A/N: My God. I would offer a thousand excuses regarding my delay in updating this story, but it all comes down to one word—Time. Time got away from me, and with it went my muses. I pray this will be a sufficient offering for my readers. I would like to personally thank those who kept on me about updating "Lovebearing Storm", and I hope to see reviews from all of you. Thank you very much and please enjoy Chapter 4.
Fear and Respect are two different animals, yet they descend from one parent. Hence, to distinguish between the two falls upon a thin line which is all-too easy to cross and even easier still to distort.
Chapter 4: Fear
Even for one of younger years, it did not take any great length of time for Lena to learn that, should she awaken at the earliest possible hours of the morning, well before any of the other crewmen had regained consciousness, she would be afforded at least two hours of solitude before the necessary interactions needed to be made. And so, once again, she had sacrificed her need of sleep for her desire of silence and a little taste of privacy.
It was better this way, when she could be alone and not need to work along side of the others. Clanker's company was always welcome, yes, but rare were the moments when they could simply be alone. More often than not, she would be separated from him and ordered to work with one or two of the other crewmen. For the most part, they kept to themselves, only directing attention at her when it was absolutely necessary. At first, she had believed they would jump on any and all opportunities to make her life just short of miserable. Now she knew better; to think they would bother with harassing her was decidedly self-centered. She was nothing more than another face among many. More importantly, she was young, and she was a woman. Attention was hardly to be spared for her.
If anything, she was probably considered an inconvenience.
There was one member of the crew with whom she had encountered difficulty: a man covered in a thick layer of spikes and barnacles that designated him amongst the most imposing. Once or twice she had heard his name—Koleniko—but she had done little more than file it away in the far reaches of her mind. His name was one she would never be permitted to use. Much like Master's associates, she was not permitted to call any of the other crewmen by their name. Koleniko had made that perfectly clear only two days earlier, when she had made the foolish mistake of calling him by name, complete with a fierce glare and dark promises in his voice: "Ye'll not be speaking to me like that, girl. Clanker may be fool enough to think ye on our level, but yer not. Remember that, or it'll be yer pretty head."
She did not need to be told by the rest just how little standing she held on this crew. All of them demanded her respect, just like the Master. Just like the first mate.
Though in the end, there was no other who demanded the same respect as he did.
Lena's eyes drifted to the horizon, where a distinct gleam of sunlight was beginning to creep across the water's edge. Dawn was mere moments away, which meant her time of peace and quiet was rapidly drawing in an end. Once the sun arose, so did he.
It was fitting, perhaps, that the first mate should awaken not only before the rest of the crew, but before even the captain. It was entirely possible that the captain was awake long before all of them put together, as he rarely emerged from his cabin, but she found it far more likely that Maccus was the first to awaken—aside from herself, anyway.
She heard the door to his cabin open; the wear on the wood never failed to give a distinct creak, particularly in the early hours of the morning. To hear him was a far different matter; so like the shark whose appearance he bore, his movements were silent, deliberate, yet never cautious. He thought nothing of approaching her when the need presented itself. She was hardly a threat to him, no more than she had been to the Master.
Even from her place high on the mast, repairing a fraying rope, she could feel the intensity of his eyes. There was little desire for her to return his attention, but to not do so would have been nothing short of idiotic.
Her pale eyes turned downward, almost immediately finding his darker ones: both the human and that which was more animal than man. His instructions were silent, requiring no words be spoken for his message to be clear.
Slowly, she drew herself to an upright position and made her way toward the mast, where another rope—this one fully intact—waited, prepared to return her down below. The material was coarse against her hands, but the rough texture mattered little to her. If anything, it was nearly a relief after enduring the sharp bite of barnacles for over a month…or had it been longer? Time was more elusive than ever now, and as she slid down toward the deck, toward him, she considered it to be perhaps more worthwhile to no longer keep track of the days.
Time, it seemed, simply no longer existed on the Dutchman.
Instinct—or perhaps overly engrained habits—prompted her to take several steps back from where she initially landed before him. If he did not approve of their proximity, no doubt he would adjust her position for her, with or without consent. It would be best for both if she just saved him the trouble.
If he was pleased with the distance, he didn't show it. His right hand—the only one still retaining a human appearance—reached up for the rope she had been repairing, giving it a firm and deliberate tug. His human eye carefully examined the reaction, taking stock of the sway of the rope, unyielding and resilient to his action.
Lena remained in place, her eyes downcast to the deck. Absently, her mind registered the fading stain of blood on her bare feet, peeking out from both soles, where the real injury was. The pain was nearly non-existent, allowing her to continue on with duties. At the time, of course, the pain had been excruciating. Stepping directly onto a patch of coral tends to have such consequences.
That dark eye, the rim of Caribbean blue distinctly present now, turned to her once again. "You know how to mend a line." It was not so much a question as it was a statement of fact. To have phrased it as a question would have been asinine, and she knew it.
"I know how to sew, sir." Lena replied quietly, her eyes staring straight ahead, between the narrow loop of his arm and the barnacle-covered span of his chest. "The two are not so different."
He merely blinked. "Indeed," his voice was cold as he stepped around her. Tightness crept into her muscles as he passed beyond her line of sight, not from disgust but uncertainty, an inability to discern his thoughts as he circled her. She bit down on the inside of her lip, fighting down the urge to speak.
"Seems you've found some way to make yourself useful." He said quietly. "Go then. There are others up there, all in need of your…services."
Almost immediately, she closed her eyes, willing them to remain closed until he had left her, until he had permitted her to be alone once again. So long as she did not have to look at him, she would be able to retain control. If she dared open her eyes, she knew there was little chance of her resisting the urge to take his throat with nothing more than her fingernails.
She released a slow, deliberate breath and opened her eyes. He was gone, and the sun had long since risen high in the sky. Down below, she could hear the crewmen beginning to ascend. Without hesitation, she moved for the mast and rapidly ascended the rope before the first man ever appeared at the hatch.
Her fingers worked quick and sure as she worked with the ropes, the material steadily burning against her palms with each motion. The pain was but a momentary consideration, pushed aside to allow concentration to remain at the forefront. She had a task to accomplish, and she would do it with perfection, nothing less.
The sun was particularly hot today, a surprising turn after the long stretch of cold rains. Wincing slightly with discomfort, she adjusted her position in the hopes of relieving the stress placed on her limbs. Stress slicked down her brow, uncomfortably warm and decidedly irritating. Finally, unable to ignore the annoyance any longer, she paused in her task to run the length of her forearm across her forehead. At last, relief…for now.
"Yer a hard one to find today, lass." Clanker's voice brought her attention to the right, where the crewman was maneuvering himself up the mast beside her. "Or did ye consider this a fine time to be alone?"
She managed to give him a small smile, but it was half-hearted at best. "I don't fancy much company today."
He paused, and she felt his gaze examining her hands. "Appears ye don't fancy much today, especially yer well-being." His barnacle-encrusted hand wrapped around her wrist, stalling the task to bring her hand closer for inspection. "Christ, lass…ye look like ye've lost a fight with a shark."
Her eye twitched slightly. "That isn't so far from the truth." She replied crisply, securing a rope with a bit more force than required. Clanker's brows lifted nearly to the brim of his hat.
"I warned ye, lass…" he said, tone lowering to a darker, more serious level than before, "Don't press yer luck. Ye get on his bad side, ye won't be comin' back in one piece."
Lena only blinked. "May I presume there have been other unlucky crewmen, Clanker?" she replied with a rather condescending tone, "Poor souls who didn't bow down and give the first mate his dues?"
He frowned at her. "This is no joking manner, lass." He shook his head firmly, "Ye steer clear of him, or mark my words, he'll make ye regret it."
The final repairs finished, she stood and made her way lightly to the rigging once again, pausing only to turn back and face her fellow crewman. "I am no stranger to men who demand and are given respect solely through means of terror and physical injury, Clanker." Her voice was cold, her expression tight with anger. "I have bowed down to them for all of my life."
His frown deepened, shaking his head slowly. "For yer sake, ye'd best keep yer head down and keep bowing."
Lena shook her head. "No." she took the ropes in hand, ignoring the biting sting coming from her bloodied palms, "I have no intentions of bowing down to him. I am not afraid of him."
When she next emerged from below decks, once again tending to the cannons, dusk was a short time away. Already she could see the clouds painted the wide array of color that signaled the ending of one day, just as sure as the sunrise announced the beginning of another. A pair of gulls danced above, their wings spread wide as they circled one another, over and over again in some strange ritual. Despite the harsh sound of their little melody, there was something still entrancing about the whole spectacle.
It was a mating dance. The kind of dance every animal and human being alike engages in once they have found their soul mate, the one to whom they will forever belong from now until death should part them.
It was the stuff of fairytales. Nothing more than the dreams of fools.
Behind her, a pair of crewmen moved below deck, rusted bottles of rum clutched in their hands. Their speech was already slurred, and she was sure it would only decline for the remainder of the night until their coherent abilities were completely diminished. Vaguely, she wondered how they could possibly stand to drink so much in such little time. But then again, what else did they have to do at night?
Clanker was on watch tonight, but instead of joining him she opted to remain at the rail, vacantly admiring the sunset. She had never held the same respect for the dawn, not when it only served as a reminder that a new day was beginning, and with it, either uncertainty or cruelty. Sometimes, a new day was filled with a wretched mix of the both: unpredictable cruelty.
That had been her life for ten years. Unpredictable. Cruel.
And here she was now, a fourteen year-old girl with nothing left of herself—nothing but a name. A name given to her by parents of whom she held no memory. A name used but three times in her lifetime, and even here it was not to be used. She was not "Lena" but "girl". She was an object, a tool with one purpose and one alone: to be obedient.
This was not a new life. It was simply another prison.
The familiar sensation of being watched seeped into her conscious, but this was not Clanker's curious gaze or the lecherous viewings of another crewman. The gaze was far too intense, far more piercing than any other's. And even now, merely two months after swearing her soul to this ship, she knew it was only one time of many that she would be the subject of this gaze.
She slowly consented to face him, standing there just outside the captain's quarters: a place to which only he and a few others were permitted entry. Curiosity had not yet beseeched her to wonder what it was like, this seemingly sacred and hallowed place deep within the Dutchman's core. She prayed it would remain this way. Curiosity, she knew, was capable of killing far more than a harmless little cat.
Lena was hardly stranger to the dangers of swimming in shark-infested waters. She had often listened to the tales that Master and his crew told, and she'd seen the various scars etched into their bodies where flesh had been forcibly removed, torn away by the rows of razor-sharp teeth. Each scar and every tale had been marked by one distinct memory: the eyes. Each man had spoken, always in a hushed tone, of what it was like to look straight in dark, empty eyes as they fought for their lives. To look into the eyes of a shark, they had whispered, was to look into the eyes of the devil himself.
But she saw no devil here, only a being mutated and transformed by the sea itself, by the curse he had brought upon himself, body and soul. At one point in time, she knew he must have been a man, appearing just as human as herself.
But no longer.
In the fading light of day, she could only barely discern his expression. What little she could see of him centered on his right eye, and it seemed to speak far more than words ever could. Though she might be loathe to admit it, she admired the intensity of his eyes. It made her wonder, ever so briefly, if his eyes had always been this way, even when he was human.
She closed her eyes, forcing these notions away, out of thought and out of mind. When she reopened them, she was no longer alone.
Truly, she noted, he had all the stealth of the sharks. Only creatures such as they could move with such swift deliberation, all without ever being detected by their prey. It made them masterful hunters, ultimate predators.
"You finished your task." Again, he phrased nothing as a question. Likewise, Master never asked questions, only demanded answers. And he demanded answers with all due speed, else there would be terrible consequences to be paid.
"As I was instructed, sir." Lena answered quietly, meeting his smoldering gaze without as much as a blink. Within the cavern of her chest, the heart was beating wildly in an unfortunate reaction which she could not yet control. Yet still her gaze did not falter. She would not show fear upon her face, even if her body could not yet master such resilience.
He took a step forward; she held her ground. His eye never left her face, never venturing down even to her throat. And once again, she felt the discomfort of having a man solely interested in her face, showing no interest in her body whatsoever. He had far greater control over his emotions than the others. So much so, in fact, that she wondered if he still possessed any emotions to control.
He finally spoke, and she knew he was displeased. "You still have yet to show respect," he spoke quietly, the words passing through his protruding teeth in little more than a hiss, "I suggest you learn it very quickly, understand?"
Lena finally allowed herself to blink, her stance relaxing ever so slightly as the faintest traces of a smile curled her lips. "You say…respect? Is that what you think this is then, sir? Threatening those subservient to you with physical harm, with violence, with injuries far worse than even those conceived in nightmares…you think it is respect that they give you? You think it's out of respect that they cower before you, rush to do that which you demand of them, never questioning one word that passes your lips?"
She paused, her lips curling all the more as she shook her head. "That, sir, is not respect. It's fear."
Another moment passed in silence while she watched him stiffen, his mouth twisting in a snarl, his teeth bared all the more. There was no mistaking his resemblance to the beast whose features time had given him. He was no longer a man, but an animal, devoid of all emotion save perhaps anger.
"If that it what you demand of me," Lena continued, her anger finally spilling over to conquer what little fear still remained within, "then kindly just call it what it is. You don't want me to respect you. You don't want me to revere you or admire you as a worthy figure of authority. You want me to fear you."
Stepping away from the rail, cold defiance still present in her stance, she paused only briefly to look back at him. He did not return the favor.
"Make no mistake, sir," she whispered, "I will do neither. You demand fear and call it respect, just as the Master did. I neither feared nor respected the Master, and I will neither fear nor respect you—not so long as there is even the tiniest trace of him that I can find in you."