The following night, Natasha sat at the steps that led to the ships helm, looking down at the main deck and the men who still lingered there. It was late and she was exhausted, having spent the entire day exerting herself underneath the warm sun, but she hadn't been able to fall asleep.
John had delayed their departure for one more day, after they returned from the village to find a report that there were still repairs to be finished before they set sail into deeper water. Natasha, determined to busy herself for the day to keep her mind off her disappointment that they were still not beginning their journey and worry over her family, had let Jack take her throughout the entire ship once they returned from the village, trying to pick up on the names he used to describe people and places onboard. She had committed as many names to memory as possible, and spent the night writing the names down on one of the back pages of her sketchbook, adding quick sketches of the faces she remembered next to the names to pass the time.
The next day she spent back on the small corner of the beach that could be seen from neither village, letting Alexander begin to teach her how to properly wield and move with a sword and the dagger she had been given, with Jack cheering for her as he alternated between swimming through the shallow surf and running through the warm sand. John had originally ordered Castille to instruct Natasha, but when Alexander volunteered instead, she accepting his offer, secretly hoping that Alexander would have been an easier teacher, and that she would have the chance to talk to him more about her home. She hadn't been given the chance the night before, as Alexander spent his night with the rest of the crew on the main deck. Both of her hopes proved futile. He was kinder, more personable, but held back no criticisms or toughness when it came to actually teaching her, and his drive left no time or breath in Natasha's lungs for conversation. She suspected part of the reason he was tough on her was because John would occasionally appear at the ship's edge and watch them, and every time she noticed him she felt themselves both putting forth more effort, no matter how much her body ached in protest.
By the end of the day her arms and shoulders ached from the weight of the sword, her feet were blistered from the boots that she hadn't fully broken in and had eventually abandoned as they trained, and her nose and cheeks were red from the sun. She had hoped to sleep well through the night, ready to finally set sail the following morning, but the crew had dipped into the ship's supply of liquor after their own long day of work readying the ship for departure, their stash enhanced by bottles they had picked up while in town the previous day. Natasha hadn't been able to fall asleep with the noise combined with the millions of questions she still had about her home and the anticipation of finally settling sail tomorrow, which came springing back to the forefront of her mind the moment she tried to lay down to rest.
After surrendering any hope of sleep, Natasha decided to venture out of her quarters, the captains' quarters, to the main deck. Back in her own clothes, her dress stored neatly with the others that Jack had managed to get back to the ship before the shop was destroyed over the guilt that Natasha felt while wearing them, she had taken her sketchbook and slipped out of the room, standing by the door for a moment, watching the men before deciding to slip above deck and settled herself in a position out of the way. About half way up the steps she sat, leaning against the ship's side.
The men all but ignored her now, slowly growing accustomed to her presence, although still unhappy. A few still glanced in her direction, eyes hard and distant as they watched her, and Natasha tried to ignore them, engaging in Jack's conversation as he perched himself on the step beside her for a while before disappearing into the massive ship. The others were gathered around a metal bin in which they had started a small fire, and were talking and drinking for hours until some made their way below deck, others falling asleep where they sat. She watched them closely, studying them in silence for a while, attempting to gauge their appearances before she settled on trying to decipher them the best way she knew how. Opening her sketchbook, her fingers hesitating when she passed the page she had last been working on from her perch in the willow tree, she found a clean page and began to document the scene before her. Her fingers clutched steadily around a piece of charcoal that she dragged across a fresh page, the scene before her slowly taking place on the paper, clearing her mind of questions for the first time in days.
Natasha let herself get lost in her work for the moment, letting her focus on the drawing of group of men, the curves of their backs as they sat hunched around a small fire, which cast dancing shadows across their face, letting her fingers explain the expressions on their faces and the characteristics their body language displayed.
"That's quite the drawing." Natasha jumped at the voice, looking up to find Alexander standing behind her shoulder. Lost in her drawing she hadn't noticed, but he had walked up the other set of steps, crossed the deck, and come up behind her. She didn't know how long he had been standing there, either.
"Thank you," she replied, looking down at the drawing then back at the main deck. Only a few men remained compared to the amount in her sketch, even John had retired to his own room, making Natasha hesitant to return to bed.
"May I?" Natasha looked up at Alexander, who was motioning to the space beside her. She nodded, moving over slightly to allow him more room. When he settled next to her, she looked over at him and handed him the sketchbook when he asked to look more closely at the drawing. He studied it for a moment before handing it back to her, and Natasha closed the book and held it tightly against her chest, thankful that he hadn't been nosy enough to flip through the other pages as her siblings often had.
Despite having spent the better part of the afternoon with him, they had only talked about the steps and techniques he had been trying to teach her, and while his demeanor while they trained taught Natasha a lot about him, he was still a stranger to her. Even more, she still had so many questions for him, and as she looked at him, she sensed he had his own thoughts he had been waiting to express.
"So how long has it been?" he asked her, before Natasha had the chance to ask one of her many questions, and she tilted her head to the side inquisitively. "Since you left."
"Oh," Natasha replied quietly, "Five days now, but it feels like a lifetime already." She looked down at the sketchbook in her arms, thinking of all of the pictures tucked inside of her home, her friends and family. She missed them, and a large part of her always felt the urge to just abandon the ship and take her chances in the village, anything to see her family, to make sure they were safe and let them know that she was too.
"Tell me your side of the history," Alexander continued, still watching her carefully. "What stories were you told to keep you imprisoned in the town for so long?"
"You don't know?" Natasha asked him, surprised. With everything he had told her earlier, with everything he seemed to know, she assumed he would have known what these people said did to keep her and her townspeople imprisoned. Part of what he had said earlier in the bar was even true, the assassins who hunted her town for people who tried to leave, but there were parts of her story that differed from what he seemed to know.
"Well I've heard stories, of course, rumors, but I've never actually spoken with somebody who lived in the village. I want to know what you know, to hear the truth for once from somebody who lived it." Natasha studied him for a moment before retelling the story she had repeated to her so many times in her life, beginning to realize how absurd it sounded that her entire village had believed in these monsters, and how nobody had managed to escape, and live to talk about it.
"It sounds crazy, doesn't it?" She sighed after finishing her story, running her hands back through her hair. "A whole village believing in monsters that nobody had ever seen."
"I wouldn't say it was crazy," Alexander replied, looking off in the distance as he spoke. "Your village faced great tragedy for centuries, perhaps it just became easier for them to accept that these atrocities were the doings of supernatural beings instead of human beings. Nobody wants to believe that kind of evil actually exists within people." Natasha followed Alexander's gaze, looking out over the water as she let his words sink in, and she couldn't help but think about her father once again, and how that kind of evil seemed to exist within him.
"But why didn't anybody find out the truth? After all these years, why didn't anybody figure it out? If they had, if somebody had found out the truth, all of this could have been avoided," Natasha said quietly, letting her words trail off again. "My father never would have disappeared. He would be alive."
"I wouldn't be so quick to assume that nobody figured out the truth," Alexander responded, and as Natasha looked back at him she found his eyes already on her. "If I had to guess, I'd say that perhaps the reason many of your people disappeared was because they were bothering to find out the truth, and they found out something they weren't supposed to know. For that, they were either killed or forced to join those who guarded your town."
"Why do you think that is? What could they have found that would have cost them their lives?" Natasha watched him carefully, unable to deny how thankful and relieved she felt to have somebody who would answer her questions, somebody who knew something about her town.
"Don't you remember what I said yesterday, Natasha?" He asked, and she nodded, replaying bits of their conversation in her mind, searching for what Alexander would be referencing.
"Nobody's ever found written proof of what happened the day those two Lords abdicated, but the people who know about your village believe that you come from those families, and that's why the current Lords put so much effort into keeping you all contained, because descendants of those two Lords could disrupt the kingdom.
"The spies originally sent into your village killed those in charge, most of the people who were old enough to remember where you came from. Those who were left, I image were threatened into keeping quiet, until eventually all those who remembered your past were gone. But I don't believe that these men and women would have just let your heritage die. If I had to bet, there's information hidden somewhere in your village about your past, about who you all are-"
Natasha finished the sentence for him.
"Descendants of the two formal Lords."
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A/N: I'm not really a huge fan of this chapter, idk why. Let me know what you think!
Edited 9/8/18