A/N: I consider this story set in the 1700s, but anyone who knows anything about the 1700s will catch immediately that I did a. no research and b. didn't care. Likewise, anyone who knows anything about geography will notice that America is not exactly anything like America and that there is no large city in Spain called Olnack and so on and so forth.
More importantly, the cultures portrayed here are almost entirely made up, and just go under the guise of what I say they are. I have my reasons, really. If you want real information on gypsies (properly called "the Roma") go to paltrin.com. It's incredibly informative.
Oh! Yes, this is Evietro, mild slash, and dedicated to batE. Even if she'll notice right off that Evan's and Pietro's personalities are kinda . . . switched and the powers are all wrong or non-existent and . . .
The docks are never empty on certain hours, on certain days, when the sun is high, but not as bright as it was in the summer and the less hardy of people start to feel pressed toward warmer climes. They skitter around the harbor with wide eyes and sack upon sack of clothes and can't-part-with-it positions plastered over their backs, or over their servants' backs, should they be more well-to-do.
Of course, no matter the season, and no matter how excellent business has turned, there is always clumps of riff-raff to form some kind of contrast. The poorer patrons actually have to form lines, unable to push ahead by force of their flashy clothing and flashing monies. You'll have a guard patrolling the crowds, keeping a lazy eye out, just in case. But nothing major is likely to happen. The people (who have to) form their lines and impatiently wait for the richer to bluster on board their various ships. It's not as though they have much to weigh them down. The poorer seldom can afford to be pleasure seekers -- if they leave, if they ship off for greener pastures, they'll remain. They won't return when the weather here gets better, they won't return when they get bored. Many of these are tip-toeing uneasily over their last chance for prosperity, many are trying to earn money for a starving family and have to move where the job market isn't such a wasteland. Many are simply trying to escape. From what is their business.
Follow the line back a ways, over those family groups and scruffy teenagers antsy to be doing something more than standing here and old creaky rags that "might have been something in their day" and there always has to be someone at the back of the line. That someone might change in a moment, when more boarders come trickling in, but let's look at the current one for a moment. He keeps looking over his shoulder nervously, like some great-aunt is going to come screaming over the docks, begging to kiss him good bye one more time . . . or not. It probably wouldn't matter if it was his beloved girl he was leaving behind -- his expression and body are so tense and apprehensive, that you can't imagine him relaxing for Helen of Troy, let alone a relative, or some silly female. He is fairly young, still a boy really, skinny, with thin, slanted eyes that smoulder a confused, angry blue. His clothing is drab, save for the faded blue bandanna that pushes back oddly white hair, and far too large for him. A few copper earrings dangle from one ear and a likewise copper ring hangs from around his neck, on a chain, which, with its silver look, might be the most valuble thing he has. His furtive air and painful slouch certainly don't give him an appearance of having much else.
The line finally starts to shuffle forward and he shuffles with it, hands so deeply in his pockets that one can't see much below his elbow. Occasionally, his mouth opens slightly, as if he's muttering to himself. At the very front of this line, if we may pull away from our skinny little boy for a moment, is a man taking money and taking tickets and gruffly ordering the passengers onto the boat and down to the steerage. A couple of peasants do bristle at one point, when the man ends up taking more than they bargained on paying, but the line moves on, nothing happens, one person succeeds another until the line has petered out and our boy is still at the end of it.
He squints narrowly up at the man, who stares brusquely down.
"Payment?" His massive fingers wave in toward his palm.
"Oh! Uh, yeah," the boy stammers, as if caught off guard, and unfastens the four earrings from his right ear, arranging them in the opposite hand, and offering them to the man.
The man does not look impressed. "Son, those 'rn't gonna ferry you more'n a few miles downcoast."
The boy shrugs, but an uneasy quiver makes it into his expression. No stone-face, this one.
"What 'bout the ring? Won't get you much farther, but the chain might pass you down closer to America, if that's where you're going?"
"Can't give you the ring. Uh, no, can't." The boy starts wringing his hands, his nervousness all-too-obvious now.
"Then step off the dock. I can't take ya."
"Okay." Tone appropriately miserable, the boy begins to back away. The man sighs.
"Or, I'm guessin' I can set you up as a sailor. I don' like doin' that, but if you work 'ard, I might not drop you off at the next port. We'll see."
The boy looks hopefully up at him, although one hand's still clasping the other. "I'd do that."
"We'll see." The man picks up the clipboard from its position beside him, on a post, and licks the adjoining quill. "What's yer name, then?"
"Pietro. Uh, Pietro Maximoff. Maximoff's my clan, that is."
"You's a Gypsy?" A flash of uncertainty now. "What's you doin' here alone if you's a gypsy?"
"Um, I'm recently clanless, actually." The boy's smile is unconscious, and very twitchy. The man isn't sure he likes it.
"Why clanless?"
"Um, just, y'know, trying to make my own in the world, for once. Wanna see what it's like outside the caravan, stuff like that."
"Guess you wouldn't know a few measly earrings ain't gettin' you anywhere." The man's tone is still wary. "Kid, don' take me wrong or nothin', but you go filchin' anythin', and I'll either drop you on the first authority that shows 'is 'ead, or I'm leavin' you in the ocean."
Pietro straightens. "We don't do that. We don't steal."
"Yes'n, you do. But you yourself won't, right?"
"No . . . sir." The boy chews sidelong on his lip, his narrow eyes fixed on the man.
"See that you don't. Yer 'ired for the moment. Evan!"
A young man, dark-skinned and dark eyed with a loose and well-groomed clump of black hair comes sauntering down the dock. Pietro is more than certain he's never seen the youth before, but he grins at Pietro toothily and waves like they're somehow old friends.
"Yes, boss?" He's alongside the man now, still grinning at Pietro.
"New sailor. Yer responsibility. Get 'im swabbin' or somethin'. I'm gettin' the ship ready." He peels onto the ship, bellowing. Pietro hitches his shoulders, trying to avert his gaze from the weird youngster as if that would make him go away.
"Name?" The dark eyes are right in his face, suddenly, and he jumps backwards, limbs flailing. The other boy laughs and grabs his shirt front before he manages to careen off the dock. Dark-boy continues to smile, as if just waiting for an answer, as if Pietro didn't just wet himself, or whatnot.
"P-pietro," he finally gasps and Dark-boy yanks him hard forward until he's secure on the dock and lets him go.
"Great. Very pretty. I'm Evan and that's just Evan. A-and, I'm an African, so, yes, when you get off the dock wherever you're stopping, you can tell all your new buddies what you ran into. Ready?"
Pietro just stares at him blankly. "What?"
"Ready to get on the ship, as we're gonna be moving off in a second or two?"
"Oh, um, yeah." He nods belatedly.
"Then come on!" Evan bounds up the ramp, onto the decks, not bothering to look back to see if Pietro's coming. He does come, however slowly and uncertainly, eyes sweeping the hollow boards under his feet as if he expects them to break under him should he step a little too hard. Evan whistles with urgency and bounds back, then off again.
"Slow!" he barks, and Pietro tries to increase his pace, despite the uneasy sway of the ship that's already making him a twinge nauseous. No good.
The dark boy finally stops next to a closet, slamming it open with a deft slap of a palm. With all that fanfare, you'd expect the closet to be full of gold, or at least food. But, of course, it's just a few brooms and mops and a bucket or two. Evan snatches a bucket and mop and thrusts it into Pietro's arms before he's fully processed, well, anything.
"See the string?" He thumps the thin rope coiled around the bucket handle. "Use that to lower this into the water, right? Soap's back here . . ." and he points to a couple of grimy boxes in the back of the closet, "and don't be too liberal with it. Got that? Good." And he bounds off again, leaving Pietro stranded with the paraphernalia. He stares after Evan with the same blank expression for all too long before stumbling toward the railings to fill the bucket.
Ho hum.
You hardly need to be told that swabbing the deck is not anyone's dream job, but it's not overly strenuous, especially when you know you're really more of a charity case than an employee and no one's going to shove you off the side because your pace isn't quick enough. Pietro is not so much lazy as meticulous to the point of not getting anything done and the dark boy passes by him several times without seeing much progress (which he loudly tells him a few times). Then he'll go a little faster, but there's always a crack darker than the rest of the board which he'll try to lighten up and an hour later, it's still darker than the rest of the board and most of the deck is just as dirty as it was when he started.
When Evan comes to fetch him for dinner, he's almost in the same position, still ineptly mopping away at one spot, his tongue neatly pinned between his teeth and his expression determined. That crack is still there, by the way. Evan sighs loudly . . . and then has to sigh again, even louder, before the pale boy turns to look at him, thin eyes a little wider with a mix of indignation of being disturbed and simple surprise.
"What?"
"Dinner time, my child. You do eat?"
"Um . . ." His face scrunches as he tries to think of something clever. "I guess." Failure.
"Then put your mop away and come eat. You can finish the deck later." Assuming such a thing is possible.
The pale boy blinks, shrugs, and wanders off to do just that. Evan doesn't bother to watch him, making his casually hurried way toward the main mess and looking as comfortable and indifferent as something that sticks out as much as an African can. His curiousity is mildly piqued by Pietro, as it would be piqued by any anomaly. Not that his mere prescence is anything special. The captain is a bit of a pushover. Any poor idiot out of his luck and dumb (or smart) enough not to scrounge together a full payment usually gets signed on as a sailor. Not that any of them are particularly good sailors -- tend to get in the way, often as not, or get sick over the side on a constant basis. It's not even that Pietro is a gypsy -- it's more that he's a lone gypsy, without caravan or family to load with him and Evan's never known a gypsy to hire out, like he would otherwise expect some callow youth without resources to be doing.
This is primarily why he's interesting and primarily why the captain is a bit more antsy about hiring him on than he usually is. Gypsies seldom travel alone and they do have that reputation for stealing, which is partially deserved, no matter what side you're on. When a group lives outside the law, they live outside the law, even if the law is unjust -- and they'll get hammered for it. Evan's own had been hammered, back on the continent he must have been born on, long ago as that was, for essentially the same thing, only theirs had been a more active protest. So it was. Yeah, Evan was inclined to feel sympathy for gypsies in general, since they lived by what means they could while still being gypsies, but he also happened to be second mate on a ship and the ship certainly came before sympathies.
And if a lone gypsy didn't end up spelling trouble, Evan would be fine with that. But if Pietro stole, he'd come down on him hard enough. You didn't get patrons if the rumor went around the sailors were theives, right?
See, it's not just that he's a gypsy, Evan muses as he wanders to a side table with a bowl of fish 'n' stew, it's also that he's kinda sullen and strange for a kid out on an adventure. Breaking all family ties, no money to speak of, well, yes, it's all something to keep an eye on him for.
The little pale boy stumbles into the food line not long after, and Evan makes sure he catches his eye. He's fairly intent on Pietro sitting at his table, if only to be nice and watchful at the same time. And, when he does have his bowl, Pietro ends up walking in his direction after all. There's a skittishness in his glance, like he's terribly unsure, and he breaks his direction slightly to veer off toward an empty table, but Evan clears his throat and slaps the spot beside him insistently.
Now Pietro's eyes look very worried and keep snapping from him to the empty table, but a grin twitches around his lips and he ends up sitting across from Evan, as he thought he probably would.
"So. How are you liking the ocean?" Evan doesn't particularly care, of course, but it's always polite to start the conversation when you're talking to a new 'un.
"Big," he says inanely, digging his spoon into the stew. "I mean, so's the land, but with all the hills and trees and stuff, it doesn't look it quite as much."
"You'll get used to it pretty quick. Although the ocean has plenty of hills in it, you wait. So . . . I expect you've travelled a lot?"
"Yeah, all over. It's like, well, y'know, we don't keep to one place so long. Most places look pretty much the same, though."
"Perhaps. Perhaps you'll think differently of America?"
His face falls slightly. "It doesn't matter."
"It doesn't?"
"I don't care what it looks like." He attacks the stew -- Evan suspects more to avoid talking than out of hunger.
"It's fairly pretty," he fills in. "Prettier than here, I thought, although your country gets quite green up around the north, America is that bright of green all along its coasts. It's green without the rain, and as you get further in, the green mellows into more of a pine. Go far enough and you might as well be wading through dust, for it all drops off into patches of desert in the middle, but what desert, all dust and ashes. Beautiful in a sense most deserts aren't. Most deserts live, just subdued. America has the beauty of the dead."
"Mmph." Pietro drops his spoon, tilting his head and swallowing. "You've travelled more than I have."
"I've been between here and America so many times . . . but I'm more recounting stories than anything from experience."
"Don't like to leave the ship?"
"I visit coastal towns enough. But if I wander too far inland and get lost, there goes my job, right?"
"I guess. Unless you felt like getting another one."
"It's never that easy. My skill is with the sea."
"'Least you have a skill." And there's that sullen tint to his expression. "I don't know what I'm going to do when I get to America."
"You don't exactly have family there, do you."
"Left all my family home. Save my dad, y'know, don't know where he is." He flicks the haft of the spoon, trying to decide whether to pick it up again. "But who does?"
"I expect you weren't terribly close to your folks."
"Not at all. I was raised by the caravan, really. Just thought my mom had to be in there somewhere. But they didn't really want me, not a one of them." As he speaks, his voice gets angrier, more rapid. He might as well be glaring holes in that spoon.
"Why not? You seem like a nice kid."
"Not really. I'm not a nice kid at all. You just don't know me yet, see." Voice still fast, top heavy, like it's going to collapse at the end of the next sentence, or maybe the next. "Anyway, no one wants me, so I'm going to America to start over. Everyone should be able to start over, you think."
"Definitely. That's one thing about living on a boat. Learn to swab just a little faster, and perhaps we could keep you on."
"Don't like the water, really. That's a fact, there." He hasn't thrown up over the side yet, but there is the film of misery over his face that might be his unwanted orphan angst or, yes, the beginning of sea-sickness. "Just had to sign on to get out."
"That bad, huh?"
"Worse! Was impossible to live like that, no one treated me properly, didn't matter who they were. Maybe it won't be any different in America, I guess, but at least I can try."
"There's always that. But you don't have any useful skills, you say?"
"None. No useful skills at all. I'm pretty useless."
"So what are you going to do?"
The anger gives over completely to the misery. "I don't know."
"Better figure that one out before we reach America, or you might as well jump over the side now and swim back to your clan."
"Yeah, probably."
Evan purses his lips. The gypsy might be keen on dying young as long as he could die with dignity or some other such tripe. Evan rather hopes that his few years on the boy gives him a bit more sense. He tries again. "Can you read?"
"Some. Didn't have a whole lot of books, you know."
"You could probably get a clerk position somewhere."
"What's a clerk?"
"Well, you'd handle money, write down orders, things like that."
"No one's going to let me handle money." He lifts his lip, snarling at the spoon.
"I suppose you'll have some time to think about it."
"Yeah." He drops the spoon and stares at Evan, leaning on his palm. "So, what do I do after dinner?"
"Oh -- keep swabbing."
"Okay." He picks up the bowl and trots off toward the back of the mess hall to dump. Evan yawns for lack of an expression to plaster on her face. The gypsy had come off as terribly young and petulant -- and perhaps not altogether harmless. He'd gritted out plenty of bad-tempered teenage feelings, which were so much air, but a gypsy unwanted by the caravan -- oh, it's the whole lone gypsy thing. When you live outside the law, well, Evan hasn't heard of too many gypsies booted for being too law-abiding.
He finishes his dinner and climbs partway up the mast, watching the pale boy cleaning with desperate slowness below. Certainly wouldn't be hired back for the sake of his incredible competence, but high marks for effort, no matter how dirty the deck remained. The sun is long vanished before Pietro's struggle to remain upright and awake becomes all too apparent and Evan slides down on the deck to relieve him of the mop.
"You'll sleep down in the hold -- look, here's your hammock." No, Evan does not normally keep hammocks slung over his shoulder, but he is nothing if not quick on the uptake and generally prepared and when there's a new sailor, that sailor'll be no good if he snoozes on the deck. That does funny things to poor liddle backs and muscles. Of course, the poorer patrons have to experience just that, but they aren't working now, are they.
Pietro's head lulls in a weak approximation of a nod -- then he blinks awake, his mouth set in a drooping line. "Okay."
Evan watches him stumble off and makes sure the pale boy descends before leaving for his crew-cabin. Well. So far the gypsy hasn't been any real trouble. There is always tomorrow.
