The Night I Found Home (The Forever Pirates) #1

013

A/N: I'm publishing this early for @BluteZeit
You're welcome :)

Seonghwa 

Pain. 

That is all that clogged my senses. 

Everything just fucking hurt. 

It hurt for so long that I didn't think it would ever stop. 

I don't know when I reached consciousness again but I know it had been awhile and yet I was still being held down by pain. 

Lights blinded me whenever I cracked my eyes open the slightest bit, it crashed into me and made my ears ring. 

"Seonghwa?" I heard a gentle voice ask. I didn't know who I expected to be by my bedside, I didn't know if I expected anyone to be there. This felt like my fault, even if I didn't know if it was. It felt like it, in my heart. 

People died- the kids...

And it was my fault? Wasn't it? It was my father, that applied to me. No matter how much I scrubbed my hands clean of blood, his blood still ran through my veins. I was my father's son. Didn't his actions apply to me? 

I groaned in pain, fighting the drowsiness. It look a long time until I could even process who it was. 

Yunho sat there, his hands holding mine, waiting for me to come back. 

Maybe it was the concern in his eyes but I broke down, sobs racking through me as images of what took place haunted my thoughts. I felt myself being pulled into his arms and he held me while I cried. 

"Yer're okay. Yer're safe-"

"But the kids aren't." I wept. 

I had no tears left for myself. All of the pity I had for having such a cruel father was gone. But what I did have was anger and pain that any of it even happened. I didn't know what I could've done better. I didn't know a way that could've gotten more people out alive. I didn't know how to handle such a loss. 

I cried and cried and cried until I passed out again, and this time the darkness was more welcomed. 

***

San stood behind me a couple feet away, his hand extended to catch me if I fell. I stumbled here and there but I refused to let my own inability to work my legs properly stop me from walking around the ship. 

A lot of them visited me but having visitors felt hard to handle. To act like I was a victim in any of this just felt like utter bullshit to me. 

I had been staring at my hands more times than I could count, seeing the dried caked on blood underneath my nails. That was one thing, but walking out on the deck and seeing that blood spot- 

"If one of you make so much as a peep, I will kill not you, but the person next to you. Do I make myself clear?" 

Jongho stared at the soldier with an unyielding glare.  

"Oh...well, that works too." The soldier said, taking the back of his musket and slamming it into the pirates head next to him. The pirate fell to the ground, not even having a chance to get back up when the soldier slammed the heel of his boot against the pirate's head repeatedly, stomping until his brains was splattered and stained into the wooden boards.