Saying she'd sobered up was a misconception. She'd cut back to one jug of grog in the morning and one in the afternoon - down from two or three depending on her mood. She didn't like feeling pain, emotional pain especially. She'd felt enough emotional pain to last a person a lifetime. She'd been through two wars, she'd watched her cousin become orphaned, she'd lost her own child...
Grinding her teeth together, she shut her eyes tightly as the sunlight reflected off of the water and blinded her temporarily. Being hungover wasn't conducive with early morning sunlight.
She couldn't think about everything she'd been through. Not now. Not when she was about to see him again. For her entire life, he'd been her best friend, her closest confidante. Ruby didn't trust people. She trusted no one, but she trusted Killian and she always had. She knew how he thought, and she knew who he was. Throughout the Uprising and the rule of the Bloods, she'd known where his loyalties stood. In a world of dishonorable scallywags, he had some version of pirate honor: an honor she shared.
Even now, after four years, she still felt like she could walk right up to him and see the same man she'd always known.
Perhaps that was unrealistic - it probably was, considering all of the shit they'd been through and the fact that they hadn't seen or talked to one another in so long - but that was how she felt. That was why she knew Killian was the only person she trusted to become her first mate. He was the only one acceptable. He always had been.
Gritting her teeth together so her jaw tightened visibly, she leapt from the boat and landed on the floating dock, almost losing her footing. That was another downfall to being only half-sober: her natural agility was shit. Weaving slightly and waving her arms at her sides until she planted her feet and caught her balance, she glared pointedly at the other pirates as the piled off behind her and chuckled at her loss of surefootedness. Sniffing, she lifted her chin and attempted to march off but was forced to stomp purposefully up to the shore when her hips and feet didn't seem to want to cooperate with one another.
She headed straight for the Phoenix Crest Inn, the inn and alehouse where she'd been directed to find him. He was holed up on one of the smaller, no-name islands in the Caribbean of all places, as if she didn't know the entirety of the Caribbean like the back of her hand. This was her territory. This was there she'd grown up. If he was trying to hide, he wasn't doing a good job of it.
Shoving the door open, she blinked as her eyes attempted to adjust to the light. Just as she did, the din asssaulted her and she frowned as she realized there was a brawl broken out in the center of the pub. The pirates on the fringes cheered it on, some of them screaming for one opponent or the other. Narrowing her eyes, trying to focus through the growing migraine in her head, she recognized the very person she was looking for. Sighing audibly, she motioned for her men to follow her, to help break it up.
Her Sunken Reef pirates peeled off attackers, separating men so she could reach Killian who was at the center of it with a particularly brawny, blond-haired pirate who looked like he'd been thrown up out of Norse mythology. Since she wasn't an idiot, she didn't intend to throw herself between two men throwing punches at one another, but as she focused on Killian, she recognized the stagger to his gait. He was drunk.
What a small world. At least they had that one thing still in common.
"Fuck you, you rotten bilge rat!" Killian roared at the fair-haired pirate in front of him, a man who dwarfed him in stature. Diving forward, he went for the man's waist and drove his head into his gut. The blond man grunted and grabbed him by the top hem of his pants, both of them falling back toward the bar from the force. As her crew broke up the fighting on the edges, Ruby watched as carefully as her bleary eyes could muster, waiting for her opportunity. And then, suddenly, there it was. Killian staggered back, blinking to focus on his opponent, which created space between them. The blond man reeled back to go for another hit, and in that moment, Ruby inserted herself, deftly kicking Killian beneath his knee so his left leg buckled and took him drunkenly to the floor. Bringing her gun up before the other man's punch could fall and hit her instead of his intended target, she shoved the barrel of her pistol beneath his chin hard enough to make him catch his breath with surprise.
"I'm going to need you to stop," she informed him nonchalantly. Motioning with her head behind her were Killian was, she shrugged slightly. "I need that."
Cocking the gun as the man seemed about to argue with her, she heard Killian beginning to argue behind her, and she inwardly rolled her eyes. "What the... hey! Who do ya think ya ar?" he muttered drunkenly as he attempted to stand. Thankfully, Red Locks came in handy at that moment to gather the slighter, dark-haired pirate and Ruby offered blondie a smile before lowering her gun. The blond pirate had no quarrel with her, and removing Killian from the bar seemed to be the trick to make the fighting stop. Not caring, Ruby followed directly after her crew out of the pub and into the bright sunlight.
No one followed them, to her relief, and she blinked to regain her focus as Red Locks dumped Killian onto the ground. Holding up a hand to block the sun, she blinked and lowered her chin to focus on Killian as Red Locks dumped him unceremoniously outside of the bar. He was cussing wildly and fighting, but since he was very obviously drunk, his fighting wasn't gaining him as much ground as she was sure he would have preferred. Pinching the bridge of her nose, she sighed hard through her mouth and dropped her hands to her side.
His black clothes were coated with dust as he remained on his knees for a moment before pushing himself to his feet and simply patting himself down. Finally getting his balance, he blinked blindly as he stood in the middle of the sunlit street. A migraine blossomed behind his eye, but he'd grown to ignore it over the past four years since he'd stayed drunk for most of it. He was in a state of constant hangover, and he was accustomed to it by now.
She hadn't seen him in four years, and time had certainly changed him. Over the years they'd known one another, she'd never really paid much attention to him until she'd grown into adulthood. Now, after four years of not thinking about him - or at least trying not to - she was weakened to his natural good looks. The new, darker air around him was also surprising since she'd been expecting the Killian she'd known four years ago. This version of him was far different, tanner even, and his dark hair was longer. His facial hair had grown in and aged him over the past four years, and he was leaner and obviously more refined. He was no longer the boy she'd grown up with.
Confused and blinded as his eyes slowly adjusted to the sunlight, Killian squinted and covered his face, and then he heard it. Her voice haunted him like a ghost from his past, and at first, he thought he'd imagined it. He'd imagined her voice so many times before; why should now be any different?
Turning slowly, his eyes widened as he noticed her standing behind him, dressed almost entirely in black. Crossing her arms over her chest as she watched him, she used her characteristically sharp tongue to protect her. It was her defense mechanism. Hopefully he was too drunk and it had been too long for him to remember that. "Rogue pirate. I can't say I'm surprised, but I must say I'm impressed," she remarked. One thing about her that hadn't changed was her sardonicism.
As he turned to face her, she watched him through the tops of her eyes, the breeze blowing solitary tendrils of her dark hair across her forehead as she kept her eyes trained on him. Her own drunkenness had faded to a dull roaring headache behind her ears, so she no longer saw multiple images of people. That certainly didn't help her immunity to him, or lack thereof. There had been a time when Killian didn't affect her. She hadn't been attracted to him her entire life. When she'd grown up, when she'd realized she was a female and not just one of the boys, he'd been the one she was the most interested in. Whether she toyed around with others or not, that didn't matter. Killian was the one who got her quality time. He was the one who knew what she was thinking. He was the only one she trusted, the only one she truly confided in.
Whether he'd known it or not, that meant a lot. Ruby's trust in humanity was lost at a very young age. Her father and brother had always been ruthless. They'd murdered their own family. Her own brother had caused her to have a miscarriage. They were murderers. When a girl couldn't even trust her own family, who could she trust? Ruby had had Killian. Now she had David and his wife Snow, but that was a very limited pool to choose from.
She had changed remarkably since the last time he'd seen her. Standing silently, facing her now, he examined her coolly, having trouble reconciling the versions of her in his head with this woman before him. She couldn't be here. She'd left, and she'd never bothered to return. She'd left while she was pregnant with their child... with his child. With that thought came the tiny hope deep in the pit of his stomach that perhaps she was here to introduce him to his son or daughter who would now be a toddler. Anger filled him simultaneously that she would keep his child from him, and in his drunken haze, he stupidly peered around her for some sign of the mystery child. However, there was no child to be seen, and he wilted slightly in front of her but said nothing. His eyes darkened as he watched her, allowing his anger to overpower anything else he may be feeling.
But the one thing that hadn't changed was how often he thought about her. He'd tried desperately not to, but he found himself thinking of her without even trying. He'd wondered often about why she'd left, and if their child was with her. He didn't understand, and he'd tried painstakingly to figure it out each and every single day. He had been away on a mission one moment, and when he'd returned, she was gone. He was still devastated by it (as evidenced by his perpetually drunken state), but now here she was. He wasn't elated to see her. On the contrary, she was a black widow of his nightmares, the embodiment of all the pain he'd felt and imagined over the past half-decade.
The moment was long between them, or at least in her mind it felt long. In reality, it was probably only seconds as he caught his balance and examined her, but she felt like she was standing in a spotlight, his gaze tearing her open to reveal all of the secrets she'd kept hidden for the past four years. To everyone else, she'd been a closed book. No one could read her, and she was an expert at protecting herself, but she'd never hidden herself Killian. She'd never even tried, and she wouldn't. The only truth she would keep hidden from him was what happened to their child. And if at all possible, she would keep the topic from coming up at all.
"Fuck yerself," he retorted finally in response to her comment about him being a rogue pirate.
It was true, he was a rogue pirate and he had no desire to deny it. When his precious ship, the Jolly Roger, was stolen from him during the Uprising which had changed the pirate world entirely, he'd become a man-for-hire, signing up for any work he could get his hands on. He was a disgraced captain, and he'd done what he could to survive. He'd changed any way he could just to keep his head on his shoulders and to eat a meal on a regular basis.
But when he cursed at her, she relaxed visibly. She could handle anger. What she couldn't handle was how her heart felt like it was now set to overdrive. Of course, he argued with her even though he knew how much she hated it. That was only natural. It felt like falling into an old familiar pattern, a pattern she'd prophesied would arise once they saw one another again. The familiarity of it, albeit annoying since she was still irritable with the after-effects of her hangover, served to break the tension between them. It was a tension none of her crew would understand, but a tension all the same.
Readjusting her weight, she tilted her head to brush the dark brown tendrils of hair out of her face, shifting her long braid so it laid across her shoulder. She'd removed her jacket on the boat since her hangover made her feel hot all over, and the black of her leather and the lace of her shirt drew the heat right down into her skin, covering her with a sheen of heat. Fixing him with her blue eyes, she spun her pistol around her index finger of her right hand and shoved it down into the holster on the smooth curve of her hip. "I could go in to how four years is a long time, but I require your help, and you know I hate arguing."
His eyebrows shot up in surprise as she admitted she needed his help in her backhanded way. "'Elp you?" he asked her in disbelief, snorting and raising one eyebrow at her. After all these years of no word, she wasn't going to show up out of nowhere and demand anything out of him. "No," he paused for a moment and shook his head, his brows drawing together irritably, "Fuck no. Fuck yer crew. Fuck you. I ain't helpin' ya."
Punctuating his announcement, he turned on his heel to walk away, laughing derisively at her attempt to ask nicely. Or at least as nicely as Ruby ever asked. His sharp laugh barked from his lips at her audacity, and he shoved his way through the circle of her band of misfits.
Stepping forward as he pushed his way through the men ringing them in, she unholstered her pistol, spun it in her hand and whacked him hard just at the base of his skull. She nailed him on the tender part of his head, knocking him out with the hit. Stepping back as his knees went limp, she raised her eyebrows approvingly as one of the burlier members of the crew caught him just before he hit the ground. She didn't want him getting hurt, even if her pirate definition of pain was a bit different than a civilian's idea of pain.