A Fairy's Tale (Eustass Kid & OC)

Chapter 3: Welcome to The Victoria Punk

She woke up under water. At least, it definitely seemed that way; everything looked hazy to her, swirling around in a muggish blur of muted sights and sounds. A rolling sea fog in a shattered mirror. It should have been discomfitting, but it turned out to be more of an odd sort of comfort, a hazy blanket that hid her away from the rest of the world while she treaded the line between awareness and sleep.

She heard noises. Words. People, she thought, and tried to turn her limp neck muscles towards them to satisfy her mild curiosity. Two blurs were there, one red, one blue, both uncomfortably large. To her slight disappointment, their noises stopped when she stirred.

The blur closest to her, the red one, paused before bobbing closer.

"She's awake," it said, its tone muted and slow to her ears as she was forced to blink and squint to make sense of its changing shape. It said something else, but it was like trying to listen from the other side of a wall. She couldn't hear it. Must not have been important.

Her eyes had just begun to close again when her chin was grabbed and her face tilted upward.

"Hm... Maybe not," the blur muttered as it leaned in. Something waved in front of her face, "Yo, Bright-eyes. You with me? Wake the fuck up, sunshine."

She tried to lay her head back down. She wanted to go back to sleep. She tried to tell that to the blur, but it just came out as a whine.

Another voice joined in, "It's only been a day, Kid. Be patient. In her state, it's a wonder she survived for this long."

"Yeah, whatever. Fuckin' weak..." the red blur grumbled. She felt her upper body being lifted and groaned in protest, squirming away when something was brought up to her lips.

"Quit whining and open your damn mouth," it demanded roughly. "Wakey wakey, eggs and bong water."

"It's a tincture, idiot."

Something pinched her nose. When she opened her mouth to breathe, a spoonful of bitter liquid was promptly shoved in, after which a massive hand laid itself over her lips to force her to swallow. The process was repeated once, twice, and a third time; by then, she decided to just lay back and let it happen, too exhausted to be annoyed any more.

_______꧁꧂_______

Kid was worried. He'd never admit it and would probably slaughter anyone who somehow summoned the brass balls to dare point it out, but there it was, and he fucking hated it.

He had lugged her tiny body back to the ship and locked her in the brig while she was out; no use dirtying a cabin with the filth covering that ratty little stick of a body, he figured, and they could question her when she woke up. Killer tended to her feet while the rest of them finished getting the haul back up to the ship, and she slept through that too.

Considering how weak she looked, it wasn't at all surprising that she was still sleeping hours later. Heat, with that fucking bleeding heart of his, had given the unconscious prisoner his own bedding, pillows, blankets and all, sentencing his dumb self to a sleepless night. Kid had caught the tail end of that conversation between Mohican and Heat:

'The fuck are you doing? She's a prisoner.'

'I mean yeah... but she's a cold prisoner, so uh... I dunno, don't give me that look!'

'Whatever, flames-for-brains, have fun not sleeping.'

'Maybe I will! Jackass...'

It was fourteen hours later, almost noon the next day, when they realized something was wrong. When Kid went to check on her, he found her writhing around in the tangled and sweat-soaked sheets that Heat had given her, pale as death and whimpering like a kicked puppy.