Disclaimer: I do not own anything in my stories except for the fan fiction (including plots, OC's and so on). All the characters belong to the rightful owners. Any songs/poems/etc in my stories do not belong to me unless stated otherwise.
A/N: Hello.
Can I just say that I think this chapter is a whole large load of shait?
I had massive, and I mean fucking massive, writers block with this one. It was supposed to be so much better because since I started this whole story, this chapter has been the one I had been looking forward to.
I finished 80% of it today, so please excuse any and all mistakes for I'm sure there are a lot of them. I haven't really proof read this at all.
Also, my chapters seem to be getting shorter and shorter and I don't really like it.
I should probably let you guys get on with it...
Chapter 4
"I'm afraid I can't explain myself, sir. Because I am not myself, you see?"
"What the hell was that?" Gareth boomed and slammed the door closed behind him. Scarlett's head was pounding already. "Scarlett."
She felt like she was fifteen years old again and he was scolding her for something. "What do you want me to say?" She stood up and put her hands on her hips. "If you want me to say that I am sorry for what I did out there, know that I am not going to. Gareth he tried to rape me. Because of him I will have a nasty-ass fucking scar across my chest for the rest of my life. Also, need I remind you, he tried to fucking rape me!" She shouted.
"Scarlett."
"No!" She kept shouting and Gareth sat down. "You have no right to do this. You have no fucking right to make me feel bad about this, even though I probably should. I mean. Fuck! I just tortured a man, but he fucking deserved it! He fucking deserved it alright!"
"Scarlett!"
"Gareth! I'm not eighteen anymore. You have to let me make my own decisions, because I will make them whether you want to or not. Whether you like them or not." She let out a sigh and sat down next to Gareth. The two fell into silence.
"I figured I could still fix my mistakes." Gareth spoke softly. "I made a promise to your parents. I thought I was fixing it by leaving, I guess not."
"What exactly do you mean?"
"You were going to go off to university, I knew you would professionally take up being a hired gun if I was around. So I figured that if I faked my death, you'd put all of that behind you."
"You could have told me, you know." Scarlett said, wiping the hair off her face. "I wouldn't have listened to you, but you could have still told me."
"I realize that now."
"Plus it's too late. It was too late then." Scarlett shook her head. "I'm not something you can fix, I don't need fixing. You never made me a killer, I did that myself."
Gareth shook his head. "But I helped. Concious or unconscious."
"Still not your fault." Scarlett snorted a laugh. "Still not a reason to fake your death." She nudged the man in the ribs with her elbow.
The day passed, Scarlett survived on pain killers. She went up onto the roof at some point, she wasn't sure whose roof it was or was she allowed there or not, but to be honest she didn't care all that much at that point. She had a pair of sunglasses, a bottle of water and she could see most of the camp from where she was.
Perfect. Her inner voice commented and self-fived like Barney Stinson from How I Met Your Mother.
"Fucking nerd," Scarlett said out loud and shook her head. She sat there for hours, seeing how the camp and the pirates in it worked. She noticed how Vaas toyed with the hostages and mercilessly killed the rejects. She watched as Gareth made the men sweat and throw up from working out so hard in the heat. She realized that she didn't even know how Gareth had ended up here or what he was doing here. She made a mental note to ask him later when she went to have dinner.
An hour before the sun set loud music started blasting out from somewhere. Guessing by the direction of it, it came from Turkey Point. Apparently that's what the men called the dining hut. She came to the conclusion that this whole thing, sitting hours upon hours on the roof, had been a waste of time, she was going to reach no conclusions by merely sitting there. Though she did get a good overview of the place, meaning that she doubted that she would be lost in the place again.
In a half an hour she was down from the roof, with a clean bandage across her chest and a full bottle of cool water. When she finally made her way to Turkey Point, the area surrounding it was filled with pirates drinking and eating and dancing to the music. Scarlett noticed that the two hostages that used to hang from the ceiling were removed by now. Her stomach scrunched in worry when she thought of what happened to them. With a lump in her throat she grabbed a plate, got her dinner and a full glass of whisky. Then went to sit down at a table with Gareth.
"Evening, doll."
"Evening, Old Man." She imitated him and dug into her food. While chewing on a piece of potato, she wondered out loud. "Are there showers or something of the like here?"
Gareth nodded. "Yeah, but right now in this heat they don't really work. The men usually go to clean themselves on the beach, if they clean themselves. There's a waterfall nearby though, I can take you there tomorrow. None of the men go there because they're not fucked to walk the distance, plus Vaas doesn't let them use the trucks for shit like that anymore." Gareth laughed.
Scarlett smiled. "Thank you. I feel so fucking sweaty and sticky and greasy. It's disgusting really." She took another bite of her food. "Why can't they use the trucks though?"
"They can use the trucks, but not when they're going to scrub themselves. A while back this one guy drove one of the fucking trucks into a lake. Actually that has happened four or five times in total. That particular time Vaas was making rounds on the main island and happened to be at that camp." Gareth shook his head.
"Making rounds?" She wondered, taking a sip of her whisky.
"Yeah, basically what it is, is that he goes through each outpost on the island. Making sure shit is in order and the sort. It's a shit process and takes a hell of a long time, but it's got to be done."
Scarlett nodded, her fingers playing with the rim of her glass, and after a moment she spoke again. "By the way, you never told me how you ended up here."
Gareth put his fork down, the corners of his mouth pulling down slightly. He was obviously unhappy with the direction of the conversation, but spoke none the less."Well, uh. After dying," he made air-quotes with his fingers when he said the word 'dying', "in Mexico. I went to Switzerland, where I met this rich guy who was planning on making a trip here. Apparently he thought there was treasure hidden on this island by the natives, the Rakyat. He had a whole crew together, except that he was lacking on security. So I offered myself. Legally I was dead and a trip to an unmapped island sounded pretty good." He took a swig of water.
"When we got here, the boat was raided by the pirates. I was the only one who survived, in that matter of speaking. They let the captain and the rich guy live for a while, but neither of them exactly fought back. Vaas was surprised at the fact that I did. He was impressed too, but he won't admit it." Gareth chuckled. "I know he was. Anyway, I managed to cut a deal with him. I went through a couple of... uh, trials. I guess you could call them that."
"Trials?" Scarlett raised her eyebrows in doubt. When she bought her glass to her lips, she noticed that she had drank more than half of it already and it was starting to make her brain fuzzy. Scar had always hated how much of a lightweight she had been.
"I had to fight a bunch of guys on several occasions." Gareth shrugged, brushing it off as nothing, and continued his story. "So I got a spot here. Over time I proved my loyalty and experience, now I'm training the men."
"So you're pretty much the main mercenary?"
"I guess you could say that, yeah." Gareth leaned back in his chair.
In the moment of silence that fell at their table, Scar was able to notice a few things through her tipsy brain. First off that there were several languages spoken at the same time. Smiley was speaking French with two others, different versions of Spanish, Portuguese and what she guessed to be the native language of the island seemed to be popular. She thought she even heard Italian at one point, including many others.
Secondly, how odd it all seemed. Alien, for some reason. How there were so many different kinds of people here. Everyone so different and surprisingly open minded. No one seemed to care where you were from, who you were or what skin colour you had, as long as you could shoot a gun. It seemed odd to her that men who were murderers and who would be called savages anywhere else but on the Rook Islands, were more human than most of the people who ran countries in the rest of the world. She of course realized that she could be wrong, perhaps there were things the men weren't saying about what they thought of one another.
"Did you end up going to university, by the way?" Gareth's voice pulled her out of her thoughts.
Scar looked up and saw Carlos approaching. He wore a white v-neck shirt, the red bandanna loosely around his neck, and jeans and she wanted to slap herself for noticing the dark hair and muscled chest that peaked from his shirt before lifting her eyes up to look at his face. His hair was the most unruly thing she'd ever seen, the brown locks sat in a wild mess atop his head. It made him look like he had been very thoroughly fucked, then again for all she knew he could have been. A strong jawline lined with stubble drew in her eye before she met his gaze.
Quickly, she focused on Gareth again, her cheeks tingeing with pink. Internally cursing the alcohol which was affecting her so strongly. "I did, actually. I was pretty sure that I was not going to go, but Shaun actually pushed me into it." She said and Carlos sat down next to her. "I don't know if you know, but your death got pinned onto The Auzric Brothers."
"Yeah, I heard. Why?" Gareth asked with a hint of hesitation.
She felt like she was six years old and ate the last cookie without Gareth's permission. "I may have killed them."
Gareth raised his eyebrows and his smacked the table. His voice was laced with surprise and humour when he spoke. "You may have killed them?"
Scarlett shrugged. "Eye for an eye."
"That's what you seem to be all about these days." Gareth retorted and Scarlett could feel an argument coming on.
"Hold on," Carlos spoke. "The Auzric Brothers, where have I heard that?"
Gareth lit up a cigarette. "They ran one of the biggest drug cartels in northern Mexico," Gareth chuckled. "How the hell did you manage to take them down? They had more security than the fucking US president."
"A girl has got to have her secrets, no? Though I'll tell you this much, a pair of heels, a short dress and red lipstick helped quite a bit." Scarlett smiled triumphantly.
Gareth groaned. "My God, you were eighteen!"
"I was on a mission!" She raised her voice a little.
Gareth slammed his fist down on the table, "You weren't supposed to go after anyone in the first place!" He shouted back.
"I thought you died! I thought they killed you, Gareth. I had no choice!" Scarlett accused.
"Yes, you did!"
"As did you!" Scarlett snarled, eyes lit up with fury, and Gareth fell silent.
After a moment Carlos cleared his throat while running his hand through his hair, messing it up even more. "By the way Kidd, Vaas wants you to go make rounds tomorrow with Monroe."
"How come?" Gareth asked.
Carlos ran his hands through his hair, pushing it off his face. "A couple of privateers are coming to get hostages to pass onto buyers and you know how Vaas is about the privateers."
Gareth nodded with a sigh. "Alright, can you take Scar down to the waterfall to clean up? I promised I'd do it tomorrow."
"Can't." Carlos lit up a smoke. "I have to head down to Nat's Repairs with Kip, they got attacked and the alarm blew. Sorry."
"Fuck," Gareth muttered.
"Have Vaas take her."
Gareth opened his mouth to say something but then faltered. "That's actually not a bad idea."
Scarlett raised her eyebrow at the older man, wanting to comment but she didn't. Her need to clean herself was too big to actually mind who was going to show her where the waterfall was. Plus, no matter how bad Vaas was, he was still better than Smiley and his kin.
"By the way," Scarlett asked, her hand going up to motion to the commotion surrounding them. "Are we celebrating something?"
Carlos chuckled and shook his head. "Oh no, it's just the guys blowing off steam. Life gets pretty routine and tough, so they need an outlet."
Scarlett raised her eyebrows and down the very last drop of her whisky. "This? This is how they blow off steam?" She was in disbelief. There were a bunch of pirates in a state of drunkenness dancing around to Latin music and singing along.
"Yes," Carlos responded to her, as if it was the most obvious thing in the world. "You expected something different?"
"I figured you'd have... Hookers. Or something." To be honest, Scar didn't even know what she had thought. Perhaps she had thought that the pirates blew off steam by killing people, which seemed like a logical thing.
Carlos' mouth stretched out into a grin, his eyes filling with mischief. "The hookers will come later. Don't worry."
Scarlett nodded, reaching for her glass only to remember it was empty. Little by little the table they were sitting at started filling up. First it was Kip, then a man who she had never met with lightly orange hair and a pair of rectangular glasses. Later on a drunk Vaas, with fresh wounds, joined them as well. Some of the pirates had lit a fire nearby, casting a soft orange glow on everyone.
Scarlett was feeling actually drunk from the alcohol by now and incredibly engrossed in a story that Carlos was telling. She didn't even notice Kip and the ginger man disappear, when she finally did notice, she didn't hesitate to ask about their absence.
"They're probably fucking somewhere like conejitos." Vaas slurred and emptied the label-less bottle in his hand.
Carlos leaned closer towards her, making her skin prickle where his breath hit it. "Translation: bunnies."
"Kip is gay?" She wondered, her voice coming out almost as a shout.
Carlos nodded and Vaas raised his eyebrows. "Why are you so fucking shocked? Huh, mujer." The corners of his mouth pulled into a cocky smirk. "Does Scarlett have a crush?"
"No, I just-"
Vaas cut her off with a loud, drunken laugh. "Don't worry, you'll find someone who isn't gay." With a wink he got up and walked over to the table where the food usually was and grabbed another one of the label-less bottles off of it.
A while later she was sitting on the hand rail that surrounded the Turkey Point deck. A bunch of the pirates were swaying or dancing to the music, a few of them muttered the words. Her eyes soon fixed onto Vaas, who had a bottle in one of his hands and an unrecognisable piece of technology in the other. His hips were subtly, but perfectly shaking along to the music.
It seemed so... Not Vaas. It had been only hours before that she had seen the man toy with the hostages, grazing their cheeks with the barrel of his gun. Taunting them with snide little comments and chuckles. She had seen the small, cruel smirk on his lips as he put bullets into the heads of the rejects.
She heard a gunshot ringing through the air. Quickly, she made her way up from her spot and climb down from the roof. She headed toward where the sound came from, but with the fear of being spotted by Vaas, she stood in a nook between two houses. Shielding her from view while still being close enough to hear bits and pieces.
Vaas was standing on top of a platform that consisted of a wooden frame, a crossbeam on two upright beams. With a shaky breath out she recognized it to be the gallows. Four people were kneeling in front of Vaas with their hands tied behind their backs and a fifth already limp of the ground, explaining the gunshot.
He said something to them, though she couldn't make out what and then shot two more of them. Vaas kneeled in front of one of them and spoke, this time Scar was able to make out a few small bits. "... Nobody wants to pay for you... You are worthless... I see it all the time. People say 'Family is priceless, family is priceless', no no no please. That is fucking bullshit. Family is..." Vaas' voice was washed away by the wind rustling the trees surrounding them, only a whistle he let out carried out to her.
A second later Vaas was on his feet and shot the person he had been speaking to. The last man, wearing a light blue shirt and a pair of khaki shorts, winced and sobbed. Every inch of Scarlett was screaming for her to go there and stop the maniac, but she knew it would do no good and would only mean her death.
"Hermano..." Vaas said, pointing the gun to the mans head. "Look me in the eye..." When the man managed to lift his head and make eye contact with Vaas, the Pirate King cocked his head to the side. "I am going to kill you." A fraction of a second later a gunshot rang through the air and a heavy thump a moment later confirmed that the man in the blue shirt was indeed dead.
Scarlett couldn't tear her eyes away from it, she could barely even blink. Vaas let out a chuckle and eyed all of the dead bodied. "Did you," Another chuckle. "Did you realize that I just shot them all in sequence?" The scarred man looked at the pirates who were scattered around the area.
She didn't know if any of them said anything, but Vaas spoke up again. "One after the other, I did not do that one purpose." He paced slowly infront of the bodies, back straight like the cock of the walk. "You start to think about the small coincidences in life... Will you clean this fucking shit up?" In a fraction of a second, his voice changed from joking to pissed off. Vaas motioned to the dead bodies and walked off the gallows.
Scarlett shook her head as her eyes were on the Pirate King. She didn't understand him. He was completely calm and joking one moment and then he could kick off and break a few things or kill a few people, and then a few moments later he could be laughing about something completely else. He was impulsive and unstable to a certain extent, yet she couldn't fear him the same way that the hostages and even some of the pirates feared him. It was terrifying, because in the end... what did that say about her?
She sat there for a while, so lost in her own head that she had completely overlooked the arrival of a bunch of women. They were all clad in rags and were bone thin, with sunken faces and wobbly feet. She knew for a fact that the women were under the influence of some stronger drugs. Just before she was going to jump down from the handrail she saw a person lean on the railing next to her. She looked over her shoulder and the first thing she saw was a jagged scar across a mans head.
Vaas.
A moment later he stood up straight and leaned against the railing, so that they were facing the opposite ways. Vaas reeked of alcohol and cigarettes and sweat, though she doubted she smelled any better.
"You know... Mina." He trailed a finger on her hand which was resting on the railing. "When you get bored, you know where to find me." He lazily pointed to a house which was in better condition that most around here.
"There are many others who wouldn't mind... wetting your pipe." Scarlett said.
The corner of Vaas' mouth pulled up just a fraction. "I know." He licked his lips and lit up a smoke. "Perhaps te deseo."
Scarlett didn't know what he said, but she still had some alcohol in her system and that made her braver, and more flirty, than usual. "Don't tempt me." She said so quietly that she wasn't sure if Vaas even heard her. "I just might."
She jumped down from the railing and started walking to her room. When she was a good twenty metres away, she made the mistake of looking over her shoulder. Vaas had a cocky half smirk on his lips and when their eyes met he winked at her. Her heart picked up the pace just the tiniest bit, enough scare her. Vaas was the last person she should be attracted to.
_x_
Scarlett woke with a massive headache. With a groan she covered her eyes and turned to her side. It was about an hour until she finally decided to get up. Thankfully she had some water in her water bottle. She quickly drowned it and sighed. She looked down at her clothes, they were dirty and sweaty and she was so sick of sleeping in jeans. She thought of it pointless to change them now, she would dirty the clean ones before she can get to the waterfall anyway.
She pulled on her boots, brushed through her greasy hair and pulled it up into a bun. It was better than having it clinging to her face and neck. Right when she got her hair tied there was a knock on the door.
"Yes?" She asked, sliding her hand under her pillow where the knife was.
The door opened and in came a pirate she had seen around the camp a few times. He was, according to Kip, just a foot soldier so I was unlikely to befriend him. "Hello. Vaas says you leave camp, when privateers leave. Two or three hours." The man had a very thick accent.
Scarlett nodded. "Yes, alright."
The man gave her a nod and exited the room. Scarlett lifted the lid off of the box that held all of her belongings. She grabbed out a canvas bag and put shampoo, a towel and some clean clothes into it. When her bag was ready, she headed to Turkey Point. It was almost noon, which meant that she was the only one eating. Also, since breakfast time had passed she only got a few pieces of bread. It wasn't long when a group of five privateers walked through the camp, heading toward the area where they kept the hostages. She recognized one of them, he was the man who had been in the helicopter with her and Hoyt the day she arrived.
Hector, was it? She wondered and kept chewing on her bread. It was only an hour later when the privateers came back with three hostages that Hector saw her. Hectors face when he saw her was the most surprising thing of all. It was a look of complete and utter shock and surprise, as if she was the last person he had expected to see there. Scar's eyebrows pulled together and it made her worry.
Her worry for the moment was short lived, because a very pissed of looking Vaas sat down opposite of her.
Scar eyes her warily. "Morning."
Vaas nodded at her and clearly wasn't bothered with pleasantries. "Ready to go?"
Scar nodded. "Yes, I just need to get a bag."
"You have five minutes, meet me at the trucks."
In about ten minutes the duo was out of the camp and headed down a jungle road. This was the first time Scarlett had been really in the jungle since the day she arrived. So with a deep breath in, she leaned back, fixed the sunglasses on her nose and looked at the sky. A faint smile was present on her lips.
"Why are you smiling?" Vaas' voice broke the silence over the car engine and chirping birds.
Scarlett's smile widened. "Because it's so beautiful."
Vaas let out a humourless chuckle. "It's only beautiful because you don't have to survive in it."
Scar turned to look at him, expecting him to continue speaking.
When Vaas was met with silence, he quickly glanced over to Scar. He skilfully nicked the sunglasses off of her face and slid them on. "The jungle will eat you up alive... You white people come here, you want to live. You want to be free. They never last long." He let out another humourless chuckle. He seemed so at ease driving, barely paying attention to the path but not once going off of it. "You come here. You will forget your life before. Soon you forget your fucking name. The jungle strips you of your humanity... You become an animal." He said quietly. "The jungle changes you."
Before Scar could reply, Vaas pulled the truck to a stop and got out. He lit up a cigarette as Scarlett followed him out, and then he hopped onto the hood of the car. When Scarlett was just standing there staring at him, the man spoke up.
"What are you waiting for?" He wondered and peeked over the top of Scarlett's sunglasses.
She wasn't sure, to be completely honest. Scarlett turned to look at the waterfall, it took her breath away. From high above, massive amounts of water were gushing down into a pool. Everything around it seemed so green and fresh and alive. She had taken about five steps toward it when Vaas shouted out to her.
"Oi, a propósito. If you see an alligator, shout for me."
Scar's eyebrows pulled together in confusion. It would have been nice to know about the fact that there were alligators here before she agreed to come. "Wouldn't that just attract their attention?"
"Yes," Vaas sighed, sounding like he was trying to explain physics to a three year old. "But that would also attract my fucking attention." He took in a drag from the cigarette. "That shit will keep you alive."
She raised an eyebrow in disbelief as her hands landed on her hips. "You're going to fight an alligator? Bare handed? For me?"
Vaas merely shrugged and kept smoking his cigarette.
Shaking her head, Scar walked down to the waterfall. She eyed the water for a moment, trying to see if there was anything alive in it. When it seemed safe, she stripped off her shirt. Scar was painfully aware of the fact that Vaas' eyes were most likely on her. Then, with a sigh of relief, she took off her jeans for the first time in days. However, she wasn't going to give the scarred man on the hood of the truck the complete satisfaction of seeing her naked so she headed to the water in her underwear, only taking them off in the water. She washed her hair three times, just to make sure that all of the grease and dirt was out of it, and for a while she just enjoyed the cool water.
Scar chose the moment when Vaas was occupied with the stereo to get to her towel. She quickly dried herself, put on clean clothes and wrapped the towel around her head. After making sure she had all of her things, she headed back to the truck.
"Ready?" Vaas questioned. "Still got your toes? And limbs?"
Scarlett nodded. "I do believe I do."
It seemed like a much shorter trip back to the camp, which in a way was sad because she quite enjoyed the freshness of the jungle. During the ride she took the towel away from her hair and let the wind dry it. It was going to no doubt knot her hair and it would be hell trying to get them out, but at this point she really didn't care.
Vaas pulled the truck to a stop and killed the engine. "By the way, nice tattoo."
A/N: Ahh, so much flirty Vaas.
Anyways, as per usual. Any and all criticism and ideas and thoughts are welcome.
If you wish to keep reading, adding it to favourites and alerts helps.
Reviews are better than Carlos' sex hair. (This point can and will be argued.)
Adiós amigos.
-Max