Drift
Pairing: Maeve/Sinbad
Rating: M (adult themes)
Setting: After Season 1, assuming Season 2 never happened
All standard disclaimers apply
Maeve does not choose to retrace their path to the far side of the headland. Sinbad does not choose to question her. The captain in him screams that he must uphold his obligations, but the pull of this woman and the peace she provides sing stronger. She moves, he moves; the moon and the tide. He repeats her words like a prayer—there is only so much a single man can do. Even a hero. Even him.
This is not his mess.
He doesn't quite believe it, but he has no strength left to fight. His reality has reeked blood and fire for so long that he's not sure he remembers a wider, kinder world or only just imagined its existence.
She drops her legs over the edge of the bluff and skids in a shower of dust to the sand below. He follows, as he's bound to follow, burying the relentless tug of duty he has no will to answer. And here, on the warming sand of a tiny, protected cove, he begins to recall a world before dead children fell to pieces in his arms, before the sea died and the sky spilled fire and ash in relentless choking waves. He breathes clear air, salt-sweet and cool, and when his lungs expand to their full breadth he only coughs a little. Green-gold dune grass, sword-sharp, casts blue shadows against tawny-buff sand. The sky arches overhead, clear and deep and blue. He names the colors his eyes forgot existed, cool as rainshowers, sweet as the mercy of this morning.
Maeve dumps her blade and belts in the shelter of the dune grass and stretches a filthy, weary body open to the honest sunlight.
"You're not going to sleep, are you?"
He shakes his head wordlessly.
She chooses not to fight, closing her eyes and leaving him to his thoughts. He keeps watch over her sleep as she kept watch over him last night, his focus the steady rise and fall of her breaths, this rhythm which encapsulates his world. He's fascinated by the faint shimmer of sweat which appears on her brow and upper lip, the graceful sweep of her collarbones. He's held vigil over her slumber before, and resumes this watch with deep contentment. He cannot sleep, but she should. She is the embodiment of his remaining faith, everything he used to trust now concentrated in this single perfectly imperfect soul. She returned from the deep, as no one has before—not lost parents, not lost crewmembers. Not Leah. She goaded a dangerous sultan to violence to protect him—not a wise choice, but such a very Maeve one. A more traditional captain would discipline her severely for such a reckless act, but he's never had the heart to do so before and he's resolutely unwilling now. She did it for him, and even the elements responded. Who the hell is he to tell her she was wrong?
She coughs.
The world rushes back to him, like earthly sounds to ears rising from deep water, gaining the surface. Rough barks tear from her throat, empty her lungs as she inhales swiftly, a voiced whimper of sound before the next burst. It sounds so painful, but there is nothing he can do, possibly nothing even Firouz can do. Another round hits her, but not so harsh; she regains control of her breath and slips softly back into sleep. He exhales slowly. If there's lasting damage, he's at fault and he knows it. He answered Omar's call. He knows without a doubt he will not do so again. The sultan's amulet, token of his esteem, lies heavy and cold on his chest.
She's so beautiful.
He shifts closer, cautious, loath to wake her. She slept no more last night than he. He sees no fresh red staining her mouth—a small mercy. She shifts, spine relaxing deeper into warm sand. She sleeps on.
Beautiful thing. Lovely, strong, unstoppable thing. His hand hovers near her wrist as he wrestles with this desire. It's raw, this need, and he now has permission, but he does not wish to disturb her. Pain twists his gut. Deepening sunshine paints a film of gold along her sharply defined collarbones, turns her loose curls to pure fire. They glint like precious metal, copper and bronze, glimmers of gold and deepest ruby. He wishes he could capture this color, the way her skin glows in the sudden burst of sunlight even under a film of ash and soot. She's a warrior no poet or painter could do justice.
His fingertip traces the line of her wrist, the delicate knob of bone. Birds call softly in the dune grass, little darting things.
"Are you ever going to sleep?" One dark eye cracks open, squinting in the sun. She must be a lighter sleeper than he believed.
He shakes his head wordlessly. He does not want to sleep, and anyway, he's forgotten how.
"I'm trying here, Sinbad. You have to help me. Give me something to work with." She cups a long-fingered, elegant hand along her brow, shading her eyes from the drenching sunlight.
"What do you want?" He'll give it to her—anything. Everything. He'll spend the rest of his life chasing her elusive smiles.
"Stop that," she snaps, and suddenly her body is in motion, rising with the swift grace of an agitated cobra. How long did she sleep? An hour? More? Why can't he tell? "It's not about what I want. You're still not listening."
He is listening. Her voice, her heartbeat; these sounds anchor him to this moment of peace, this tiny stretch of sand and sun, as the reality of what they left behind yowls and reaches and attempts to claw him back.
Her perfect mouth thins, a blade she's about to use. He's prepared. He knows this woman, knows her habits, her predilection for spouting unpleasant truths he'd rather not hear. So long as she stays, she can say anything she pleases. He can take her venom. He cannot take her absence.
"I don't know what's going on in that head of yours." Her chin tips forward as if her own head feels heavy, or she's hiding. "I never do. Most people I can read like books. Not you." She pulls her face upright again, resolutely refusing to shy from this admission. "But I don't like it anyway. Whatever's going on, it's not healthy and it's not helping." Her eyes meet his squarely. "Whatever you think I am, whatever pedestal you're building to put me on, stop it. Now."
He watches her warily. He's building no pedestals, he swears he isn't. If she's standing on one, it's only because she built it herself. Those moon-eyed cabin boys know it. So do the sultan's horses. How is he supposed to look at a woman who captures the gaze of the world, except with the reverence she deserves?
"You need to sleep. I don't know what else you need, but let's start with that." Her eyes lock with his, shrewd and measuring. "I'm not too good with your idioms, but I think this is what you call a stalemate. I know you need sleep. You know I can't make you."
He remains silent, unsure what she's asking of him. He would sleep if he could, if only because he will do anything to please her. But he can't. He's forgotten how, and though he will not admit it even to himself, he is afraid to try.
"What is it, exactly, that you want from me?" She touches him, circling his wrist with her fingers. He doesn't expect it and inhales a tense breath. Her skin is sun-warm, her grip firm and sweet. "I wasn't going to ask. Not now—you're not in your right mind. But I can't force you to sleep, and I need to know."
He lifts a questioning eyebrow. "You don't have a sleep spell buried somewhere in your books?"
"Of course I do," she snaps. "What self-respecting sorcerer doesn't? But I don't have the ingredients or the time to mix a potion, and I doubt you'd drink it anyway. Stop deflecting."
He runs a broad, dirty hand down his face, giving in to her after barely a battle. "Everything," he tells her with the brutal honesty which comes from lack of sleep, lack of energy to fight the unwinnable. "I want everything."
"That's not good enough, and you know it."
Very often her irritation, her demanding nature, lights a twin spark in him as well. But not today. He looks at her in the pouring sunlight, feels her fingers encircling his wrist, holding him at anchor. Dirty linen, hot skin; she waits impatiently for his answer. She's so beautiful it hurts. Pain twists his gut but he cannot look away, entranced by the play of light on her throat as she breathes. Despite her ferocious nature there's enough woman in her that she hates being so dirty. But she does not complain, has not complained since they answered Omar's call. She's alabaster and gold, cheeks pinked by sun. Ruddy curls spill over her shoulders. He wants so badly to touch, to pull them out of her eyes, ease the harsh line of her mouth with his own. His skin sings sweetly against her fingers.
"I mean it," he insists, because she has to understand. "I want everything." Knowledge of her past, her presence in their present. Whatever she's capable of promising of the future. Her regard. Her respect. As much of her body as she will willingly share. He wants to follow where she leads, and exist in quiet beside her. He wants to know she has his back, not just today but for always. Wants permission to watch over hers, to guard and protect though he knows she does not appreciate his hovering. "I want you." Putting the minutiae of his desires into words proves impossible—he struggles, opening his mouth and finding only silence while his mind whirls and the rushing pressure in his head begins to climb.
"You have me." A low bark of laughter jerks her body. It sounds just as painful as her cough. "You have…no idea. But what do you want? A friend? A partner?" She levels a look which cuts as deep as her touch heals. "A savior? Because I can't be that for you. You'll break me if you try, and you won't fix yourself in the process." She coughs, badly concealing a wince of discomfort. Dark eyelashes kiss her cheeks as she blinks. Shadows play over the hollows of her collarbones, delicately lovely.
"A baby." The words shock even him. He doesn't blame the way her arched brows lift toward her hairline. But he will not take it back even so, because maybe it's the truth. Maybe his instincts know something his brain doesn't. And really, would it be so bad? The more he considers, the more he wants. A new start, something fragile and pure, something to bind this woman to him permanently. A new embodiment of hope born into this world, a living child who might hold the power to silence the dead ones which drift, endlessly drift, behind his eyes. A little boy who looks like him but holds the quiet of sun-dappled wings in his gaze.
"No." Her voice is a cliff face which cannot be surmounted.
"No?"
"That's not what you need." Her words ring firm but hold no anger, only a deep well of sadness he does not understand. "I get it. I do. You want a fresh start. But the last thing you need right now is another soul you think you're responsible for, another soul to weigh down with unrealistic expectations. No. That's not fair to me. Or him. Or even you." She releases his wrist and for a moment he feels bereft, a ship cut loose from its mooring, but her fingers travel to his cheek, ghost the lines of his tense mouth. "Some things in this world can be layered over pain like a bandage, and it helps. A good meal. Love. Time. Sleep." She looks at him significantly. "But not that. Not for this reason. Do you understand me?"
No, he doesn't. It still seems like a better idea than he's heard in a long while. The image of this woman round and glowing with new life, standing aboard his ship, far, far from this pit of destruction, twinges his insides with painful intensity. He wants it—badly, suddenly, with no rational explanation. But he trusts her. Respects her. And he's always accepted that no means no, especially from her.
"Besides," she says, dark sweep of lashes kissing her cheeks as she blinks, "I think that would tear you to pieces right now, adding new worry on top of worry. You're hurting, and you don't know what you're asking. No. You don't need that. To be honest, I don't know what you do need. But I know what you don't."
He feels his brows draw together: a puzzled frown. Doubar says she's done this before, faced the aftermath. She herself admitted as much. If she doesn't know what he needs, who would? Does anyone? "What did you need, before?" His lips find her palm, place a cautious kiss in its warm center.
She does not pull away. "We're very different people, Sinbad."
He knows. Night and day, fire and water, however anyone wishes to describe them, they are opposites. He doesn't care about that; he never has. "Still."
She exhales slowly, fingers tracing tender lines along his filthy skin as if this small touch could unlock the mystery she prods, unravel the meaning behind his pain. "I needed to leave. To run. Movement—space. Room...not to forget, because that's impossible, but to learn to live through the memory. I needed Dim-Dim, too, though I didn't know it at the time."
For a moment, he's bitterly, irrationally jealous. He wants so badly for her to need him, too.
"But I never fought sleep like you. Never believed the world would fall to pieces without me." Her shoulders hitch. "My corner of it fell to pieces with me, in spite of me, so I always knew better. I may be bossy, but I don't have a captain's heart." Her head tips sideways, the graceful quirk of an inquisitive bird, her eyes as gentle as a forest creature's as they watch him. "We are not the same."
No, they are not. He fell to pieces when the drowned children rose from the deep, drifting silently, bodies like abandoned hulls in the harbor. They broke apart in his arms, dragged unwillingly from the quiet of their rest. He did not want to touch them, to disturb further what was not his to take. Maeve loved them anyway. She touched them gently, refused to make them burn. Her conscience is clear. She can sleep.
His knuckles find a rend in her sleeve, a long tear of linen which bares the warmth of her skin. He aches for this heat, his fingers slipping under the fraying edge. The song of touch, of contact, rings louder than the call of the sea, deeper than the invisible tide. He's burned for solid nights to hear again the gentle rhythm of her sleeping breaths, for the reassurance of this cadence to drown the whispers hissing her death. Now she sits before him warm and alive, squinting in pools of sunlight, the most beautiful sight he's ever beheld. The sweet lines of her shoulders gleam, smooth as soft water.
But then she coughs. Horses rear in his memory, horses drowned by their own blood, lungs like wineskins, heavy and full and seeping red. His hand tightens on her skin. Not her.
"What would Firouz say to do for you?" He touches her lip, cracked and dry.
"I don't know, and I don't care. We've all been spitting blood, Sinbad. It will pass. But I know what he'd say about you. There are more hurts in this world than he can heal. Pains not of the body, pains no poultice can reach. This place is hurting you, and removing you for a night didn't help. It's time to go. Not just for a day, but for good."
"It's hurting you more," he insists, but he does not argue her conclusion. They need to leave. She all but cemented this fact when she goaded Omar to violence. He will not risk her, and she knows it. She was protecting him in the only way she knew how.
"It is not. I'm honestly not sure anymore whether you're lying just to me or to yourself as well." She drops her hand from his skin. Huge brown eyes watch him, tawny-sweet, amber-dark, veined with gold when the sun hits her. She's so close. Soft breaths lift her chest gently, clear and untroubled for the moment. "Whichever it is, stop. Now. You're good at hiding, but you're not a liar. You're better than that."
He wants to tell her he's fine, but the automatic rebuttal dies before birth. She knows better; she knows him. He's unsure what to say instead. That he can't sleep? Since when has that killed anyone? "Blood belongs inside you." This defense is weak, and even he knows it.
"And you belong in your bunk at night, not pacing your ship and watching us like a creep." A small smile touches the corners of her lovely mouth, but it aches like winter. "Rongar knew, you know. From the start, that first night you thought Doubar died."
He doesn't bother asking how she knows the measure of his dreams. She may not tell him, and he may not like the answer. "You knew I was there."
"In my cabin? Of course. I've been on my own since I was young—how long do you think I would have lasted without learning to sleep light? I decided I didn't mind, not if it helped you. But I don't think it did."
Oh, it did. More than he can say. He needs the reassurance of her heartbeat, the promise it has not stilled. She's his person. Soft-strong, all hard edges and sharp corners, but with a hidden core of tender sweetness like the heart of a palm. He curls his hands into fists, forces them to remain at his sides. He wants her, wants the firm pressure of her body curled tight along his, heat for heat, fire for fire, but he's afraid she'll bolt like one of her wild creatures if he holds on too tight.
"You need to be alive," he insists, sleep-plagued mind cloudy and dense with too many thoughts he cannot voice. "I need to know it." His words do not come out right at all, but he needs her to understand.
"I know, and that's part of the problem." She wears her frown like a crushing yoke, as if the burden of existing suddenly weighs far too much. He wonders if this is his fault, and loathes the possibility that he's done this to her.
"How long have you been coughing blood?" He's furious at himself that he does not know the answer. He's her captain, and she means more to him than he can possibly explain. He's always watching. Protective, yes, but more than that. She draws his attention, draws him in. She has ever since their disastrous first meeting. How could he possibly not notice? He should have known exactly when his crew began struggling, and he should have defied Omar and sailed away the moment they first spat blood.
"Not as long as you've been awake. It's dulled your beautiful mind. Your reactions." She eyes him as she would a wounded animal huddled in terror. Her next action will be mercy, but whether a healing hand or a killing strike he does not know.
Her body shifts. Between one heartbeat and the next she's nose-to-nose with him, her mouth so close he can taste the whisper of heat on his skin, but it's her eyes which hold him steady, locked firmly in this moment. They're so dark, liquid and deep. What do they see in him, he wonders? What don't they? Her eyelashes sweep slanted shadows along her gracile cheekbones as she blinks.
"Let's make a deal. I suspect we'll be doing that a lot—call it female intuition."
He doesn't doubt her. And he's perfectly willing to make any deal she wants, so long as he gets to keep her.
"Talk to me. Help me understand. I'd bully you into sleep if I could, but I can't. You have to help me."
He will give her anything she wants, because he's incapable of doing otherwise, but he wishes she had chosen some other desire, something easier to provide. He has no words to explain how he feels, and he doesn't know how to find them. "What will you give me in return?"
"I'll promise not to cause a scene when we return to the sultan."
He considers the weight of this promise, something he's unsure she's capable of upholding. Ordinarily, yesterday notwithstanding, she does not court trouble deliberately. She's simply unable to ignore it when it finds her. And Omar, assuming the sultan still lives, will not be pleased to see her. Sinbad touches her cheek, cupping her sun-warmed skin in his broad hand. "Not intentionally, anyway."
The ghost of her signature devilish smile creases her lips. "I can behave. Sometimes. When I have a good enough reason."
He exhales a slow breath of defeat. He'd give her anything she wanted for the mere price of asking, and she knows it. But he does not know how to grant this boon. Words cannot adequately explain the images which haunt his brain, things which remain unnamed and unacknowledged even to himself. The tide. The immense stillness of the deep, its eternal power, this relentless tugging energy which will not let him sleep. The reckoning which waits for him, biding its time, aswim in the tide like a circling shark. "I don't know where to start."
Her mouth touches his, soft breath tickling the bristly stubble and sensitive skin above his lip. "How about the beginning?"
"I don't know where that is."
Her kiss is velvet heat, full of the soft mercy of shadows, cool darkness and shaded glens. She is the tether binding him to earth, the memory of deep forests and green growing things, shelter and safe harbor he as a sailor has never before truly known. Her soft mouth captures his upper lip, a slow, soothing gesture which kindles a sweet ache somewhere deep inside. It's the next thing to chaste, yet so very far from platonic. "Start with Doubar."
"Doubar?"
"The night you thought he died."
Except Sinbad isn't sure this is the beginning at all. The first night he staggered, yes, but the cracks in his hull appeared long before. He closes his eyes to the painful shimmers of sunlight on surf. Dead children no longer drift upon the invisible tide, but other bodies take their place—lost crewmembers. His parents, faceless but known.
Leah.
He forces his eyes open again so he cannot glimpse his brother and current crew added to the vision.
"What are you so afraid of?" Her voice is gentle, far gentler than he believed her capable of. Soft hands touch him, dirty but aching-sweet. She is not cruel, but she will not back down. "You've never been afraid of anything, Sinbad. Not like this. What changed?"
He doesn't know.
"Dim-Dim told me I didn't want to train. It was my choice, but his advice." This is not the answer she requested, but it's what tumbles out when he opens his mouth.
"I'm not surprised. Whatever talent you have, you paid a price for it. But that doesn't mean you're suited to such a life. I can't see you content in a sorcerer's tower."
He cannot see her content in such a life, either, but her motivations are her own until she chooses to share them. He traces the delicate line of her jaw with one callused fingertip.
"People go into the sea." He stares beyond the leaf-dark refuge of her eyes, the glitter-topped surf stealing his focus, shattering the peace he sought so avidly in her gaze. "They don't come back."
"People?" She moves with intention, blocking his thousand-league stare, forcing him back to this moment: a small, narrow cove, tawny sand sun-warm and sweet. Clear air. Her. She's so close he feels the sibilant sweep of her syllables, sees the rustle of gentle wings in her eyes. "Who, Sinbad?"
"Everyone." Somewhere deep in the recesses of his mind, he acknowledges this is not factual; the answer holds the heft and weight of truth nonetheless. He's lost too many to the water, losses which keep mounting the longer he remains alive.
"Crewmembers," she says, beginning with the safe answer, the easy answer. "Friends."
"My parents."
Surprise kindles briefly in her gaze; this is a story she does not know. Apparently a story Doubar never told.
Leah's name hovers like mist between them. He has never given her this piece of himself, either. Has Doubar? He doesn't know. His eyes seek the answer in leaf-soft rustles, wood-dark, forest-deep.
"You became its master because of what was taken."
It's the obvious answer, but Sinbad is no longer sure it's quite correct. "I was taken."
He waits for her rejection, her denial of this statement. It does not come. She watches with the quiet mindfulness of a doe or a vixen, a creature of shadows and twilight. "What happened?"
"It gave me back." He can give no other accounting for his continued existence. "But I've always known my time was no gift."
"A loan?" Her eyes sweep like feathers over his skin.
"A loan. On terms I didn't know, and never agreed to."
The faint hint of a line appears between her brows. "Do you regret your life, Sinbad?"
"No." Of all her questions, this is by far the easiest to answer. "I never wanted to do anything else. Just sail. But it changes nothing."
"I didn't think so. I can't see you anywhere else but the deck of your ship."
"Dim-Dim always said I created myself. I don't know that he was right."
"I think he was." Her fingertip drifts along his lips. "Just because you were called doesn't mean you had to answer. You still made a choice. As did I."
She must have made many difficult choices to lead her here, a young woman alone, so far from her homeland. He aches to know this tale, but the questions die before they meet his tongue. She will not tell him now.
"You thought Doubar was dead." Her hands still, falling from his skin; he aches to feel the heat of her once again. "You thought he was payment. Collateral."
He twists a gnarled strand of her ash-stiff hair between his fingers. "And then you and Rongar. But you're here." Unbidden, another head of red hair rises through the mists of memory, hair he last saw at a funeral fit for the princess they buried.
"I'm here," Maeve agrees. "Look, I'm not good at giving reassurance. Whatever happened when you were young, I trust your interpretation. But you've never let it bother you before—not like this. What changed?"
He doesn't know. He's too tired to answer. The glitter of midmorning sun on gentle waves looks like schools of flying fish, silver-finned, silver-winged, set free from their element to arc fumbling toward the firmament.
She waits. He breathes. He has no answer. Dreams and reality fissure and blur, and he watches bleached-white bones slowly beach along the tideline. Little femurs and skulls small enough to cradle in his hand, pearls of milk teeth which will never loosen and fall.
"I thought it was a mistake at first. An accident. But then there were more and more. Too many."
"The children." Her chin lifts with the satisfaction of a scholar who has cracked a code. "The children in the harbor. They reminded you of Leah."
Sinbad does not like the jolt he feels at hearing this name from Maeve's mouth. The temporal dissonance, the collision of two worlds he has long since kept separate, feels far too much like physical pain.
"Doubar told me ages ago." Her brow knits, corners of her bee-stung mouth tilting downward. "I didn't ask. He was drunk and blubbering. I doubt he remembers."
Sinbad isn't upset about that. She deserves to know. But he does not wish to talk about it.
"I think I understand now." Her voice is gentle as dawn. "But, Sinbad, I'm not her. I'm not a child, and I'm not a fragile, naïve little princess unprepared for this world."
He knows that. He does. She's a warrior every bit as much as he, and her soul may be stronger. She can sleep. She hasn't broken.
But he's sick with lack of sleep, sick with smoke and ash and the sick-sweet reek of death, the memory of little bodies coming to pieces in his arms. He can still see it, the vision which haunted the two days he passed without her—this delicate, powerful body lost to the deep, the brilliant flames of her hair forever muted by darkness. She's no child, no little princess easily overpowered by human bullies. But the sea takes as it pleases, and human strength makes no difference. It swallows ships whole and spits out the pips, shattered bits of timber and bone left to drift without name or memory. Even Maeve, warrior-bred and trained, cannot fight the tide. No one can.
"You have to stay alive." This is his plea—his prayer. His command, though he realizes the futility of a captain ordering such a thing.
"And you have to face this fear, or you'll never live again." A spark kindles in the depth of her seeking gaze, blown to brightness by the salt-stiff wind. She rises, a single fluid movement, flame rising from a candlewick.
He watches warily. He knows that look, the resolute determination walling off the quiet thickets deeper in.
"I can't make you sleep, but maybe that's not what you need most. You're too important to let this permanently cripple you." She toes off her boots, revealing slender, pale lower calves and the delicate turn of her anklebones. He watches through rising caution as she lifts filthy leather over her head, then the ruined linen beneath. Her undershift isn't much cleaner, creamy undyed linen which hugs her body and rides high on her firm thighs, shoulders bare save for thin, dirty linen straps.
"What are you doing?" He's afraid to ask, and also afraid not to.
"Proving a point." She turns, a handful of steps bringing her to the tideline. "Not everyone who leaves you drowns, Sinbad. And the sea doesn't take everyone it touches. I'm not a little princess. I can swim."
She steps deeper, frothy water dancing along her ankles, tickling her bruised shins.
No.
No.
The tawny beach melts and fractures, dream and reality merging as Sinbad rises, horror sick and cold, heavy in his gut. She's his tether, his lifeline. Where she goes, he goes. When she moves, he moves. He remembers her dancing in hotter, golden sand, bones strewn like agates along the shore. Remembers her laughing as blood-flecked waves sucked at her skin, desperately hungry, intent on claiming this soul Sinbad needs to survive.
No.
He stumbles to the water's edge, slow and fumbling, nearly retching with fear. She wades deeper, up to her hips, her ribs, the waves breaking along her back, wetting her skin, her hair. She gleams like sunlight.
"You can't save everyone, Sinbad, and you'll drive yourself mad trying." Her voice calls to him across the water, over the rush of the surf. "There is no danger here."
There is. His instincts lie silent, dormant in the face of overwhelming physical fatigue, and only the keening ache of screeching anxiety guides his scattered thoughts, his movements. The sea has now tasted her, and it will not willingly return her. He knows this without question—the moon-eyed cabin boys seek her, the sultan's horses. Men with intentions both pure and not. The sea will be no different. Yet he hesitates on the shoreline. He needs her out of the water, needs her safe. Preferably tucked close to his skin. But he owes the water—a reckoning which has yet to be paid, a claim still outstanding.
The intolerable, sick glacier of indecision shatters when she disappears beneath the waves.
One heartbeat passes. Two. She does not reappear.
His body is in the water before his battered mind can argue. He dives.
The sea embraces him.
Once more, as when he was a child, he opens his eyes to burning salt water and the beautiful, terrible silence of the deep. Waves churn, pulling him back toward shore as he pushes on, pushes deeper, water clear and brilliant, shards of sunlight piercing the depths with a power that seems unnatural.
No, not unnatural. Elemental.
He moves with the tide, the ancient rhythm of the sea, but he's not drifting. He's driven. He can swim.
And so can she. He sees her, calm and composed, waiting for him to come for her, as she knew he would. As she just goaded him to do, manipulating him as easily as she manipulated Omar. Her arms circle gently, keeping her in place below the water. She knew he would come. He's a hero, and he adores her. He had no choice.
He should be furious, should fume and seethe at how easily she maneuvered him, he who has always been his own man, controlled by nothing save his own desires...and the sea. But she plays by different rules, and always has. She is an anomaly in this way—or, rather, an element whose nature is foreign to his own. Fire is alien to water—causes liquid to bubble and boil, turns fluid to steam. With just one glance from her fire-dark eyes, so deceptively soft, she transforms him from one element to another, water to air, sea to sky.
And frees him.
His skin prickles as if on fire though he remains beneath the cooling waves.
Her hair drifts around her, slow-moving tendrils of flame. He could not save Leah, but this is not Leah, no little child too trusting of bullies, unschooled in the cruelty of human nature and the merciless elements. Maeve knows the reach of human brutality, and she willingly unleashed the elements upon it herself.
Sinbad draws near, puts out a hand. She takes it. Her fingers thread through his and she pulls. The sea gives, allowing her claim to its rightful property. His chest touches hers; she twines her free hand behind his neck and encircles his hips with her long, powerful legs. Eyes open in the stinging salt, her mouth touches his.
She breathes. He breathes. Bubbles escape the gentle meeting of mouths as life is traded, accepted: breath for breath, heartbeat for heartbeat. This element is alien to her, yes, but she's more adaptable than he believed. She can swim. And so can he.
She breaks this kiss and he kicks, propelling their twined bodies to the surface.
Later, when he's gained distance and sleep and perspective, and is willing to be honest with himself once more, he admits he did not truly expect to breathe again once he dove after her. He did not believe the sea would release them, would allow their heads to break surface, bobbing gently above the waves. But it does, and they do. He exhales stale air, sucks in a far sweeter breath tinted with sun and salt and her. She's so close, her body afire and pressed tightly to his. She goaded him to her rescue despite her perfect ability to take care of herself, and once more his pride wants to be angry, but he cannot.
Because she says, "There you are," and even though it's too smug by half, it's followed by the only words in the world that matter: "I love you."
How can he cling to resentment in the face of that?
Her strong, slim thighs tighten around his hips and his mouth claims hers again. He treads water, keeping them afloat. They're not drifting. They're swimming.
And while she remains beside him, the bodies cease drifting, endlessly drifting, behind his eyes. They sink softly without further protest as the sea reclaims its shadows and the waves calm, still waters deep and silent and, for now, full of perfect peace.
