pirate king (pirate!au) ➵ ateez ✔️

missing (you)

San wakes up with a gasp and a soundless scream clawing at his throat.

"Don't go-"

His fingers close around empty air.

For a moment, he can't think straight, panic still reigning dominant in his mind contrasting with the heaviness of his limbs, as if he's been asleep for a long, long time. All he can feel is his heart beating unevenly in his chest, each thump painful against his ribs. Cold sweat trickles down his back.

He's supposed to be doing something. He's a healer, he's supposed to be saving someone-

"Woah, woah, woah, calm down." At the sound of a familiar voice, San whirls around - to see Seonghwa sitting next to his bed, a mild smile on his lips as he peels an apple with a small paring knife. He immediately notices the dark shadows under the cook's eyes, the way his cheeks have become thinner, more gaunt. But his smile is the same as it's always been, if not a little more tired than it used to be. "It's good to see you awake, San-ie."

"I... what...?" There's a painful ache throbbing in his head, and San rubs at his temples in an attempt to alleviate it. Slowly, the healer side of him commands, calm down, and process bit by bit. San decides on the first question he can think off. "How are the rest of the crew?"

Seonghwa laughs at the urgency of his voice, careful to maintain steady hands so that the apple peel spirals down in a pretty red ribbon. "Of course the first thing you ask about when you wake up is the rest of the crew. Wooyoung and Yunho were taking bets, you know?"

From the lighthearted tone of Seonghwa's voice, the rest of the crew must be doing fine. Or at the very least, not in mortal danger, like San had been worrying about. Now that his main concern is taken care of, he moves on to the next question nudging at his mind. "How long have I been asleep?"

San was expecting something along the lines of two to three days. He is not prepared for Seonghwa's answer of 'two weeks'.

San can only stare. Seonghwa isn't the type to make jokes like this, that's more of Wooyoung or Yunho's thing, but if it were anyone else other than the cook saying it, San might have been tempted to laugh. Two weeks... that's closer to a coma than a prolonged period of sleep. And San has just begun to notice this, but the floor isn't shifting and rolling under them like he's used to, and instead of the familiar scent of sea salt in the air, he smells... smoke and metal. The sort of smell that only hangs around a town, just like the one he'd lived nearby when he was a child. "Seonghwa... " he says slowly, "Where are we?"

This isn't the Treasure goes unsaid.

Seonghwa's hands pause in peeling the apple, before he sighs and sets the half peeled fruit down on the bedside table. The apple does not roll of the edge, like it would on a ship. He's not sure if he likes this sort of different. "So... you don't remember either," Seonghwa murmurs quietly, as if he's... disappointed. Before San can ask what he means by that, Seonghwa only claps his friend on the shoulder comfortingly. "No matter, most of the crew woke up the same way as well. It may come as a bit of a surprise to you, but we're actually in Nassau."

He's in a bed with clean sheets, no chains shackling him here and no steel barring the windows, so there must be some other explanation as to why they're in the stronghold of the Royal Navy, of all places, but San can't help the way the blood drains from his face at the name of the port city. Once again, he wonders of this is some sort of joke Wooyoung and Yunho have put him up to. From the serious look on Seonghwa's face, though, it isn't.

"Wow, must be nice for you, being back home," he manages to croak out. They must be awaiting investigation, a trial of some sort, and without a doubt execution. Seonghwa only smiles lightly.