adventure lies on the horizon

==>Rosemary: Describe your mother.

Her face scrunches up into a disgusted scowl. “She was a horrible excuse for a human being and even worse for a mother and she deserved exactly what Papa gave her—,”

And suddenly, she calms, straightening herself, her anger melting into an odd form of honesty. She glances to the side, her expression bitter yet soft.

“…But I guess that ain’t really what you’re lookin’ for, is it.”

She sighs, looking down. “She was young— sixteen, I think, when I was born. She didn’t expect me but she was a whore and really should have,” she chuckled dryly. “She kept me for a year and some sorta miracle brought her and Papa together again and she forced marriage— tch. You don’t bind a pirate to land. Nothin’ good will come from it.”

“She was short.” And this time, she almost sort of smiled. “She was short! Can ya believe it?” She raised her hand in front of her forehead, emphasizing her own height. “Brown hair, freckles… pale,” she tapped the back of her hand. “Green eyes.” The corner of her right eye. “Irish, I think. Name was Molly.”

She paused, shaking her head. “She couldn’t mother, though. At all. I don’t think she was ever taught.”

Heh. “She and Papa fought a lot. And, eventually, when I was seven, he got fed up and boom—!” She made a gun with her hand, pretending to shoot her temple. “She died.”

Another pause, and sort of distant, quiet laughter, and even quieter words.

“Good riddance.”

They’re almost done.

Almost done, almost finished, all of the riches are almost all theirs for the taking— or, well, they are already, but they just need to get them off of this damn boat and onto her beautiful ship, except she really doesn’t want to help in the least, so she’s just watching her crew do all the work. She’s watching, and she reaches into her coat for a cigar and a match and she’s about to strike it when

when she hears crying.

She stops moving, she stops breathing, and suddenly time is moving very very slowly, and it’s all she can do to force her legs to carry her to the awful dreaded sound of a child in pain. It doesn’t take her long to find the child at all and she sort of wishes it did. 

The crew is confused, they’ve stopped their work to stare and wonder what the hell is shes doing? They call out to her but it’s as if they don’t exist anymore, right now it’s just Rosemary and the boy in pain.

She kneels, swallowing hard.

“What’s your name, lad?”

It takes him a few seconds to respond, and rightfully so. For once in her life, she’s patient.

“J-James.”

“James,” she repeated softly. “That’s a good name. I’m Rosemary.”

“I-it hurts, Rosemary.”

“It hurts?” she questioned, feigning confusion. Her eyes flickered up to the fallen yardarm crushing his legs. “What hurts?”

“Legs… m-my legs…,”

“Ah…,” she reaches out to push the arm, and he cries out and it occurs to her that it’s a miracle he can feel his legs at all. “I’m sorry.”

By this time there’s a hand on her shoulder, but she shakes it off, violently, on instinct. She turns to look over her shoulder just slightly, and if looks could kill he’d drop dead on the spot.

“Where’s Dad?”

She whips back very quickly, her breathe catching. “…He’s… swimming.”

“He can’t swim—,”

“He learned.”

And it’s quiet again, except for his sobs. Rosemary reaches out, smoothing his hair with one hand. 

“M-make it g-go away, Rosemary.”

She freezes again, and it’s difficult to breathe.

Make it go away make it go away make it go away.  

James couldn’t be older than ten. His legs are no doubt completely mangled under that damned piece of wood, and she knows for a fact that even if they managed to free him from the horrible weight, infection would get to him far too soon and he would 

die

painfully

and slowly.

Please make it go away.

She’s certain the boy doesn’t know what he’s asking of her. 

Or maybe he does.

She doesn’t know what scares her more.

Eventually, she breathes. “Make it… go away?” She sounds broken, but no, no! She needs to sound strong, for the boy, for the dying boy she barely knows. 

“Please.”

“Are you sure?”

“Please, Rosemary…,”

He’s asking so nicely.

Slowly, mechanically, she reaches for her flintlock, cocks it. She tries to soothe the boy, as if gently caressing his cheeks and his forehead would have him healed. 

If only.

She does anyway.

Somewhere along the line, after he asked please but before she presses the barrel to his delicate skull, she starts shushing him, like a mother would. She stops, only to smile and say

“You’re a great lad, James,”

and pull the trigger

and swallow tears and stomach bile.

——

She forced the crew to sink the plunder along with the ship.

She didn’t eat for a few days and was drunk the entire time during that.

No one dared question her. 

Not even herself.

“Why are you always such a bitch?” It was Jason, this time, who snapped, yelling at a pitch that hurt poor Juliette’s ears, giving Rosemary the nastiest of glares.

“Why— why do you insist on being on condescending ans sarcastic and— and pushing us away, even if we’re honest to God trying to help you you just— are stubborn and downright rude and it’s so goddamn annoying and I’m sick of it.” Jason was gesturing wildly, almost to the point of shaking. Juliette had managed to turn her attention away from the sheer volume of his voice to trying fruitlessly to clam him down. 

Rosemary all the while was sitting very uncharacteristically: quietly, staring at the ground, chewing her lip, letting her blood boil slowly and silently instead of releasing it all in one destructive outburst. This made Jason even more furious.

“That wasn’t a rhetorical question, you little bitch! I want an answer!”

Her hands were clasped tightly, one of her index fingers tapping the back of the other hand. In fact, everything about her was stiff right now, and Nikolai furrowed his brows, glanced into her eyes, and—

That wasn’t anger. That was sadness. And frustration, and… longing, too.

Before anyone could say anything else, and before the silence suffocated them, Rosemary spoke.

“Do you know what today is?”

Her tone was quiet and distant, like she was trying to remember something, and her words were totally unexpected. Jason blinked. 

“Uh, the third? Of July.”

She just nodded. Nikolai licked his lips.

“Hey, are you alri—,”

“No.”

Everyone stared. Juliette looked anxious.

“I need a smoke,” Rosemary said eventually, but what she pulled out of her coat pocket was a flask. 

“I’ll be back later.” And she disappeared deep into the forest.

All was silent. The tension in the air was tangible, but finally Juliette stood. 

“I’m going to go look for her.”

Neither of the boys objected. 

——

As it turned out, “deep into the forest” wasn’t actually all that deep.

At least, it didn’t seem like it, and it was painfully easy to find the girl when the scent of alcohol caught Juliette’s nose. She didn’t stop walking until her foot bumped into Rosemary’s arm, and then she knelt.

“You’ve had a lot, haven’t you?”

Rosemary said nothing. Juliette sighed, cupping her face in her hands successfully after a few attempts. Her face was warm and wet with tears. 

“What’s wrong, Rosie?”

“Don’t call me that.” Her accent was heavier.

Juliette just smiled softly, brushing some hair behind her ear. “What’s troubling you, ma petite?”

“Get off of me!” Rosemary shouted, shaking violently out of Juliette’s grip. Her face fell, eyes now filled with concern. 

“I-I’m sorry,” Rosemary choked out after several seconds. “I can’t. I c-can’t—,”

“Can’t what, darling?” Juliette murmured, hugging the girl and smoothing her hair. This time, Rosemary didn’t protest.

“Can’t get close,” she sniffled. Like she was trying to cry, but she couldn’t anymore. “B-been there, done that… I can’t… risk it.” 

“Risk what?”

“Losin’ ya.”

There was a long stretch of silence. Juliette pressed her lips to the other’s forehead.

“What happened, Rosemary?”

It was quite a while before she responded at all. Juliette was patient.

“F-four years ago, t’day, my dad— my dad was shot. Right ‘n fronta me. He died in my arms.”

Juliette drew a long breath.

“He was all I had. I loved him so much an’— but I lost him, right ‘n fronta me, an’, an’ cryin’s just so weak y’know, an’ I was a mess, an’ an’ it can’t happen again. I can’t— I won’t let it happen again. I can’t do that, not again.”

“So you push people away in the easiest and most surefire way you know how.”

“Mhm.”

Juliette didn’t say anything for a long, long time, only holding Rosemary dry sobbing in her arms. Poor girl had already spent all her tears, she thought.

“I’m sorry,” Juliette whispered gently, rubbing her back. “I truly am. But you can’t use that as an excuse to cuss people out and be rude to everyone. I wa hard for you, I know, but try to be a bit more… civil. Alright?”

A long pause.

“Rosemary?”

“No promises.”

Juliette just laughed.

“An’ ‘f y’tell anyone ‘bout what jus’ happened, I’ll bite yer head off. Gotit?”

Juliette smiled and kissed her forehead. “Yes, of course.”

unedameavecrienmaislaclasse:

She wasn’t in Heaven, nor was she in Hell. 

Neither was she a ghost, a spirit condemned to walk the earth  with only her soul.

No, of course she wasn’t a ghost. Nations, she’s fairly certain, cannot become ghosts, especially if the death is only temporary, as hers is. 

That doesn’t make it any less agonizing.

There is nothing to hear, or feel, or smell, or taste, or see. There is just inky, inky blackness.

Time is imperceptible. She can’t tell if she’s been dead for a day or a month (though the latter was unlikely). 

She can’t move, either. Or talk, which is worse than not moving, because if she could speak at least she could try to contact someone from the waking world, tell them she’s alright, there’s no need to worry.

She’s dead in body, comatose in soul. 

And she just wants it to end.

prompt; why can’t you stop screaming?

SHUT UP.

those were words she heard often, and not in the kindest of tones. it’s okay, though, because she’ll shout right back with just as much fire as has been thrown at her. 

she screams, a lot, because it’s fun. sometimes she tries to make herself sound angry, or sad, or horrified, but then they run in and tell her to SHUT UP and ruin all her fun. but she keeps doing it.

she likes hearing what she sounds like. the way her voice fluctuates and breaks and flows over the air, and how it drills into the minds of those who always tell her to SHUT UP. she grins, because it agitates them so. 

mostly, though, she wants to try and work out the perfect scream— the perfect scream, for when she’s standing on that tall, tall building looking down a the tiny ant-people before she steps off, grinning, grinning, because no one will ever tell her to SHUT UP again, because she’ll show them, and she’ll 

MAKE

THEM

PAY.

unedameavecrienmaislaclasse:

He said to leave him alone, but she doesn’t want to, at all.

Because she’s old. She’s very old, very, very old, and she’s seen enough faces and lived enough lives to know a tortured soul when she sees one, even if that soul is buried deep within an inhuman body and a distorted voice. 

She wants to help him, but she doesn’t know how and she’s fairly certain that he doesn’t, either, and then it comes back to he wants to be left alone but he doesn’t and she can tell and nobody deserves to be alone.

Nobody.

So she waits.

She waits, quietly, for the right moment.

And then, maybe, just maybe, he won’t want to be alone anymore.

April 5th, 1704.

It’s Rosemary’s fourteenth birthday.

It’s the first birthday she spends alone.

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She’s actually rather ruthless.

She cares not to destroy all in her path with a passive face— and sometimes not, which is worse; twisted grins are always worse.

It’s terribly frightening how one so young can be so cruel.

The first stage is denial.

She denies their touch, their smile, their voice, their name. She will deny their very existence, if it comes down to it, even though she is completely unable to distract her thoughts from them, even in her dreams.

This will go on for a pathetically long amount of time— for days, weeks, months— before the second stage finally dawns: cold revelation. Followed quickly by the third, anger.

Not at them, no, of course not. At herself. She rocks on her heels, pulls at her hair and bites her lip, and hits a thing or two or three or twenty. And right as she’s wheezing for air, sweaty, tired, bloody, the fourth stage settles in. Fear.

She rocks on her heels, pulls at her hair and bites her lip, but this time she cannot do a thing about it. Her throat is dry no matter how much she drinks, and she’s almost constantly shaking, because these are the very emotions she’s trained herself for years and years not to feel. She’s conditioned herself to be devoid of most feeling, to put up walls and push away anyone who even remotely tried to reach out.

And yet, here she is, having an emotional breakdown because her mind is dangerously preoccupied with the horrifyingly wonderful thoughts of them, and they won’t go away, no matter how much she ignores them.

It’s a long, hard struggle to the fifth stage, but when it’s reached, she licks her chapped lips, drums her fingers on the table and finally allows herself to think those dreaded words.

I’m in love.

Her movements still, and she is frozen; there is almost complete silence, but then she speaks.

“I’m in love.”

Daggers on her tongue, those words are. They’re painful and they terrify her, but there’s nothing she can do about it now than act like the mature adult she pretends to be.

“I’m in love,” she repeats, but now the words are full of wishes and dreams and longing. If only she knew how to fulfill them.