warnings: Heero is still perfect, mention of murder, there will of course be real murder - for those of you who can't read a pirate story that doesn't have at least one corpse in it :) And (I don't know if it really should be considered a warning) I forgot to mention Relena, but she will eventually make an entrance.
Chapter 3: Deceit
Contrary to what people may think, life on Froog's Island was surprisingly uneventful. Although on second thought that probably shouldn't be surprising at all since most of the islanders benefited from keeping a low profile... For most of them rewards were offered at some place or other in the known parts of the world, for piracy or murder or treason or something completely different, but mainly piracy, murder and treason. The rest had been put to flight by creditors or tried to bridge the gap between a raid and the time when it was finally save to dig up a buried treasure. Still less waited for a ship to bring them to faraway adventures while (presumably) only four of the island's inhabitants had set out to investigate the strange circumstances surrounding the legendary gold of Mr. Sawdown.
For decades now Froog's Island had stayed hidden in the thick mist that was billowing around the island and the European ships bound for the newly found, mysterious continent in the West had continued to overlook it and sailed by. On days a ship was due to cross the coastal waters of the island everyone held their breath and watched motionlessly as the invisible vessel slowly moved through the mist and more often than not only missed the coast by a hair's breadth. The only thing that might have threatened the island's secret existence were the frogs that infested its ponds and muddy pools. They kept croaking - ship or not.
While Quatre and I started our work at the inn, Trowa and Wufei went in search of Doc J, who lived and worked outside of the small settlement, at the southern edge of the bay. There, on a pristine strip of white-sanded beach was Doc J's very own shipyard, where he contrived and designed the truly remarkable ships his utterly insane mind used to come up with on a regular basis. But that was something Trowa and Wufei were still ignorant of...
The first thing that drew their attention when they arrived at J's shipyard was just a curious floating, swaying and groaning object that lay at anchor in the shallow coastal waters... and a thin old man with white hair and a white face clothed in a onetime white coat, hopping around on the surface of the strange construction, swinging a hammer and a paint brush.
Trowa and Wufei drew nearer to the shore. Up close the swimming object had a quite interesting texture, metallic almost. But before they got the chance to further investigate, the man on top of the thing had already discovered them and leaned over the rail, his spectacles flashing brightly in the sunlight.
"Ah, Admirers! You came to see my ship, didn't you? The last one foundered unfortunately... but this will last, I know it! What do you think?"
"Well... is it really a ship, sir?" Trowa called up to the old man.
"Of course it is! Why, it swims!"
"Well, a lot of things... swim and no one would ever... um... never mind."
Ignoring the conversation, Wufei had waded knee-deep into the water and was touching the silvery hull of the ship with hesitant fingers. "But how can that be?" he murmured. "It does not only look like metal... it feels like it, too." Bravely, he knocked against the smooth surface and rested his right ear against it. His eyes went wide in amazement.
"It is metal!" Looking up at the strange man, now perched on the ship's rail, he exclaimed in a slightly awed voice: "But metal is too heavy! It doesn't swim! Is it... cursed?"
The white haired man erupted into booming laughter. "This here is the future, gentlemen! You will see— or maybe not...— in a few hundred years all ships will be made of metal! And the carriages on the streets and maybe... maybe there will be ships for the sky, too... hum… metal sky ships, yes, of course! Can't you just see it in your head, hm?"
Trowa and Wufei looked vaguely uncomfortable. "We are looking for a job, sir... If you could use two fearless young men on your fishing boat, we'd like to sign up."
At this the old man blinked owlishly, looking truly surprised. "You... you would sail with me?"
"Yes. Didn't we... just say that?"
"Oh, of course, of course. I... just wanted to make sure. Well, what is keeping you then? To your right is the rope. Climb up here!"
And so it was that Trowa and Wufei met Doc J and came to sail on his strange metal ship. Along the way they (belatedly) began to realize why no one had ever wanted their job and continued to sail on (conservative) wooden ships, while J had finally found someone who would listen to his (immensely progressive and ingenious) ideas.
In the meantime, Quatre was slowly getting accustomed to his job at the Sailor's Inn and Mr. Sawdown's awkward advances. Despite the odd twitching of his face, he was still a beauty (and there were quite a few pirates on the island who admitted that even the twitching was a tiny little bit appealing). In fact, it wasn't long before the people on the island began to gossip about Quatre.
"If anyone had told me just a couple of days ago," one crippled pirate would say to another, "that someone on this island could rival Heero in beauty I would have felt obliged to cut his throat, you know? But I might just change my mind seeing that sweet little thing with his twitching face."
"And he can cook, too!" the other pirate would reply and noisily slurp the soup Quatre had whipped up in the kitchen.
With Wufei and Trowa on Doc J's fishing boat and I myself so very occupied with Hee... um... the distillery, Quatre was our main source of information in this early stage of our adventure.
Within the first week he supplied us with the name of a man that had caught his particular attention: Zechs Merquise.
Zechs had smuggled secret information for the royal courts of England and Spain, sometimes behind both their backs and to the advantage of a third party. As a triple agent, he betrayed his royal clients with the same smooth evasiveness he used to dupe his countless romantic conquests. His career ended with at least five death sentences in four European kingdoms. He was deserted at sea, but rescued by the henchmen of a lovesick Italian lady named Noin. Saved and set free again he turned his back on civilization and joined a marauding bunch of pirates called White Fang. The most striking thing about Zechs was certainly his face. He wore a flashy ivory mask over the upper half of his face, which gave him an air of mystery... but also had people wondering about his fashion sense.
Zechs was a regular at the inn, always lurking around somewhere, drinking and playing cards and that made him rather suspicious. He also seemed to be truly infatuated with Heero, which wasn't all that unusual—Heero was the heartthrob of the whole island— but Zechs really took the cake with his boldness and straightforward advances.
Most of the islanders had made a move on Heero since the boy had hit puberty, but were just as easily scared off by his father's open disapproval of any possible suitor, and that gives me a wonderful transition. Mr. Sawdown's peculiar—peculiar—objections. He certainly was a little too fastidious for a thief and crafty businessman, who might otherwise have seized any opportunity to make money. But all suitors fell into disfavour with Mr. Sawdown, even the wealthy ones, which was odd to say the least. He would instantly reject any son or daughter-in-law the little island possibly had to offer, which earned him much enmity and many hard feelings. As the island's only distiller, he'd always been rather well-liked and respected - until the thing with Heero. Now he was at odds with the whole island.
Poor Heero was the recipient of his father's temper tantrums, spending his days hiding behind soot and dirt and ignoring his suitors. Alas, refusing to speak to them had made him a little... silent.
And then there was me and Heero and the distillation of first-rate sugar cane rum. I still remember quite clearly the first few days after our arrival when we sat alone in the tiny wooden hut and performed a number of utterly complicated, more or less accidental procedures that must have been pretty dangerous. We weren't exactly what you would call kindred spirits. But I was determined to discover the sweet and charming sides of his character or else—if there weren't any sweet and charming sides to be discovered—settle with Heero the shrew!
My wooing had been off to a rough start, though, and since nothing I had tried seemed to be even remotely successful I eventually decided to stick to tradition. The pirate approach to new friendships and marriage was story-telling. Adventures, great quests and daring deeds— if they didn't win me Heero's heart (or at the very least his body) nothing would, I started to realize.
So, in the early morning hours of a cold November day while scrubbing, crushing and draining sugar canes I began my first story, the story of how I came to be, of my parents and their own passionate love affair. What better way to begin a courtship than with a tale of passionate love… or so I thought.
"It's a story of great passion!" I told him. "My mother was a beauty few men could have resisted, and as a matter of fact very few actually did… resist her, I mean. My father was a pirate. She saw him passing by her window where she sat all day combing her chestnut hair. Her house was close by the sea, you know, so she could watch the sailors strolling by on their way to the taverns. She caught his eye and winked at him and that was that. Their love was passionate but sadly short-lived— it lasted a very, very short time... um... say a night. The very next morning my father went to sea again and, well, my mother was back to combing her hair."
I must admit Heero didn't look particularly wooed. So I tried to do better with my next story, at noon in front of the bubbling distillation apparatus. "I may not have known my father, but I had a great many aunts and all of them were quite popular with the sailors that used to drop by for... um... visits. I learned all kinds of useful things from them, like how to pick pockets and play cards." Indeed, I had learned how to play for stakes, and cheat while doing it, long before I was out of my diapers.
By early afternoon, while we were still waiting for the alcohol to precipitate, I was telling him about my first adventures. When I was 12, I'd started working as a ship-boy on a large English three-master that was circumnavigating Africa. The journey took two years and all I'd done during that time was scrub the deck-planks, stern to bow. But by now I was clever enough to keep that little detail to myself. So I told him mainly about the heaps of gold we'd looted and of the artful tricks we'd played on those who had tried to oppose us. The scrubbing part was left out. And it may well have been that all the other stories I told him after that turned out a little more glorious and fascinating than they should have and Heero might just have thought me a little greater and braver than I really was but all's fair in love and war! And for the first time I really seemed to make some progress!
The first thing that changed was the way he looked Heero me. At the very beginning of our acquaintance he had merely glanced my way (clearly out of shyness*) and well, without speaking a word. But one day in November I discovered a difference. He actually looked at me. His mouth still refused to smile, but I could tell he wanted to. His traitorous lips had acquired a slight twitch and for some odd reason that made me almost deliriously happy. On rare occasions, his cheeks would turn the faintest pink, usually when I spoke of a beautiful woman I once had known (and admittedly I did that just to see him blush like that). I hadn't realized that I had turned into a story-teller until he began to listen to me with serious eyes and a gasping mouth. As he looked at me, completely forgetting to mask his interest while his hands were still scrubbing and crushing and draining away, he was both really funny to look at and a thing of unconscious beauty. Suddenly, it became quite easy to strike up conversations.
"How did you manage to get out of that?" was his favourite question and I did feel guilty when I answered him more often than not with the same answer...
"If I tell you now, I'll have not story left for tomorrow! Just be patient, Heero."
He snorted. "You are lying."
"I can't lie. Ask Wufei, he loves to talk about that topic."
"It's still not possible that you could have survived something like that."
"Have you ever been in something like that?"
"I don't have to be. It's not possible."
"Ouch— there you have it! I've cut my finger and it's your fault."
"Still not possible."
"Would you look at the blood! My finger is almost half cut off—"
"Baka," he said, face twitching.
"You could… kiss it better?"
And just in case you were wondering, he didn't kiss my finger. It wasn't half cut off either, but there was a lot of blood, really.
On another day - I was just about to tell him how Trowa found a shipwrecked Quatre in the middle of the Dead Sea, far away from any scrap of dry land - I managed to draw Heero into a longer conversation.
"He was alone there. Clinging to a figurehead?" he asked.
"Yes, he was."
Heero snorted softly.
"In most other stories people are clinging to planks," he informed me coolly.
"If you'd stop interrupting me I could get on with the story and tell you."
He sighed. "Go on."
"So, as I said before you interrupted me, Quatre was drifting at sea clinging to a figurehead. And it was, I might add, not just any random figurehead but the figurehead of the flagship of a royal fleet. As the true heir to a huge desert kingdom Quatre had had many enemies, even in his own family. It was just his bad luck to have 30 sisters who all hated him and envied him to no end since he was going to be king. So they were constantly scheming to put a forceful and preferably painful end to his claims to the throne. One night they decided to just get it over with and strangle him. Each of them tiptoed into his bedroom and in turn tried to murder him. That's how he got the twitching: He managed 29 of them quite smoothly but by the time the 30th arrived his strength was waning and she did succeed in cutting his air supply for a minute or two. He did survive, though, and his evil scheming sisters never bothered him again. But he still had to fear for his life and therefore decided to steal the complete royal fleet, take a handful of his most trusted men and sail away to find a new kingdom for himself."
"And that's when his ship was attacked and boarded and he was enslaved by pirates," Heero said, knowing far too many of my stories already, I realized.
"That would be rather boring, wouldn't it?"
He nodded.
"Well, his ship was attacked and boarded and he was thrown into the Dead Sea... by pirates."
Heero rolled his eyes, but kept listening all the same.
"Miraculously, Quatre and the figurehead floated on the surface when Trowa picked them up."
"Wood floats, Duo," Heero said, as if he were speaking to a toddler.
"But the figurehead was not supposed to float."
"It wasn't?" His face was twitching again. I could almost sense the smile threatening to break out on his face.
"Well, like any decent figurehead it was a symbol. Quatre's ship was called Sandrock and the figurehead was just that, a rock of—"
Upon my soul! What was that? Heero was laughing! A rich, completely unreserved, happy kind of laughter I'd never heard from him before.
"Duo, you baka," he gasped, as that wonderful laughter shook out of him.
"Ah, I might just as well go on with the story."
"Yes," he said, smiling. "Go on."
"Quatre was very grateful that Trowa had saved his life and he decided to stay with him as his first mate. He was still his first mate when I met the two of them years later."
"Were you still captain of the large English three-master then," he asked, eyes twinkling.
"Huh? Captain of—oh, you mean the three-master... erm... no. And I didn't tell you that I was the captain, did I?"
"You said you were quite possibly the most important person on the whole ship."
"Why, yes. Sure, the most important person... sort of... well, I met Quatre and Trowa. And now listen... and stop your smirking, will you?"
Ah yes, it seemed to go so well... until all of it decided to go awry instead.
* Yeah, right. Remember you don't have to believe everything Duo says:)
Notes: I know that there's little romance going on so far, but I finally figured out what's going to happen next:D Since February or so I wanted to beat romantic situations into this chapter, now I'm wiser and just post it. The fic was an the verge of dying due to neglection. But the next part can't possibly take longer, can it? Once in a while, things like one-year-breaks just happen:) That's one of the great mysteries of mankind. Although I won't hold it against you if you lost interest because of that :D