Chapter 27
CLARISSE POV
(I don't own PJATO, Rick does. Just noticed something; the last review on this story was a month and a half ago, and I know this makes me sound like an asshole, especially when we're almost at five thousand views, but I would like feedback now and again, ya know? Again, trigger warning, and the dialogue does get a bit PG-13 at the end, but nothing graphic.)
As Clarisse stood up from Blackbeard's corpse, she looked behind her. The pirates milling about were still, the sight of their dead leader quenching any and all enthusiasm they had. One stepped gingerly forward and knelt at her feet.
"My sword is at your-"
WA-CHH!
He lay sprawling on the sand, his left cheek a dull red from the slap he had just taken from Clarisse. She curled her lip at him.
"Get up. All of you, come forward and lie on the sand, cross legged, hands on your knees." The pirates, although a general consensus of muttering was among them, one by one did as was ordered. "Good. Now, who here has rope?" One of the pirates lifted his head, presumably to speak, but Clarisse smacked his skull with the flat of her rapier. "Raise your hands, not a word from any of you!" Nothing happened for a minute, until minute shoots of green started poking up from between the sand, growing until large, thick vines encircled all the pirates' wrists. Clarisse looked behind her to see Meg give a small thumbs up. Clarisse nodded back and turned to face them, steeling herself for the gruesome task ahead. "Now, move your dominant hand." A couple looked at each other in confusion, but eventually five of them were wiggling their right, and an older man at the end was moving his left around in its bond. Clarisse nodded, then swiftly lopped them all off with her rapier.
CHOP. CHOP. CHOP.
Winces could be seen on their faces, and a few were blatantly pressing their lips together, a faint whimper escaping now and then.
"Oh, be quiet, it's more than you deserve, you'd be hanged and quartered if you faced regular judgement." Clarisse went over to Edward's corpse, and drew each pistol from its sheath, leaving the extra. "Alright, you ignoramuses, you're all pirates, and you'll face your own justice. This is a decently large island, I reckon you lot could last, maybe a week or so. Once we sail away from here, my friend will untie you, and you can either all shoot each other to death, try to live in harmony for the rest of your days, or go and die in solitude. You all deserve much worse, be thankful you aren't visiting Hades right now." Clarisse turned to the sorceress, who had just been watching the proceedings from the cover of a pole. "Miss, you could come with us, we have a place you'll be safe, where you can recover." She stepped forward tentatively, until she was right in front of Clarisse.
She offered no words as she grabbed the blade of the rapier, ignoring the cuts, and jammed it into her midsection. She gave a faint smile as she collapsed, the light going out of her eyes as the sand became a dull reddish shade. In her peripheral, Clarisse noticed Chris stepping forward to give final orders to the crew, but couldn't hear anything over the ringing in her ears. The next few minutes were a daze, she was led - or carried, maybe? - down into a metal tank, and the next thing she remembered clearly was Chris snapping his fingers in her face, trying to get her to respond.
"It's fine, I'm here." She put her hand on his wrist, and Chris visible exhaled, sitting next to her on what appeared to be a padded bench. She reflexively curled into his chest, his arm around her side. "Remember after the Titan War."
"Uh-uh."
"When we would wake up together, after nightmares."
"Yeah." Clarisse couldn't see him, but she imagined Chris's expression; blank, but with a grimace noticeable enough if you looked. "That was a pretty crap time."
"This reminds me of that. Not that I don't enjoy you, but I don't want to resort to that again." Chris shifted slightly, so that now both his arms were around her and her head was buried in his shoulder. "She lurched forward - I figured it must've been terrible living like that for eight years - but she just gave up." Clarisse paused to give a dry chuckle. "I figured I was going to spill blood on there, but I didn't realise who's." Chris squeezed her in closer.
"Yeah, sorry I stole your kill-" Clarisse broke off his sentence by leaning back with an incredulous look, then coming in and kissing him hard. As they both came back for air, Clarisse pressed her forehead against his.
"You saved my life, again, don't apologize for that." Clarisse leaned in and kissed him again, pushing Chris back onto the bench, her lying on top of him. She drew back, but kept her head on his chest. "Where are we, anyway? I remember a tank, but not much else." Chris hummed a deep note as his fingers traced patterns on Clarisse's shoulder blades. Anoitos, he knows that turns me on.
"There was a submarine in the port, and we wouldn't have all fitted in any of the jets, so here we are. Seawolf class, US Navy." Clarisse twisted upwards so she could kiss the underside of Chris's chin.
"We probably shouldn't get too loud. It seems like a small boat, and the kids don't need to see this yet." That derived a snort from Chris, who continued drawing patterns with slightly more pressure, and moving onto her lower back. Damn. He's got me.
"It's not that small, they're both somewhere downstairs, and the walls are fairly soundproof." Clarisse pushed herself up on her elbows, looking down at Chris's face.
"So you're saying we'd be absolutely fine here?" She moved closer, kissing a line up his jaw. Chris closed his eyes, but kept moving his hands on her back.
"Well, not completely closed off, but they're smart kids. They'll know enough not to take a closer look. If you want to, it's your choice." Clarisse looked him in the eye, brown on brown, then dove down on him, shifting her hands under his shirt slightly.
"Honestly, there's nothing else I want right now. Just you." Clarisse whispered, then they both started going at it, hard and fast, the daughter of war and the son of youth falling into each other.
(Didn't really have a better place to end it, sorry. I realise I kept ending Chrisse moments on non-sexual scenes, and maybe you guys like that, but this would be the third if we're not counting after Capture-The-Flag, and I figured it would be a change of pace, if not a better one. I'm totally falling prey to the 'younger companions find/hear older companions doing it' cliche, but it's a cliche for a reason; funny dialogue is funny. Please give feedback, whether I can write sexual scenes decently, or whether I'm absolute rubbish. Again, tried to be as historically accurate as possible, and if I did my research right, then the Seawolf model would indeed have been the primary sub in 2005-6. And it's mentioned in Percy's overview of the island that there is a sub tied up, so points for canonical tie-in. We're getting close to the end now, I doubt we'll hit forty chapters. We'll have some Reg fluff (why did I call him Robin, the one chance I have to create a ship name and it's also a brand of Jamaican sixties music) next time, talking about the stuff on the island, and preparing for the fight ahead. For now though,
Vaya con Queso,
DamaSENDhimafriend
