"Arggh! I can't believe you beat me," Carla growled through the scattered cheers, rubbing her bicep as she stood.
Guybrush leaned across the table with a churlish grin, his fingers flexing from his recent victory. "Best five out of ten?"
The swordmaster scoffed. "No! If this keeps up, one of us is gonna lose an arm."
Bugeye slouched into the galley, his carpentry tools hanging from one hand. "What's going on?" He'd come here for a much-needed break after sanding down floorboards all day. Carla and her crowd was filing out, leaving only Guybrush and the quartermaster to answer his question. Since Van Winslow seemed busy entertaining himself, the former took it upon himself.
"You're looking at the tri-island champion of insult arm-wrestling," Guybrush explained smugly. "Care to go a round?"
"Insult arm-wrestling? An antique custom for an antique pirate," Bugeye sneered.
Winslow snickered from the corner table, his fingers tangled in a string game he was attempting to teach himself. "The captain's not too much older than yourself, crewman."
"It's okay, Mr. Winslow, he's just blustering because he knows he'd lose." Guybrush was in a fantastic mood. He was so happy with himself, in fact, that Bugeye was tempted to knock him down a peg.
"You're on, Threepwuss." He swung into the stool and slammed his toolbox on the table, away from the designated battlefield.
Guybrush winced.
"You've chosen the wrong adversary," Bugeye warned, cracking his knuckles. "Pirate faces aren't the only thing I have to my name." He flexed his arm. Carpentry was defining him in more ways than one. Ropey as his limbs were, the tentacle tattoos on his shoulders still tightened with undeniable muscle—maybe not enough to impress someone like Haggis, but Guybrush Threepwood was more than a match.
He was already shaking in his boots.
"Ohohoho. There's still time to back out if you're scared," he crowed, but something about the man's blue eyes was putting him off. Guybrush kept glancing between the toolbox, his competitor, and his own pale, shaking fingers on the tabletop. His palms remained pressed down and flat on the tabletop, despite Bugeye offering his untested grip. His lips twitched open but no sound came out except the hitching of his breath.
Reginald turned his attention away from his work. "I say, captain, you've gone white as a sheet."
Confused, Bugeye gradually dropped his outstretched hand. "What's wrong with you?"
"S-s-so…s-sorry," Guybrush started, pulling his hands shakily back towards himself, his eyes now locked solely on the tools.
"Oh, dear." Winslow stood up quickly. "I'll fetch his missus."
"What's going on?" Bugeye followed the quartermaster's retreat with his bald head, but he was quickly left alone with Guybrush, who had begun to outright panic. A strangled noise wormed out of him between spastic gulps of air. Bugeye swiveled back around to face him and slowly grabbed the handle of his toolbox.
"N-no!" Guybrush wheezed, his chair shrieking as he skidded it backward, but Bugeye didn't startle.
He carefully lifted the box, trying to hold eye contact as he pulled it off the table. "Hey. It's going, okay? Don't worry about it." He pulled the offending object under the table under Guybrush could no longer see it. This did not soothe Guybrush, but the terrified noise stopped.
Elaine slipped in with the barest of sounds, Winslow trailing behind. Her hair cascaded to hide Guybrush's face from Bugeye's view as she bent over the seated figure of her husband, speaking softly to him. "Guybrush, sweetie? Can you hear me? Come on. Come on, talk to me."
Bugeye shot a questioning look towards Reginald, but he was met with a grim stare. He mouthed, "What did I do?"
Winslow waved him over. "Let's give them some privacy, shall we?" he said in a low voice, shockingly devoid of his usual cheer. Bugeye started to reach for his toolbox but the quartermaster caught his hand. Shaken, the peg legged pirate slipped out of his chair, leaving Elaine kneeling next to her spouse. Guybrush's breathing began to steady as Winslow closed the door on them.
"Sorry about that. Your toolbox will be waiting when we go back in," Van Winslow explained.
Bugeye blinked. He felt a strange displaced shame for Guybrush's reaction to his challenge. Was arm-wrestling really that big of a deal to Threepwoods? "What the hell was that?"
"There are a lot of things you don't yet know about the captain. I've only come to glean tidbits myself, but Mr. Threepwood has had…a number of events that left a lasting impact on his psyche."
"Is—is it because he died?" Guybrush's unconventional wake had seemed so long ago. Now Bugeye could remember the look in the walking dead man's eyes, both in the Club and during the battle afterward. It had been mirrored during this panic attack, looking strange and unpleasant on a living body.
"Goodness. I wish, dear boy." Van Winslow put a contemplative hand to his mouth, as if deciding how to impart the facts. "The truth is, he was tortured. For several years, cut away from humanity, made into an object of pain and ridicule in some kind of twisted carnival headed by LeChuck himself."
A shiver snaked up Bugeye's spine. "Damn. When was this?"
"Long before we met him. He has memory issues regarding the topic, which is why it's difficult to piece the story together. Mrs. Threepwood-Marley can tell you why and for how long, but only Guybrush himself knows fully what happened, and sometimes odd things can trigger an unpleasant experience for him. I can only assume it was the woodcarving tools that unsettled him, by the way he was looking at them."
"Why? It's just a set of chisels," Bugeye protested. "A mallet, maybe some pliers. But even the blades aren't that sharp."
"As I said, I don't know the details." Van Winslow tipped his head, changing the subject. "I've a flask hidden in the fo'c'sle. Care for a sip?"
"I don't think I need it as much as he does."
The quartermaster gave a humorless chuckle and ushered him along amiably. "The captain will be all right in a few. That wasn't an exceptionally bad attack and we were there to catch it in time. I'm sorry to burden you with this, but it's best you find out sooner than later, I suppose. Come on."
Bugeye allowed his friendly escorting, but shook his head, trying to clear the image of haunted blue eyes from them.