"Tell me about this place." Natasha let her fingers rest on another spot on the worn map before her, faded colors of tan and brown outlining the breadth of a world she could have never even imagined. Her two fingers all but covered the entire rugged shape of the island, situated at the top left corner of the map, a place that seemed close enough to her home that perhaps she would have visited if she had known of the world that existed beyond her village, if she had had the chance to explore instead of being kept prisoner in her small corner of the map. She pulled her eyes from the spot on the map where her fingers were still resting to look up at John as he leaned over her shoulder, his shape casting a shadow across the lines of the map.
She had woken up that morning, the last before they reached their final destination of Acalia, and crossed the space of John's quarters until she reached his desk. Alone in his room still, she situated herself in the chair behind his desk, letting her eyes draw slowly over the shapes and lines that made little sense to her, finding understanding only in the name Acalia and the thick line drawn around the vast territory it encompassed. She was leaning over the map, legs crossed underneath her trying to work how where her village existed amongst all of the markings, when the door to John's quarters opened and he walked in, coming to stand behind her without a word.
As if he had known what she was searching for, he had reached over her shoulder to point to a spot at the left of Acalia's borders, along the water at the southern base, to an unmarked piece of land. As he pulled his finger away, Natasha let her eyes linger on the spot where he had pointed, imaging her small village existing in that one pinpoint on the expansive map before her.
"There's not even a marking for it," she had whispered, reaching up slowly to rest her finger on the place. It was inside the thick border of Acalia, but outside of the smaller encompassed other territories within the kingdom, without even the slightest of hints that an entire village had existed there for centuries.
"It's not supposed to exist, remember?" Natasha had pulled her finger away, leaning back into John's chair as her eyes swept across the map once more. "Before your people escaped there, it was nothing. After you got there, the Lords continued to let everyone believe it was nothing." His words, his reference to her home as nothing, made her heart ache, as it had once been something, been everything, to her. Now, because of her, it was nothing once more.
"How many of these places have you visited?" She asked, wanting to change the subject, watching as he moved John fingers across the map, letting them rest momentarily across the coastline of Acalia, and on to other kingdoms she had never heard of before, names of places that sounded like another language as they left his lips. When he pulled his hand back, she kept her eyes on the last place he had pointed to, the island at the corner of the map, and looked up at him as he craned his neck to see where she was pointing to.
"Tell me about this place."
"Miserable place to visit." Natasha frowned as she looked away from John's face to the small island on the map, pulling her fingers back so she could study the shape, wondering what could possibly make the small territory such an awful place.
"It snows more often than it doesn't, so unless you like the god awful stuff-"
"What's snow?" Natasha looked back at John, watching as his expression morphed from one of faint irritation, to bewilderment, then finally amusement.
"You're not serious?" His words were laced with laugher he was trying to hold back, his eyes shining with the most honest expression of happiness that she had seen from him in the weeks that they had known each other. It was at her expense, however, and Natasha felt her cheeks flush slightly with embarrassment as he clearly enjoyed her lack of knowledge of the world around her.
"Have you forgotten I've spent my entire life trapped in one little corner of this world?" Natasha huffed bitterly, looking away from him down at the map before her, her heart aching again with the desire to have seen more of it.
"Perhaps one day I could take you there, you can see the snow for yourself." Natasha looked back over her shoulder immediately, finding John's expression somber again, but with the slightest hint of hope in his eyes. As much as he tried to hide it, Natasha had finally begun to be able to pick up on the subtleties of his expression as she spent more time with him. If it was because he was allowing her to see those things, or because she was simply understanding how to read him better, she wasn't sure, but the hope she saw now in his eyes made her stomach flutter, as the offering of taking her around the world one day brought with it a wave of conflicting emotions.
"Perhaps, one day," she wanted to say, partially out of a true desire to have him show her the world, partially out of a desire to halt the regretful look seeping into his eyes, replacing the look of hope, but she never had the chance. As soon as her lips moved to form the words, a quick knock on the door jolted both of them, and as Natasha turned she saw the door swing open immediately, Castille storming in.
"We've got a problem, Captain." With a glance back over her shoulder, Natasha realized their moment was gone. Complete stoicism had taken over his expression and form, as he stood straight behind her now, his brown eyes trained on Castille. As she looked between them, the sound of shouting from the men on deck intensified, and Natasha could sense what the problem was before Castille even spoke. John seemed to know without needing to hear the words, also, as he immediately began to move from Natasha's shoulder to round the corner of his desk towards Castille and the open door, neither of them exchanging another word.
Natasha stood quickly to follow, grabbing her own sword from where it lay on top of the chest at the end of John's bed, not bothering to grab her boots that were also placed at the end of the bed, trying to catch up with the long, quick strides John had taken to cross the room. By the time she reached the door, he was already pulling it shut beside him, and she had to pull back hard to open it back up in front of her.
"What do you think you're doing?" John spun around, his face dark as he looked down at her.
"Did you think you were just going to lock me in here until whatever it is that's happening has passed?" Natasha questioned, sliding her sheathed sword into the belt around her waist, crossing her arms as she looked up at John.
"That's exactly what I thought," he said, clearly irritated as he reached forward to put a hand on her shoulder, an attempt to move her backwards out of the way of the door. Natasha wrenched her shoulder back, twisted out his way as his fingers just barely brushed against her shirt.
"And how well did that work out for me last time?" Natasha shot back, narrowing her eyes at him as she reminded him of the last time Alexander had tried to keep her safe by locking her in his room, only to result in her being takin by Easton. She watched as John clenched his jaw, his eyes darkening even more as he looked down at her, but this time he didn't try to stop her as she brushed angrily past his shoulder.
The ship was alive around her, men rushing back and forth across the desk, disappearing beneath the deck, where Natasha knew they were readying the ship's cannons for whatever enemy they were approaching. She dodged her way across the main deck to the forecastle, walking right to the edge of the ship to look out at the scene before her, a sight which made her heart race with fear. In the distance, but rapidly approaching, were three massive ships, all waving a flag with the symbol of Acalia. Natasha spun around, her hair whipping around her face as The Nightingale picked up speed, to find where John had made his way to, only to jump slightly when she found that he had come up behind her.
"We can't take on all three, can we?" The last time The Nightingale had gone up against three Acalian ships, they had been overwhelmed, but when she looked up at John's expression, she didn't see any fear in his eyes. In fact, he looked vengeful, his arms crossed firmly over his chest as his eyes narrowed at the approaching enemy ships.
"Last time we were ambushed," he said simply, never taking his eyes off of the water. Natasha looked back at him, finishing his thought that at least this time, they knew the ships were coming. That seemed to have instilled a dark confidence in John, but Natasha's body still felt alive with nerves. Standing at the ship's bow with John behind her, though, with the rush from the wind whipping around her, the buzz of the men behind her preparing for the approach of the unavoidable battle about to take place, some of those nerves began to shift into a sort of excited anxiousness, her heart pounding in her chest.
"Is there any chance this was enough to convince you to return to my quarters?" Natasha looked back and John, finding that his eyes on her. She could sense the concern in his words and the look in his eyes that he knew the answer to his own question, but wanted to try one last time to keep her out of the way.
"I'll stay out of the way," she started, "But I won't hide this time." Her compromise seemed to be enough to satisfy John, because he nodded slowly for a moment, seeming to consider if it was worth continuing to argue with her, before a quiet "fine" left his lips and he began to back away from her, his back turning as he started to shout orders out to the men below him.
As he retreated from her, she glanced back over her shoulder to look once more at the ships, now much closer than they had been only a few minutes ago, before she also retreated from the bow, back across the main deck. Natasha resigned herself to settle in the same place she had on her first day, on the crates stacked underneath the stairs that lead to the top decks, taking her sword from her belt and resting it across her lap, her feet crossed before her.
"Natasha." She watched as Jack climbed onto the crates beside her. She wasn't surprised that he had found her, imagining that he had through back to their kidnapping the same way she had.
"Are they going to take us again?" Jack asked, as he settled at her side, a small dagger gleaming in his hands. She wondered where he got it from, or if ht was something he always carried with him.
"No, Jack," she said quietly, running her hand through his messy hair the way she had when her own brothers when they were scared, as John's shouts echoed over the voices of the men calling out to each other, following his orders. "We're prepared this time. Besides," she met his eyes, offering him a reassuring smile, "Didn't you tell me once that this was the fastest, best, most fearsome ship to have ever sailed the seas?" The relief she felt at Jack's smile began to erase some of her own nerves, until she felt the boat begin to turn sharply, causing both her and Jack to jolt slightly. She listened as the deck fell silent, the only sound the rushing of the wind and waves as it turned sharply. Looking out at what she could see of the main deck, the men had frozen, poised and waiting for the next order.
When the ship seemed to stop turning, righting itself and moving straight ahead, John's voice rang out throughout the silence. There was a beat where nothing could be heard except the roar of John's voice, until the deafening sound of The Nightingale's cannons firing drowned out the sound of his voice, shaking the ship. Natasha gripped her sword more tightly, waiting, listening as chaos erupted around them once again.
******
A/N: Ahhhhhh! I can't believe it's been 21 days since I posted, I'm so sorry! I haven't forgotten, I've just been so swamped, and for a while I couldn't even access my Word document because my license expired and I couldn't even copy/paste what I had written. It was so annoying, but I finally got my Word access back and had the time to finish this chapter! I'm not giving up on this story, and I'm not forgetting about it, I'm just having trouble carving out time to dedicate to it!
Thanksgiving break is thankfully (no pun intended) coming up in a month and since I have the whole week off, I know I'll have a lot of time to write and get caught up. Until then, I'll do my best to update again more quickly than another 20 days! :p