of the only untouched by the tragedy that her family – and by extension this house - had seen over the years. Most of the damage to the front of the house during the raid had been repaired over the years, the paint repaired, and the actual structure of the house still intact.

At the tender age of six, with no mother, and virtually no father, she had been sent away from the only home she'd ever known to live with the former governor Nicholas Trott and what was left of his household in Nassau proper, closer to the bay. It had been no secret that Richard Guthrie had not taken the death of his wife well. And while drinking and whoring and leaving Mister Scott to run both the Guthrie shipping and the Nassau fencing operation were acceptable ways to show grief, it was no place for a little girl. When her father quit the island a year later, the house had been more or less abandoned. Mister Scott had acquired anything that she had asked for from it, and soon her father's man realized that there was more than one reason why little Miss Guthrie had been left behind.

He'd petitioned the Mister Trott for permission to seek an education for the girl. A tutor had been sent shortly after Richard had reached England, but every afternoon the girl was allowed to come down to the warehouse or the tavern, where Scott would challenge her himself, only pushing as far as she would allow because that was what her mother would have asked of him.

Eleanor smiled as she selected one of her mother's tomes to take with her back down to the inn. Everything of monetary value that had made it through the raids had been locked away ages ago, and any looter that might consider her father's house a substantial mark would certainly be disappointed. But this room had remained untouched by her father, and she couldn't bear to crate up what was left of her mother and try to forget her as Richard seemed to have done. So instead she came up here weekly, exchanged whatever book she had managed to find time to devour, and bask in the presence of a woman who was now little more than a face in her mind's eye.

She trailed her fingers in the dust on her mother's portable writing desk, saving a small smile for the small pile of books that always sat untouched on the corner of the table – her mother's favorites, to be read only when she needed to feel loved – and quit the room, pulling the door shut behind her. The book was tucked safely in her saddlebag, and she was racing back to the beach before anyone could realize that she was gone.

She had just sat down to dinner – at the bar of the tavern so she could take account of which ships were hunting, and which had returned but hadn't come to her to announce their prize yet – when there was a buzz from the doorway, and a sailor she didn't recognize was pointing at her while whispering to his companions.

Not for the first time she wished that the Ranger wasn't out on the sea. Her nerves were frayed from the lack of news from her father this month, and with the numbers from the Walrus down from where they should be for the second take in a row, and Charles gone she discovered that she had little patience for gossips and the jeering of the men today. Taking a deep breath, and a swill of the ale in her mug, she waved one of the serving girls over.

"I'm taking this into my office before I stab someone and ruin business for the night." It wasn't the first time that she had expressed this sentiment, and the girl – Abby was it? Or maybe Sally – nodded with a soft smile. "Your tip will be larger tonight if you can find out what the fuck is going on over there so I know which ship to put on notice."

The girl gave her a soft 'yes miss Guthrie' before grabbing a pitcher, refilling Eleanor's mug, and sauntering over to the table indicated.

She had just tucked herself in her office; a copy of the days takes in one hand and her bread in the other when Mister Scott entered. It was a common occurrence, they kept no real secrets, and she found that he didn't startle her as much as others announced presences were known to.

The look on his face gave her pause, though; as did the fact that he closed the door firmly, and checked the doors to the balcony before he stepped to the desk. "Eleanor," his voice was tight, his face stretched thin. "Richard Guthrie has returned to Nassau."

"No." When she finally found it, Eleanor's voice was strong. "I was just at the house this afternoon." She knew the look was coming, even if she hadn't been looking at him she could still describe the clenched jaw of silent disapproval that Scott seemed to reserve only for her. "Don't you dare start." Her chair and dinner abandoned, Eleanor opened the double doors to the balcony and took a deep breath of the night air. "You were counting the take from the Lion and I needed a new book."

Scott heard what hadn't been said. She'd been a week without Charles Vane, a week without the kind of sustenance that someone in her position couldn't get from just anyone. And the longer that the Ranger hunted their prize, nursed their wounds, or did whatever it was that was keeping them away for so long, the more time she had to think of all the reasons why he wouldn't return.

Eleanor was almost too far in, and Scott didn't know if she knew it.

He gave her a moment to give her more excuses as to why she had found her way to the Guthrie Estate unescorted. While he was needed at the warehouse when she wasn't, he could have at least spared a man to ensure her safety. When none came, he dropped himself into the chair on the other side of her desk. "The supply ship is in a week early, and your father, half a household, and at least two guests were seen unloading from his private dock." Eleanor accepted all of this information with little more than a nod, and now it was Scott's turn to wish that someone who was not on the island could return, swiftly. "I have already made inquiries from the staff that will be needed to help prepare the house as to the nature of his visit." No response. "I have also begun to prepare the warehouses and the books for his inspection in the event that his visit is," he paused, trying to watch her face and not all at the same time. "Permanent."

"Fuck me."

"Eleanor."

"No." She turned finally, face like stone and her entire body stiff. She was the face of Guthrie Shipping on the beach, and she'd been quiet long enough. "He disappears for eight fucking years and then just sails into the harbor like nothing happened? And I'm supposed to – what?" She turned then, arms flailing in a way that made Scott check to make sure that the door leading to the tavern had been closed firmly. While the pirates throughout the whole of the island would most likely feel her displeasure, it wouldn't do to have the merchants see a rift between father and daughter. "Just hand over the business that you and I have spent years cultivating?"

"You haven't even met with him yet." Scott didn't want to tell her that her father had no interest in their fencing operations. He hadn't so much as inquired about the warehouses or their coffers in the years since Eleanor took over the business. Richard Guthrie would request control back, that was true, but of the legitimate business.

He didn't stop to think of what the beach would say if he asked for both, which was something that he supposed that Richard had heard already.

"He hasn't formally announced his presence, Eleanor." Caution wouldn't calm her nerves, or comfort a mind too conditioned to think of their opponent's next step, ever guarded as to stay two steps ahead of anyone against her. She'd been brought up in a man's world, taught to keep herself on her own two feet. It was a shame he had no other way to go. "The best we can do is prepare for the worst and go from there."

Eleanor said nothing.

Instead, she kept her head down, turning back to the balcony and pulling her arms in tight to her body, her hands hugging her elbows. She took a deep breath of the night air, allowing the scent of the waves to calm her frayed nerves.

Her father had always been somewhat of a mystery to her. With so many years without his presence, Eleanor knew him by face only, and that was only from a smoke-tattered painting of her parents at least a year or two older than she was. Would he still look the same? She doubted his smile was as free. Eleanor's only good memory of the man was the day before he quit the island, informing her with a stiff hug that he was leaving, and that Mister Trott and Mister Scott were to be taking care of her now, and she was to be on her best behavior. It was rigid and formal, and he didn't even refer to her by name, instead calling her 'the child' and offering the former governor whatever monetary compensation he needed while Guthrie was away.

Eleanor hadn't even been told why he'd gone to England instead of Boston, where his own family resided.

When he wrote, which was considerable all things considered, Richard Guthrie's letters came to the former governor and Mister Scott. Nothing for her. Ever. Even after she had been raised to junior partner – a term that Mister Scott lovingly harassed her with for years before she was allowed to sit at the desk in the tavern and actually meet with captains at the warehouse – she received secondhand information from the missives that Scott thought she should read. Her father only thought of her in passing, inquiring as to her education, her suitability as a bride.

She didn't bother asking Scott what kind of responses he sent back.

And now he was back.

The man she had tried so hard to ignore, just as he had ignored her. The man that the whole island thought that she was trying to impress.

And he had the ability to take away from her everything that she had built in his absence.

As if he could read her mood from her posture, Mister Scott let himself out of the office, pulling the door closed firmly behind him.

He'd let Eleanor face her demons alone tonight.