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“What would you say,” Oluwande asks, while he’s unwrapping Viola’s hair from her silk, their daughter sitting in his lap, “to a bit of a trip today?”
“What kind of ‘trip’ do you mean?” Jim answers his question with a question, knelt in front of them, lacing Viola’s boots up to just below her scabby, scuffed knees. They readjust her stockings while they’re there, tugging them up and retying the ribbons to make sure they stay secure.
With Oluwande, ‘a trip’ can mean anything from a wander around the ship— following a new path every time, inevitably, and eventually getting lost enough that Jim has to navigate their way back to their room— to a vacation on land over the course of several days. Depending on what he’s capable of convincing the captains of, ‘a trip’ could be any sort of event anywhere along that spectrum.
“Just for the day,” is what Oluwande responds with, though. To Viola, he says, “Sit still, wiggle-worm. I’m going to pull your braids by accident, and you won’t like that very much, will you?”
“No,” Viola agrees easily.
“Then you’ll just have to jab him, won’t you?” Jim asks her, knocking her booted heels together.
“Not Daddy,” Viola insists, though she’s smiling.
“Not even a little one?” Jim asks. They’re unable to stop themself from smiling, either, but they find that they smile a hell of a lot more often in general since Oluwande and Viola came into their life.
Considering this question, Viola tilts her head back. Oluwande moves with her, hands shifting to avoid tugging on her braids and pulling her hair.
“Can I stab you a little, Daddy?” Viola asks him. “Please?”
Oluwande laughs, full and unrestrained, and Jim’s smile only grows. Nobody in their life has ever laughed around them the way that Oluwande does. It makes their chest tighten up every time in a way they’ve never really felt before. Not before him, anyway.
“Only if you promise to make it better after,” Oluwande tells her.
“I will!” Viola insists. “I can give you a kiss.”
“Oh, perfect, then,” Oluwande agrees. “Stab away. I’ll take the trade.”
Viola giggles, letting her head fall back down. She kicks her heels together again, focus returning to Jim, and asks, “Where’s we going?”
“Where are we going,” Oluwande corrects. Jim snorts. “What? It matters. Sort of.”
“She’s close enough,” Jim says, jostling Viola’s ankles, before they ask, “I’ve got the same question, though. Where are you taking us?”
“I was talking to the Captain at breakfast,” Oluwande replies. Jim doesn’t remember seeing him talk to either Ed or Stede, but they’d also been mostly-focused on preventing Viola and Hako from painting each other with smears of oatmeal. “He’s bringing us into port today because there’s a berry festival or something. I thought that could be fun, maybe?”
Viola asks, “What’s that mean?”
“A festival is like… a big party,” Oluwande answers her, while Jim pushes upright to fasten Viola’s collar. Working the last oil through her braids, smoothing her out, he explains, “There’s all sorts of things to do. You can play games and eat snacks and—”
“I wanna go!” Viola exclaims, already sold on the idea. When she jerks her head around this time, Oluwande snaps his hands upwards, releasing her; he narrowly avoids pulling her hair again, moves born out of practice and time and experience. “Can we go, Daddy?”
“Ask Papi,” Oluwande tells her, and she whirls on Jim, all sweet face and clenched hands and pouted lip, and Jim just raises an eyebrow at Oluwande. He laughs, asks, “What?”
“She should be classified as a weapon,” Jim replies, dry.
“I bet they’ve got those knife-throwing games,” Oluwande pitches. “You could show everyone up.”
Jim considers this, then asks, “How much time do we have to spend with other people?”
“None, if you don’t want,” Oluwande answers.
That’s a tempting offer. Jim loves everyone on their crew like siblings, like a family, though it’s— not the easiest emotion in the world to express.
Still, for someone who’s used to being on their own, the Mercy can be— sort of a lot. Jim loves them, they do, but there’s people fucking everywhere. There’s always someone doing something, some noise, some chaos. Before all this, Jim was used to being alone, doing their own thing, in control of their surroundings; the Revenge, and then the Mercy after her, have been massively different.
Not only that, but with the Captains’ apparent ever-increasing fucking horde of children, the ship is loud, and it’s hectic, and there’s practically always at least two children and one adult underfoot, and more often upwards of a dozen.
The idea of time spent with just the three of them— just Jim, Oluwande, and Viola— on land, at a festival, is extremely tempting. The Mercy is chaotic, hectic; Viola deserves her own attention, her own space, just for her.
Jim can’t help but accept the offer of time alone with her and Oluwande; if they’ve learned anything, it’s to grip tightly to the things they love while they have them, because they don’t— don’t, can’t, won’t— last forever.
“That sounds fun, actually,” Jim agrees, and Viola shrieks, clapping her hands together.
“Really, Papi?” she asks, leaping up to her booted feet. The worn brown leather pair is her favorite, broken in just how she apparently likes them, and she’ll pair them with anything. Today, they’ve let her dress herself, Jim helping her put on her chosen outfit of a sparkling teal dress, shimmery and gossamer and perfect for the hot weather, while Oluwande did her hair, oiling her braids, tying teal ribbons at the end of each one to match.
“Only if you play a game with me,” Jim replies, and Viola throws her arms around their neck. Jim, smiling, scoops her up and stands with her, letting her settle on their hip. “Sound good?”
“Yes!” Viola exclaims. “When do we go? Can we go? Berries!”
“Patience, mi vida,” Jim reminds her. “Your father isn’t dressed yet.”
It’s the reminder Oluwande needs to finish dressing himself, laughing when he realizes he got no further than tugging his stockings and breeches on. Viola chases after him the entire time, once Jim sets her back down on her feet, pulling at his clothes and laughing every time he pretends he can’t see her and sprinting to hide behind Jim, as if invisible, when he finally whirls on her and makes to snatch her up.
The whole thing is just so…
Normal.
The way Jim grew up, and the life they’ve led, and the person they are—
A normal life isn’t something they ever expected for themself. They made their own sort of normal. It wasn’t ever supposed to be anything that had love in it, or domesticity, or companionship, but along came Stede Bonnet anyways, recruiting them for his insane crew of misfits and miscreants, putting Jim and Oluwande together without even realizing it was— destiny, or whatever.
Now, Jim’s practically got a husband— since they’re everything short of married and, based on the discussions they sometimes have, they someday will have a husband. Not only that, but—
Fuck, they have a daughter. Their own daughter, who they— they raise, and take care of, and love. And they do it all with somebody else.
A husband. A child. A job— albeit one aboard a pirate ship, killing for Blackbeard and the Gentleman Pirate, but— still, a job. One that pays well and consistently. One they’re good at. One they kind of like doing. One that gave them a family.
Who the fuck would’ve thought?
For Jim, this is normal. It’s become normal. Their days are filled with Oluwande, and Viola, and the crew of the Mercy, their floating family out here in the middle of the great wide ocean. This life is a unique sort of joy they never thought they’d get to possess, a happiness that seemed forever out of reach, a contentment that was meant for other people, but never for them.
And now—
Now, they have this.
And, they consider, as Oluwande leads them and Viola out of their rooms, they have the berry festival.
Leaving the Mercy with the rest of the crew, all of them filing off of the ship to spill onto shore, Jim’s overwhelmed, for a moment. It happens, sometimes. After their life before this, their life now can feel— slightly unreal.
Oluwande stops at their side in the sand, Viola on his hip. She’s practically bouncing, watching everyone else trail up the sandy paths towards the port and on, past it, forward to the festival happening deeper in the woods on this shore. Her eyes are fixed on Ariel, their hand in Juno’s, tugging their sister along after them; she tracks them all the way until they disappear beyond the trees, then starts wriggling again, itching to follow after them.
To Jim, though, Oluwande pauses to ask, “You doing okay?”
“Yeah,” Jim replies. “Just taking a second.”
Like Viola, they watch the crew spilling upwards. Fang and Black Pete walking close, fingers tangled together, Fang laughing at something Pete’s only just said to him; Lucius and Izzy just ahead of them, Lucius’ arm slung across Izzy’s shoulders, whispering something directly into his ear, lips brushing the shell; Buttons crouching to pick a shining red beetle up between two fingers; Frenchie and Wee John brushing the leaves of snapped-off branches along Ivan’s neck to distract him and make him laugh; the Swede discussing something with Roach, his hands flying through the air, while Roach just grins around the pipe in his mouth; Ed attempting to corral Alma and Louis where they’ve wandered off to poke at a jellyfish washed up on the shore; Stede herding Ariel and Juno back with Hako and Kyrie, all four of them orbiting with and around him like tiny moons around a planet.
It’s sort of absurd, but— they’re also Jim’s family. They love them, insanely mad and strange and wild though they are. They’re just like them, sort of, actually. Maybe that’s part of why they fit so well.
They’re also a lot, and there’s so many of them, and Jim suggests to Oluwande, “Want to head off on our own?”
“Oh, yeah,” Oluwande agrees easily, handsome smile in place. “Absolutely, I do.”
They navigate their own way up through the trees. Viola squirms so much Oluwande just puts her down, and Jim warns her, “Stay close,” so she keeps running ahead, stopping to jump in place while she waits for them to catch up, and then running off ahead again.
She darts off once again, stooping to crouch and examine a pink-speckled beetle making its slow way down a leaf. Jim’s watching her when Oluwande’s fingers tap against their palm, then wind up with their own, tangling together.
They glance sideways at him and find him already grinning right back.
“Hi,” he says, and squeezes their hand.
“Hi yourself,” they reply, heart tapping out a quick double-beat. They knock their shoulder into his, then ask, “So, what sort of festival is this, again? Did you say fucking berries? Just berries?”
“Nah,” Oluwande replies. “Stede— Ah, Captain Stede— Bonnet—”
“He’s not here,” Jim reminds him. “It doesn’t matter.”
Smiling still, Oluwande amends, continuing with, “Stede was mentioning he heard about it in port last. It’s a sort of spring harvest festival, I guess? He said there’d be flowers and berries and all sorts of stuff, I suppose.” He glances upwards at the golden morning sun filtering warm through the emerald leaves overhead, comments, “Perfect day for it, yeah? Feels like spring.”
“Hot enough to be summer,” Jim says. They look ahead, then call, “Viola, take that out of your mouth, mi vida, fucking shit—”
Viola drops the bug she’d been about to swallow, apparently content enough to abandon it and run after Jim and Oluwande again, soft dress flying and braids streaming, teal ribbons striking the air like tiny butterflies on each snap upwards as she sprints.
She catches up to them in easy seconds, nearly taking them out at the knees when she collides with their legs. Wrapping her arms about Oluwande’s calf, head craned back, she declares, “I want to play!”
It’s just then that Jim starts hearing the commotion of people, civilization, and they crouch to scoop Viola up, setting her on their hip again.
“Lucky you, little goblin,” Jim tells her, “I think we’re there.”
They’re correct, because it’s only a few steps later that they’re breaking through the tree cover and the path they’d been following through the woods into a massive meadow rimmed with trees and teeming with action and filled with people.
People wandering about, laughing, talking; fires burning, roasting meat, baking treats; tents and tables set up all over, serving fruit juices and sweet wines and strong liquors and hot food; games running at every intersection of pathways, contests of wills, matches of strength, tournaments of knifeplay; music playing over itself, instruments and voices from every corner of the field; and the fruits, the flowers, the berries, the sunshine, the spring-summer festival filling up the air as if the atmosphere itself is imbued with the spirit of the day, soaked in and permeated by warm, shining joy.
“What do you want to do first?” Oluwande asks Viola, stroking a few loose, curling wisps of dark hair back from her face.
“I can pick?” Viola asks in return, smiling wide. Jim always thinks she looks just like Oluwande, when she does that. It doesn’t matter if she’s not biologically his, in Jim’s opinion. She acts just like him, looks just like him, is her father’s daughter, no matter what.
Now and then, Jim gets the thought that they could give him another kid, but they usually shake that off.
“‘Course you can pick,” Oluwande tells her. “You can pick anything today, yeah? It can be Vi’s special day, if you’d like th—”
“Yes!” Viola exclaims, before Oluwande can even finish, kicking up so excitedly that she accidentally digs her knee into Jim’s belly and her heels into their thighs, but they just laugh, readjusting her.
There’s so many options, baking that smells sugar-sweet and children running with flaring ribbons about a maypole and a puppet show performing from within a curtained box. Viola seems overwhelmed by her options, taking it all in from Jim’s hip, before her attention is drawn by a sound long since familiar to her: the steady, even thunk, thunk, thunk of blades sinking into wood.
“There!” Viola cheers, decision made, pointing with excitement towards a target-game.
“This one’s all you,” Oluwande informs them as they head over, and Jim just laughs. They don’t think they ever laughed so much before him.
This one is going to have to be all them, though. The game consists of twelve targets, the first as large as Louis, the last practically as small as Viola’s palm. Based on what other people are doing— children and adults alike— nobody is particularly good at the game, though everybody’s having fun flinging knives at the wooden, red-painted circles dotted with pockmarks carved out by the points of amateurly-flung blades.
“Can you help, Papi?” Viola asks, tilting her head up to meet their eyes.
“You should try yourself,” Jim tells her. “You’re really good, mi vida. You probably don’t need my help.”
Viola just keeps giving them her big eyes, dark and round and huge, begging with her face, words unnecessary. When Jim glances up, Oluwande’s giving them the same look, though he’s smiling through it.
“Please?” Viola begs them. “I might need help! You’re really good, Papi, please—”
“Okay, fine,” Jim agrees. Viola and Oluwande both cheer; they can’t help smiling, even as they say, “Yeah, yeah, keep it up. See if I win. Maybe I’ll lose on purpose.”
“No!” Viola exclaims. “You have to win!”
“If I win, I get to keep the prize,” Jim tells her as they approach the game, setting her down on her feet in the trampled grass, flattened into a spongy green floor beneath her boots.
“No, you can’t,” Viola argues. “I’m the baby. I get the prize.”
“I suppose that’s true.” Jim watches Viola put her hands on her hips, glaring up at them. “Alright, well, how about this— You get two on your own, you can have the prize. I’ll do the rest.”
Viola jumps up and down, excited, declaring, “Okay!”
Waiting her turn, she continues to hop from foot to foot, nearly trampling the coordinator at the front who’s running the games. The second she’s called to go up, she grabs onto Jim’s hand and tugs them forward, pushing them into place at her side.
Helpless, Jim glances backwards at Oluwande, but he just grins and waves them off.
“Go win a prize for our baby,” he tells them, and Jim doesn’t think they’ll ever get sick of hearing him say things like that.
They don’t know when they became this, the sort of person who smiles when their lover is sweet to them, the sort of person who allows a toddler to tug them around to play games with them, the sort of person who spends a day wandering about a spring festival just to enjoy passing time, but—
Honestly? They sort of like it.
“Now, young lady,” the knifeman is saying, pocketing Jim’s passed-over coins, crouching down in front of Viola. “You’ll want to hold the knife just down here by the blade so you don’t hurt your fingers. These are very sharp, so—”
“I know how to hold it,” Viola informs him, taking the knife from his hold.
“Don’t interrupt, Vi, babe,” Oluwande calls from the sidelines. “Let him tell you how to play.”
“Sorry,” Viola says upwards to the man, though she still steps aside, gripping her tiny fingers around the knife hilt.
“She does know,” Jim says to the fellow. The man shrugs, pushing back up to his feet.
“Go for it,” he tells them, as soon as he’s stepped back.
Without hesitation, Viola flings the knife right at the target. She doesn’t think about it or aim or prepare herself first, and the knife hits it sideways, falling to the ground with a dull thud into the grass. Frowning, Viola turns her face from the knife up to Jim, a pout already in place.
“I messed up,” Viola informs them, frustrated.
“You need to take a second and breathe,” Jim reminds her. They crouch at her side, taking the next knife the man offers to them. “Hold out your hand the way I showed you for throwing.”
Viola extends her hand, palm up, and waits for Jim to place the blade there. When they do, her fingers curl around it, then readjust, going into the positioning Jim’s been teaching her since the moment she could close her fingers.
“There you go,” Jim says. They shift to eye the target with her, lining it up with their vision. “Okay. Remember, focus on the target. Keep your eye where you want the point to go. Remember your balance when you throw it, keep the point in place. Slow, then fast.” They squeeze her shoulder, glancing at her profile; her eyes are fixed ahead, focused on the target, and Jim smiles. “Ready?”
Viola nods, answers, “Ready!”
“Okay,” Jim says, and shuffles back a bit. “Whenever you want, go for it.”
Though she’s still so small, tiny and round-cheeked and exuberant and sweet, she has a killer aim, and determination, and patience. Jim’s been practicing with her for her whole life, so far, and she’s good. She’s got skill, too. By Jim’s measure, anyway, she’s amazing, and they’re pretty sure their opinion counts more than anybody else’s.
Viola focuses, fixing her eyes on the large target ahead. She pulls her hand back, just over her shoulder, still staring, patient, preparing—
—and then, she flings the blade, sending it somersaulting in circles through the air before it embeds itself inside the second ring of six, the point dug right into the target, one of the only ones stuck in amongst a sea of them littered below the wooden boards the targets are pinned to.
Leaping into the air, jumping up and down with glee, Viola announces, “I did it! Papi, I did it!” She whirls, shouts, “Daddy! Look, I did it!”
“Yeah, you did!” Oluwande calls back from the sidelines, mixed in with other spectators and milling parents. “Good job, babe! That’s awesome!”
Viola’s beaming, overjoyed when she whirls to Jim, arms spread wide. Jim automatically opens their arms, lets her throw herself into them, embracing her tightly about the neck when she winds her own grip tight around Jim’s.
“Think you can do the next one?” Jim asks her.
“Yeah!” Viola exclaims, hopping backwards, holding her hands out, palm-up, to the man in charge, asking, “Knife, please!”
She makes her way down the line, trying each one herself before asking Jim for help. In the end, she’s able to do the first three, and the second-to-last, for some reason; the rest, Jim crouches behind her, guiding her hand, throwing them with her to drive the point of the blade into each target.
A few of them even hit in the center, and Viola cheers every time they hit home, overjoyed by each and every success. Jim’s cheering by the end, too, and Oluwande, and a few of those watching, everyone delighted by the toddler winning the game of knives.
In the end, Viola turns excitedly to the knifeman, asking, “Did I win?”
“I’ll say so,” he says. He turns to heave up a heavy wooden chest, popping open the top to reveal a heap of colorful fabrics, stitched stuffed animals, and wrapped-up treats. “Pick whichever you want.”
“Wow,” Viola breathes, looking into the trunk like it’s a chest of treasure. “I can pick anything?”
“Anything you want,” he tells her.
Viola surveys the box, indecisive, before glancing sideways to Jim. “What do I pick?”
Jim evaluates the contents of the chest, too, humming to themself. After a beat, they squeeze Viola’s shoulder.
“Which one wants to come home with you?” they ask her.
Oluwande, coming up to stoop down behind the both of them, says, “Oh, what a lovely bunch of choices. Who wants to be your friend, Vi?”
Viola, guided by their suggestions, considers the stuffed animals before she plucks out a quilt-stitched, hodge-podge creature, a wallaby made of random fabrics all attached to one another in patches. The button-eyes sewed onto the thing are fucked-up-looking, but Viola squeals, clutching it to her chest in a tight hug.
“I love him!” Viola exclaims. “Can I keep him?”
“That’s yours, kid,” the man says, and Viola shrieks again, whirling to hold the wallaby up for Jim’s inspection.
“Look, Papi!” she shouts. “Isn’t he perfect?”
“He’s definitely unique,” Jim allows, crouching down to examine him. “Do you like him?”
“I love him,” Viola repeats, insistent, clutching the toy tight again. She turns to Oluwande, showing him, too, exclaiming, “Daddy, see! He’s my wallaby!”
“And what a lovely little wallaby he is,” Oluwande replies. He takes the stuffed wallaby’s hand and shakes it. “Pleasure to meet you, mate. What’s your name?”
“Oh! Um…” Viola trails off, examining her new toy’s face. “Hm… His name is… Wa… Waga… Uh…” She frowns. “This is hard. How did you name me?”
“You came with the name,” Oluwande says, and Jim smacks his upper arm lightly. “What? Vi, babe, we picked your name out of a book with Ari. You know that.”
“You can name them anything you want,” Jim tells her, redirecting her attention to the little soft creature. “I picked my name. Well— Kind of.”
This information seems to delight Viola, and she turns back down to the wallaby, examining him, frowning down at his face as she tries to discover his name from inside him.
“What name d’you pick?” Viola finally asks Jim. “For you? What’s your not-Papi name?”
Jim, smiling, tells her, “It’s Jim. You can’t call me that, though.”
“‘Cause your name is Papi,” Viola replies, wise, and Jim’s smile just grows. “But Jim is good!”
“Does Jim work?” Oluwande says, his smile bright as the sunshine and just as irrepressible, clear and warm. “Do you like that name, baby girl?”
“I do!” Viola announces. She grips Wallaby-Jim about the neck, holding him close when she tells her parents, “Jim wants to find the music!”
“I’m sure Jim does,” Oluwande agrees.
Jim knocks their shoulders together. “Couldn’t have directed her to something else?”
“What?” Oluwande asks, still all grins. “You don’t think he looks like a Jim? I think he’s got that Jim look about him.”
“He does,” Viola agrees from between their ankles.
“See?” Oluwande says.
“You’re both the worst,” Jim tells them, just before Viola screams, jumping up and down in place before she’s sprinting off. “What the fuck— Where’s she going?”
The question is answered as soon as they ask it, watching Viola run and leap into the groups of children dancing happily together with ribbons by the maypole. A band of musicians off to one side provide most of the loud, jaunty music playing through the festival. The children all scream and sing and dance around them, delighted and just barely on rhythm and moving how they want to move.
It’s all unabashed freedom, human movement, childhood joy. Seeing this, sometimes, is like reading about a fantasy in a storybook. These aren’t experiences Jim ever had; they seem surreal, as if they’ve stepped into a strange sort of dream.
For Viola, though, it’s just life. Her child-life is happy, filled with music and treats and support and love and happiness. It’s so unlike Jim’s that, sometimes, they can’t even reconcile the two experiences.
They love giving this to Viola. They love letting her be a child. Sometimes, they think it heals the child inside them that never fully got to live.
Oluwande winds his hands with theirs, interlocking their fingers, and asks, “How you doing?”
“I’m good, actually,” Jim tells him.
“Really?” Oluwande asks. “Not overwhelmed? Don’t wanna head on back yet?”
“No, not yet.” Jim allows Oluwande to tug them off to the side, near other lingering parents, an audience of amused spectators enjoying the frivolous body-flinging dancing of the children to the folk-music, flute-pipes and guitar-strings and drum-pulses riling them up into shrieking singing. “It’s fun watching her have fun.”
“It is, isn’t it?” Oluwande replies.
The two of them watch her, tracking her easily as she leaps through the crowd. The flashes of her teal dress and braid-ribbons help to spot her, as do the flying limbs of Wallaby-Jim, floppy and mismatched, soaring through the air when she dances with him.
Jim’s content watching her, leaning against the closest tree, enjoying the moment of stillness. She can see Ed and Stede at the other edge of the group; Alma and Louis are two of the dancing children, flinging themselves about, and Stede’s got half an eye on them and half an eye on Ed, covered in children, attempting to dance with Ariel’s hands in his while Juno and Hako try valiantly to climb onto his back.
From Stede’s arms, Kyrie shrieks, reaching for the other children. Jim’s just about to motion towards her when Alma runs up, taking her sister from Stede’s hold and sprinting off again, dancing with her into the group.
They’re just children, being children, and Jim’s getting all weirdly, stupidly emotional about it. They huff a sigh of a laugh, keeping their eyes fixed forward.
“All alright?” Oluwande asks them, weaving together flowers he’s plucked from the earth into a chain, absently threading stems together.
“Yeah,” Jim replies. “Just thinking.”
“About what?” he prompts. Jim doesn’t remember the last person before him who chose to give a shit about them, and their emotions, and the things they think about. “Anything good?”
“Just that it’s nice Vi gets a good life,” Jim tells him. “And she gets to be a kid.”
“That’s a good thing to think about,” Oluwande says.
He keeps weaving the flowers, and Jim watches his fingers, for a minute, before turning up to find Viola in the crowd again. She’s dancing with Louis, now, the both of them laughing, each of them with a hand in the other’s and their other hands holding Wallaby-Jim’s, making sure he dances with them.
“And,” Jim adds, smiling, “If I ever ask you to have as many kids as the Captains, kill me.”
“Oh, in a heartbeat,” Oluwande agrees. “I love ‘em, but— Fuck, I don’t have the energy.”
Watching Ed get tugged to the ground and piled on by children, Jim says, “Neither do I,” and they don’t quite know how someone else does, but Ed’s laughing and smiling and Jim doesn’t want to question that. Not when they know the alternative all too well.
“What do you think?” Oluwande asks, and Jim redirects their attention to him and the circlet of flowers he’s holding, his chain woven together into itself to form a loop of blossoming colors.
“It’s nice,” Jim tells him. “Gonna wear it?”
“Nah, not for me,” Oluwande says, before he’s jogging off towards the crowd. Viola sees him, and she runs for him, throwing her arms out, leaping towards him. He catches her easily, setting her on his hip; though Jim can’t hear them from this distance, they can see their mouths moving, and they see Viola’s delight when Oluwande presents her with the flower crown, and then they’re smiling while they watch Oluwande set the circlet on her head, dotting her dark hair with pinks and golds and teals and emerald-greens, sparkling jewels of flowers in her hair.
Jim just loves them. They love them both so, so much.
Even if it’s something they might never have done before, they follow after Oluwande into the crowd of dancing children. When the next song picks up, and the beat quickens impossibly fast, they even allow Oluwande and Viola to dance with them, tugging them into a frantic, out-of-rhythm sort of sway-and-hop, their hands held together.
It’s not perfect, and it’s not even really coherent, but Viola laughs until her face flushes dark and she’s bursting with joy, until she’s weaving around their ankles and jumping into Oluwande’s arms and sprinting off after other children, until she starts to flag with the exhaustion of constant output.
Jim keeps track of her, notes when she starts to slow. They follow her, and, eventually, when she inevitably starts to list and trail off to the side, they crouch down beside her.
“Hey, kiddo,” they say. “Hungry?”
Viola perks up slightly, though she’s looking tired. Jim can tell from the set of her shoulders, the shadows under her eyes— even the way she moves, breathes, speaks, the tone of her voice. Jim’s good at reading people, but they’re pretty much perfect at reading Viola.
“Yeah,” she says. “Can I have a sweet?”
“I’m sure we can find something,” Jim agrees, and opens their arms. Viola tilts right into them, letting them scoop her up and settle her against their hip. Her head drops against their shoulder, and she yawns.
When Jim glances down, though, she hasn’t closed her eyes. She’s holding Wallaby-Jim tight, stroking the top of his mismatched head, while her dark eyes scan the festival, searching for an acceptable snack to have. At their side, Oluwande does the same— though, he’s seeking out a proper meal, something to put real food into her system before she attempts to load it down with sugars and candies and sweet-breads.
Closer to the clusters of food, they discover there are options, perhaps too many for a tiny, tired brain. Viola blinks at them all, overwhelmed, before glancing anxiously up to Jim.
“I can’t decide,” she tells them, nervous.
Jim kisses her hairline, allowing her to fall into them again. “Don’t worry about it, mi vida. We’ll hunt you down something good, yeah?”
“Like… Oh, there we are,” Oluwande says, and Jim follows him to a tented booth, tracking after the scents of warming sugar and baking bread and fresh fruit. “Wow. Holy shit.”
“You said Cap said it’s a berry festival,” Jim reminds him.
“But, like— Berries,” Oluwande replies, which—
Yeah, berries. Not just berries, but— fruits. Looking over this area of the festival, it’s just all fruits. Breads thick with dried fruit, cakes made with bits newly picked just days ago, candied figs and caramel-dipped apples and glazed orange slices on display. And that’s just to start, apparently, with countless vendors and farmers and salesmen running all the way down the rows, here.
With Jim on carrying-Viola-duty, Oluwande is on choosing-food-duty, and he takes a basket near the tables to load up with the treats he exchanges his pocketfuls of stolen gold coins for.
Now and then, Viola will pick something out, but most of the fruits are new to her. She’s curious, wants to try everything, and so they get samples of— pretty much everything.
Oluwande gives her tiny nibbles, now and then, evaluating if a new fruit will be distasteful to her, or if she’ll have a reaction, or if it just might not be good, but pretty much everything passes her test. They end up with loaves of fruitcake, muffins baked with blueberries, cupcakes soaked with orange and lemon, bunches of tiny-sweet grapes, and just— an apparent unending supply of fresh, loose fruits: raspberries, and bananas, and avocados, and mangoes, and dragon fruit, and papayas, and, fuck, even Jim can’t process everything that’s somehow available, here.
While they walk, and officially buy their goods, Oluwande passes food off to Jim, and Jim feeds it to Viola. She takes it in bites, one at a time, deciding whether she truly likes it before eating more.
At first, she’s excited. She insists on going up onto Jim’s shoulders, watching the entire crowd and the festival from above, while Jim lifts nibble after nibble of fruit up to her. Each new bite is something to pay attention to, and she tells them which fruits she likes more than others (raspberries win over avocados, but bananas are better than both, apparently), and pretends to feed bites to Wallaby-Jim, still clutched under one arm, pressed tight to the back of Jim’s head.
After a while, though, her lethargy returns in spades. Her bites grow sleepier, smaller, until she’s barely paying attention, her eyes most of the way closed. She only opens her mouth when Jim presses a bite of fruit to her lips above their head, half-asleep.
“Hey,” Jim whispers up to her, then rattles her slightly. Viola yawns, mumbles something incoherent, and snuggles in closer to them, pretty much just collapsed on top of their head and shoulders.
“All done?” Oluwande asks.
“Looks like,” they say, and give him back the bite of banana he’d just put in their fingers. He eats it right out of their hand, and they both huff a laugh, glancing at each other and just briefly making eye contact.
Oluwande. Fuck, Jim loves him. It’s like— he’s the other half of their soul, or some shit. Bullshit they wouldn’t have— didn’t— believe before meeting him, and can’t help but believe in now that the three of them are together, now that they’re—
A family. A real family, giving their daughter a real childhood, like she deserves. Like is supposed to happen.
“Oh, she’s conked out,” Oluwande says, examining Viola where she’s now actively sleeping on Jim’s shoulders, slumped over their head. “Want some help, there?”
“Please,” Jim said, because her dead weight is compressing their spine. They crouch, and Oluwande hoists Viola up and off of them; she doesn’t wake up through the experience, sufficiently worn out and asleep, all dangling dead weight, and stays that way until she’s tucked into Oluwande’s arms, cradled in his hold, sleeping— well, like a baby.
She’s still got the flower crown Oluwande wove for her set atop her head, and Wallaby-Jim is held tight in her sleeping arms, and raspberry juice stains her lips. She looks just like a sleeping, content child—
—because she is a sleeping, content child. She’s Jim’s sleeping, content child, theirs and Oluwande’s, the child they found in the middle of the ocean that Oluwande just couldn’t let go of, and— fuck, Jim’s grateful every fucking day that Oluwande knew she was meant to be their daughter, because she is. If Oluwande’s the other half of Jim’s soul, Viola’s their heart; they can’t live without her, their blood doesn’t pump without her, they can’t take a breath without her. She’s just— part of them, now. She’s theirs.
“Do you want to head back to the ship?” Oluwande asks, when the two of them find a soft, warm patch of grass in the late-afternoon sunlight, a bit removed from the rest of the festival. “Probably pretty quiet, right now.”
Jim glances over the festival, seeing the crew of the Mercy scattered throughout, enjoying themselves, and can’t help but smile.
“We can stay a little while longer,” Jim allows.
Oluwande’s got a smile of his own when he folds down into the spongy grass, Jim following right behind. Viola sprawls in his lap, snuggling into him, cuddling Wallaby-Jim close even in sleep. She smears raspberry viscera across Oluwande’s shirt in the process, but he just laughs.
“Nothing was fermented, was it?” he asks, teasing.
“Drunk on life,” Jim comments, and Oluwande laughs again.
Looking over at the both of them, Jim gets— not jealous, but a bit covetous, and decides to take over Oluwande’s lap, too. They fold into him, dissolving into his other side, letting their head pillow on his thigh when they curve up into him, tucked up and curled in just like Viola is.
Oluwande starts threading his fingers through Jim’s hair, his nails lightly scraping along their scalp, and Jim relaxes into him.
“Enjoying yourself?” Oluwande asks.
It’s such a simple fucking concept.
Still, it’s one that Jim wasn’t all that familiar with. Not before Oluwande and Viola.
“Yeah,” Jim tells him. “I am.” They turn their head up, cheek against his belly, meeting his eyes above. “You?”
“Oh, hell yeah,” Oluwande answers. He rattles Jim a bit, his hand cradling the back of their skull. “Got my two favorite people in the world right here. What more could I want?”
Jim grins, turning into him, winding one arm around him. They don’t really care who sees, who watches, who witnesses them pulling their husband and daughter closer into their hold. Honestly, they don’t care at all. They’re just—
They’re happy.