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

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.

I wouldn't think you did. He served with Nelson, and you're well before Nelson.

This ship is brimming over with terrors. You can't be the only one.

Who the damned hell is Nelson?

I've just killed one. I'd say that makes me one of the biggest.

And his friend or his conspirator or whatever Mister Riddick is is unmoved except to threaten to take the 'cephalo' off your 'pod' whatever that means. It wasn't quite English even before this.

Nelson was a war hero; a sea captain as brave and clever as any you've ever met, and as an Admiral he thrashed Boney at Trafalgar. One of the finest the Navy's ever seen; there's few of his quality.

If you aim to let him, that's your business. I understand consequences well enough; and now Arthas does, too.

I'll assume 'Boney' is another sea captain of yours. I'll save my reservations for when I meet him face to face. It was I who carried the souls of Henry Morgan, Black Bart Roberts, Ned Low and many others to their graves.

[Bush scoffs, offended.] Bonaparte's no sea captain. He was a General of the French Army and now he thinks he's an Emperor. He had his teeth in all Europe except Britain, for a bad few years. Admiral Villeneuve or however it's pronounced was the commanding officer of the action. He lived to return to France, and that's where Bonaparte had him murdered for failure, so they say.

And God rest his soul, Admiral Lord Nelson died at in that battle. That was the year five; in eight-- no, nine-- years there hasn't been another like him except Hornblower.

And as it happens I don't have a mind to let anyone murder you. I was told that there's no death for punishment her and I'll abide by those laws.

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