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ari
Ariel is busy untying ribbons from their beard when Kyrie knocks at their door. They know it’s her; only their sister knocks the way she does, a fast, rhythmic thud-thud-thud-thud-thud that continues until the door is answered.
For their part, though, Ari just calls, “Come in,” over their shoulder, still focused on their reflection in their vanity’s looking-glass.
Kyrie shoves the door in, the wood sticking in its frame, frowning at it when she’s inside. Ari can see her glaring at it in her reflection, just behind them.
“You know,” she says, “I can fix this for you. The ship shouldn’t already be this fucked.”
“It’s not fucked,” Ari replies. “It’s just humid.” They remove the last ribbon from their beard, then swivel to face her. “Hello, love. What’s up?”
“There’s a ship,” she tells them, her eyes bright.
“A ship?”
“A ship,” she confirms. “Big one. Sailing right for us.” She claps her hands together, one skating through the air, and whistles. “I think they wanna fuck around.”
Ariel sighs, glancing towards the nearest port-window in their captain’s quarters— one of two sets on the Captain Hands’ Revenge, the ship the two of them commissioned together after Uncle Izzy decided he wanted to retire, too, and Kyrie suggested to Ari that they put their looks and inherited attitudes to use and keep up the Blackbeard thing on their own.
Really, Ari thinks that if Kyrie just dyed her hair, she could conceivably do it all herself. She looks enough like their father that she could pass for him if only her hair were black instead of the fiery red she’s grown into the older she’s gotten, the lighter strawberry-blonde she had when they were children long since faded.
That bright hair and her freckles make her stand out, Ari thinks, but she still looks pretty much exactly like they do. Her eyes are lighter— she’s got their dad’s eyes, rather than their dad’s— their other dad’s— hazel and bright, where Ari’s are dark and honeyed, but nobody notices Blackbeard’s eye color. All the stories say they glowed red, so— really, it doesn’t matter, they think.
Still, though. Ari looks exactly like their dad. Like, exactly. So. They get it.
Plus, it’s fun.
Ariel loves being Blackbeard. They love having fun and doing whatever they want and sailing with their sister. They love her whole adapted Gentleman Pirate thing, love her ideas, love her fuckeries, love her. Until they stop having fun doing this with her, they’re just going to keep doing it.
It’s late, though, and Ariel’s only just finished reading their crew tonight’s chapter of The Underwave Palace for their bedtime story.
“Are you sure?” they ask. “It’s only— You know. It’s a bit late, isn’t it?”
Kyrie sighs heavily, kicking their door shut behind her with a roll of her eyes that would put Rosie to shame.
“Fuckeries don’t wait until the daytime,” she reminds them. “They wait for the perfect time. Night-time’s on our side. We can do much cooler shit when it’s dark.” She’s comfortable in their quarters, crossing to their vanity, tugging open the bottom drawer on their make-up chest. “Wanna do the pretty-little-lady bit?”
“Do I get to be the pretty little lady this time?” Ari asks, and Kyrie nudges their shoulder.
“Shave the beard,” she says, lightly tugging on one lock of it, “and you can give it a shot. Keep the hair, though, so I can make myself a beard.”
“I keep saying you should,” Ari reminds her.
“I like doing my bit,” Kyrie complains. “You can be the lady next time, I want to do it this time. Last time you got to do the shark bit you like.”
“Ah, that’s true,” Ariel concedes. They really do love doing the eaten-by-sharks bit. It scares the shit out of people, it’s always hilarious, and people end up diving in the water every time, even though that makes no sense. Waving a hand at Kyrie, they allow, “Fine. I’ll do Blackbeard again this time.”
“As if you don’t love it,” Kyrie remarks, and Ari laughs. “Your dramatic ass.” She pulls their kohl out, taking one stick for herself, slipping it into her pocket like Ariel won’t notice. They slap her wrist, but she just laughs. “Please?”
“What’s mine is yours,” they say. “Just ask, you little devil.”
“But you’re gonna say yes anyways.” She reaches to take their chin through their beard, tilting their face up. “Close your eyes. I’ll do your makeup for you.”
“Can I do yours?” Ari asks, doing as she’s asked, letting their eyes close.
“It’s just going to end up fucked when I have to smear it,” Kyrie reminds them. “And then it’ll end up under the kohl anyways, so, what’s the point?”
Ari shrugs. Kyrie smears kohl around their eyes, practiced and careful over their eyelids, smudging it just like their dad taught them.
“I don’t know,” they answer. “I just like doing it. It’s fun.”
Kyrie hums an acknowledging sound, then tells them, “I told Bandit to come down and let us know when the ship was close enough for me to start.”
“You already told Bandit we were doing this?” Ari asks, starting to open their eyes, but Kyrie squeezes their chin and they remember themself, keeping them closed.
“I figured you’d say yes,” Kyrie replies. “And you did, so.” They can hear the smile in her voice when she asks, “Who knows you, huh? I do.”
“Awful,” Ari says.
“Don’t do that,” Kyrie says. “You sound just like Dad.” She releases their chin, says, “Open up, look up at me,” and evaluates their face while she tells them, “If you can get into your leather shit fast enough, you can do my make-up, too.”
“Yes,” Ari exclaims, already shoving their seat back to stand with a jolt. They wave her off, telling her, “Go, go get dressed, I’ll be right there.”
“Don’t fuck up your eyes,” Kyrie warns them. She’s already moving to do as she’s told, though, ducking out and disappearing through their door. Her captain’s quarters are only right down the hall, a mirror to Ari’s own; they can hear her distant, muffled thudding as she, presumably, makes a mess while dressing herself.
As told, Ari moves quickly.
They open up the drawer in their second wardrobe that holds the lookalike leathers they had commissioned, identical to Dad’s. At first, they had just used their father’s old Blackbeard leathers, but they hadn’t fit quite right, besides being irreversibly worn and faded, so—
Those clothes are now safely back at their parents’ cottage while Ari dresses in their own version, bespoke and heavy and unlike most things Ari likes to wear when they’re just them.
It’s a good thing they just finished taking the ribbons out of their beard, because all they have to do is unbraid their hair and toss it around before they’re looking pretty close to all-set. Between slipping on their one-sleeved jacket and strapping on their heavy leather boots, they become Blackbeard in mere minutes.
Ariel puts two guns on one hip, a sword on the other, and knives on both thighs. If they have to use them, they will, but they’re reassured knowing Kyrie will have at least one sword and one knife of her own on her underneath her dress, if not two or three of each.
The guns and the swords are vital for the Blackbeard look, though. Uncle Izzy always said so.
Hopefully, nobody will look close enough to realize that Ariel’s tattoos don’t quite match their father’s, or that their face is just the littlest bit rounder than his beneath their beard, or that their voice is just the slightest bit higher, their accent just a little bit off from his, their other dad’s lilted influence more obvious in him.
In all honesty, between Ariel’s perfected Blackbeard look and Kyrie’s flawless theatrical presentation and smoke-and-flame effects, people never realize the little details are off. All they see is Blackbeard, and they don’t think to look twice.
When Ariel is dressed and goes to their sister’s cabin, rapping a soft, quick knock on her door, they receive a frustrated, “Get in here,” that has them laughing.
“Everything okay?” Ariel asks, pushing in the door, finding their sister in front of her full-length mirror. She’s contorted and twisted around, struggling to button up the back of her own dress; she releases when she sees them, letting herself straighten back out, looking up at them with desperate eyes.
“Would you, please?” she asks in return.
“Of course.” They cross to her, turning her around, starting from the bottom and buttoning their way up her back.
Kyrie doesn’t often wear dresses, preferring instead either full leathers or just her linen pants without a shirt, but she indulges whenever she does put on a gown. ‘They’re not practical,’ she’d explained to them once, ‘but they’re fun, right?’, and Ari couldn’t help but agree.
Exaggerating her role in the performance they’re about to put on, Kyrie has chosen to dress in all white. The elaborate gown she’s tugged on is one they recently filched on a raid; Ariel knew the moment they saw her take it that it was only a matter of time before the beautiful thing was ruined in a fuckery— but, to Kyrie, being used this way isn’t ruining, so Ari allows her her fun. Clothes are meant to be worn, after all, and things are meant to be used, no matter how beautiful they are.
The garment is the color of pure, soft ivory, stitched with the faintest of patterns: a thin golden lacing at the ends of the sleeves that meet her wrists, down the collar and the off-the-shoulder neckline that exposes her shoved-up cleavage, along the hem at the bottom of the full skirt that trails along the floor.
With the back of the dress buttoned up, Ariel fetches the last piece of the dress, tugging his sister’s arms through the sleeves, pulling it into place around her. This heavy piece, too, is pure white, though the light golden lacing is visible all over, when she catches the light.
“You’re sure you want to use this dress?” Ariel asks, one last chance. “It’s so beautiful.”
“Imagine how amazing it’s going to look after everything tonight,” she points out. “I’ll make sure to show you before it gets totally fucked up. I’m hoping to get blood and fire at some point.”
“It’s like an art project for you,” they comment, and she laughs. “Well, I look forward to seeing it, then. I’m sure your realized vision will be stunning.”
“And now you sound like Uncle Lucius,” Kyrie accuses them.
Ariel finishes fixing her dress, fastening the front in place and situating the edges on her hips, before they release her. She’s moving in an instant, unable to stay still for long, heading for her own vanity to dig through her jewelry box.
In moments, she’s draping herself in pearls to match her dress, rubies to match her hair, gold to match her lace. She pins sparkling red rubies in her ears, loops strands of fine pearls around her throat, then asks Ariel, “Would you do my hair?” as if they’d ever say no to that.
“How do you want it?” they ask her, while she’s digging out rings she wants to wear. At least every finger has one already; she’s still searching for more.
“Pretty and out of the way,” she tells them.
“I can do that,” they reply, and reach for her comb and her hair-pins.
Kyrie’s hair may be auburn and fire-bright, but it’s still just as thick as their dad’s— as either of their dads’, or both of them put together, and the long spiraling curls are difficult for most people to maintain.
Most people, though, aren’t Ariel, who has loved their sister’s hair since she was born, and has mostly taken up the role of caring for it, since Kyrie doesn’t often remember to do it herself.
Tonight, they braid it quickly, twisting it tight and pinning it at the back of her head. A few curls fall free, but that’s inevitable; Ari gave up on trying to get all her hair into anything when they were still nine years old. They can easily conceal how practical it is by dotting her with pearl hair-pins, catching the firelight and twinkling in her hair, reflecting the close-up red like embers sparking.
“Sit and I’ll do your make-up,” Ari instructs her, feeling the urgency of time pressing on them. Lucky them, they’ve been working on make-up since they were young, too, and they’ve got her painted in minutes, lips pink and eyes shadowed and lashes full and cheekbones prominent, the perfect image of the beautiful damsel.
Just as Ari’s powdering her face, careful not to cover over the moko on her chin before they’re cleaning up the last edges of shadow near her eyes, a rapid knock at the door interrupts their soft, absent humming together.
“Come in!” they both call at the same time, in the same breath.
Bandit sticks their head in, their mutual first mate finding them with their upsettingly blue eyes to tell them, “Ship’s about here. We’re all ready below for the bit.”
“The fuckery,” Kyrie reminds him, pushing Ari away. “Okay, we’re done— Ari—”
“Just let me—” Ari insists, swiping their thumb at the corner of her eye. “Okay— Okay, okay, you’re done, it’s perfect.” They step back, letting her stand. “Have you got your knife?”
“Knives,” Kyrie corrects, and ducks to grab her dress by the hem, hiking it up around her thighs to show them the knives strapped to both thighs and both calves, the sword at her hip, the guns dangling on the other side. “I’ve got a couple up my sleeves, too.” She drops her skirts, knocks on her bodice, giving a hollow thud . “Plus, I put that plate Uncle John got me in here.”
“Good fucking luck killing you, Cap,” Bandit comments.
Kyrie tugs up her sleeve, shows them the kohl and the knife against her wrist with a fierce grin.
“That’s my girl,” Ari says, and Kyrie knocks their shoulder with hers.
“Ready to go?” she asks.
“Oh, absolutely,” they insist. To Bandit, they say, “I’ll go with you, love. Let my sister do her thing, yeah?”
“Sure, yeah,” Bandit agrees. He’s seen a few fuckeries since they recruited him onto their ship— enough that he trusts them implicitly, now, which Ari loves about him. “I’ll be waiting down below with Cap for you, Cap.”
“Sounds good.” Kyrie brushes off her front, situates her bodice, asks Ari, “How do I look?”
“Just perfect,” they insist. They take her hands, tug her in to kiss her cheek. “You’re going to do wonderfully. Have fun and be yourself, love.”
Kyrie laughs, kisses them on the cheek in return.
“You’re so funny, Ari,” she tells them, and Ariel laughs right with her. “You, too.”
Ariel leaves her there, slipping her shoes on, heading for the upper decks alone. They’d be more afraid for her if they hadn’t seen, time and time again, exactly what she’s capable of.
It’s not just her looks that could help her play Blackbeard herself: she’s just as skilled as their fathers ever were, if not moreso, and she can hold her own in a fight against anyone— anyone. She was trained by some of the best swordsmen on the seven seas, at the height of the Golden Age of Piracy; Ari pities the people who fall for her acts during fuckeries, no matter how badly they deserve it. She’s just good.
Then again, Ari thinks they can hold their own, too. They can’t be Blackbeard without being a fair hand at swordplay, after all.
They like to think they work well together, that they’re both crucial parts of the fuckeries they pull. Sometimes, it really does just feel like they’re kids still, playing games together, making up the rules as they go, bickering and sorting and having fun.
It’s with a smile that Ari says to Bandit, as they duck another level below deck, “This is fun, isn’t it?”
The look Bandit gives them is halfway-agreement, and halfway-bewildered, but that’s alright. Not everybody gets it— not like family does.
kyrie
Kyrie holds a black cravat in her hand, waving it desperately at the ship as it’s pulling in nearer to her own.
It’s dark; white fabric would definitely be easier to see. Then again, waving white would also be a specific sort of lie, and Kyrie follows the pirates’ code, if nothing else. She’ll wave the black flag like it’s a call for help and let them fall for it; then, it’s not her fault, and she can feel as free as she likes to tear them all the new assholes she decides they need.
The nearer the approaching ship comes, the more people Kyrie can make out on deck. The flags they fly are dark, too, black pirates’ flags; when they’re close enough, she can tell there are three white whales embroidered sloppily on each flag, and she snorts.
Just in case a crewman on the other ship has a spyglass, though, she quickly schools her expression into one of theatrical distress instead. She even pulls up tears, a false sob catching in her throat when she screams, “Help!”
A couple of people can be heard calling to one another from the opposite ship. As they pull in tight, nearing the port side of Captain Hands’ Revenge, Kyrie can read the name reflecting on their hull, silver in the moonlight: Swimming Orca.
The name means nothing to her. It’s just another name for another ship she’s hoping she can drop to the bottom of the sea, optimistically sooner rather than later.
Allowing her drawn-up tears to run her make-up down her cheeks, she shrieks again, “Please, help me!” running for the port side rail, clutching it in desperate fingers, waving again her makeshift little black flag.
The Swimming Orca pulls up tight along Captain Hands’ Revenge, throwing across a heavy, solid connecting bridge to hook up with her rail.
Kyrie grabs at the ends of it like she has no idea what she’s doing, panicked and scrambling to hook it over her side of things, hands shaking and tears streaming as she keeps shouting, “Help me, please, I don’t know how long we have!”
The crewmen on the other ship are very clearly pirates, and also very clearly confused by her. She’s not surprised; it’s well-known, by now, that Blackbeard and the Gentleman Pirate sail on the Captain Hands’ Revenge.
They just don’t usually realize that Ari and Kyrie have long since taken over for Blackbeard and the Gentleman Pirate, respectively.
Nobody ever expects her. After a while, she’s sure they’ll start, but they haven’t just yet.
The first man to cross over onto their ship must be their first mate, because the man who comes just after is very clearly the captain, and his first mate trails at his heels like a rabid little dog the second he jumps down onto their deck. It reminds her so fondly of Uncle Izzy that she has to keep back a smile in response.
“Where’s Blackbeard?” are the first words out of the captain’s mouth. He’s a big man, but not much bigger than Ariel; his hair is dark, but only brown, not black, and his eyes are a muddied yellowish-green, and he looks just like any other man who could’ve stumbled across their ship. Not particularly threatening, not particularly special, but— to Kyrie, he’s in the right place at the right time, which is particularly perfect for her.
“I don’t know,” she tells him, playing at fright, throwing herself at him. He smells like salted fish and brine, a familiar scent, and she hangs off of his arm, directing big, wet eyes up at him. He doesn’t throw her off right away, which has her excited at the potential here. “They must still be below, I— I saw you coming through the window and I snuck up here, but— They’re going to notice I’m gone, oh, God—”
Kyrie bursts into tears, falling against the captain’s chest, dissolving easily into theatrical hysteria. She’s had practice with this for years; it comes to her like instinct, like muscle-memory.
The first mate, skulking around beside her and the captain, says in a low, scratching sort of voice, “If Blackbeard’s asleep, we can take him unawares, easy as.”
The way the captain pats Kyrie’s back is stiff, awkward. A beat later, he pushes her off, holding her at arm’s length, evaluating her face. He’s studying her, digging into her expression, before he skims down her body. His dark eyes catch on her chest, then the lace of the gown; she can watch his vision trace over the webbing before he glances back up to meet her eyes, swollen and tear-stained and blurring by her put-on dramatics.
His grip on her shoulder is uncomfortably tight when he says to her, “Now, now, dear,” his voice thick as ink and just as dark, “I hate to see you cry like that.” He takes her by the chin, directing her face up to look at him. “What did Blackbeard do to a sweet thing like you?”
Kyrie swallows, tells him in a voice far higher and more panicked than her own, “I haven’t seen my father in weeks, I’ve been on Blackbeard’s ship, I— I don’t know what to do, I haven’t known—”
“Don’t worry, sweet thing,” the captain tells her, using that same term of false-endearment on her, and she nods, sniffles, pretends to fall into line with him, lets him think he’s protecting her— or wooing her, or stealing her for himself. Whatever works. “We can take you with us, long as you show us where Blackbeard’s sleeping.”
Kyrie shakes her head, plays at fear, tells him, “No, you can’t, they’ll kill you— They’ll kill me—”
“Nobody’s killing me tonight,” the captain insists to her. Kyrie doesn’t let herself smile. “Besides, Blackbeard’s— What, seventy years old?” Wrong again. “My men and I can kill him easily enough.”
“Their crew—”
“—will fall in line,” the captain finishes for her. Kyrie wrings her hands, glancing anxiously at the Swimming Orca over the captain’s shoulder, as if she’s evaluating their capabilities of doing anything.
A very real flash of anger sparks through her at this man’s thought process, at the belief that Blackbeard would ever be an easy target. Even if it were her dad out here— either of her dads— they’d be able to destroy this man and his entire crew, regardless of age. She really believes that.
Her parents are safely in their cottage, though, and her older sibling is Blackbeard now, and she’s not letting any of their reputations suffer this. Not from scum like this captain, a man whose name she doesn’t even care to learn before she’s nodding her head in a jerk and saying, “Okay, I— Okay. If you’re sure.”
“We’ll keep you safe, little miss,” the first mate tells her. Kyrie doesn’t believe a word either of them say—
—But, then again, she doesn’t need to. It’s not her who needs to be kept safe.
When the first mate retreats to the Swimming Orca to pull their crew over, the captain sets his hand on Kyrie’s shoulder again, turning her into him as if commiserating with her.
“Now,” he says. “Tell me everything you know about Blackbeard.”
And Kyrie lies.
She tells him how Blackbeard’s grown frail over the years. She tells him that Blackbeard spends most of the time below deck, in the captain’s quarters. She tells him the ship is a terrifying place, filled with strange old men, and that she’s been here, terrified, for weeks.
She doesn’t let him pull her in too close, and he never feels the weapons beneath her dress, and she draws up more tears to end his questions before he can push their game too far.
When the crew starts coming back over— leaving not a man behind in their eager joy and anticipation over taking Blackbeard’s ship— the captain squats slightly in front of her, as if speaking to a child, and asks her, “Are you ready to show us Blackbeard now, sweet thing?”
Kyrie can’t wait for him to die under her hands.
She’s honest when she nods and tells him, tremulous, “Yes, I’m ready.”
The stage is already set, the hatch that leads them down below deck already thrown open, as if she’d left it that way in her supposed panicked fleeing earlier. It’s through this hatch and down the sturdy wooden stairs she commissioned herself that she guides the pirate crew of the Swimming Orca, led by their captain and their first mate, into her trap.
It’s all night-dark below deck, even the moonlight curtained out. This isn’t abnormal, but it does work to their advantage, the fact that this crew doesn’t question the lack of light. Sometimes, Kyrie forgets that their fathers kept a specific sort of ship; most other pirates don’t sail warm ship-homes filled with light and bright flame and family and laughter. Most are used to exactly what she’s showing them: dungeon-dark and tomb-quiet, the air thick and shivering with fearful anticipation, meeting every expectation they have of Blackbeard’s ship and more.
The crew has confidence, Kyrie can tell, but it’s unfounded. There are only about a dozen of them, and she lets her nails rap twelve times along a section of wall as they pass, knowing Bandit’s inside and will pass the message on further down.
Kyrie’s making sure to shake, cowering in her heavy gown, dragging herself as if an unwilling guide, down further, and further, and further—
—Until a massive door bangs open at the end of the dark hall and she lets out a blood-curdling scream.
She makes certain to collide with the captain before she’s sprinting down the hall as if a bolting colt, skittish and terrified, disappearing into the darkness. Throwing him off his balance, she hears him hit the ground, cursing, and she’s already tugging up her sleeve and pulling out her kohl, grinning with excitement.
From above, distantly, she hears a heavy thud, then the snap-click of the lock being latched in place over the hatch, trapping the crew of the Swimming Orca below decks with Blackbeard’s crew.
Kyrie smears kohl across her eyes, her cheeks, her jaw, her chin. She knows what she must look like, and she loves it. It had been an easy decision, for her, to lean in to her dad’s Gentleman Pirate thing when Ari was the natural choice for Blackbeard; she likes the colors, loves the clashing, and she especially loves getting to combine her concepts, taking her dad’s kohl-smeared Kraken look and melding it with her other dad’s bright-and-fancy Gentleman look until she’s this: extravagantly dressed and elaborately costumed and dramatically made-up and theatrically beautiful, as well as looking sea-logged and pirate-mad and wild. She just loves it.
Hitching up her skirts, smearing black from her fingers along the hem, she pulls two of her knives free, a blade for each hand. Her swords and guns remain beneath her dress— for now.
“Took you long enough,” she hears Ari whisper to her, when she ducks around the door they’ve just thrown open, and she throws a light elbow into their belly. “You’re such a ham. You just love showing off.”
“What, and you don’t?” Kyrie whispers back. She can practically hear Ariel rolling their eyes. “I think we should just kill the whole crew, by the way.”
“Aw, what? Really?” Ari asks. “What’d they do?” Their voice is a little darker when they start to ask, “Did they touch—”
“Nobody hurt me,” she insists to them. “They’re just stupid shitfucks. They thought they could take the ship ‘cause Dad’s old now, so Blackbeard can’t stop them.”
Any of the desire Ariel must have had to spare crewmembers of the Swimming Orca vanishes the moment Kyrie tells them that. They can feel Ari’s temper flaring as if it’s hot and thick between them, a lick of flames, and then they’re throwing their hair over their shoulders and slipping their sword free of its sheath on their hip.
“Crew first,” Ari agrees, instructs. “Ship after. Did you get a good look?”
“Not a great one,” Kyrie admits. “It’s not huge, but they look pretty well-fed. Bet we could find some shit worth selli— Oop, here we go—”
The crewmen of the Swimming Orca have re-calibrated themselves and are audibly coming down the hall, swords being drawn and guns being packed, and Kyrie’s so excited.
This is always her favorite part, like the moment she holds her breath just before leaping off the ship’s rail and diving underwater. The action is just about to start, so much potential in the air, everything charged up the same way it is in the seconds before the break of a storm, and she takes a deep breath before she’s pushing back out the door, flying down the hall, throwing herself at the man in front— the captain, as it turns out, back on his feet and much angrier than he had been.
“Help me,” she begs, desperate, though even she can hear the smile edging into her voice. “It’s Blackbeard and the Gentleman Pirate.”
The captain starts to ask, “Where—?”
—Which is exactly when Kyrie brings up the blades in both hands and drives them up beneath his jaw, through his mouth, into his sinuses, and rips inward, shredding his face to bits and sending him screaming, garbled, to the floor.
“Right here,” she tells him.
Just like she’d hoped, his blood spatters in artistic sprays across the front of her ivory dress, and she laughs with delight as she turns back towards Ariel.
“They’re all ours, Blackbeard,” she calls to them, and then Ari’s stepping out and into place at the end of the hall.
No matter how many times she sees this, she still loves this part of their performance. She’s the one who put it all together, trained by her dads and her Uncle Izzy, and she’s always so proud of the smoke that billows out around her sibling’s form, swallowing them from the ankles up, immersing their intimidating, leather-wrapped form in a stormy haze.
The coals set in the mask they’re wearing glow red, giving them the fiery, burning eyes of Hell that the stories all talk about, and then Blackbeard is in full view, beautiful and terrible and horrifying and definitely not a frail old man in his bed.
And that’s when Ariel tears off the mask, engulfing themself in darkness, and sprints down the hall to join their sister, leading the crew of Captain Hands’ Revenge after them.
Moments in battle are always so chaotic. Kyrie acts on instinct, trusting her own sword-skills to move her from one fight to another. She slashes a throat, she drives a knife into a heart, she opens up a belly, she halfway-cuts off a hand. Anything that gets her from one crewman to another works, and she’s tearing down the hall at Ari’s side like they’ve done countless times before, punishing these pirates for the crime of thinking anyone could take on Blackbeard and the Gentleman Pirate.
In all the madness, Kyrie chooses one crewman at random to keep alive. She doesn’t keep him uninjured, slicing at the soft insides of his elbows before she cuts off one of his ears, but she doesn’t kill him, hauling the sniveling pirate up onto the top deck after her.
“Guess what?” she asks. Ariel hears her voice and follows after her; she knows they love this part, too. “You’re going to show me where all the best shit is on your ship.”
The man is shaking, but still manages to spit back at her, “And what if I—”
“And if you don’t,” she interrupts him to finish for him, “I’ll choose someone else to leave alive, hm?”
The pirate considers this. Kyrie steps up, near to his front, leaning in close to his remaining ear; Ariel steps up beside her to grip the man’s shoulders, keeping him firmly in place.
“Show me what you’ve got,” she says, and drops the knife in her hand down so the blade presses into the soft sack of his terrified cock beneath his trousers, “and you get to be our special voice, hm? You can tell everyone who’ll listen what happens when you think you can cross Blackbeard and the Gentleman Pirate, how’s that?”
He’s still shivering. He says, “But— But you’re not—”
“Blackbeard,” Kyrie says, and relishes in the moment where Ariel takes the man’s head between their large hands, pressing in until the pressure makes the pirate’s breath quicken. She ducks her own head, looks into his murky eyes in the moonlight. “You were saying? I can always choose somebody else, if you’re not—”
“No, I’ll do it, I’ll do it,” he insists. He smells awful; Kyrie glances down to realize he’s pissed himself, and she frowns, wiping the point of her dagger off on a dry part of his trousers. “We’ve got— We’ve got tons of stuff on our ship, we’ve— We just— We just took a wine ship not long ago—”
“Oh, nice,” Ariel comments, sounding more like themself than Blackbeard. Kyrie supposes it doesn’t really matter; this man’s not going to remember much besides the fear anyways, she’s assuming. “That’s great, that’ll get us a good bit of money.”
“If there’s any pink ones we can bring ‘em back to Dad,” Kyrie says upwards. “And Oli and Lyz can help us price the rest.”
“We’ve got lots of wine,” the man insists, as if he’s still begging for his life, somehow. Kyrie gets it; she’s sure the sounds of his fellow crewmen dying, screaming, below deck at the hands of her crew have rattled him more than a bit. “Tons of wine, pink and— and white and— and— and we have jewels, we’ve got lots of jewels— Rubies—”
“Rubies?” Ariel echoes.
Kyrie’s already reading their mind, says, “Bea’s gonna lose her shit.”
“Thinking the same thing,” they reply. Kyrie steps backwards, and Ari shoves at the man’s shoulders, pushing him back towards his ship. “Show us.”
The man does as instructed, taking them through the ship room by room, as if his good behavior will bring back the day he’d been having before he encountered the two of them. All it does, though, is aid the two of them in stripping his captain’s ship bare of any worthwhile goods, Ariel briefly retreating back to Captain Hands’ Revenge to recruit a couple of their own crewmen into hauling everything back over.
“I can leave now?” the man asks, when the last chest— all fine silks, and Kyrie knows her dads, Loki, and Rue are going to love what they’ve found in there— has been brought off of his ship and onto her own.
Behind her, Ariel laughs. It’s not even that frightening of a laugh— their voice is a little high, and they sound delighted and amused, if anything.
The pirate seems to know better, though, and there’s only fear on his face in response to that answer.
“Not now,” Kyrie tells him. “We’ll drop you off at port.”
“What about my ship?” he asks.
“Were you the captain?” Ariel asks him in return, and the man shakes his head. “Not really your ship, then, was it?”
Was, they say, and Kyrie can see realization dawn on the man’s face moments before Bandit comes up from below deck on Captain Hands’ Revenge with a torch. The end is wrapped in rough fabric, soaked in oil, and lit aflame; the fire illuminates Bandit’s dark, excited face, and he’s smiling when he brings the burn over to Ariel and Kyrie.
“The ship is all ready,” he tells them. “We should have plenty of time to sail away before the fire eats up to the gunpowder we laid.”
The pirate starts to protest, but Kyrie motions backwards, and one of her crewmen gags him with a strip of fabric, tugging him back to join the rest of her blood-splattered crew, allowing him to be a member of the audience for one of her favorite parts.
“Can I do it this time?” Kyrie asks Ariel.
“Yeah, go ahead,” they tell her. “Your dress does look good, by the way. You were right, the blood’s interesting.”
“Thanks,” she says, and leans up to kiss them on their kohl-smeared, blood-spattered cheek before they’re turning back to the Swimming Orca. It’s with a smile that she says to the abandoned ship, “And thank you for a lovely evening,” before she’s tossing her torch at a wet puddle of gas on deck and watching the flames burst to life, already starting to eat up the ship, starving and vicious and fast.
Captain Hands’ Revenge lurches as the anchor pulls up, and then they’re moving, the night-wind catching their sails and drawing them off. Still anchored in place, the Swimming Orca burns with an ever-increasing flame, growing larger and smaller all at once as they sail off away from it.
After not long, at a distance, there’s a boom, an explosion on the sea, and the Swimming Orca explodes into a million tiny bits, filling the night sky like a reverse rain, flowing upwards towards the clouds, illuminated by the red fire.
Kyrie, smiling, glances sideways and upwards at Ariel. The flames are bright in their dark eyes, so much like their father’s— and, when they turn down to look at her, they’re smiling, too.
“That was fun,” they say. Nudging her shoulder, they say, “Thanks for dragging me out, that really was a good one.”
“Told you so,” she says upwards. “They’re always fun, you dickfuck.”
“That’s why I’m here,” they reply. After a beat, they say quickly, “Dibs on that pink gown we found, by the way.”
“No,” Kyrie groans. She knows exactly which one they mean, a massively heavy rose-colored piece that they’d found in a trunk on the Swimming Orca pre-explosion. “You shitdick, I wanted that.”
“I know, but I want it more,” Ariel answers. “That’s why I called dibs.”
Kyrie shoves them lightly again, the both of them still watching the burning ship on the water fade into the distance as if they’re gathered about a campfire.
“You can borrow it,” Ari allows. Kyrie huffs, though she’s smiling. “Hey, what do you say to dropping that guy off and heading on to visit Dad and Dad? It’s been a few weeks, yeah? And we’ve got a few things for them and the others, now.”
“Not a bad idea,” Kyrie comments. She glances up at the stars— what she can see around the Swimming Orca’s smoke, anyways— and tells them, “We’re not too far off. We could be there by the end of the month.”
Ariel turns backwards towards Bandit, asks, “Do you have my map?”, and accepts the folded-up parchment he hands them in return.
The map is one of Ari’s own creation— one of dozens, all shockingly colorful and astoundingly accurate— and they examine their own tiny handwriting on the thing before folding it right back up again, passing it over to Bandit for safekeeping once more.
“Maybe even sooner,” they tell her. They groan, then. “Oh, no— Dad’s gonna want the pink gown.”
“Don’t let him see it,” she warns them.
Ari laughs at her side before they lapse into a comfortable silence. The smoldering remains of the Swimming Orca grow fainter and fainter until they vanish beyond the horizon, leaving the siblings in the calm, moonlit darkness again, sailing across the sea.
Next to her, Ariel reaches out and winds their fingers with hers. She squeezes, and they squeeze back, and she smiles again, already mentally planning ideas to suggest to them for their next fuckery.