"How is it possible that you grow up so fast?" Harry asks Nerea, unbuttoning her clothes, which don´t fit her anymore, to bathe her, and the baby frowns, almost offended, in a gesture inherited from Uma. She doesn't like to be cold. Outside the weather is typical of the Isle of the Lost, rainy, without sun, with a lot of wind.
Uma approaches them and maternally strokes the fuzz of her daughter's hair. Her expression is halfway between calm and bewilderment, and it's an expression Harry has only seen on her when she sees Nerea. As if she couldn't believe they made this person. When she looks at Harry, her eyes have a spark of mischief again.
This is a strange moment of intimacy that they have not had in a long time, as they have been too busy trying to get through the day, solving momentary problems. Even Nerea enjoys the extra attention, because for several days only one of her parents has been with her when they bathe her, always quick, always alert. But now Gil has everything under control on the deck and the little family can enjoy this indulgence.
Harry caresses Uma's hair and she runs her hands over his hips, pulling him closer, possessive even in this privacy where everything is hers, the ship, her husband, her daughter, and that wide blue gaze that has never stopped looking at her with adoration, and that Uma suspects will not change...
Nerea complains, making her parents look at her. Uma rolls her eyes in exasperation and amusement.
"Always looking for attention. She is just like you," she says mockingly.
Harry looks offended when he turns to Nerea.
"Don't listen to mom, little wave. She is a pirate with bad temper." He plays with her wrinkled little hands, moving closer to her to kiss her face. Nerea reaches out an arm to touch Harry's face.
"Enough of playing," Uma decides, raising her arms asking Harry to give the girl to her. "It took me hours to heat the water to the right temperature, so someone will have her bath now".
On the Isle of the Lost they don't have access to all those things that parents have in Auradon to take care of their children, small tubs, soft towels, creams, so Harry and Uma manage with the toilette, the tub that Uma has in her cabin, and takes off her clothes to enter the water with Nerea. The baby loves to feel the water around her, and Uma suspects she's inherited her sea blood. It's too soon to know, but she can´t deny she'd love it.
Uma holds her against herself while Harry fills his hands with with a little soap that they have been able to get and water and washes Nerea's hair, neck, all her body, giving her gentle massages that make their daughter relax, feeling completely happy and safe.
They are a peculiar family. Harry and Uma don't say "I love you" very often, not even in Auradon, but they say it every second, in every everyday gesture.
Uma looks thoughtful as she kisses the baby's wet hair.
"What's wrong, Captain?" Harry asks, stroking her collarbone. Uma looks at him and sighs before starting to tell him about her concerns.
"Is it valid for us to be happy here, even for a moment?" She asks. "You and I know what this place means, we know that she has no future here. But right now, in this one moment, sometimes… I feel happy. How can I be happy if I failed her, Harry? How can I be happy when I failed you, Gil, the crew?"
There is anguish in her voice, disheartening beyond what is possible to bear, so Harry kisses her to share her guilt, to drink her fear, to adore her too. She reciprocates the kiss, warm, strong, fierce and confident. The three of them are so close now, and Harry doesn't mind getting one bit wet as he leans over to them in the tub, listening to Nerea's happy sounds, Uma's racing heart, and his own heart beating wildly in his ears.
"You couldn't know, Uma. Not Gil, not me. No one." However, Harry doesn't blame her for thinking like this. Since they were very young she took responsibility for all of them, for their freedom and well-being, and it is a habit that never quite left. "You are incredibly strong, but don't carry the world on your back. It's okay to be happy, even for moments. It's human. Right now, I am happy, here, with you and with Nerea."
And he says it honestly, because between the familiar wooden walls and the smell of the sea that permeates the Lost Revenge, between the salty aroma of shrimp that lingers in Uma's hair and the lively and mischievous look of Nerea, here, in this life in which he is a pirate and father and a lost child of the Isle of the Lost, Harry is happy. That does not mean that he does not yearn for his freedom, that he does not want with all his might to show the world to his daughter and give her more, more than he had, more than Uma had. It's contradictory and strange, but it is what it is.
"You are a blessing in this place, Harry. You always were," she acknowledges, and Harry understands that she is thinking about the same thing that has been running through his mind the last few days. How much they changed, how much they struggled growing up here. When they went to Auradon they never forgot who they were or where they came from, but somehow, they feel there is a lifetime difference between who they are now and the teenagers who were hungry all the time.
Those teenagers would never have trusted Auradon, because they knew that trust was too precious a gift to give. Precisely to avoid feeling as betrayed as they feel now. So, had they betrayed themselves?
Harry doesn't know the answer. But he knows that it is the same claim that Gil makes to himself, and every member of the crew, and probably every person who has been returned to the Isle.
Because they just can't believe it yet.
They handle every momentary situation, they chase the seconds and the hours and the days in the hope of going forward, even knowing that there is no forward. But at night, in the stillness of the night before the crime, no one can escape reality.