[i]((Collaboration with AmongHeroes and Igraine))[/i]

Thomas waited in the hissing gale, his head bent away from the rain and wind. There was a strange quality to the storm’s fury. Something that Thomas could not immediately identify, though it was instantly perceived as he walked from the shelter of his cabin. 

Even as he stood there, not wavering, his face contorted into an expression of discernment. The feeling the storm imparted bothered him, and he searched his own thoughts for an answer to its unspoken riddle. What was it he felt amongst the rain? The question gnawed and tugged gently upon his mind, and he scoffed as comprehension continued to elude him. 

He could recognize enough of what he felt to know that it wasn’t a baleful sense he gathered. No malice or note of impending doom was born upon the droplets of driving rain. Yet, standing amidst the elements, Thomas had the uneasy feeling that there was a cost to be paid to this fortuitous and ethereal tempest. 

His reverie broke with the sound of his cabin door opening, and the sounds of booted feet coming to meet him. Turning just slightly, Thomas looked to the soaked, while still exotically striking woman that had joined him. 

Thomas gave Antonia a grim, but appreciative look. “Thank you for joining me for this.” His voice was full and loud. A requirement to be heard above the din of the storm. “It is never easy, especially alone. A terrible duty, but one that must be done.”

Antonia nodded, taking a deep breath as she looked up to the darkly shadowed planes of Thomas’ face, her grey eyes soft with understanding and an unswerving, unequivacol tenderness. This was no time for smiles, no time for gentle levity, and her gaze told him she knew as much. Captain Lightfoot loved his men fiercely. She knew well, he would batter the very gates of Hell for any one of them - and they for him in return, but for the mutinous bastards who never did last long, one way or another. 

It was this love that drove him to his ‘terrible duty.’ And for her love, she would not leave him to this alone. 

She said nothing over the roar of the storm, not trusting the volume of her voice over the laughter of the loa, or the winds and the torrential rain that buffeted them all, lifting the [i]Dusk Skate[/i] and driving her like a child in his bath with a carven wooden ship. Antonia simply reached for Thomas’ hand, squeezing those fingers tightly to tell him she had heard, she had understood all he said - and all he left unsaid - before nodding toward the entry that would take them below deck and to the rest of the crew. 

All they intended this night, the bloody work that must be done, should be completed quickly as well. The First Mate would rise, of course, to come doctor the crew as duty demanded of her. She would have her hands full enough, with those who had the least chance of survival. Nicolette should not have to rend her soul for those who simply did not.

The rogue released Thomas’ hand, turning swiftly to descend the narrow stairs. 

With the comforting tingle afforded by Antonia’s hand still lingering upon his skin, Thomas followed. The darkness of the stormy night sky was made all the darker with each descending step into the gun deck, and he had to pause at the end of the short stairway to allow his vision to adjust. 

As he waited, he could hear the moans and painful breathing of the crewmen huddled amongst the cannons. That he could make out these noises, even above the roar of the storm, was a terrible thing to comprehend, and Thomas felt his heart sink to his stomach. It was all too clear the damage that the Sirens had wrought upon the crew of the [i]Dusk Skate[/i]. The wails of the crewmen spoke to as much. Thomas tightened his grip upon the dagger in his hand, and a sour, metallic taste filled his mouth. In short order, his vision adjusted to the darkness, and he could see well enough.

The sight that met him, even in the dim confines of the gun deck, married in terrible accent to the sounds that accosted his ears. Men were strewn about upon the floor, some huddled together, some alone. Many clutched at the figures of their comrades, offering promises of peace and paradise to their dying charge. The obsidian gleam of blood was everywhere, and the whole of the deck stunk of the sweet, iron tang of gore. 

Without a word, Thomas began to move away from the stairs, and into the tangle of grievously wounded men. The first man he reached was but a mere foot or two from the last tread of the stairs, and it was with a hard mask of resolve that Thomas knelt beside him.

[i]Marshall[/i], Thomas thought in quiet dismay. He recognized the man before him almost instantly, seeing the silhouette of his face, and noticing the shark’s tooth earring that gleamed from his left ear. Reaching out, Thomas pressed a hand gently against Marshall’s abdomen. Against the spot where dull light shone in uneven and grotesque fashion over what had always been the flat stomach of a slight man. 

Immediately as Thomas’ fingers met the smooth, wet surface of Marshall’s eviscerated bowels, the man winced and cried out. Thomas withdrew his hand, and his head hung low. Now stained with blood, Thomas reached forward with quaking fingers that shone black. Soundlessly, and with a reverence only hard circumstances could convey, Thomas relieved Marshall of his agony for all eternity.

Antonia watched Thomas kneel beside poor Marshall, her impassive face yet another mask belying a thousand emotions that would do not a single one of these men the least bit of good. And so she kept them well hidden, turning away before her love did what he must. The rogue knew very well there were others still in need of mercy this stormy night. 

She had not gone more than five paces before she too took a knee, beside Adjoa. The ebony skin about his lips and cheeks had turned a sickly hue, a dire blue that promised he would not live out the hour though his face contorted in a rictus of pain as he gasped vainly for breath. The man’s enormous chest heaved uselessly, blood bubbling up through the makeshift bandages that were already soaked crimson, covering the mortal wound that opened one side of his chest entirely.

Adjoa’s dark eyes held Antonia’s gaze, one massive hand wrapping about hers. This wound was merciless, and though it was stealing his life it had cruelly left him all his wits though he could not speak a word. Something that tried to be words gurgled wetly in his throat, his hand reaching for the small silver cross that still, somehow, hung about his neck. The great man’s gaze told her he knew exactly why she had come for him - that he knew, and he welcomed her arrival. Yet he still had a thing to ask of his own merciful angel.

Antonia nodded once more, bending low to his ear as she held his hand, murmuring the words she knew he most needed to hear in his last moments. 

[i]Did he most heartily repent of his sins?[/i] A nod. 

[i]Had he truly forgiven all who may have sinned against him?[/i] Another nod.

[i]Did he accept his Lord as his one true Savior?[/i] Yet another quick nod, followed swiftly on its heels with a heaving breath that gurgled blood turned a visceral black, shining like oil as it dribbled from his quivering lips. 

The rogue bent her head, whispering a prayer she had learned as a little girl in her father’s plantation chapel. She lay a loving angel’s kiss to his forehead, and then set Adjoa free, liberating the great man to make his way to Heaven’s gates.

[center]**********[/center]

The time spent on the gun deck passed with a sickening swiftness that made Thomas numb. Each new soul sent away seemed to pass swifter than its predecessor’s, until many of the bodies tucked amidst the gun-carriages set all too still. By the time Thomas had worked his way forward to the bow of the ship, he was covered in blood, sweat, filth, and the heavy weight of guilt. 

Though his hands no longer shook, Captain Thomas Lightfoot felt no strength in his limbs. Leaning against a large bulkhead, his blood soaked hair pressing against the grain of the wood, Thomas perceived himself like a husk. A man held up by only the thin veneer of his station, and not by the will of his body. To their credit, those of the crew still alive and well enough to carry on had not protested the work of Thomas and Antonia. They knew well the value and mercy inherent in the terrible action. Yet, even with the unspoken blessing of the crew, Thomas had the poignant venom of disgrace and repulsion drifting slowly, mixing in the blood of his veins.

Looking back, he watched Antonia carry out her own terrible task. Like a true angel, a merciful creature of death, the rogue moved and dealt her final gifts. Thomas could only stare with half-lidded eyes, eyes that had lost their usual brilliant shine. In the back of his mind, Thomas knew that he was glad that Antonia loved him enough to share this burden. At the same instant, his face soured at the opposite side of the coin; if he loved Antonia as much as she did him, should he have asked her to help him in the first instance?

He let out a dismal, crestfallen sigh, willing the burden of his thoughts from his mind. There would be time enough for that, and he was too exhausted to fully unravel all that troubled him. For now, the comfort that he sought in Antonia’s company was all that he would allow himself to focus on. 

As she neared him, her grim duty complete, Thomas reached out a hand caked with stained blood, and waited for his love to pull him away from the Hell around them.

And she did not hesitate, not even for a moment. Beneath the blood, beneath the gore, Antonia saw the guilt-laden agony with which her beloved flayed himself. She wrapped her strong, nimble fingers into his tightly, not forsaking his bloody touch as she pulled him into her own.

She was tired, so unspeakably exhausted and just beyond these too-thin planks she could still hear the voices of the loa laughing in the conjured storm. The rogue had paid a price tonight, a horrible price alongside Thomas as they moved among the crew, performing their most bloody, and yet horribly necessary duty. Faces of friends, some she had even considered as close as brothers, would haunt her darkest dreams with wordless recriminations, their dead eyes bearing accusations and blame for untold nights yet to come. Yet she was neither fool enough nor naive enough to believe - not even for a moment - that this soul-rending work could begin to pay the crushing debt she entered into this night.

But whatever price she must yet meet, Antonia did not believe her debt would be called quite yet. And her sweet lovely man, her magnificent Captain Silverfish, needed her strength in this moment, not her fears or misgivings. She pulled Thomas to her, wrapping one arm about his waist tenderly, but firmly, as she led him further into the bowels of the [i]Skate,[/i] to the one place Thomas might find a measure of solitude and peace, however slight or ephemeral those blessings might truly be.

The galley was warm, but not uncomfortably so, particularly for those soaked straight to their miserable bones by rainwater and a deluge of blood. Carefully she let Thomas sit upon one of the stools, pulling their intertwined hands to her chest as she let her forehead rest tenderly against his, not a single care for the spatter or gore that caked them both. 

[i]“Take your rest for a moment, my lovely man,”[/i] she whispered, [i]”I will warm the water.”[/i]