them over you
Regulus didn’t stick around to find out if Malfoy's fallen ghouls regained their autonomy. He raced below deck, scuttling around corners and throwing open every door he could find. Distantly, he could hear Malfoy bellowing, a raw, animal sound of anger and agony.
He found Dorcas in the galley, tied to a post. It was obvious she had not been conquered without a fight. Her wrists and ankles were red with rope burn, her heavy traveling gown torn. Her braids had been pushed around over her face and her lip was split. When she saw Regulus, her cheeky smile broke open the scab, causing blood to spill down her chin.
“You bloody genius you,” Dorcas hummed as Regulus worked on untying her feet, “You’ve gone and caused a stir up deck, haven’t you?”
“You could say that.” Regulus admitted, his hands slipping.
“Where are the others?’
“Evan and Pandora are safe. They got off ship.”
“What? Why?”
“You can’t stay here Dorcas. We can’t stay on this ship.”
“Reg, you don’t understand. Malfoy took us here and-”
“And I just cut off Malfoy’s hand. So now he’s sent his skeleton crew to capture us so we may be used as ritual sacrifices for his necromancy,” Regulus said impatiently. He tossed aside the ropes and drew his short sword, “Try and pull your hands apart as far as possible.”
Dorcas did so, turning her head and squeezing her eyes shut.
“Don’t nick off a finger.”
“I’ll try.”
Regulus threw his force down so hard the blade wedged itself in the wood between Dorcas’s legs. She shrieked, but recovered quickly, throwing off the ropes.
“Now your legs. Spread ’em.”
“I still fancy girls, you bloody rake.”
“Dorcas! Not the time!”
Regulus repeated the swing on her ankle bonds and stuck his hand down to help Dorcas up. She slapped him away and leapt to her feet before barreling him with a hug.
“I see there was no point in us coming to rescue you,” Dorcas said, breaking away, “You’ve become a full on pirate.”
“I guess so,” Regulus blushed, “Dorcas, your face.”
Dorcas swiped at the blood on her mouth with the sleeve of her gown, a gesture so remarkably unladylike and so very Dorcas that Regulus could have cried.
“Where’s Barty? He’s supposed to be here with you,” Regulus questioned.
Dorcas began to yank off the layers of her skirts, shredding through the seams as she spoke.
“I’ve pretty much been down here the whole time. Your stupid cousin-in-law or whatever the fuck, turns out, is an absolute dick and I wouldn’t stand for it. Fat lot of good that did me. A couple of his crew- ghouls, you said?- tossed me around. Pandora was getting sick and Evan was just about losing his mind because they wouldn’t let him smoke and Barty was fighting with everyone. I assumed they would all eventually join me here. But no one else has been down but you.”
Dorcas tore through the final shirt, leaving her only in her bloomers.
“Ha!” she declared triumphantly, “Pants!”
“Except Barty wasn’t on deck,” Regulus muttered aloud.
“There can’t be many more places he could be,” Dorcas said, “We all tried to stick together once Malfoy got violent.”
“I’m going to kill him.” Regulus scoffed.
“Barty?”
“No- never mind-” Regulus gently guided Dorcas out of the galley and into the hallway, “We need to find him and get out of here. We can’t go back across the gangplank and-”
“Why not?”
“I kicked it into the ocean.”
Dorcas’s eyes widened to saucers, “What? Why would you do that?”
“I don’t know!”
“You don’t know?!”
“It seemed the right thing to do!”
“Good God, we’re all fucked then.”
“Not yet. We just need to get back on deck without being seen.”
“And then swing ship? Without a plank? How’d you suppose we do that?”
“Swing ship…” Regulus repeated, “That’s it. We swing ship.”
“You don’t mean-”
“I do. I do mean.”
The idea settled on them both like thick mist.
“What about Barty?” Regulus asked quietly.
Dorcas exhaled heavily, “If we don’t find him, we don’t find him.”
“Dorcas!”
“What? Did I say something wrong?”
“He’s our friend!”
“He can be very irksome.”
“We’re going after him, Dorcas.”
Dorcas groaned, long and exaggerated.
“Fine. But don’t say this is all my fault when he bitches and gets us killed.”
It turned out that Narcissa’s Revenge, being a ship of substantially higher price and better quality than Lady Lily, contained more exits than superficially visible. Regulus kicked in the door of a luxury cabin and Dorcas stood on his shoulders to pull out one of the ceiling planks. When she finally jimmied the plank loose, a flat grey sky winked back at them.
Regulus held a finger to his lips. He jumped, catching the edge of the exposed deck and pushing himself up as silently as possible.
They had popped open the foremast deck, closest to the bowsprit. Far enough from the main deck to ensure they wouldn’t be immediately spotted, but Regulus still didn’t like their odds. He wouldn’t leave Dorcas anyhow and reached his hand down to heave her up on deck.
Dorcas flipped her braids out of her face, “What now?’
“We’ll eventually need to scale the mainmast,” Regulus hissed, pointing up, “The big one there. First things first is to find Barty. Then we can start thinking about the ropes.”
“What about finding Barty?” A higher voice broke in.
It was strange to see Peter on a flat deck, not dangling his legs over the edge of the crow’s nest. His mop of hair hung limp and wet in his face, his clothes soaked through with seawater. He had swam to Narcissa’s Revenge. Fury rose in Regulus like air in the ocean, bubbling up to his brain and making him blurry with anger. He drew his short sword, his grip shaking.
“How dare you,” Regulus whispered, “How dare you betray us like this!”
Peter cackled, “Betray us? Who is us?”
Peter advanced forward, step by grating step. He was unarmed, arms spread like a saint, vicious grin splitting his face like a sunken pumpkin, rotted from the inside out. Regulus fumbled back.
Dorcas stepped forward to say something, but backed away as Peter turned to her. She bumped into the mast and sunk down, pressing herself as far away from Peter as she could manage, stiff with fear. Peter turned back to Regulus.
“Who is us?” Peter repeated, “You’re not one of us. You’ve never been one of us.”
Step. Fall back.
“Did you seriously think you were finally becoming a pirate? You’re a lowly mate. You get to swab deck and shelve supplies and get stepped on. You’re nothing on that ship.”
Step. Fall back.
Regulus’s hand wouldn’t stop shaking, wouldn’t operate on the courage he had demonstrated earlier.
“You’re a prisoner. I was a prisoner. But you can be free, like me.”
Step. Regulus stumbled.
Dorcas’s urgent pleas were deaf to his ears. Regulus was entranced, spell locked in his own loop of doubt being echoed back at him.
“Remus was forced to help you. He doesn’t care about you, doesn’t care about how you feel, if you succeed, if you feel at home. He’s under orders. So is Marlene. So is Lily. You’re all alone on that ship and you don’t even know it.”
Step. Fall back.
“James is the worst of all. He’ll go so far to get what he wants that he’s willing to use others as a catalyst.” Peter paused for effect, enjoying watching Regulus slip.
“And James doesn’t want you.”
Regulus stopped all together. He fell to his knees, sword clattering on the deck.
“James doesn’t want you, Regulus. How could he? You’re unknowable. Unlovable. Your own brother didn’t even think you were worth coming home for. He chose them over you.”
Tears, foreign and phantom, fell onto Regulus’s face. From the sky or himself, he didn’t know.
He didn’t know anything, anymore.
“Over and over, Sirius chose them. James doesn’t want you. James wants to be somebody.”
Peter leaned down and picked up Regulus’s fallen short sword. He twirled it around haughtily before grabbing a leg of Dorcas’s bloomers and stabbing the sword through the fabric, pinning her to the deck. Dorcas screamed as Peter continued to advance on Regulus, his voice low and hypnotizing.
“James wants to be somebody. And I’ve learned you can’t be a somebody when you’re standing next to a nobody.”
Peter reached down and gripped Regulus by the jaw, rough and unforgiving. He spit his words, each one another dab of hateful poison.
“You’re a grade-A nobody, Regulus. You’re not a Duke. You’re not a pirate. You’re barely even human. So tell me,” Peter hissed, “Who the fuck are you?”
Dorcas’s voice seemed so far away, so lost in the sweep of storm and the pulse of words in Regulus’s ear. Magic pressed down on his head like a leaden crown. Everything was thrumming and clouded, the very music of the air vibrating and ticking like the tail of a snake. His eyes might have been closed, but he couldn’t tell. He just felt fuzzy and fake and foolish. Poor little boy playing pirate…
And suddenly the fog cleared and clarity slipped over him in a veil of focused glare. Regulus regained his sights, took in what he had slowly failed to see. Dorcas, hopelessly tugging at the sword that nailed her to the deck. Peter, suddenly crumpled to the ground, hands raised to protect his face, a black liquid streaming from the left side.
Barty, firmly planted in front of Regulus’s fallen form, arm outstretched with one of Evan’s knives gripped in his palm, ink dripping from the iron.