CHAPTER 11

AN: Ok, so I'm pretty behind on the whole monthly update thing... Sorry! There's still more coming, I promise! Seriously though, all your reviews, positive feedback & constructive crits are what's kept this story going for as long as it has. I love hearing from you guys. It's totally helpful and encouraging. So, thanks again! You guys are awesome!

Also, I am aware that historically Henry Morgan was a privateer and not an actual pirate. But for the purposes of furthering this story I'm insinuating that he was a corrupt privateer. Meaning that even though he was raiding under the legal sanction of England, he was also fraternizing with pirates in Nassau and engaging in shady deals with Richard Guthrie. The time line for his life and the life of Alexandre Exquemelin are also slightly off, as they lived in the late 1600's and early 1700's. But as the show has taken a few liberties with the time lines, I figure it's alright if I do too.

On a side note, at the end of this chapter I've posted some random info about the time period in regards to the things I needed to research in order to write this chapter with any decent accuracy. Feel free to skip over it, but I thought it was pretty interesting so I tossed it in there at the end.

Period Specific Terminology:

- Barber-Surgeon: A doctor who acquired their skills through an apprenticeship instead of through a formal schooling education. These doctors treated and operated on their patients, but the law prohibited them from writing prescriptions. Most of their money was made by performing amputations, boil lancing, bloodletting, and teeth pulling.

- Physician: A doctor who graduated from university. If a patient fell ill or was injured, the physician prescribed medicines to assist in the patient's recovery, but he rarely examined, or even saw any patients.

- Spill: A spill is a rolled paper taper or very thin wood stick that is used to transfer fire from one place to another. They're often used to light candles, lamps, pipes and cigars.

Mentioned Historical Figures:

- Henry Morgan: A famous welsh privateer (sanctioned by England) who sacked Panama City in 1671. From his base in Port Royal, Jamaica, he raided settlements and shipping on the Spanish Main, becoming wealthy as he did so. He owned a warship called The Oxford. But after the Oxford was sunk, he captured a French privateer flagship and renamed it Satisfaction.

- Alexandre Exquemelin: An indentured servant who was sold to a barber-surgeon, to whom he later became an apprentice. The barber-surgeon ended up setting Exquemelin free, and Exquemelin went on to sail with Henry Morgan as his sea-surgeon. He was present at the sacking of Panama City. In 1697 he returned to the West Indies aboard the Sceptre, commanded by Admiral Bernard de Pointis, and participated in the sack of Cartagena. He went on to write one of the most important source books of 17th-century piracy, Buccaneers of America, in 1678.

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Previously...

Let them come. Let them try to take her alive. They wouldn't succeed. She'd spatter her own brains across this hut before she ever gave them the chance. Her only regret, aside from her betrayal of Charles, would be that she hadn't found a way to take more of these pompous pricks out with her when she went.

She cocked back her weapon, prepared herself for what was almost certainly the inevitable outcome.

And the door crashed open...

Her heart lurched in her chest as her breath caught stiffly in her lungs. Charles stood partially silhouetted in the the open doorway. The light filtering through behind him made him look almost celestial, surreal. Or perhaps that was simply due to the release of tension that rushed through her with the sight of him.

He stood there filthy, tousled and bloody, but he still stood.

Relief flooded through her veins, left her hands shaking and her throat tight. Distantly she recognized that his presence didn't necessarily mean they'd won, but he was alive and that was something. She realized suddenly and with a bit of a start, that she hadn't truly expected him to be. She'd expected them both to die in this place. But even in expecting death, she still she hadn't said half the things that needed saying.

Stupid.

Cowardly.

Breath shuddered from her lips on a tremulous exhale as she numbly lowered the pistol from it's place against her temple. The weapon hung limply in her hand for another moment before slipping from her grasp and landing with a thunk in the sand at her feet. His eyes flicked briefly toward the discarded weapon before returning to her face, and somewhere in the back of her mind it occurred to her that she was lucky the thing hadn't gone off when she'd dropped it. She'd left it cocked.

Again, stupid.

They stood there for another moment. The only sounds being their own heavy breathing and the ruckus from whatever commotion was still going on outside.

Before she even realized what she was doing, her feet were carrying her across the hut towards him. Somehow she managed not to tear across the room in an undignified, hurtling blur, like was her initial instinct. And she didn't quite fling herself heedlessly into his arms, either. But her pace was still brisk and desperate, not quite as controlled as she would have liked.

When she reached the space directly before him, she didn't allow herself the time to consider her own actions or desires, she simply acted upon them. Her arms snaked up and around him in a bruising embrace, her cheek pressed firmly against his shoulder. With her brow creased and her eyes squeezed shut, she allowed herself the briefest of moments to indulge this weakness.

She didn't cry or quiver or speak, she simple clung.

She didn't expect him to return the embrace, so she wasn't surprised when she was met with the stiffening of his body beneath hers. Honestly, she didn't really care. She'd needed to touch him, and so she had. That was all. It didn't need to make sense, and she didn't need him to understand.

But then he sighed and his arms slowly lifted from his sides to encircle her waist. She knew as he did so, that she'd been foolish to think he wouldn't understand. Of course he did. He always did. His perceptivity had often been as irritating as it was comforting.

He tried to remain impassive, detached. But he'd already seen the look on her face, witnessed the relief that had shuddered through her as she'd recognized him standing in the doorway. She was shaken, he could plainly see as much. But still she had held firm to her composure, that sheer strength of will that made her who she was.

Despite himself, he was once again moved by her passion and resolve. She was a force of nature, a force to be reckoned with. And in that moment prior, as he'd watched her standing there with his pistol pressed against her temple, he felt absolutely certain that had anyone other than himself walked through this door, she'd have pulled that trigger.

The thought had his gut clenching.

It was one thing to concede to her deserved death at his own hand. That had felt justified; her betrayals had earned her such a fate. It was something she was owed. And that knowledge had served to sooth his ego, to dampen some of the rage that coursed through his veins with the thought of her. But it was somehow something entirely different to imagine her death unfolding in a manner such as this. He was struck by the image of her lifeless, bloody body. He envisioned her slumped against the wall of this dirty hut and surrounded by sanctimonious English bastards.

And it did something very unpleasant to his insides.

So when she dropped that pistol and closed the distance between them, he wasn't quite sure what to do with himself. Her arms came up around him and she held on. Her breath came just quickly enough to betray emotion, but not so much as to make a cloying spectacle of herself. For a moment he just stood there, wholly uncertain of what it would cost him to give her this moment.

But when her hands fisted in the back of his shirt, his fastness wavered. With a relinquished sigh, his arms folded around her to return the embrace. He rested his cheek briefly against the crown of her head and resigned himself to whatever this moment was going to cost him. Hopefully it wouldn't be anything too crucial, certainly nothing he couldn't live without. Surely he could afford just this one brief moment in the grand scheme of things.

The hug was brief, the reality of it lasting only seconds at best. But it was enough. She was steadier now, more clear headed, composed. She opened her eyes and stepped back from him, but she didn't meet his eyes.

His hands lingered upon her waist just a second too long before slipping away, and she felt the loss of that contact far more keenly than was comfortably admitted. When she finally lifted her face to look into his, her frowned deepened with the sight of him. It was as though she were only just now noticing his unsettling state of injured disarray.

He was a mess; filthy and covered in blood and bits of dirt and sand. His bottom lip was split and there was a nasty looking gash above his left eyebrow, from which there was a slow but steady flow of blood. His shirt was tattered along his left shoulder and there was a considerable measure of blood soaking through it's material. Most of it seemed to be coming from the shoulder and bicep area.

"You're bleeding." She stated it almost absently, more to herself than to anyone else as she stepped forward again with new purpose. Her hand stretched out to pull the material away from his shoulder for a better look. He hissed as the bloody fabric stuck to his skin and pulled at the wounds.

Frowning, he reached up to snatch her hands away at the wrists and halt any continued movement.

Her breath had snagged as she caught sight of what was quite obviously shrapnel damage speckled along his skin. But she adjusted rather quickly, letting reason and necessity outweigh any possible emotion. There was a lot of blood, but the wounds themselves seemed small and mostly superficial. She was more grateful for that than she cared to analyze.

With her eyes still fixed upon his wounds she opened her mouth, presumably to tell him he needed medical attention. But his next words distracted her, caused her gaze to dart confusedly back up to his.

"We won." He ground out quietly, trying to ignore the concern he could still see plainly etched across her face. He wanted to gauge her reaction, witness her understanding of the situation. He wanted further confirmation that she was really on his side, that this wasn't all somehow just another elaborate ploy. It was somewhat irrational, considering he had almost just witnessed her suicide. But the doubt was still there. It still lingered just under his skin, itching and burning and planting seeds. He wondered briefly if it would always be there, or if she'd find a way to snuff it out and crawl back inside him to replace it.

He wasn't entirely sure which scenario sounded worse.

"What?" She asked disjointedly, her expression conveying clearly that she didn't quite believe him. Or maybe just that she didn't think she'd heard him right. Either way, the reaction was warranted. Hell, he barely believed it himself.

"We won." He repeated clearly, studying her face like the answers to life's greatest mysteries might be carved along her skin.

"We won?" She echoed numbly through furrowed brows, as if she was almost afraid to believe the words were true. When he nodded, her face softened slightly, a slow and involuntary grin creeping steadily across her mouth. "We won." She parroted again, though this time sounding far more convinced and enthused.

Before he could think to stop it, he found himself grinning along with her. Her delighted enthusiasm was rare and apparently contagious. She was practically glowing, all gleeful exultation and prideful excitement. In the back of his mind he recognized the familiar warmth spreading through his gut, and knew it to be dangerous. He was distantly aware of how close she was standing, and of how problematic that could become. But these dangers felt secondary, almost wholly drowned out by the way she stood so jittery and thrilled before him.

Still grinning, she slipped her wrists free of the loose hold he still had on them. She brought her hands up to tightly grip either side of his face. "Charles, we won!" She exclaimed with a fierce and spirited glee as she gave his head a little shake. She sounded as if she was trying to convince him of something he didn't already know.

He gave a soft chuckle and agreed simply. "We did."

He watched on as the look in her eyes shifted. The edges of those eyes were still crinkled by her smile, but something else now shone in them as well. And once again, he knew what she was going to do even before she did it. But in the raw and jubilant triumph of the moment, he didn't bother trying to stop it. For the first time in months, he actually welcomed the crash of her mouth against his.

Their accomplishment was worth a little celebration. They'd defied the odds, conquered a force who's firepower had far outmatched their own. It was only the beginning of a long and bloody battle, that much was true, but they'd made one hell of a start. A few free men had dealt a catastrophic blow to the established order, a bloody reminder of exactly what it would cost them to try and claim what wasn't theirs to take.

Such a feat deserved reward. Though admittedly, this form of reward was likely not the wisest choice. But if the far off voice of reason whispered anything at all, it was lost in the heavy rush of hands and teeth.

He kicked the door closed behind him as one of her hands smeared through the crimson staining the side of his face. If either of them noticed, they didn't let on. She moved to tangle her hands in his hair, pulling herself closer as she fought for dominance. His hands fixed themselves to her hips, fingers digging almost painfully as he pressed against her. The high that coursed through her was wild, all consuming. She hadn't truly expected them to live through today, let alone to triumph. This victory had given her new hope, a renewed sense of faith.

In this moment, the world was bright and wrought with endless possibility.

As was so often the case with Eleanor, she responded to this onslaught of emotion with action rather than discussion. She fell back on old habits, allowed herself to act on impulse and without concern for consequence. And when he didn't pulled away, she was encouraged, further emboldened.

It was only when her hand slid down over his wounded shoulder that he flinched, and reality dealt her a vicious slap to the face. He hadn't exactly recoiled, the movement had only been fractional and likely only instinctual. It was probably something he'd have been willing to ignore, as he'd never been one to yield to notion of pain. But it was still enough to make her reconsider.

Breathless, she pulled away from him to examine the state of his shoulder. He gave a low grunt of protest, but otherwise made no move to stop her. She didn't overlook the way his hands remained on her hips even as she moved to place a good few inches between them. The continued contact warmed her heart even as she reminded herself not to be foolish.

She glanced from his wounded flesh back up to his face. His eyes were hooded and dark, his lips slightly parted as he watched her. She knew exactly what he was thinking because she'd been thinking it herself, but now was hardly the time for a tumble. Even if she had been the one to start it.

He'd suffered some considerable bleeding. And from the looks of it, he was going to need stitches. The last thing they needed was to get his blood pumping any faster. Though the look on his face suggested he might disagree with that assessment.

With another steadying breath, she stepped back and out of his grasp. "Sit." She ordered softly, gesturing towards a rickety looking chair from which his coat hung on the back of. It sat next to a sturdy looking table on the opposite end of the room. "Take your shirt off."

When he only arched a brow and made no move to obey, she rolled her eyes. "Would you prefer to stand there and bleed out?" She asked sarcastically.

It was his turn to roll his eyes. "If I were going to bleed out, I would've done it already." He growled. Now that the heat of the moment had passed, he was kicking himself for being so compliant. His hands were still itching to roam across her skin and a good portion of his blood was still residing below his belt, but his head was clear enough now to see the folly in such action. There were presently more pressing matters to attend to, more important discussions to be had.

"And that sounds to you like a good enough reason to refuse stitches, does it?" Her inquiry was unmistakably satirical, but she arched a speculative brow at him anyway. Just in case he'd missed the derision in her tone.

He was half inclined to tell her it did, just to spite her. The flustered irritation it would no doubt cause her, almost felt worth it. But the fact of the matter was that he really did need stitches, as satisfying as denying he might be. So he bit his tongue, choked back whatever scathing remark laid waiting upon it, and shrugged out of his shirt. Without another word, he stalked over to the indicated chair and sat. Better just to get this over with as quickly as possible.

"There's a needle and some waxed silk thread in the trunk by the bed." He divulged bitterly. "Should be a bottle of rum in there as well."

She gave him a look that bordered on smug, no doubt pleased with his acquiescence despite his bitter tone. However, she must have known enough not to push the matter any further because she said nothing more as she moved to collect said items from the trunk.

Having gathered those items a well as a few scraps of relatively clean linen and a pair of scissors, she returned to his side and laid her haul down on the table beside him. He watched her as she uncorked the rum, his eyes narrowed and mildly suspicious. He wondered idly if she even knew what she was doing. Given the sureness of her movements, he decided she must. But he was still wary. Nothing with this woman was ever quite as straightforward as it seemed.

Relatively unfazed by his scrutiny, she ignored it and reached for his arm. "This is going to sting." She warned coolly as she lifted the bottle.

He only grunted in response. As if he didn't already know that. As if he hadn't already endured this a thousand times and come away from it with enough scars for the both of them.

In the next moment, she tipped the bottle and coated his wounds in liquid fire. His muscles tensed and there was a sharp intake of breath, but he made no other sound, never moved to flinch away. She chanced a glance at his face and found him glaring intently at the opposite end of the room, jaw tight and browns drawn but otherwise unmoved. A small smile tugged at her lips. He always had been stubborn.

There was a part of her that couldn't help but admire him for that. He didn't tolerate weakness, wouldn't allow the room for it. It didn't matter how big or small it felt, weakness was still weakness and he'd no more taste for it than she did. Perhaps that was why they'd so rarely seen eye to eye. They'd both been so consumed with the notion of remaining unconquered, with the projection of an air of invulnerability. They'd spent too much time trying to convince one another to concede rather than to seek compromise.

It was why loving him had been so devastating. She loved him like she'd loved no another. But that very love had also been a weakness, a near crippling vulnerability. And as a result, she'd eventually began trying to cut away the liability that came with that affection. She hadn't actually succeeded, of course. But she had given it one hell of a try, all the while doing her very best to ignore the progressively mangled state of her own heart. In the end, all she'd truly succeeded in doing was destroying them both. She'd ultimately done little more than alienate herself and hasten the lot of them towards the very end she'd been trying so desperately to avoid.

Despite her melancholy musings, her face remained impassive as she focused on the task at hand. She set down the bottle and reached for a piece of linen. "Tilt your head back. I've still this one to douse." She stated collectedly, gesturing towards the lazily oozing fissure above his brow.

He turned his head to stare at her again, his expression stoical and searching. For a moment she thought he might try to make things more difficult, but then he slowly tilted his head back and she released a soft breath of relief. His eyes remained fixed upon her face as she leaned over him and tipped up the bottle.

After she'd sloshed rum over the wound and watched his chest expand with the sharp pull of his breath, she made quick work of patting away any excess alcohol with a piece of linen. She then moved to set about threading the needle. The room was silent as she slipped the thread through the needle's eye, tied off it's end, and ignored the fact that he was still staring at her. She wanted desperately to ask him about the battle in vivid detail. But at the moment she decided tending to his injuries as more imperative. She could grill him for details afterward.

In all honesty, he was wondering how the hell she knew what to do with lacerated flesh and a pointed needle. Suturing and bandages weren't exactly the hallmarks of womanly learning. Not that much of anything she said or did would fit into that category. But this sort of thing wasn't generally a part of owning a tavern or running a business, either. Which left him at a curious and reluctantly intrigued loss.

He surmised that when in frequent proximity to violence, one might eventually acquire some basic skill with patch work, if only as a direct consequence and means of necessity. However, to his knowledge, that had not been the case with Eleanor. Up until recently, the closest she'd come to first-hand violence had been her run in with Ned Low. There had also been the incident in which she'd struck Charles and had him retaliate in kind. But neither of those singular instances would explain where she'd acquired this unusual know-how.

Having finished prepping the needle, she stepped up to him again. Reaching out she tipped up his chin, aiming for a better angle of work. Her lips were pursed in concentration as she leaned forward to touch the metal faintly to his flesh. There was a moment of pause before she flicked her eyes to his, a silent query as to his readiness. It was an unnecessary nicety, given that she saw the go-ahead in his eyes almost as soon as she looked up, but she still felt better having offered it.

She held his gaze for just a moment longer. Once again she noticed that the only sound between them was their respiration coupled with the bustling and muffled voices beyond the hut. On a deep and steady exhale she broke eye contact and shoved the needle through, breaching flesh and drawing together the center edges of the wound.

Again his jaw tightened, but he still seemed otherwise indifferent. So she set to work, moving with a quick and steady efficiency. Her stitches weren't particularly beautiful, looking a touch uneven and perhaps a little hasty, but they were effective. She'd taken care to ensure she hadn't drawn the lips of the wound together too tightly, as she wanted to avoid any further inflammation and allow for the possibility of drainage. She'd started from the middle of the wound at it's widest point and worked her way outward, then repeated the maneuver on the opposite end of the would. She was just starting on closing up the last few stitches when his voice broke through the silence.

"Where did you learn to do this?" He inquired plainly.

His tone was low and relatively bland. Had she not known him as well as she did, she might have wondered if he was just trying to fill the silence with idle conversation. As it was though, she knew he wasn't one for pointless pleasantries. He rarely bothered asking questions unless he was genuinely interested in knowing the answers.

She sent him a knowing look before responding in a tone just as airy and mild as his own had been, though a touch of sarcasm was still apparent in the quirk of her brow. "Stitching is a woman's skill, is it not?" She quipped.

He scoffed. "Only in the minds of halfwits." He almost accompanied the comment with a disapproving shake of his head, but thought better of it when her needle moved to perforate more flesh. Instead, he just added to his thought. "It ought to be taught to anyone with half a mind to listen. Who should give a shit what's between your legs if you've willing and able hands?" He ground out.

His tone sounded clipped, a little testy. She wondered if that was due to the subject matter or the fact that she'd been shoving sharp metal into his skin for the past few minutes. Knowing Charles, it was probably a bit of both. Not that he'd ever admit he wasn't perfectly comfortable with all her poking and prodding.

She smiled a little at that. What he'd said was true enough. Stitching, whether it be a tear in your shirt or a tear in your flesh, was a considerably useful skill for anyone to have. Though many would be quick to disagree, claiming such bloody work to be distasteful and undesirable of a woman, Charles had always been of a freer mindset. As far as he was concerned, if you were strong enough or smart enough to get something you wanted done, there was little reason not to do it. He'd never cared much for the dogma of the civilized world, didn't give two shits about social discourse or governing statutes. He lived by his own rules, his own decree.

It was one of the very first things that had attracted her to him in the first place. He'd been so powerful, free and dangerous, the very incarnation of everything she herself had wanted out of life. She'd been drawn to him, begrudgingly envious even as she was awed and privately enamored. As a young girl, it had been a heady mix.

Who was she kidding? Even with her envy long abandoned and forgotten, the rest of what she felt for him was still a heady enough mix. Everything about him was as infuriating as it was beautiful and intoxicating. She'd never taken very well to that truth. She'd never really stopped fighting against it.

"Well?" He prodded gruffly when the silence stretched between them and she still hadn't answered his question.

He doubted she'd learned to suture skin simply from stitching quilts. Sure, there was a element of transferable skill between the two tasks, but skin wasn't nearly the same as fabric. He also found it genuinely implausible that she'd ever actually sat still long enough to learn to sew anything of the like.

There was still a slight smirk to her mouth as she tied off the last stitch in his brow and shrugged. "Perhaps I like to read."

His lip twitched even as he released a skeptical grunt. Tangled in bemused curiosity and mild irritation, he rebutted. "Bullshit. Theory and practice are two different things."

She said nothing as she stepped back from him and turned to face the table and the instruments still atop it. "Have you anything I can use to remove the shrapnel?" She asked, momentarily avoiding answering him as she casually laid the needle down on the table beside him. "As small pair of forceps, perhaps?"

He gave her another skeptical look. "And you would know what to do with forceps, if I did?"

She snorted, caught between being amused by his curiosity and annoyed at his obvious skepticism. "I don't imagine yanking a few splinters out of you would be terribly complicated." She knew his injuries to be more serious than a few splinters, but it made her feel better to claim otherwise. It certainly didn't hurt her pride any to do so, either. So a win-win.

He stared at her through narrowed eyes for moment longer before gesturing back towards the trunk again. "If it's there, it would be in the trunk with the rest."

She nodded, returning to the trunk and rummaging around in it. After a couple more minutes of digging, she glided back towards him with thumb forceps in hand. In all honesty, she was surprised he even had such a thing. It wasn't exactly something the average pirate would even know what to do with, let alone have stowed away in their traveling trunk. Then again, so little about this man had ever been average.

Without another word, she began prying the pieces of wooded shrapnel from his flesh. As she began to work, he turned his face down to watch the process. He studied the movements of her hands as she picked and prodded at the holes in his skin, tossing the offending fragments down into the sand as they were removed. For the most part, he appeared to remain focused, mostly unaffected by her digging around. But she didn't missed the way he ground his teeth whenever she'd excavate a particularly well bedded fragment.

She decided that distraction, in this instance, was a kindness she could afford to offer. So, with a soft and steady timbre, she gave him an honest answer to his earlier question. "Spend enough time mulling about a camp wrought with murders and thieves, and you pick up a few things."

He snickered at that. They both knew who's camp she was referring to. In those first few years, she'd spent almost as much time in Charles' tent and camp as she had in her own bar. "And this iatric know-how was just one of those things?" He asked with a quirk of brow. How was it that she had picked up such a thing without his knowledge? And during a time in which they'd spent countless hours together?

She shrugged, frowning in concentration as she wedged free a particularly deep rooted piece of debris. "Among other things..." She answered a little distractedly. The wound oozed red with the removal and she moved to retrieve the discarded needle. She began knitting it closed as she continued. "A ship is a place in which injury and death are commonplace. It wasn't irregular to happen upon survivors of such injuries receiving treatment in camp after docking. I took an interest."

So she'd just, what, spotted a barber-surgeon and begun following him around taking notes? Unlikely. "How exactly did that work?" He asked. "I don't imagine the barber-surgeon was too keen on the tutelage of some wayward girl." The words themselves were a little harsh, but they were spoken without any real malice. He was honestly just curious. The conversation was a welcome distraction from her poking and prodding, anyway.

She smirked. "Oh, he wasn't. But after I informed him of who my father was, he was considerably more cooperative. An added flash of coin to that knowledge, and suddenly he was happy to assist."

He arched a brow at that."Why should a barber-surgeon be concerned with what pleases Richard Guthrie? He wouldn't have been reliant on Richard for his livelihood. Physicians are always in high demand. They've no trouble finding work, especially not in a place like Nassau."

She nodded in agreement, but a small and self-satisfied smirk pulled at the edges of her mouth just before she continued with the explanation. She was clearly pleased with herself in regards to this particular matter, he thought. And why shouldn't she be? She'd acquired a valuable skill, one that was generally not afforded to women at all. She always had been a clever and resourceful woman. She never had concerned herself much with the social expectations that accompanied her sex. She preferred to do as she pleased, and he'd always loved that about her. Despite the trouble it so often caused him, he wouldn't have ever asked her to change.

"Because he wasn't just a barber-surgeon, but a pirate as well." She went on. "And it seemed my father was a rather important benefactor of the crew on which he served as sea-surgeon."

Intrigued, Charles asked "And what crew was that?"

"Henry Morgan's. The flagship, Satisfaction." She replied, glancing up briefly to gauge his reaction.

Charles frowned. Henry Morgan was a Welsh privateer employed by the English crown. Ordinarily, a man of such allegiances would not have been so well received in Nassau. However Morgan was a man with many fingers in many pots. He'd had regular dealings with Richard Guthrie, often using the man as a go-between for the sale of goods he'd failed to report as commandeered. Morgan was also rumored to be a particularly ruthless man, cruel and callous and often prone toward the practices of torture and brutality. The men among his crew were little better. They ran with him more for the coin and glory than for any real sense of honor or loyalty to the crown. These privateer shits were hypocrites, the lot of them.

Men were being hung left and right for giving off the mere whiff of piracy. While privateers, who were essentially just glorified pirates themselves, were celebrated and deigned honorable heroes by the civilized world. All because a slip of a paper had proclaimed to grant them legal sanction. Theft, rape and murder were all fine and well, so long as it was all done in the name of some fat fuck of a monarch. To act in one's own self-interest, simply because you could, was apparently a heinous offense.

The whole thing was a mockery that churned his stomach, a sanctimonious farce that claimed to be one thing publicly while practicing something entirely different in private.

In reality, a privateer was no better than any pirate. They were all just as selfish and corrupt as the rest of the world, they just used the crown as a means of pretending to be civilized about it. In the end, all that separated a pirate from a privateer was the privateer's willingness serve on bended knee beneath a colored flag. It was essentially just a man's willingness to submit below the boot of another. Nothing more and nothing less.

"What was this sea-surgeon's name?" Charles asked, wondering idly if he knew the sea-surgeon she spoke of.

"Alexandre Exquemelin" She frowned a little as she fumbled slightly with the pronunciation of the man's last name. She plucked free the final piece of shrapnel and began stitching up the last wound deep enough to need sutures. "Do you remember all that hubbub with Morgan and his crew a few years back?"

Charles nodded and she continued. "A memoir published by a crew member of Morgan's accused him of widespread torture and criminal offenses, implied he was a traitor to the crown. It painted him more pirate than privateer, and brought into question the verity of his supposed allegiance to England."

"I remember." Charles interjected a little impatiently. "Morgan shucked the whole thing off as slander and sued for damages. But instead of the noose, they knighted him and appointed him the position of lieutenant governor over in Port Royal. What of it?"

She shrugged and replied evenly. "Exquemelin was the man who published the memoir."

"Hmm." He grunted, considering her words before muttering "Small world."

"I suppose." She agreed, tying off her last stitch and reaching for a clean stretch of rolled linen to wrap his shoulder and arm in. A silence spanned between them as she dressed the lesions and she finally decided there had been enough small talk. She wanted to know the details of what had transpired down on the beach and in the jungle.

"There." She stated conclusively as she covered up the last patch of broken skin, secured the bandage and patted his arm to signal the completion of the task. "Finished."

He simply grunted and stood, making his way over to the bedside table to fish out a cigar and prop it between his teeth. Mildly irritated by his apparent lack of appreciation, she crossed her arms and leaned against the table behind her. For few moments she watched him set about looking for something to light the smoke with, but the silence didn't last long before she interjected. "Now that I'm certain you're not about to bleed to death, would you care to apprise me on the details of today's victory?"

He ignored her question and continued searching for a method of ignition. As the seconds ticked by and he still hadn't found one, she rolled her eyes and straightened up. "Oh, for Christ's sake." She grumbled, moving to retrieve a light from the pocket of the coat he'd left hanging on the back of his chair.

He turned around to find her standing directly in front of him with a lit wood spill extended out towards him, her hand cupping the flame. She had an impatient look on her face, but he pretended not to notice as he leaned forward to touch the smoke's tip to the flame and inhale. His eyes flicked back to hers as he straightened and exhaled a lazy stream of smoke into the air around them. She held his gaze for another impatient moment before blowing out the wood spill and arching her brow at his continued silence.

"Well?" She inquired with exasperation. "What happened?"

After another brief moment of silence, it seemed he decided to grace her with an answer. "Teach happened." He stated smoothly, as though he hadn't just declared the impossible.

For a heartbeat, she simply stared.

Teach. Teach had made an appearance here on Maroon Island. That had the potential to be either a blessing or a curse. Perhaps even both. Teach had been a thorn in her side for years before she'd managed to convince Charles to side with her and have Teach pushed from Nassau. He had been the one thing that had stood between her and the ruling of Nassau. He had also been standing between her and Charles. Teach had never liked her, and he'd made no secret of it. He'd made a habit of undermining her at every turn. And back then, she hadn't yet possessed the strength or backing to stand against him. So she'd used Charles to achieve those goals, to remove that hairy man-shaped obstruction from her path. In doing so she'd attained both Charles and Nassau in one fell swoop, the two things she'd wanted most out of life at the time.

And for a while that had been enough, she'd been happy. At least until she started to notice that she'd never be who she needed to be while under Charles' arm. So she'd cut out her own heart, moved on to ensure her place in Nassau, and later Nassau's legitimacy.

Neither of those decisions had been wise or without regret, but at the time she had been convinced they were necessary. Done was done. There was no going back, and thus no point in dwelling.

But the day she and Charles had cast Teach out was the day she'd hoped to have seen the last of Teach. Apparently, she'd no such luck. She'd known of Teach's return and of Charles' reunion with him, but she'd been under the impression that Teach had no desire to involve himself in the war with England. It was her understanding that Teach had refused Flint's request for an alliance even as Charles had accepted it. So why was he here? What had changed his mind?

"Teach?" She echoed, her voice laced with disbelieve. "Teach came to our aid?"

"He did." Charles moved to seat himself upon the corner of the bed and take in another drag of smoke. "Brought six warships along with him too." Smoke billowed up around him on another exhale, dancing through the air in rich, delicate swirls.

Her eyes widened a fraction. Six, she reflected astoundedly. That was a fair bit of firepower. Perhaps even enough to make a considerable difference in the long run, to tip the scales a little more in their favor. Suddenly very intrigued, she moved to drop down onto the bed beside Charles, angling her body to face him. He gave her a curious and leery look, but she opted to ignore it in favor of attaining this new information.

Tone laced with a hesitant and wary excitement, she demanded "Tell me everything."

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ANOTHER AN:

Some random knowledge tidbits for those who are interested in the time period (Feel free to skip ahead, haha) :

- According to various histories, pirates used rum in two ways in regard to wounds. First, since many pirate wounds involved shrapnel of one kind or another, rum was used to clean those wounds. The alcohol acted as a disinfectant as well as an astringent which helped to cause capillaries to shrink and reduce the rate of blood loss. Second, they drank it as an anesthetic to dull the pain. This is pretty impressive considering the concept of germ theory, while theorized upon in the 1600's, wasn't actually fully accepted as valid until the 1800's. They might not have known why using alcohol on a wound helped prevent infection, but it's cool that they made the connection it did.

- Sutures were not often used in the 18th century because it was widely believed that wounds needed to be left open to allow for drainage, possibly due in part to humor theory. But when sutures were used it was often with threads that were less likely to rot in the body. One such material was silk thread, which was often waxed to further protect the silk from deterioration.

- Having a doctor/surgeon on board a pirate ship was a rare luxury. Usually a crew would simply use the ship's carpenter as their doctor because a surgeon and carpenter had similar tools. On the occasion that a doctor was found aboard a raided ship, he would be recruited (willing or not) and given a 1ΒΌ share of any plundered booty. Which was far more money than any legitimate ship's surgeon might have been able to earn in a month. Because these doctors had either received a formal medical education or served as apprentices to those who did, they were generally the more literate and learned men aboard a ship. This, and their medical know-how, made them highly valued and sought after members of any crew.