Ship In A Bottle || South Park Pirate AU

Four

In which Kyle tries his hand at swordplay.

Kyle slept fitfully that night. This was in part because the floor was not a pleasant place to rest, but as there were no free hammocks or bunks, that was where he lay, with a threadbare pillow and a threadbare blanket, in a cramped cabin below deck, where pirates were packed in like sardines. He was accustomed to sharing a dorm, having done so during his years at boarding school, so the snoring and snuffling was nothing new. The scrabbling, however, was unexpected.

"What was that?" he whispered into the darkness. Someone groaned and sat up, but he couldn't tell who it was until he spoke.

"What was what?"

"The scratching, Butters. Don't you hear it?"

"Oh, that. Don't worry, it's only the rats."

"Rats?" Kyle squealed, louder than he meant to, earning a few hisses from those he'd woken.

"They're harmless," Butters said. "Pay them no mind."

"Don't you have a ship's cat to catch them?"

"Craig doesn't trust cats, on account of her parrot."

Kyle was about to remark that a rat-free ship was well worth ruffling a few feathers, but then someone snapped, "Will you two be quiet?" and he heard Butters curl back up in his hammock again, and it was clear the conversation was done for the night.

The main cause of his insomnia was, of course, his return to South Port. He tried to think up ways to stop it, but each and every scenario he played out in his head ended the same way: the reveal of his identity. Eventually, he came to the grim conclusion that the best thing he could do was nothing at all. Stay calm, keep his head down, and pray to God that no one recognised him.

Despite his father's reputation, he himself had remained mostly out of the public eye until recently, when his engagement to the Princess of England was announced. This had been as much news to him as it was to everyone else, with the arrangement conducted by his parents without any care for his own enthusiasm for Phillipa, or lack thereof. It hadn't even been through them that he'd first found out, but from catching sight of his own portrait on the front page of the paper in a shop window. Royal Engagement! Broflovski Son to Wed Princess Phillipa. Kyle had pressed his face up against the glass and stared in unbridled horror. He couldn't bring himself to read the article, but he had noticed, with irritation, that the artist had altered his features – made his nose smaller, jaw sharper, left out his freckles and tamed his hair in a way that he could only dream of doing in real life. That permanent scowl of his had also been dropped, in favour of a polite smile. The boy on the front page wasn't him. It was the son his father wanted.

After an eon of tossing and turning on the hardwood floor, he at last drifted off. Kyle dreamt he was a marionette, with strings embedded in his arms, legs and head that were pulled taught by an unseen hand. It walked him and talked him, until Kyle strained at his bonds with all his might. The string snapped and he was sent flying, landing in a tangled heap, motionless. A puppet is given life by a puppeteer; Without one, he is nothing.

He woke in a cold sweat, and for that one dreadful moment where fiction and reality are blurred, he thought he was still wooden, and lifeless. But then he heard someone sigh in their sleep, and he remembered who and where he was. And then it was dreadful in a different way. For a while, he lay, listening to the gentle creaking and groaning of the ship, like a whale song, out of tune. At one point, he thought he heard the distant sound of someone crying, but it was too faint for him to be certain. When he could stand stewing in his own thoughts no longer, he rose, and tiptoed out of the cabin.