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“They paint the world full of shadows, and then tell their children to stay close to the light. Their light. Their reasons, their judgments. Because in the darkness, there be dragons. But it isn't true. We can prove that it isn't true. In the dark, there is discovery, there is possibility. There is freedom in the dark. Once someone has illuminated it. And who has been so close to doing it as we are right now?” James Flint, Black Sails, "XXXVIII"
“This is not what I wanted. But I will stand here with you. For an hour, a day, a year, while you find a way to accept this outcome. So that we might leave here together.” The plea is there in John Silver’s voice. Don’t make me choose. Come back with me. But the alternative hangs between them as well and he knows it. “For if not...then I must end this another way.” His hand trembles even as he throws down that final gauntlet, the pistol seeming overlarge and heavy in his fingers.
Flint remembers hours, days, a year, when that hand held his. When it stroked his brow and his cock in turns. He sees that same memory in the wild blue of John’s eyes. “Then end it,” he says quietly, taking a step toward his partner, his friend, his enemy, and his lover. “If you would kill me now, then do it. Because I cannot leave this place with you and that chest.”
The anguish on John’s face is stark. It likely mirrors his own. Flint is so fucking exhausted. From the bloodstained roots of what hair he has left to the blistered soles of his feet. But he can’t, won’t, sleep until all of this done. Perhaps it will be a permanent sleep, and that outcome is in the shaking grip of the man in front of him. The man he trusts above all others. The man she trusted, too.
Of course John doesn’t understand that his betrayal today is as much a betrayal of Madi. All he can think of is her life, not her heart. Not her soul, which calls for freedom just as Flint’s does. “You’ll lose us both,” Flint murmurs, taking another step closer, crushing grass and twigs and distance beneath his boots. “One way or another, you’ll lose us, and it will be of your choosing. So do it.”
“Dammit, why can’t you decide my cause is the right one?” The words explode from John’s mouth like the bullet he can’t bring himself to loose. “We could have peace,” he insists, desperation and naivety dripping from each syllable. “The three of us. Like those days at the camp.”
“We were preparing for battle at the camp,” Flint can’t help but point out. For all their time there, “the idyll was a lie.”
“Not all of it!” is the instant parry. And an instant cut. While his skill with a gun may currently be in question, John’s swordplay has definitely come up to snuff since their lessons on the cliff. Since those lessons…and everything after. “You can’t tell me none of that was real.”
John’s lips against the nape of his neck. Madi sprawled, sweat-slick and sated, across his chest. Counting the freckles on his sunburnt skin. No, that wasn’t a lie. That was as honest as he’s been since losing Miranda. Since losing Thomas. Since losing everything including his name. John, Madi, and Nassau are all he has left. Those three things and the legacy of Captain Flint.
They’ve moved within centimeters of one another now. The shot will be close range and it will leave an ugly wound. Flint has been ready to die for years. Perhaps it’s fitting that the final blow be dealt by one of the two people in the world he would allow this proximity. “End it your other way,” he urges again. “Because I will not yield.”
Except he does yield. He gives in to one last impulse. One indulgence before the bond between them is forever severed. He leans forward and takes John Silver’s mouth in a kiss. It shouldn’t be tender—they both taste like blood and ashes, like seawater and sand. It should be as violent as the last time they were amidst these trees, doing their level best to kill each other and yet keep each other alive. But the kindness in it can’t be helped. The forgiveness. The sorrow. The grief. They were never going to last. Nothing good ever does.
John’s free hand curls around the back of his neck, more sure and true than his hold on his pistol. He leans into Flint with a groan. With the damp of tears tracking through the dirt on his cheeks. “I can’t,” he whispers into the sacred space between their mouths. “Oh, god, James, I can’t.”
And here at last is the truth of Captain Flint. Of his legacy. He’s known for his ruthlessness. His determination. His skill at sea. For his hatred of England and his loyalty to Nassau. And for doing what no other pirate can. What no other pirate will. So he covers John’s fingers with his own. Traps the gun between them. And then he pulls the trigger.
***
“That is also how the story could have ended,” Jack Rackham acknowledges with a shrug, his eyes going distant with speculation.
“Is that what you know to be certain or what you wish for?” Max studies his face for subterfuge. Jack, for all his playing at piracy and gift for spinning yarns, is an honest man. Or at least one incapable of believable lies. But just this once, his features give nothing away. Whether Flint died in one lover’s embrace or was packed off to the estate in Savannah to live in another lover’s arms is anyone’s guess.
“It’s all bullshit,” Anne declares from between them with a huff. “Fanciful bullshit for romantics. People who ain’t us. Flint wouldn’t just run off. And he wouldn’t sacrifice himself like that.”
Wouldn’t he? Max has been in the game longer than most. She has scraped and clawed and, yes, sacrificed to get where she is. She trails one finger across the stubborn furrow of Anne’s brow. An act she’s only recently been allowed to replicate along the ridiculous cutlasses of Jack’s sideburns. After Eleanor…after losing Anne—after betraying her—this delicate and delighting balance they’ve found is everything. “We know better than most what it means to give up a dream that will never come to fruition,” she points out. “And to make a new one.”
Jack drops a kiss on Anne’s breast. And then rests his head there for a moment. As if listening for the beat of her heart. Max catches him doing that most nights, long after Anne has worn them both out and fallen asleep. “What’s so bad about being fanciful?” he wonders, a hoarse quality in his voice. “About being a romantic? About loving fiercely until the end of it all?”
Anne gives a cynical snort and tugs at his hair. Probably harder than strictly necessary, but she and Max are both of the mind that Jack deserves it more often than not. “I’d rather live for you than die for you, you sentimental fucks,” she growls.
Jack’s odd melancholy turns into a burst of laughter. One so contagious that Max finds herself giggling like the child she never was. Anne grumbles for a bit before joining the music. It soon becomes the song of another kind of pleasure. And that, Max thinks, is why they are here in this bed in the captain’s cabin of an English brigantine. Sailing together into the horizon. Toward the rising sun. Because, yes, Flint was right. There is freedom in the darkness. But there is also infinite power in creating your own light.
-end-