Jolly Sailor || Elizabeth Swann

14

The east India trading company raided tortuga two weeks after Benj had been left on the beaches. His mother, so kind and loving, had no idea how to heal a human. The pod had done their best but they couldn't keep him. Mermaid politics always complicated. So his mother had bequeathed him to his friends. Issac and Jeannette collecting him from the sand and dragging his shaky form back up the beach and into their familiar inn. The merman's treasure forever his safe haven.

"What trouble did you get yourself in this time?" Issac grunted, Benjy sprawled across his back. The merman's leg splinted to driftwood with several pieces of seaweed.

Benjy had laughed weakly. His body had gone through dramatic changes to survive the depths the kraken had dragged him. Scales covered patches of his skin even in human form, no longer just tattoos, and they glinted in the light. His gills were vivid red scars across his neck, visible and bright. The scales were his usual colour of grey blue and they covered patches of his shoulders crossed his rib cage, glinting in the sun. His shirt long lost during the first hazy days with his mother's pod where his consciousness was fleeting. He didn't remember much of those days. "Only a kraken and Davy jones", he grunted as Issac shifted him to begin climbing the stairs of the Inn.

Jeanette smacked him on the arm and Benjy yelped. His body was still adjusting to the changes and everything ached like he had been trampled by horses. He was pretty sure he was running a fever as well. "One of these days you're going to end up dead", she scolded weakly. Her hit must have left a bruise. He was bruising like a overripe peach and it was not a good look. His skin adjusting to the scales and colouring red with irritation.

"Pirate's life for me", he mumbled, exhaustion returning. Together, though Jeanette's smaller frame meant that it was mostly Issac doing the work, they managed to get him back to his room and down onto the cot. He groaned in pain at the movement and sighed as he was settled onto the thin mattress.

Jeanette dragged a blanket over his bare chest, tutting at the patches of scales and the irritated skin surrounding it. "You've grown them on your cheeks too", she hummed as she rubbed her thumb gently over them. They stung and Benjy hissed at her, his teeth still human but sharper than before. He wasn't sure if he would ever recover to his original humanity. The scales felt pretty permanent and they itched in the air. Dotting up his arms, across his collarbones and shoulders with a few sprinkling his face like grey freckles.

"Are your ears pointy?" Issac swiped Benj's hair out of the way. "They are! You look very fishy".

"Oh fuck off", Benjy grunted. He was so tired and his eyes were drooping.

Jeanette just chuckled and patted his cheek. "You're still beautiful. Just a bit more fishy now". Benjy huffed at her. "Issac will go and get you some food".

"I guess I've been told", Issac smiled and Benjy laughed as the bigger man left the room.

"Now", Jeanette grinned as she arranged her skirts to take a seat at his side. "Now, give me the whole story. What happened to Ms Swan?" Benj smiled to himself as he thought back to the kiss. Will and Elizabeth both owned his heart it seemed. Not that he particularly wanted it back. He hummed, a blissful smile spreading across his face as sleep threatened to sweep him back under. He had been sleeping so much recently. His mind brought up the image of Elizabeth's flushed face after their kiss. Her parted lips and the way she breathed into him, skin warm and lashes brushing cheeks. Will underwater with the air Benjy had blown into his lungs, hair dancing in the current and eyes half lidded. Both of them were beautiful. He dozed off before he could verbalise it, their faces in his mind.

Jeanette woke him not long after to weasel the whole story out of him while Issac fed him spoonfuls of porridge, Benjy's limbs too sore to work. He fell asleep right after and woke the next morning to Issac knitting a sock next to his bed. As the days passed and his time awake grew longer, neither Issac or Jeanette left him unattended. One of them was always on hand to keep him occupied while the other bothered their staff with the running of the tavern below. Jeanette reading to him or telling stories of their lives in tortuga. Issac often knitting, more silent than his wife but still engaging in conversations to distract Benjy from clawing at his own skin. His blood restless from being sick for so long.