Chapter Seven—Straight Talk
Tetra slept most of that morning, and Jack let her do so. He also, however, told the crew that if any of them saw her about, they were to inform her to come and speak to him right away.
He had already spoken to Michael about what had happened aboard the Red Lion, though that interrogation didn't last long.
"Crawford," he began, throwing an arm over the sailor's shoulders. "You got a good look at that crew, aye?"
"Yes, sir," Michael confirmed uncertainly.
"Good, good. Now listen carefully, and think hard before you answer." He looked at the young man intensely. "Did any of them look familiar to you?"
Jack watched as Michael's eyes made several small movements that showed how thoroughly he was considering the question. The conclusion he came to was, "No."
"I see." Jack frowned. "Well, that's all, sailor."
From there he went to his cabin to have lunch, and that was where he now sat, eating slowly as his mind churned with fragments of information. Somehow he just knew that Tetra could fill in most of these blanks.
When a small knock sounded at the door, he called carelessly, "Come in," without looking up.
The door opened and a blond head leaned in. "Jack?"
Surprised, he lifted his head and saw that it was indeed Tetra.
"You wanted to talk to me?"
"Ah, yes." He waved her into the room. "Come here, sit, eat, help yourself."
Closing the door carefully behind her, she took a seat at the table and grabbed a roll, which she ripped in half and began to butter.
"Right, then," Jack said conversationally, "here's what I know." He swallowed a mouthful of chicken before continuing. "You've been looking for your friend Link, and that ship, Reyga's ship, has been following you. You knew that your crew was right and it was after you, so that was a lie when you told me otherwise."
He saw her stiffen slightly and pause with the roll halfway to her mouth, but went on.
"And when the Red Lion caught up to us, Reyga sent you a couple of notes, but they didn't say that he had Link's hostage. That was another lie.
"And Reyga said he wants to bring you back to your country because you left it illegally, but I don't believe that story, and neither do you.
"All in all, there's more going on between you, your country, that general, and possibly your old friend, then you've told me. And let me tell you something…" He leaned forwards with his elbows on the table and said threateningly, "I want answers."
Tetra had gone completely still from when Jack mentioned her first lie; she hadn't even blinked, and now looked rather pale. When she placed down her knife, her hand was unsteady. "Oh," she said dully, her voice shaking just as much. "Well…Well, I don't know what to tell you…"
"The truth, love. Start by admitting it. You knew from the start that the Red Lion was after you, aye?"
She stared at her roll, then confessed in a low voice, "I suspected it."
Jack nodded, satisfied, less by the answer than by the fact that he had obtained it. "My next question is, what did those notes say?"
Once again, Tetra took her time answering. When she did so, she looked him directly in the eye and spoke with confidence. "Reyga asked me to come aboard his ship. He said that he had Link."
Narrowing his eyes, Jack reminded her, "That's what you told me before."
"I know. And it was a lie then. But now it's the truth."
After contemplating her a moment longer, trying to see through her, he was forced to conclude that she was telling the truth…but he had no idea how such a thing could be possible.
"Right," he spoke up at last. "Answer me this, then. What did Reyga really want with you?"
"That," Tetra sighed, "is a question I wish I could answer as much as you do. But besides the fact that I'm a pirate, I don't know what I have that he could possibly want so badly that he would imprison me to get it. At least," she muttered, "what I have that he couldn't get from any other woman."
She glanced up as Jack arched an eyebrow, and shrugged in response.
"I see," he said thoughtfully, leaning back in his chair and tipping it onto two legs. Replaying the conversation mentally confirmed that he really hadn't learned anything from it.
"Well, if that's all—" Tetra began briskly, rising to her feet, but Jack cut her off.
"Actually, I do have at least one more question," he said, ignoring the flash of irritation blending with fear in her eyes when she looked back at him. "That language you and Reyga were speaking. I don't believe I've ever heard it before. What was it?"
"Oh," she said, sounding rather relieved. "Just the language of our country, that's all."
"Ah. Yes. Of course. And what were you saying to each other, exactly?"
She shrugged uncomfortably. "Just insults. 'You're an idiot,' 'You don't know what you're talking about,' 'Shut the hell up,' that sort of thing."
"That's it?"
"Pretty much."
He had believed her until she spoke those two words. Then something came into her tone that proved to him that there had been more in that exchange than she admitted.
Perhaps she saw Jack's slight frown of suspicion, because Tetra's voice suddenly became weary and pleading as she said, "Look, Jack, please just give me a break. It was a difficult experience, and I'm just not ready to talk about it yet. I promise I'll tell you all the things I know you want to know…but not right now," she finished. "Please?" she added hopefully.
He frowned at her for a few more seconds, as always taking his time to decide whether or not she was telling the truth, and finally concluding that she was. Then he nodded his acquiescence, and she left without a word.
Tetra stood by the mermaid, a crease in her brow, drumming her finger against its wooden hair. It felt like years since she had spoken the language of the Great Sea. She had never thought of it as a language like any other, because the concept of a world where different people spoke in different tongues had been unknown to her for the first fifteen years or so of her life. Of course, there was the occasional being in the Great Sea who spoke ancient Hylian, but these individuals were rare enough to almost be considered legendary. The common tongue was so common that she didn't have a name for it—She had nothing she needed to distinguish it from.
Now, however, she definitely could draw the line between her own language and the foreign one of English. All her fondest memories were the ones which took place in the same language as her thoughts.
'Are you okay? I saved you!'
'Yeah, thanks. Don't touch me.'
She smiled. He had been such a novice, so idealistic. In her mind, he still was.
'Look, I'm really sorry if your little sister or whatever got kidnapped, but it's really not—'
'Don't say it's not your fault, or it's not your problem, because that bird was aiming at you, so it is.'
She chuckled. Somehow he always had a good point like that.
'Are you kidding me? You're a hero? You have that sword?!'
'What's the matter? Don't you think I could do it?'
The minute he got a spine…that was when she realized there could between something more between them than simply a passing alliance.
"Miss Tetra?"
Blinking, she switched mental gears and turned around to see Michael there. "Oh. Hi," she said with a warm smile. He returned it, though clearly uncomfortable.
"Hi," he replied quickly.
"Did you need to talk about something?" she inquired.
"Oh…no, not really," he said, shrugging and shaking his head. "I just… I was wondering…"
"What's wrong with me?" she suggested helpfully.
Nodding, Michael admitted, "Yeah, I guess."
Tetra let her smile disappear as she continued to look at him, making him increasingly uncomfortable. Only when she had completely and visibly deflated did she break eye contact with him, turning back around to look beyond the mermaid to the rest of the world. Michael was just about to slip away and leave her alone with her thoughts, deciding that was what she needed, when she spoke again.
"Do you have a best friend?"
He stared in confusion, unsure if he was actually supposed to answer; after all, she wasn't even looking at him.
"Michael?" she spoke up again, still staring ahead of her.
"Yes, Miss Tetra?"
"Do you?"
"I—Well, I did, but I haven't seen him since I left the navy…"
"Oh." A pause. "Do you have a girlfriend?"
Feeling himself turn crimson, Michael stammered, "I don't—I mean—What? Why…?"
"Just wondered," she replied carelessly, oblivious to his embarrassment.
"I, er…I don't anymore. We broke up. We were still on good terms last I saw her and everything, but I just didn't think that being a soldier would give me much time for…"
She cut off his ramblings with, "How did you tell them apart?"
Michael's first impulse was to laugh at the strangeness of this question, which he did, but he stopped himself when she turned fully around to face him and he saw the seriousness of her expression.
"How do I… What do you mean?" He was sure there must have been some meaning behind her question, that he was completely missing.
"I just mean, how did you treat them differently?" she elaborated. "How did you think of them, how did you act around them. Stuff like that."
"Oh." Even knowing what sort of an answer she wanted, Michael still couldn't understand why she was ask such a bizarre question. "I guess…I was more romantic with Maria—that was my girlfriend. I would tell her I loved her and stuff. And with Alan—my best friend—we would just joke around more, and have fun and everything."
"You didn't have fun with Maria?" Tetra asked, tilting her head.
"Sure, yeah, of course. It was…different, though."
Tetra nodded as he spoke, clearly weighing his words carefully. "Different how?"
It occurred to Michael that he had felt much less uncomfortable when she had been interrogating him as a prisoner, and he suddenly felt an overwhelming desire for her to leave him alone. But he had started this conversation, so he couldn't just walk out of it now.
"I dunno," he told her truthfully. "It's not something I could really pinpoint. It's like…friendship is one thing, but when you add something else to it, that's when you have a…a romantic relationship, I guess."
Even as he finished, he saw the dismay in Tetra's eyes; she was already saying, "It's better, then. Is that what you mean?"
"No," Michael replied, realizing he had explained himself inadequately. "It's not better. Maria was a wonderful person, but Alan was my best friend. Best. That—That means something," he finished rather meekly. He was admittedly surprised to see that her smile had returned, though it remained small and unsure. He wished he knew what she was looking for in his answers.
"Okay, Michael, I'll make this simple," Tetra said, as if she had read his mind. "If you could only have one of the two for the rest of your life, which would it be: friendship or love?"
Michael immediately opened his mouth, but didn't answer for several seconds. When he did, he could only say, "I've never really been in love, Miss Tetra, so I don't know. But everyone seems to think it's the best thing in the world, don't they?"
Tetra sighed, slumping obviously. "Yes," she agreed with an unmistakable tone of unhappiness, "they do."
She was staring so intently at a spot beyond Michael that he actually turned around to see what was there. When he looked back, Tetra was walking away, leaving Michael completely confused about what had just happened.
Jack was standing at the helm when Tetra approached him and said in a mundane tone, "I'm not sure if you've looked at the map, but we should be reaching land by evening and I really think we should stop there at least overnight. We could use the rest."
He could still hear the exhaustion in her voice, and besides that, he couldn't deny that it would be nice to get a good drink in a good pub.
"Right, then, we'll come into port for a night or two," he consented. "Anything else?"
"Not that I can think of."
She began to walk away to return to her duties, but stopped herself and added, "Oh, actually, there is one more thing. You know Reyga? I just wanted to let you know that I really don't think he was trying to hurt me or kill me or anything."
"Is that a fact," Jack commented, unconcernedly looking at the course ahead of him rather than at her; he had gleaned this from the time he had spent with them. "Why so sure, love?"
"Because. He's Link."
He knew she had intentionally framed this massive revelation in such a bland dialogue on purpose in order to wrong foot him, but this was only part of the reason that he maintained a stubbornly unsurprised exterior when he glanced her way. Most of the reason was simply a personal resolution to never show any outward emotion that could appear to be weakness. In other words, he always looked stubbornly unsurprised—no matter how stunned he truly was.
Therefore he simply raised his eyebrows and said evenly, "Is that so, love?"
It was rather gratifying to see that she now looked nervous and thrown off; having shrunk slightly, she was chewing on her lip and not looking at him for longer than split second intervals.
"Yes," she said quietly.
Jack paused to contemplate this. He came to his conclusion in the form of a question. "Well, love, if that's the case, then I'm curious." He leaned on the wheel to face her. "Why were you so desperate to get away from him?"
When she didn't answer immediately, but merely looked just past him at nothing, a suspicion struck him that led him to inquire, "Or was that all an act?"
"No," she said instantly, and with obvious sincerity. "I did want to get away from him, Jack. I swear. I was happy to see him again at first, of course, but…then…he was…I don't know…different," she finished lamely.
Tilting his head, Jack asked, "You didn't anticipate that?"
Tetra shook her head slowly.
"I must say, that wasn't terribly wise of you. Although I suppose it's not your fault." With a wave of his hand, Jack observed sarcastically, "When was the last time ten years changed a man, really? It's not like you could have seen that coming. I'm as shocked as you, I swear," he assured her with a nod.
Despite the insults, he wasn't expecting the level of anger that he received in her response.
"As if you have a clue what I'm talking about!" she snapped furiously. "As if you know Link at all—"
"No offence, love," he interrupted, "but it sounds to me like you don't know Link any more than I do."
Before he had quite finished articulating the last word, his head snapped around as she stuck him round the face with all her strength. He was used to being slapped by women, but that was different—She had just punched him.
"You deserved that," she spat, before stomping away.
Jack was left flabbergasted, but only momentarily. For Tetra to defy definitions of ladylike was far from revolutionary. Still, something was obviously bothering her, and he never considered it a good thing to not be on speaking terms with his own second-in-command. After quickly instructing the nearest sailor, Chris, to take the helm and keep them on a steady course, he hurried after her.
"Tetra! Love!"
"And how many times do I have to tell you not to call me that?" she demanded venomously, whipping around on the spot so quickly that Jack had to take a step back to avoid colliding with her and nearly fell over in the process. Her comment only confused him further; she had long given up on nagging him not to call her by a nickname.
"Wha—"
"Unless whatever you intend to say includes an apology, I don't want to hear it," she retorted.
"I'll be honest with you…I don't remember the last time I apologized to anyone," he pointed out.
"Probably the last time you met someone who wasn't intimidated by you."
Jack made several attempts to speak, but as his mind was divided in at least four different directions, none of them succeeded. Finally, he blurted loudly and angrily, "When did we become enemies?!"
He expected another sharp answer, and was therefore frustrated when she did no more than sigh unhappily. "Come on, Jack," she asked; it wasn't an order, but a request. "I need to talk to you."
"To explain something, I hope."
Her silence was not reassuring, but he didn't try to press her into giving him any answers as they walked, unsurprisingly, to the bow. He watched her climb atop the mermaid and sit there with impeccable balance.
"You don't know what it's like to lose a friend like Link," she said simply. "I don't care if you once had your right hand cut off, it couldn't be as painful as severing the connection we had." She paused. "I just…I can't believe how stupid he is!" she finished, her tone clearly expressing that she wished it wasn't so.
"What did he do?" Jack asked. He didn't know if he wanted to know.
Her face grew tense, and she hesitated to answer. "He…He tried to change things. Between us. Things that aren't supposed to change."
Jack stared at her. "He tried to change things."
"Yes."
"Things that shouldn't change."
"Yes."
"For the worse?"
"Y—Well…I mean, of course—obviously for the worse!" she spluttered.
Jack shrugged. "To judge by that reaction, it's not obvious," he pointed out.
She didn't answer. He was thinking.
Phrasing his statement carefully, Jack said casually, "I mean, I would have thought it obvious that you would have fallen for your irresistible captain by now."
Though she didn't look at him, Tetra's expression grew dark. "Shut up, Jack. I'm not some harlot."
"Of course not," Jack agreed tactfully, satisfied that she had reacted as expected. "So, naturally, during the night you spent aboard the Red Lion, I can assume your virtue remained untouched, can I not?"
Tetra's still silence was a confirmation of his suspicion.
"Shut up, Jack," she momentarily spoke up softly.
"I thought you told me you weren't in love with him," Jack inquired carefully.
"I'm not."
"And I thought you said you weren't a harlot."
"I'm not."
"So—"
"Shut up, Jack!" she burst out angrily, swinging sideways to face him as she shouted. "Just…just shut up! Everything I told you, it's still true, all right? I never once lied to you, not about that! Link is my friend, he's one of my best friends, and we—When I—It was a mistake, okay, a stupid mistake, so just…leave it alone!"
With that, she slid down from the mermaid and slumped against its wooden back with her arms crossed. Jack allowed her a long moment of silence before he risked speaking again.
"Well, Tetra, I must say, you continue to surprise me."
"Why's that?" she asked bitterly, turning away from him to lean against the gunwale of the ship, scowling straight ahead at the shimmering water.
"Because based on my experience, I would think any woman would be pretty pleased if a man like that was throwing himself at her. A handsome general and all that."
Tetra snorted. "You really haven't figured out that I'm not 'any woman' by now? Come on, Jack, I know you know me better than that, so just stop it."
"All I'm saying is that I would have expected you to be more typical in this area if nothing else," he told her simply.
"Why?" she asked, standing up straight. "Really, Jack, why would you think that about me? Do I look like—Do I act like the type who wants to get married so I can have a little house and a husband and a couple of kids and a dog? Yeah, right."
Taking a deep breath, she gripped the edge of the ship and leaned out over it; she shook her face into the wind, letting her hair whip wildly about her face. "I can't be tied down, Jack, any more than you can. I don't think that Link understands that."
She bit her lip, regretting the last statement; it was a bit to personal for her to share with someone like Jack, someone who didn't know her history with Link. When Jack didn't respond to it, she glanced at him, and was unnerved to see him staring at her strangely, as though he had never seen her before—or rather, as though he had seen her before, but only in the form of an apparition or ghost.
"Jack?" she asked nervously. "What—?"
"Have you…always had those ears?" he inquired evenly.
Instantly she cursed herself in fury, realizing her mistake. She had been so careful, all the time she had been on Tortuga and all the time she had been aboard the Pearl, to style her hair so it would always keep her ears hidden; similarly, the sailors aboard the Red Lion had cautiously worn hats in Jack's presence, as they would before any strangers. It was the unspoken but universally acknowledged rule which anyone from the Great Sea obeyed. They all knew that observation of their abnormality could lead to nothing but awkward questions. And now she had let her guard down. She, who of all people had the most to guard.
She stared at her hands, hoping that perhaps he wouldn't expect an answer, but knowing he would. "Yes," she finally answered heavily.
He considered this. "Interesting."
She chewed on her lip, twisting her hands as she avoided looking at him. "So now you want to know what's wrong with me, right?" she asked shortly. "Why I'm not a human, if that has anything to do with what I'm not telling you, all of that stuff?"
Jack shrugged. "Well, I've wanted to know what's wrong with you from the day I met you," he admitted. "The ears seem to be a hint, really, more than further confusion. You're not human, then? So what are you? An elf, maybe? Can't say, since I've never met one. At least, not one that I know of. But since you've managed to keep so many secrets from me, maybe other people have as well, and some old friend of mine has a secret identity—"
"No, I'm not an elf," she interrupted him tersely.
"Oh," Jack said simply. "Well, then, you're going to have to tell me what you are, because I'm afraid I'm all out of guesses. I don't know of any other…species, I suppose…that look like pointy-eared humans."
Tetra made a face. "Let's sit down," she decided. "This could take awhile."
With a nod, Jack waved his arm to indicate that they could take a seat in his cabin, toward which she was already headed. He followed her, and closed the door behind them as she took a seat.
"So what's your story?" he asked promptly. "Because I'm beginning to suspect that there's a large portion of your identity that is completely foreign to me."
Tetra let out an abrupt, disgruntled laugh. "More than you know," she assured him. "But first of all…I want you to promise that nothing I tell you here will leave this room or your lips. I mean, I keep secrets for a reason. Understood?"
"Of course."
"All right, then." Tetra sighed. "Remember when I told you how I met Link? When I was away from my ship and all that?"
"Aye."
"Well…I never really told you what exactly I was doing while I was on that…'quest,' I guess you could call it…"
"No, you didn't," Jack agreed, taking his own seat opposite Tetra. This fact had never left his thoughts for an instant, though he had begun for a time to think that perhaps it really wasn't important.
"Yeah. So here it is." She cleared her throat and met his eye evenly, in a manner that suggested she was about to say something she knew he wouldn't believe. "I'm what's called a Hyrulean," she told him, "which means I come from the nation of Hyrule."
So far, nothing too unbelievable. Jack didn't react.
"Which is a sunken civilization under the Great Sea…"
He raised his eyebrows.
"…and of which I am the crown princess, and heir apparent to the throne."
"What?!"
Jack prided himself on having been truly astonished on only a few occasions in his life, and on never having let on how he felt even during those moments. But this…this was more of a shock than anything he had ever heard, infinitely more unexpected than the first time he'd heard the name "Will Turner" and recognized the young man to whom it belonged as the son of Bootstrap. It was as if someone had just told him that he himself was royalty. He shot to his feet and began to demand, "How—?!"
"I haven't even gotten to the weird part yet," Tetra told him dully.
Jack slowly sat back down again, partly to listen to her story, and partly because he felt dizzy from having stood up so fast.
"Are you ready?" Tetra asked when he was seated.
"Ready as I'll ever be," Jack answered honestly. The truth was that he was nowhere near able to accept this. A princess was the worst thing she could have possibly been; royalty did not belong on pirate ships, and a princess especially did not belong on a ship with an entirely male crew, and only ill could come of this violation of that rule. Jack was the one whose head was in the noose if anything happened to her. She had to know that.
But there was more to the story. Tetra took a deep breath.
She told everything. About the day she had met Link, the kidnapping of his sister, the Forbidden Fortress, the evil king called Ganon, the lost castle beneath the ocean, the surprise of her own ancestry.
"How did they know you were…this…princess…person?" Jack asked, speaking up for the first time. He still could barely force himself to say the word.
Tetra sighed and reached into her shirt; she pulled out the gold chain he had noticed she was never without, and for the first time he saw what hung on the end of it—an upside down V of solid gold.
"This," she said, "is a family heirloom on my mother's side. It's only a piece, though, of the whole. It's called the Triforce of Wisdom, and it's a holy relic, left here by the goddesses who created the world."
When Jack arched a disbelieving eyebrow, she went on, "It's true, Jack. I didn't think it was anything, either, at first. I thought it was just a pretty pendant. But I've seen its power, and now I know… But that's part of the story."
And she continued. She spoke of Link—his quest for the Master Sword, for the Sages, for the pieces of the Triforce of Courage.
"He's a hero," she explained. "Not just in a 'wow, he's so brave and talented' way. In a literal 'the goddesses chose him as the embodiment of courage' way. He's a true, predestined hero."
"And that's your bond," Jack said. He was still mired in trying to comprehend this story; half of his mind was, even still, caught on her title.
"What?"
"You told me when I met you," he elaborated, "that you have a bond with him deeper than the flesh. And that's what you meant. A divine bond, forged by destiny." His own words sounded ridiculous to him.
Tetra nodded. "We fought together to defeat Ganon, to prevent him from seizing the Triforce. And then—now—Hyrule's gone."
She fell silent. When Jack saw that she wasn't going to say anymore, he finished for her, "And the legend slept until Link the Hero and Princess Tetra were reunited, aye?"
"Hero of Winds," she corrected him. "That's Link's title. And I'm… My name isn't really Tetra."
"Then what…?"
"Princess Zelda."
"Zelda?" he repeated. "So would you like me to call you that from now on?"
"No," she assured him immediately. "I'm not Zelda anymore. I'm not a princess, I'm a pirate. I'm Tetra."
"So then your name isn't really Zelda," he clarified. "It's Tetra."
"Depends how you define 'really,'" she decided.
"Semantic technicalities are the least of our problems right now," Jack reminded her. "I'd say our biggest is…now that you've found your friend, what do you want to do? Are you going to stay with our crew and continue to terrorize the Spanish Main and beyond, or would you like to settle somewhere on land? Or perhaps you'd like to return to your own country? Does it have a name, by the way?"
With a faint smile, she told him, "I just found out that it does, but I don't really remember it. Felic...Felissit…venna…ta… Something complicated like that."
Jack folded his arms. "And would you like to go back to Felikfelisitvennata?"
Tetra rolled her eyes. "That's not what it's called, Jack."
"For the purposes of this conversation, it is. Now answer the question."
Tetra took a slow breath, to buy herself time to think, and as she let it out, she decided, "I don't want to be a princess. I don't want to be Zelda. And Link wants… I think he wants me to be her."
Jack said nothing. He was waiting for her to reach her own conclusions.
"And also…I do want to go home," she admitted. "Eventually. But right now, based on what Link said, I think it would be too dangerous. I'll stick with you." She managed a grin that almost made her appear to be back to normal. "Until I feel like giving up my freedom, anyway."
"Until you feel like being a princess again."
Tetra hesitated, then nodded ever so slightly. "I suppose so, yes."
"And in the meantime, you're a pirate."
Her second nod was even smaller. "I am."
"As long as that's true, you're welcome company among us scoundrels and thieves," Jack told her truthfully.
"I'm glad there's still a few normal souls left in the world," Tetra replied with a wide, sincere smile.
