Unrely - Tumblr Posts
It’s hard to find a good place to be left the fuck alone in the Republic of Pirates. Luckily, Anne’s managed just that, squeezing into the small alley and following its blind turns until she’s come back out onto the tiny public outlook just at the hill above the docks. She’s joined a few minutes in by a man who knows well enough to mind his own fucking business and they stand in the amiable silence of two people ignoring each other as flashes of sunlight dazzle the water below. Before she can lean over and really let herself go enough to start figuring things out, though, four new strangers turn up. Four new strangers who don’t know well enough to mind their own fucking business, dumb enough to go sticking their noses where they aren’t welcome—sniffing for crumbs around the “captain’s strumpet” with ugly laughs and lingering leers.
“ Fuck off, ” Anne warns them once, hoarse. One makes a crude joke about fucking but not off. He’s on the ground before the others even have a chance to get a proper laugh in, clutching his gut from the unexpected blow.
If Anne killed every man she fought in this damned port, it’d be half corpses before noon. She fights like the hellcat she is, but never once do her hands touch the sword or the knife on her belt, except to keep other hands off them. She doesn’t grab the knife in her boot, nor the one hidden away in her trousers; she fights with surprising honor in that way. In the ways in which she utilizes literal tooth and nail, actual blows below the belt, feinting and thrusting and letting the broad little idiots use their own momentum against themselves, however, she certainly fights dirty. The one she got in the gut staggers back up just as she fells another with a hard knee to the groin, though he finds himself dazed and in his back almost as quickly as she can grab him.
That’s when the first stranger who arrived decided to step in. Anne hadn’t thought twice about him, wouldn’t have blamed him at all for staying all the way out, for watching, for leaving, whatever he did—this is one of the roughest ports on some of the toughest waters in the world, no one stuck their neck out for anyone else without the certainty of a payoff for it—but here he was.
The man in the ground, clutching his jewels, doesn’t stop sobbing when the first stranger whistles, but otherwise, all eyes find a way to his face. The stranger repeats a familiar phrase—a refrain echoed everywhere in the Republic—but this time, the braggarts listen. The standing two help their fallen companion, one under each arm; their thrown companion gets to his feet on his own, clearly still winded. He glares, and she spits, straight into his eye. She watches their retreating backs as they limp away in shame, only bending to fetch her hat (snatched off in the scuffle) when they began to take the first turn.
This is going to be a problem.
On the one hand, she’s glad to be spared the rest of the fight, having come all the way here for some peace and goddamned quiet to begin with. On the other…not finishing the fight means there’ll be a story now of Rackham’s whore needing someone else to save her. Something that will no doubt spawn a repeat incident in the near future. Anne sighs and brushes the hat off, donning it again without flourish.
“ I appreciate the sentiment, ” she quips, eyeing the man as she does so, “ but I had that under control. ”
Strong nose and jaw. Salt and pepper hair and beard. A short bastard, but no less imposing for it, with dark, piercing eyes and two tattoos Anne knows immediately: the x and the swallow. Eyes so pale a green they seemed almost colorless narrowed to sharp shards of sea glass. She knew of someone, didn’t she?, fitting this description. The details are hazy, but—yes, yes, she knows this man. Shit. The knowledge of that crashes over her like a wave and leaves her struck dumb, almost staggering back with the force of it: Israel Hands. Second to none other than than the devil himself, Blackbeard. Legends she has long stood in awe of, even to the point of chasing sad shadows of their presence—Anne is breathless, and a little star struck, and fighting her every impulse so it won’t show.
Shit. Leave it to her and her thorny, idiot tongue to lash out at the wrong person. Anne winces and belatedly adds, “ …sir. ” But it sounds sour and forced even to her ears. Christ alive. Anne slams her eyes shut in frustration and tries again, although gratitude sounds clunky on her tongue.
“ That is to say—thank you, Mr. Hands, sir. ” And? Surely there’s more to say in this moment than just that, but nothing comes to mind that it isn’t completely idiotic, and Anne refuses to look any more the idiot than she already must. If only she could have stopped her idiot tongue in time. “ I didn’t realize ye were in port. ”
Small talk. Dear God. May the earth open its mouth and swallow her whole before she has to face the consequences of trying to make small talk with Israel Hands.
It's hard to find a good place to have a smoke on the Republic of Pirates. Luckily, the reputation of 'Izzy Hands' gives him some respect. People know not to try and stick their hands anywhere near him, lest they lose it.
It's not so much the bothering him directly though. It's the tendency for a fight to start right next to him.
Israel looks uncomfortable as he watches a group of four men corner some woman. She's taller than the lot of them at least, and he doesn't really care about the end result, just that they're only ten or so paces away and he's trying to fucking relax.
He's still smoking as fists start flying, acting as though he doesn't see a damn thing. Not his fucking problem. If he got involved in every fight he ran into on this damned port, he'd never leave.
What does catch his attention is the way she fights. Whoever she is. It should be over fast, but it isn't. She bites and kicks and seems half feral. Izzy ends up watching the show that unfolds before him, the way she slips away, the way she punches. It's almost familiar in its ferocity. Reminds him of when he was still on Hornigold's, trying to defend himself from the fuckers twice his size. Stabbing people with dull forks and all that.
It's not until there's only two left standing that he interrupts, whistling to grab everyone's attention.
" Fuck off. " He looks at the two men, gesturing idly over his shoulder with the cigarette between his fingers, his hand falling to his sword at his side, a warning. " Find someone else to bother. "
@neverhangd
She’s glad, actually, and maybe even grateful when he doesn’t answer her idiot small talk. He’s a measured man; calm, collected, quiet. The stories never mention that. They mention him killing not just one men but several to join the devil’s crew, among other lurid tales of fires set and navymen cut down, but not his disquieting calm. Amongst the many eccentric pirates sailing these waters, that certainly makes Hands stand out. His approval is exciting, electric—and that makes it worse, somehow.
That makes it worse that he knows she’s with Jack. Like he knows like she does that Jack isn’t worth the spit it takes to say his name, that he’s a fraud taking credit for the work of others, that his are not works of genius but strokes of errant luck buoyed to the finish on the back of his truth-clouding arrogance. Anne stands up the straighter for it, crossing her arms and guarding her expression. She might not like the stupid arse anymore, but that doesn’t mean she’ll throw him to the sharks. He gave her her freedom back, a future, a berth: the least she can give him is a little loyalty in the face of a could-be assassin.
She’s grateful for the physical space Hands reestablishes, the distance she needs to regain her cool and remain cold to a man she’s so admired. “ Something like that, ” Anne agrees, speaking slowly. Jack had been impressed early on, had promised her a chance to run for an office aboard. That was two Articles ago, two chances to be more gone by in an unspoken, one-sides agreement to be “ of better service ” to Jack, to his planning. She isn’t dumb. She knows what’s going on.
But it’s like Jack’s even said before—who else is letting women sail aboard these waters?
“ I en’t a whore—not for cap’n and not for coin. Hope that don’t disappoint. But I en’t quite a sailor neither. ” She probably shouldn’t admit that to him, but…. Anne shrugs and turns her face away, towards the docks again, towards the sea. It’ll be too dark to see the water from this far away soon. “ Crew don’t like having a woman aboard. Waste daylight and energy checking shite I’d already seen to, me on Jack’s orders and them on their own suspicions. ” Anne huffs and looks back down the alley towards Hands. “ Eventually, the Cap’n stopped giving me sailing orders. So. ” Anne begins to count on her fingers, thumb first. “ I’m on his ship. I follow his rules. I earn my keep. But I en’t quite a sailor, no. ” Her hand falls to her side and she shrugs again.
There’s no chance at a career without Jack—not only has he said as much, but attempts to bond with his crew, as well as in taverns in ports, have driven the point home quite handily—but no chance at one with him, either. Anne’s lips twitch up into a sardonic smile despite her attempts to suppress it. It’s darkly humorous, in its way, and sharing her status as a non-sailor-entity has made her feel a bit bolder in sharing the truth.
“ I had a promising future as a lawyer ahead of me, once, ” she says, uncharacteristically candid about it. She laughs a little at the punchline before she even delivers it, angered and defeated by the truth of it all at once: “ And now I can’t even find work where I could steal it! ”
Fucking sad. Pathetic. A waste of potential only capable of blaming herself and fucking up in new and interesting ways. Anne laughs a little more, but it’s a humorless sound. It dies away and they exist for a moment or two in a reflective silence before Anne breaks back in.
“ You’re still with him, en’t ye? They he’s worse than the Devil hisself, twice as black and six times as cruel. And you’re a mate of Lucifer’s, not just his, and yer head can go all the way ‘round. ” Reverence and skepticism creep one behind the other through her tone as Anne watches the devil in the darkening alley, his glowing red tip brighter than the light of the now-absent sun. “ Is that right? ”
It’s hard to find a good place to be left the fuck alone in the Republic of Pirates. Luckily, Anne’s managed just that, squeezing into the small alley and following its blind turns until she’s come back out onto the tiny public outlook just at the hill above the docks. She’s joined a few minutes in by a man who knows well enough to mind his own fucking business and they stand in the amiable silence of two people ignoring each other as flashes of sunlight dazzle the water below. Before she can lean over and really let herself go enough to start figuring things out, though, four new strangers turn up. Four new strangers who don’t know well enough to mind their own fucking business, dumb enough to go sticking their noses where they aren’t welcome—sniffing for crumbs around the “captain’s strumpet” with ugly laughs and lingering leers.
“ Fuck off, ” Anne warns them once, hoarse. One makes a crude joke about fucking but not off. He’s on the ground before the others even have a chance to get a proper laugh in, clutching his gut from the unexpected blow.
If Anne killed every man she fought in this damned port, it’d be half corpses before noon. She fights like the hellcat she is, but never once do her hands touch the sword or the knife on her belt, except to keep other hands off them. She doesn’t grab the knife in her boot, nor the one hidden away in her trousers; she fights with surprising honor in that way. In the ways in which she utilizes literal tooth and nail, actual blows below the belt, feinting and thrusting and letting the broad little idiots use their own momentum against themselves, however, she certainly fights dirty. The one she got in the gut staggers back up just as she fells another with a hard knee to the groin, though he finds himself dazed and in his back almost as quickly as she can grab him.
That’s when the first stranger who arrived decided to step in. Anne hadn’t thought twice about him, wouldn’t have blamed him at all for staying all the way out, for watching, for leaving, whatever he did—this is one of the roughest ports on some of the toughest waters in the world, no one stuck their neck out for anyone else without the certainty of a payoff for it—but here he was.
The man in the ground, clutching his jewels, doesn’t stop sobbing when the first stranger whistles, but otherwise, all eyes find a way to his face. The stranger repeats a familiar phrase—a refrain echoed everywhere in the Republic—but this time, the braggarts listen. The standing two help their fallen companion, one under each arm; their thrown companion gets to his feet on his own, clearly still winded. He glares, and she spits, straight into his eye. She watches their retreating backs as they limp away in shame, only bending to fetch her hat (snatched off in the scuffle) when they began to take the first turn.
This is going to be a problem.
On the one hand, she’s glad to be spared the rest of the fight, having come all the way here for some peace and goddamned quiet to begin with. On the other…not finishing the fight means there’ll be a story now of Rackham’s whore needing someone else to save her. Something that will no doubt spawn a repeat incident in the near future. Anne sighs and brushes the hat off, donning it again without flourish.
“ I appreciate the sentiment, ” she quips, eyeing the man as she does so, “ but I had that under control. ”
Strong nose and jaw. Salt and pepper hair and beard. A short bastard, but no less imposing for it, with dark, piercing eyes and two tattoos Anne knows immediately: the x and the swallow. Eyes so pale a green they seemed almost colorless narrowed to sharp shards of sea glass. She knew of someone, didn’t she?, fitting this description. The details are hazy, but—yes, yes, she knows this man. Shit. The knowledge of that crashes over her like a wave and leaves her struck dumb, almost staggering back with the force of it: Israel Hands. Second to none other than than the devil himself, Blackbeard. Legends she has long stood in awe of, even to the point of chasing sad shadows of their presence—Anne is breathless, and a little star struck, and fighting her every impulse so it won’t show.
Shit. Leave it to her and her thorny, idiot tongue to lash out at the wrong person. Anne winces and belatedly adds, “ …sir. ” But it sounds sour and forced even to her ears. Christ alive. Anne slams her eyes shut in frustration and tries again, although gratitude sounds clunky on her tongue.
“ That is to say—thank you, Mr. Hands, sir. ” And? Surely there’s more to say in this moment than just that, but nothing comes to mind that it isn’t completely idiotic, and Anne refuses to look any more the idiot than she already must. If only she could have stopped her idiot tongue in time. “ I didn’t realize ye were in port. ”
Small talk. Dear God. May the earth open its mouth and swallow her whole before she has to face the consequences of trying to make small talk with Israel Hands.
If all the pirates of the world came together as one,
“ He still does. Piss in people’s drinks, I mean, ” Anne clarifies. She didn’t need to, really: he still tore shirts for fun and fed off people like a parasite. If she herself could get away from him for more than a few hours, she’d be found bleeding from where he’d sunk his fangs into her. She doesn’t doubt that hands knew him—that had been the whole draw of it, back at the pub. Two years ago, give or take a few months.
She’d just learned what James was doing behind her back, wondering how to put a stop to it. Drawn in by a storyteller in tanned hide. He said he was close to a pirate captain, and when someone suggested some stupid-arse name (“Not Calico Jack!”), he’d winked. She’d’ve walked then if Morgan behind the bar hadn’t redirected her, whispered the name _Rackham_ and sent Anne back with a bright flame in her eyes. Rackham. She knew that name. One of Hornigold’s notorious few living mutineers.
He offered her a chance to return to sea that she almost seized on before remembering the two rings heavy against her chest. What they had started to represent. She’d explained she was married, and would have to be freed of before she could pursue the sea. She would not say why, only that the only man who’d ever loved her depended on her being freed before she left. She left the table then.
Only to return the next night, wide-eyed, listening to parts of legends she didn’t know existed fall out of Jack Rackham’s mouth. How Benjamin Hornigold only ever buttoned one button in his overcoat, so he could always be disposed of it in a fight. How Blackbeard has been so inspired by his own mutiny that he followed suit with Israel Hands. Sporting fresh bruises, Anne didn’t quite care how much was a lie and how much wasn’t. She wanted to feed his ego and her inspiration, sparking a fuse between the two of them before it was even midnight.
That night, Anne Bonny would be freed, one way or another.
—She’s distracted from her inner pity party by the casual way Hands mentions the pineapple thing. That genuinely startles her, years removed from the starry-eyed arsonist who believed some of the words coming out of Jack’s mouth. In the time intervening, she’d come to assume all of Jack’s fabled connections were nothing more than rumor, but that specific allergy, Anne is quite sure, very few people know about.
She licks her lips. Considers taking advantage of the distance between them now. He really knows Jack, or at least knows him better than most. He won’t make the excuses people who don’t know him have, and would again if she asked them. Even without knowing her, surely he’s capable of weighing in. She slips her hands into the pockets of her outer coat to make sure he can’t use them as clues to send her back for reasons other than the hypothetical right-or-wrong of it.
“ So. Ye do know Jack. That’s a surprise, t’be honest. I took that for a lie. ” Might as well be forthcoming about the parts that don’t matter. “ Maybe ye can help me out of a pickle. I happen t’know Jack’s current wife—and the one he’s courting for his next. And we all know he ‘don’t settle fer divarce,’ ” it’s a poor imitation of his accent, badly mangled in her own, “ but now I don’ know how t’warn both. One won’t hear of it, and the other is convinced there’s no way forward without ‘im. The missus wants to stay and fight, maybe even kill the bastard. The mistress feels the same. But they’ll both die if they do. What would you do? ”
Chances are good he doesn’t know her exact connection to Jack, or he wouldn’t be talking to her. Not if he knew Jack, too. His advice was likely the closest to honest she would find anywhere in this godforsaken port.
She’s glad, actually, and maybe even grateful when he doesn’t answer her idiot small talk. He’s a measured man; calm, collected, quiet. The stories never mention that. They mention him killing not just one men but several to join the devil’s crew, among other lurid tales of fires set and navymen cut down, but not his disquieting calm. Amongst the many eccentric pirates sailing these waters, that certainly makes Hands stand out. His approval is exciting, electric—and that makes it worse, somehow.
That makes it worse that he knows she’s with Jack. Like he knows like she does that Jack isn’t worth the spit it takes to say his name, that he’s a fraud taking credit for the work of others, that his are not works of genius but strokes of errant luck buoyed to the finish on the back of his truth-clouding arrogance. Anne stands up the straighter for it, crossing her arms and guarding her expression. She might not like the stupid arse anymore, but that doesn’t mean she’ll throw him to the sharks. He gave her her freedom back, a future, a berth: the least she can give him is a little loyalty in the face of a could-be assassin.
She’s grateful for the physical space Hands reestablishes, the distance she needs to regain her cool and remain cold to a man she’s so admired. “ Something like that, ” Anne agrees, speaking slowly. Jack had been impressed early on, had promised her a chance to run for an office aboard. That was two Articles ago, two chances to be more gone by in an unspoken, one-sides agreement to be “ of better service ” to Jack, to his planning. She isn’t dumb. She knows what’s going on.
But it’s like Jack’s even said before—who else is letting women sail aboard these waters?
“ I en’t a whore—not for cap’n and not for coin. Hope that don’t disappoint. But I en’t quite a sailor neither. ” She probably shouldn’t admit that to him, but…. Anne shrugs and turns her face away, towards the docks again, towards the sea. It’ll be too dark to see the water from this far away soon. “ Crew don’t like having a woman aboard. Waste daylight and energy checking shite I’d already seen to, me on Jack’s orders and them on their own suspicions. ” Anne huffs and looks back down the alley towards Hands. “ Eventually, the Cap’n stopped giving me sailing orders. So. ” Anne begins to count on her fingers, thumb first. “ I’m on his ship. I follow his rules. I earn my keep. But I en’t quite a sailor, no. ” Her hand falls to her side and she shrugs again.
There’s no chance at a career without Jack—not only has he said as much, but attempts to bond with his crew, as well as in taverns in ports, have driven the point home quite handily—but no chance at one with him, either. Anne’s lips twitch up into a sardonic smile despite her attempts to suppress it. It’s darkly humorous, in its way, and sharing her status as a non-sailor-entity has made her feel a bit bolder in sharing the truth.
“ I had a promising future as a lawyer ahead of me, once, ” she says, uncharacteristically candid about it. She laughs a little at the punchline before she even delivers it, angered and defeated by the truth of it all at once: “ And now I can’t even find work where I could steal it! ”
Fucking sad. Pathetic. A waste of potential only capable of blaming herself and fucking up in new and interesting ways. Anne laughs a little more, but it’s a humorless sound. It dies away and they exist for a moment or two in a reflective silence before Anne breaks back in.
“ You’re still with him, en’t ye? They he’s worse than the Devil hisself, twice as black and six times as cruel. And you’re a mate of Lucifer’s, not just his, and yer head can go all the way ‘round. ” Reverence and skepticism creep one behind the other through her tone as Anne watches the devil in the darkening alley, his glowing red tip brighter than the light of the now-absent sun. “ Is that right? ”
♡ from izzy!!!
Send ♡ to see what my muse thinks of yours
LOW | ●●●●● | HIGH
●●●●● | ATTRACTION - No, she will not be elaborating on this.
○○○○○ | AFFECTION - BUT IN ALL FAIRNESS, she does not know this man at all. Not in any meaningful or personal way, at least.
●●●●● | INTEREST - The literal stuff of legends. Anne’s highkey a fan of his and really bad at hiding it.
●●●○○ | LOYALTY - Anne is a very loyal person at her core, and even without knowing him well, Anne would follow his orders. She wouldn’t follow him to the ends of the earth or into hell (yet?), so two points off.
●●●○○ | TRUST - She’d like to think it’s situationally dependent, but honestly? Seven times out of ten she’d trust Hands and his opinion over anything. Two points off because she doesn’t know him well enough on a personal level to put blind faith in him, never mind risk her wellbeing.
●●●○○ | OVERALL - Being a living legend and seemingly tall person will always start you pretty high up
So murder’s not really an option, then. Not while Bonnet’s in charge. What does that leave them with, then, when it comes to keeping him safe? Even before Hands’ coaching on the matter, Anne’s known that defense is to be number one at all times. She has more reservations about it than him, respectfully, having been twice in a row fucked over in that way and now being reluctant to risk it a third. She can’t help doubting Bonnet, and surely Hands doesn’t blame her one bit for it. On paper he’s…questionable, to say the least. The more one knew of the Gentleman Pirate’s exploits, it seemed, the more the same one had cause to doubt his capabilities. (Lady Luck had him a chokehold and a chastity belt, poor fucker!)
No murder didn’t mean no violence…right? Blackbeard would’ve had this fucker’s hands sliced off for coming anywhere near him, no doubt. Jack would’ve talked his way against the wall and waited for Anne to come and clean house, leaving the shitstain unconscious in the street, probably now scared ‘em off with his fucking whip again.
Bonnet, apparently, would send out a dog whistle. They both perk up when he looks over his shoulder. Even without being the target of the look, Anne knows its meaning, responding like any other bitch to the whistle every guard dog knows. She isn’t surprised to see Hands respond to it; if anything, it excites her a bit further. She’s known Hands’ stories almost as long as she’s known Blackbeard’s own, having sniffed them out lifetimes ago: to see she has anything in common outside of a shared profession is a compliment to the highest degree. Him sending her in first is overkill!
…or a very pragmatic test. Anne approaches Bonnet and the snotty merchant, cracking her knuckles, thinking it through. Murder’s not an option. Violence is…iffy. But surely no one would object to Anne falling back on a very old, very irritating, but also very effective tactic that is perfectly legal in every way! Especially one that might impress her idol the captain, who naturally she was focused on impressing so as to gain employment from without being distracted at all by anyonething else.
“What’s this, then? What’s all the feckin fuss?”
@neverhangd said:
❛ i’m just saying, murder is an option. ❜
" Hm. "
It's not . . . disagreement. It's non-committal, if anything, his head tilted as he watches Stede try to barter with a man who he would have cut the hands off of without a thought a year ago. His captain would not have even needed to ask him to. It's a weird ship to be on, after decades of working with Blackbeard, but he thinks . . . he likes it better this way. They make it work, and in a way, their inadequacies are rapidly becoming virtues. More and more pirates are killed by the day, the way the navies are going after them these days. They've become a smaller target.
" He doesn't like killing them, " Izzy says, a few moments after Bonny's suggestion, watching Stede's face turn to a pout. A sure sign that a bit of threatening is on it's way at least. " Civilians. "
Sure enough, Stede turns to look at the first mate with a look in his eye that Izzy wordlessly understands as a summons. Be a guard dog for me, Izzy. Snarl. He would answer without question. But this time, he lazily tilts his head towards Bonny.
" Ladies first. " Hands turns his head to the side and spits, his hand idle on his weapon, seeming rather bored. Bonny seems even more tetchy than he is, though, so he might as well let her have a go.
you're not like the others. you're special. // is this flirting or is she just a mutant who knows. from erik !
"OOPS... I HAVE A CRUSH ON YOU" PROMPTS
@unrely
A li(n)e she’s heard too many times before. Anne looks down and away, sighing sharply. She liked the guy generally well enough, was used to share of her drunken flirtations, but she’s heard that and variations thereon all her long life. It’s not led to anything good yet, and she can’t help but doubt it’s going to start now.
“And in…what way am I unlike the others?” Anne asks. She can’t help poking the bear, throwing the ball right back into Erik’s hands. She’s gotten good at deflecting these sorts of things: even if she wasn’t as long-lived as she was, Anne had found that working as a bartender required these sorts of skills. “In that I’m a redhead, or in that I look so young for my age?”