The pirate boy (Frerard, Petekey)

Chapter nineteen - gangsters don't cry

Chapter nineteen - gangsters don't cry

(therefore therefore i'm mister misty-eyed)

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"You up for another round?" Gerard asked breathlessly.

We had been fighting since the cold morning hours, and by now it was mid-afternoon and I'd had no sustenance all day. Gerard was panting and half covered in bruises, and a messy streak of blood from when my sword caught him ran across his cheekbone, but he still seemed determined to keep fighting until the sun went down. Or until the sun burned out.

I just wanted to go to bed.

"C'mon, pretty boy," he teased. "Don't tell me you're beat already."

"No," I said. "Just a little bored."

Gerard laughed. "Sure, darling." Then within about three seconds he was at my throat with a knife again, still laughing breathlessly as I wrestled his arms away and forced him off me so I could kick him to the floor.

Sometimes Gerard acted so similarly to the way he used to, it was impossible not to forget anything had happened. But then I would catch something insignificant– or seemingly so– and the gravity of the fact that a man so close to Gerard had committed suicide not a month ago would weigh down on me like heady saltwater on a vessel at the bottom of the ocean; pummelled with pressure it could never escape.

Gerard, meanwhile, was just floating by the whole issue like a piece of driftwood: all this chaos was still erupting under the waves below him while he passed by unharmed. The whole crew was still at a loss about Gerard. Had he really managed to cast out all emotion and feeling in a night, and had not allowed it back in since? It was one of the more disturbing pirate tendencies to form deep bonds, then wreck them, and deny the fact that any emotion had ever been present.

But not on the Freighter. We were different; more human– we had thought so, at least.

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I had found that being at sea, although I still had a suitably large conscience, I had lost the majority of my morals. It was just routine to come along to help pillage and steal when we made port. I would have no part in kidnappings though: possessions and gold were material, impermanent and replaceable, but lives were invaluable, and not to be toyed with.

I found repercussions of my former life to be all the more distressing each time they resurfaced, and this only made it more irrevocable for me to stay at a firm distance away from the affairs of others. I wanted to be the only one to have to endure being drowned in memories of a life snatched from you, especially as now it was a fairly high priority of mine to stay on the ship and out the water.

Soon we made port at Hartville, a village of little wealth with close to no produce, but Dewees had been restless.

"I haven't smashed anything in weeks," Dewees complainer. "I want to steal shit– I need to steal shit. It's what keeps me alive." His voice had turned wistful and almost philosophical. "It's my raison d'être."

Stump pulled a face. "What, stealing?"

"Yes," Dewees said serenely.

An incredulous snort left Patrick's nose.

"Excuse me," Dewees said indignantly, "But what kind of a pirate must you be if you don't get a kick out of stealing?"

Patrick raised an eyebrow and sighed dully. "I just like killing people," he shrugged, a bored settle to his small shoulders. He glanced at me as if to ask why I was here, and I nearly choked on the incredulous laugh that burst out of me.