tentacruelest | 10th Wave

10th Wave

The cacophony of noise here is growing worse. Stow your bleating, lambs, or I'll cast yeh overboard to fill your jabbering mouths with seawater.

[Never mind that they're not even sailing over water at the moment. Jones can understand English, but is speaking in Scots Gaelic]

[Private to Sylvanas]

If yeh would oblige me a moment, m'lady..? I've something you might like to see.

[Private to Bush]

Yeh've been quiet, Warden. Plotting something?

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

Your articles don't apply to me, Bush. This was an act of swift retribution.

Not by the articles, Jones-- not here.

But you attacked him over the honor of her Ladyship, over sins of his.

Who deserves retribution out of you? I hear he is a god of Death, or was, just like you was the devil of sailors, are you so different, the pair of you, that you can judge him and consider yourself an innocent?

Do not presume to bring her into this. I killed Arthas because he irritated me, just as you are doing now. The name of Davy Jones has not been brought so low as to allow others to infringe upon its good graces. Despite your best efforts, I am still able to kill when need arises.

I don't consider myself anything; and certainly not innocent. The benefit of being a devil and a monster is going out and committing monstrosities with impunity.

I will presume, because I'm not quite as stupid as you take me for.

I have never seen a man so honourable and brave and so cowardly and low at the same time-!

Again; she had nothing to do with it. She did not ask, or even imply asking. I saw what I liked and took it.

[Deeply amused at this]

Seeing as how I was both a legitimate sea captain as well as a pirate, I'll take your word as compliment to both sides of meself. So long as it's the sea captain who's the honorable one and the cowardly pirate the other.

I mean both of'm the man-- the one with a heart so broken he'd rather cut it out of his chest than live with it.

You've played the devil but showed yourself the man here, Jones. Still courtly and still with a heart, even if it ain't behind your ribs.

Of course she didn't ask you for it, I've no thought she did. But it was for her you did it.

Enough, Bush. I'll take whatever punishment you see fit to give, but I will not allow talk like this in my presence.

You're no dumb animal that fears the lash or a spell cleaning the heads. You won't shy away from'm again.

And since you're not an animal, you'll talk.

[Seething, Jones has to contend that Bush is right; punishment and discipline in their age is not likely to deter him from what he wants. He has the capacity to withstand punishment while refusing to learn a thing.

Talking about his feelings, however, is never something he's been comfortable with, and the idea of having to do that threatens to throw him into a rage]

And you'll do that how, exactly?

By talking to you. Because I believe you will grow tired sooner or later of being misunderstood.

You take me for a 14-year-old lass writing to her tear-soaked diary? I am not misunderstood except by those whom I have no interest in making understand.

You know what a dull wit I am, Jones. I can misunderstand you pretty neatly. And after an eternity or so you will be tired of me being wrong, and put me right.

You don't have an eternity to spare-ah.

I can outlast yeh, William Bush.

But I do, Jones. I have as much a one as you.

And I will continue saying that you are a scorned lover turned your scorn on everyone around you, and that despite it you would risk your life for a devoted friend.

Yeh don't have the patience for an eternity of servitude with no results. I do.

You will say it to no one or you'll feel just what my scorn can do to your beaten, broken body. She is not my friend. She is nothing.

[At that, Bush lofts both eyebrows at him, somewhat bemused by this judgement of his fickleness. If ever mortal man was born to trudge and serve through unfair treatment and monotony interspersed with danger, Bush is of the breed.]

As you like, Jones. In another ten years I'll toast you to my fickleness, and then another ten after that.

And Calypso, just a sad chapter in your past, forgotten? You lie badly for a pirate.

In another ten years I'll have killed you more times than you'd like to count. Are ye prepared for that?

[At this, Jones grows cold and stressed, anxious and angry and flustered. When it's matters of ship and sail, he knows precisely where he stands. Love is another battlefield altogether.

He immediately leaps on the defensive; a definite departure from usual tactics]

She was not so degraded as to be a bit player in any man's book. You cannot - do not speak her name-! - she was...

She is not Sylvanas.

Death frightened me more before I'd been through it twice, Jones.

I'm glad you recognize in her faults and virtues both, Sylvanas is not her. It'd be unfair to the lady if you didn't. To both of'm.

Then I'll be sure to think up something that will frighten you.

Did yeh ever wonder why it was that you could control the sea as you do, Bush? Where on land you'd be slow-going and lumbering at grueling pace, on the open ocean you could cover twice the distance in half the time?

You have her t'thank for it. She's wild and untamable and I was a fool and I paid for my mistakes. Never again will I know joy or rage like that. I am heartless; I died heartless; I will forever be heartless. There is nothing you can do to alter that.

We sacrifice to her like pagans still. Blood and sweat and days without water, weevily bread, dying in tempests. And we love her. You ain't the only man ever loved her. But you loved her more'n most.

That means something to you or you wouldn't be so angry now.

I was a fool to think she could love me back. She abandoned me to die. I mattered as little to her as a flea.

And still my wretched heart beats. I hear it. I hate it.

When we next reach port, let me bury it again.

It's yours to bury. I won't prevent you.

I can't and won't stop the Admiral from bringing it back as suits him, though.

He would not be so cruel as to inflict it on me time and time again.

...Jones, the only worse and more capricious captain I ever had than the Admiral was Sawyer, and that poor man was mad.

I don't know any Sawyer. But I can say the Admiral likely knows precisely what he is doing.

And here I thought myself the terror of any ship.

Private

Private

Private

Private

Re: Private

: Private

Private

Private

Private

Private

Private

Re: Private

Private

Private

Private

Private

Private

Private

Private

Private

Private

Re: Private

Private

Re: Private

Private