Ship In A Bottle || South Park Pirate AU

Seven

In which the hatchet is buried, and then immediately dug up again.

Craig was pacing the deck when Kyle and Stan emerged from below. Kyle could tell she was in a bad mood, just by how sharply her head jerked upwards when they approached.

"Took you long enough." The white bandage across her nose was stark against her brown skin, even when lit by nothing but the moon. Kyle might have felt a pang of empathy for the pain she was suffering through right now if she hadn't immediately sprung a passive aggressive jab at him.

"I was dressing," he mumbled, rubbing his eyes. "I couldn't find my stockings."

Craig just snorted, as if this were hard to believe, falling into step beside him and Stan as they left the ship. "I still don't see why he has to come," she grumbled, seemingly to Stan but loud enough for Kyle to hear. But he was too tired to rise to the bait and was doing his best to tune her complaints out. Stan's voice cut through instead.

"Need I remind you of the help he gave you last time?" he said. "I don't think it's Kyle who should be the subject of your wrath."

Craig shoved her hands in her pockets and stared at the cobbles beneath her feet and said nothing, though it was clear who she was thinking of. Who they were all thinking of.

The streets were deserted at this hour, and any sense of safety had vanished with the people. Kyle had thought he might feel more relaxed when they were out alone, but with the way the shadowed buildings loomed over them, he was no less on edge. He tugged his coat tighter around himself and stared at the cloudy, starless sky, thinking of the night ahead. A broken nose he could fix. But what about a broken arm? Or a broken leg? Or a broken neck? "Will you fight back this time?" he asked. "If she attacks you?"

Craig chewed on her bottom lip. "I don't think I could hit Tweek."

Kyle was about to respond that Craig had longer arms than Tweek and thus would actually have an advantage, but then realised what she really meant. "In that case, I'm not sure we should be going back there," he said. "There's no reason to believe that Tweek is going to receive us any better than last time." He said 'us.' He meant 'you.'

Craig didn't answer, so Stan did. "Last night was Tweek getting it out of her system. She's had a day to cool off and reflect," he said. "I'm willing to bet that she doesn't want that fight to be the way things end."

"Do you really think so?" Kyle asked Craig. He had gotten the impression that Tweek had rage flowing through her veins instead of blood, and that it was a permanent fixture.

"Tweek and I had a... complicated relationship," said Craig. "Yesterday was not the first time we've fought."

"But was it the first physical fight?"

"Yes," she admitted.

"So then don't you think it's different, this time?"

"I don't know yet, Kyle." She tipped her head back and sighed. "Maybe I don't want this to be the way things end either."

Kyle let it drop, though privately he thought this way was preferable to risking more fractures. He stifled a yawn. "At the very least, could it not have waited till tomorrow? Or at least a little earlier than, uh—"

"Half past two in the morning," said Stan. "It's half past two in the morning. That's when the tavern closes, so it will be more private, which, as we've learned, is better than the alternative."

"The alternative being a crowd of rowdy sailors egging her on," said Kyle.

Craig groaned and pawed at her stomach with the heel of her hand. "I wish I hadn't eaten so much soup earlier. It feels like it's turning to lead inside me."