Title: Silhouettes
Category: Television Shows» Black Sails
Author: And The Moment's Gone
Language: English, Rating: Rated: T+
Words: 2,866
Warnings/Spoilers: Season 2 finale. You don't need to see it, but you need to know what happened.
Official Disclaimer: All Black Sails characters and plots belong to Starz, and Michael Bay, I do not hold stock either the company or the man. Charles Vane, Eleanor Guthrie, and any other character featured are NOT mine. The title comes from the Of Mice and Men song Silhouettes and I don't own that either.
Tobias Hume was not an unnecessarily cruel man, regardless of the stories Eleanor had heard coming in from the beach.
Nor was he entirely unreasonable.
Eleanor was a woman, on her own in the middle of an ocean aboard a Royal Navy man o' war complimented with at least one hundred and sixty men. She wasn't going to run, she was most certain to die if she jumped, and the only thing trying to fight her captors would do would give them cause to mistreat her.
She didn't need to be told that if it were Charles in her stead, he would have done any of the three options that she had first considered. It would have been bad enough that they clapped him in irons. Charles Vane would not have allowed them to take him to England and create a spectacle out of him.
From her place at the giant window seat in Hume's cabin, Eleanor watched the men on the beach, breathing in the sweet sea air.
She longed for Nassau now, in a way she could not name.
The ship was currently anchored at Harbour Island, a brief stop before setting sail toward England. Captain Hume had taken it upon himself to have two more gowns procured for her, as well as a comb and soap made of something other than lye. Eleanor had thanked him for the comforts that he afforded her, even knowing that in the end it was for his own gain. You don't produce a bedraggled woman claiming that she had ruled a pirate colony. His prize was only worth something if he could show London the fearsome creature that they claimed her to be.
She had also been allowed blank pages and writing implements while the men restocked and crews transitioned.
Hume's secretary had insisted that any correspondence she composed would be returned to Nassau at their earliest convenience. He didn't need to tell her that that was after it was thoroughly inspected to ensure she wasn't still trying to subvert the crown. They expected something. Whether a confession that they could use to help hang her with once they reached London, a direct line to Flint and Vane - along with whatever information such a correspondence would provide - or just something that could be used to against either man when the English finally decided to take back the island.
Eleanor was determined not to give them any such information to work with.
She would admit that she considered writing Flint. With her gone and the Guthrie fencing empire in tatters, the island was undoubtedly in chaos. There were those who would step up to try to collect the pieces. There was no doubt in her mind that Max and Rackham were already scurrying around to secure their future. She could only hope that when Flint returned, that he would also do his part.
A little voice inside reminded her. She would never know if he had been successful in his endeavor in Charles Towne, or whether or not Vane had thwarted him in his maniacal quest to seek what he thought he was owed.
Then she thought to write to Charles.
That idea was squashed the second it popped into her head.
Flint was one thing. If he'd made it through Charles Towne with his ship and crew intact, then he would have the legitimacy of Peter Ashe to rely on.
Distributing a letter to Charles would lead the Royal Navy to whatever she'd left on New Providence. He could be caught, and would fight and die for his freedom. No matter how she left them, she couldn't – she wouldn't - send him another battle to fight because of her.
Instead she wrote to Jack, describing him in a cover letter solely as the proprietor of the brothel, and not including his name or the title that generally went with it. She had briefly considered addressing the letter to Max before realizing that it was impossible to guarantee that any message she would be understood or distributed the way she needed it to. No matter what issues she and the former Quartermaster had had in the past, he was an incredibly brilliant man, discrete in his endeavors, and any message that she chose to send would at least make it to where she needed it to go.
Then came the problem of what to write.
My Dear Sir, she started slowly, knowing that it now longer served to mock, but distinguish. My hosts have insisted that I put any last words I may have to page, for posterity. I've been promised that they will be provided to any acquaintances that I may wish to have them.
I regret that their generosity just simply cannot be denied.
You'll have to forgive my presumption that this letter is best suited in your hands. I can think of none other that would understand my reasons for writing these things, nor could I think of another who could best distribute them.
My first thought is to my property. It was a lie, of course. Her first thought was to the Nassau that would become when she was gone, and the men that would have to live in it. But there was absolutely no reasonable way that she could present that within the pages she was to write. Hume would be a lot less likely to allow her the freedoms that she currently possessed if she were to express her instructions as how to maintain the Guthrie shipping trade without her.
Still, if there were any way that she could at least attempt to secure the island until Flint – and Charles – returned.
It is undoubted that your partner has already taken the steps to acquire my shares of the tavern and the inn - and if not, she left unsaid, that would be the best place to start – and the subject of my personal effects could go either way. I care not for my clothing, or whatever coinage may still be in my possessions. In truth, there wasn't much. Any money that she might have possessed was in the tavern safe, or hidden away in the warehouse. But no one save Mister Scott and Eme should know that. I would consider myself appreciative if the volumes in my apartments and office were distributed to my retainer along with the jewelry in my case. Neither is worth much significance, other than sentiment, and there is none that would value it more.
There is one volume that I prefer not arrive in Mister Scott's hands, she wrote before she was physically able to stop herself. The copy of Sonnets that I kept by my bedside should find another home. It was secured after my mother's library was dismantled, and I think that it should be returned to the procurer with my affection, as I was reminded that that particular tome was hard won.
She wondered if Jack remembered the events that led to that book making its way onto the island. She was seventeen when her father had returned to the island, reestablishing his seat on Governor's Island. He'd brought a mistress – a simpering spoiled woman called Molly that Eleanor had had more than one vision of selling to Mister Noonan – who had decided that Rebecca Stewart Guthrie's decorative tastes nowhere matched hers and must, therefore, be eliminated.
With little exception – the gold inlay tea set a house slave had managed to smuggle out for her along with the contents of her mother's writing desk – everything had been put on a ship to and sent to the colonies in hopes of fetching a pretty price. Her mother's books that she had yet to have brought to her rooms and office in Nassau were also lost.
It had been the very first time in their history that she'd slid unexpectedly into the Ranger camp.
After she'd more or less attacked Charles, forcing him on his back and taking the control she'd so sorely needed, he'd held her as she ranted against this latest injustice and lamented the loss of her mother's favorite books.
The Ranger was gone the next morning. And when it returned – with a bounty that it would only sign over to Mistress Guthrie and Mister Scott – there had been a worn copy of Shakespeare's Sonnets nestled in the top drawer of the chest in her room, wrapped In an intricately embroidered linen fichu beside the rest of her mother's jewelry. They'd never spoken of how the book came to be in her possession, but on the rainy days when the Ranger was landlocked, and the captain's ill temper warranted an afternoon curled around each other in Eleanor's bed, she would crack open the book, and they'd recite the words on each other's skin.
The shutter that seeped out from under her skin scared Eleanor, and she held her hands to her lips to prevent the sob bubbling in her chest.
Why hadn't she appreciated those moments more when she'd had the chance?
Eleanor wrote of the tavern next, and the warehouses. She inquired after her employees, hinting at who should stay on to aid the transition, and who would be dead weight at a time like this. Both Jack and Max were extremely prudent in their business dealings, so she had no doubt that they didn't need what little direction that she could hide in the pages so it didn't look like she was prepping them for the invasion to come. It was after her notes on the fort that she paused again. She had taken care of everything that she could possibly think of in order to help Nassau prepare for what was to come, and she'd anchored it in women's language and ship speak so hopefully Hume wouldn't notice.
There was only one thing left for her to write.
Our Dear Captain will most likely say that I deserved this. Her hand trembled as she forced herself to skip over naming Charles specifically. His Majesty's Navy didn't need to know that she was one that could speak intimately of Charles Vane, and Jack Rackham wouldn't need the clarification. And that His Majesty's Navy punishing me for my sins does nothing for him than relieve the burden of him having to do it himself.
She would never know whether or not that was true.
I will not apologize for our latest incongruity, or the lengths I went to in order to secure the Nassau that I believed we could achieve. If I learned anything during my tenure, it was simply this: there are always sides. There is always a winner and a loser. For every person who gets, there is someone who must give.
And I gave Nassau everything that I had to spare and more.
It is what I gave up for her that I speak to now.
It wasn't supposed to be this way. Her head throbbed with the thought of the first time she stood before Charles and refused to be afraid of him. She'd done the same to Flint, and Hornigold, and Lillywhite. She was Rebecca Guthrie's daughter, and no man would rule her the way her father had tried to rule her mother. There wasn't supposed to be anything that the island didn't ask for me to give that I couldn't spare.
And he knew.
Goddamn Charles Vane, he knew that she couldn't afford to hand him her heart, and he stayed anyway. And the longer he stayed, the less he asked for and the more he let her give anyway, the more she hated him. Because she controlled the whole of the island, beholden to no man, She made fortunes and sank ships, and was deemed untouchable. Eleanor could do anything that her heart desired.
Except keep herself from loving him.
The words flowed from her quill steadily now, describing the way that siding with Flint tore her apart and that she hoped he survived the fallout, that he survived Charles Towne and what was coming. Eleanor never used his name; she knew what that would do, so instead she described what he was to her. How he had been indomitable in a young girl's eyes, and how he had always given her the strength that she needed by providing his own.
What was worse was that she forgave him, for taking from her what he needed in order to maintain his own agenda, For using her just as much as she used him, and just as unapologetically. Of the pain they caused each other, and the fact that who they were forbid it from being any other way.
She didn't know if the words would ever reach him, or if they would be read and dismissed by one that had watched them tear each other apart in a search for something that neither of them knew by name. But if this was her last chance to say it, then she wouldn't let it die with her.
In the back of her mind, she could hear her mother's voice, reminding her that even dying pirates called for their mothers.
If I were allowed one last sentiment, she wrote carefully, after her shaking subsided, and she had no more tears left to lie on the page. I know few things of certainty, but I would like it remembered that I did know that truth can cause a sharp pain behind the eyes, and that love sometimes feels like a fist around the throat.
Do not let this be what breaks him.
If you can do nothing else for me, if there is no good will left in Nassau for Eleanor Guthrie, then do what you must for him.
Please.
In the end, Hume read the letter in front of her, no longer pretending that this had not been the plan all along. She watched him scan passages and notes, tuttering over words, and seeming to skip the third page entirely. It read, she supposed, like a goodbye to a business partner, and sad words for a lost lover, which, in a way, was the point. It was a lot more likely that Hume and his secretary would skip over what few pieces of advice that Eleanor had allowed herself to include about the fortification of Nassau since the bulk of it was aimed at the despair of what she left unsaid.
After the third read-through – which Eleanor spent in the chair on the other side of the table, hands clasped firmly in her lap and eyes downcast – Hume nodded, folding the papers and affixing his seal on the overlapping ends. "The first ship we see flying the black," he handed letter off to his secretary for safe keeping, "we'll get this in the hands of a captain, miss."
He seemed kinder now than he had when he ordered her to write the letter. She supposed it was because, after all of Hornigold's bluster and bravado, Eleanor Guthrie was just a woman – albeit one that held a lot of sway over the pirates of Nassau.
"If you wouldn't mind keeping below decks until we're out on open water, though." His words might have been calm, but his tone was not. While they were moored on Harbour Island, anything that appeared to be an attempt to escape would not be looked upon favorably, and he wouldn't hesitate to chain her to her bunk. "There's no need to risk distracting the men."
She nodded; after all, there was no way she couldn't acquiesce. "Of course." Hume rose, Eleanor following suit, and she had to force her voice to be so very small. "If you wouldn't mind though, Captain," she added as an afterthought. "Might I stay in here for a while longer? Your windows are larger than mine, and I do so love the sight of the sea."
She could hear Charles's laughter in her head when Hume gave his permission, taking in the sight of the demure Mistress Guthrie with an almost arrogant grin. He'd tamed the Queen of Thieves, and soon everyone would know it. "I don't see the harm in it." Hume nodded to his secretary, the command that one of the men should guard the door, just in case, on his lips. "Mister Babish will see you back to your bunk when you're ready."
Both men quit the room without the usual pomp, and Eleanor let out the breath she was holding, allowing herself to sink to the floor with an awkward thud.
She'd done her best.
She'd warned Nassau about how best to prepare for what was to come.
She'd gotten to say the only goodbye that mattered to her.
Eleanor pulled herself to her feet using the arm of the chair beside her and slowly moved toward the window, suddenly unbelievably calm.
England was going to kill her. They were going to parade her around the courts, declare her the scourge of civilization, and tell all those that wished to hear how she was responsible for the terror that existed on the seas. Her stomach flipped, bile rising to the back of her throat.
It wasn't supposed to be this way.