You're too late to reach him.
By the time your footsteps come thundering up the gangplank of the Treasure, wood creaking beneath your boots, Mingi comes to greet you midway, face drawn with concern and barely veiled fury.
"Where is he?" Your captain asks urgently, immediately, and you feel the pit in your stomach sinking more than it already has. San has had his hand on your arm the entire time, a reassuring presence but unwilling to divulge any information to you about that mysterious white ship.
White ship... you think, eyes glancing over over the hull, following the harbor. What meets your gaze is an unassuming, slender ship a few docks down, hull painted a stark, bone white, the same colour of ashes long burnt out, cold and dead.
"He's in the sickbay." Mingi runs a hand through his hair, eyes hard and distressed. He makes a soft, helpless noise, turns to your captain. "Captain, I really didn't know this was going to happen, I-"
"There was nothing you could do, you couldn't have predicted it." Hongjoong says with a sigh, his fingers tracing the stitching along his eye patch. Next to you, San's hand falls from your arm, chewing on his bottom lip nervously as he glances at the door to the sickbay. "How is he?"
"Wait." You cut in, unable to bear not knowing about what is going on anymore. This is Wooyoung they're talking, dolphin laugh Wooyoung, chatterbox Wooyoung, brighter than the sun Wooyoung. Why is the mere sight of a single ship sailing into the harbor of Tortuga enough to unsettle all of them so much. "What's going on?"
San's mouth works soundlessly for a moment, trying to find the right words, before it abruptly closes. He glances between you and the white ship and back again, then swallows nervously. "Chin Hae, that ship is-"
All of a sudden, the door to the sick bay slams open with a bang and you nearly jump, whirling to stare at the source of the noise.
"Wooyoung, wait!" You hear Yeosang cry out, and your eyes widen when you see the purple haired gunner burst out of the door, stumbling on shaky legs and eyes wild. He looks about frantically before his eyes zero in on the gangplank, and takes off at a run, frighteningly fast, barreling straight towards you. You don't recognise his eyes, lost in the waves of something dark, a place where you can't see.
"Wooyoung, stop!" Hongjoong grabs him by the arm and tackles him to the ground, and the younger gunner goes crashing to the ground with a painful cry. You merely watch in horror as Yunho follows behind his captain, dropping from the rigging to pin his other hand to the deck as Wooyoung continues to struggle and flail, panicked tears streaming from his eyes, mumbling unintelligible nothings under his breath.
"They've found me, they've found me, need to run, need to escape," he moans, tears slipping down his cheeks as you can only stare on in horror - what on earth is happening? "Need to hide, need to run away before they find me and chain me up again, I-"
What?
"Wooyoung, listen to me-" Hongjoong tries to say, but Wooyoung shivers uncontrollably even though the sea breeze is warm, teeth practically chattering from fear. "Wooyoung, please, you need to listen-"
"Who?" You find yourself saying, even before you realise you've spoken. "Who is 'they', Wooyoung?"
"He's here." He sobs, and you can feel each individual piece of your heart shatter and crack at his heart wrenching wails. "He's found me, I need to escape, I need to-"
"Wooyoung." Your captain grabs him by the cheeks, forcing the younger man to look at him with tear filled eyes. "Listen to me. You are Jung Wooyoung. I gave you that name myself years ago, when I broke the chains on your hands and brought you with me. You are one of my crew, part of the Treasure." He squeezes Wooyoung's hands tightly, as if trying to will him to understand. "No one is going to hurt you ever again."
Wooyoung stills, the fight deflating from him like a ship's sails that have lost the wind. "No hurt anymore?" He whimpers quietly, eyes still clouded with fear.
Hongjoong nods once.
"No more hurt."
>>>
"Master, what's going on?" You ask the second he steps into the storage hold. San draws in a heavy breath, as if it carries the weight of the world, and sits down in front of you where your blanket is wrapped around your knees. Because of Wooyoung's current sensitive condition, your captain has ordered for the beds in the sickbay to be given to Wooyoung and Yeosang for now, the navigator apparently being one of the few people able to calm him down. Thus now, you're bunking down in the storage hold, lantern flickering dimly overhead, illuminating the weary slant of San's eyes, the tight purse of his lips.
"I brought you this." San says quietly, holding out something red - fox fur! - you realise. Thanking him, you draw the half stitched coat into your lap, fingers fondling the stray ends like they're old friends, before you ask once again.
"Master, please." You say quietly, fingers of your real hand curling around his, a reassurance of your presence, a persuasion for the truth. You can see that it's weighing him down, that he's dying to tell you, but there's something holding him back. "Master, Wooyoung is..." you trail off, searching for the right words. What exactly is Wooyoung to you? But regardless of the answer that you do not yet have, the truth is still the same. "He's a very precious person to me. I can't just-"
"He's an important person to me too, Chin Hae." San says softly, squeezing your hand back tight. "He's my best friend."
"But you know." You insist, desperation welling up in you. You feel your lower lips trembling, struggle to keep your tears from falling. "Master, what happened to Wooyoung?"
San lets out a groan, letting go of your hands to run his own through his hair harshly. "Wooyoung's past is... complicated. He's been through a lot, and-"
"Master." You say, and he turns to stare at you with pained eyes. "Please, just tell me. I want to know."
San holds your gaze for a moment longer before his eyes drop from yours, a soft breath leaving his lips. "I just... don't want you to think any differently of him, or any lesser about him because of his past."
"I couldn't." You answer instantly. When San looks at you, confused, you add on earnestly. "Nothing you say about his past could change the way I view him now, Master. He's the one," your breath catches a little, and you turn away, looking instead at the fox fur in your lap, "who saved me from the very beginning in Nassau, even before he really knew me. I care for him a great deal, master."
"I know." San says softly. A breath passes before he looks up at you, manages a grin. "Scoot over?"
You do instantly, shifting so that San has space to sit next to you, shoulders pressing together. He's warm, you think quietly, letting your head rest against his upper arm. "So?"
San exhales. "Well... did we ever tell you how Wooyoung came onto the Treasure?"
"No." You shake your head. As far as you know, Wooyoung's past has been cryptic at best, with San and Hongjoong dropping the occasional comment before about how he'd been like you, without a name. The circumstances behind that are unknown, but you wonder if you might finally get to find out today.
"I was in the sickbay alone a few years back." He raises his hands, looking at them as if trying to remember what he had been doing that day. "I was still relatively new on board the ship, after captain picked me up, but I know we were docked right here, in Tortuga." Your breath hitches. "I was doing something at the table, whether grinding herbs or mixing salves, I can't remember. But then all of a sudden Captain burst into the room, Mingi behind him. And I remember so clearly, the small, pitiful shape Mingi was carrying in his arms."
You can see it playing out in your mind, San sitting at his little table, back turned to the door, spinning around in shock as your captain crashes in with his quartermaster in tow. "He was nothing but a bag of bones," your master continues, voice hushed, cracking a little at the ends, "but the scariest thing were his eyes. They were so dead, Chin Hae." The despair in his words is enough to make tears well up in your eyes. "If I hadn't seen him breathing, I would have thought he might have been dead."
Wooyoung with dead eyes? His eyes have always danced with life since the first day you've known him, bright and vibrant like the pulse of the sea and the life it brings. You don't want to even imagine what he could have looked like, the mere thought of it too painful for you to handle.
"There were broken shackles around his wrists, heavy padlocks hanging from each." San adds on, voice growing more and more solemn with each word. "Captain didn't tell me the reason behind them, only instructing me to take care of him and feed him till he got better. And I did. I fed him and bathed him, and that's when I saw the marks all over his body, bruises, deep scratches, bite marks..."
You still. "Bite marks?" You repeat hollowly, the words echoing around your mind. San sucks in a deep breath, buries his face in your hair. Your arms come up instinctively to wrap around him, and San continues, words heavy.
"Bite marks... from the women he was sold to." The words seem to be nothing more than white noise now, ringing emptily in your skull. "Chin Hae, his old captain was a slave trader, but kept Wooyoung on board as a pet since he could remember. He was kicked, abused, beaten within an inch of his life as he grew up." His tears soak into your hair as you stare silently at the wooden beams opposite, unable to think. "And when his captain thought he was pretty and exotic because of his purple hair, he started trading Wooyoung with high ranking women in towns for favors, and the things they did to him, he still has nightmares about them sometimes, and he-"
There's nothing but a dull, throbbing ache in your chest. It hurts so much it stifles your breath, poisonous chains wrapped tight around your throat and lungs.
"-that's why he's so afraid of women, Chin Hae." San says helplessly, seemingly unaware of the way your breath is trapped in your lungs. "He slept with them so much afterwards as his way of convincing himself he'd finally left his demons behind, but when you came, he-"
"Please stop." You manage to croak out, and immediately San falls silent. Your head is spinning, a painful, raw feeling in your chest, breath trapped painfully in your lungs. Rising to your feet, you try not to let the tears slip from your eyes, refusing to look at your master.
"I need some time, please."
Without waiting for his reply you stride out of the storage hold, climbing the stairs to the main deck, away from the stifling air beneath the deck that seems far too choking. Here the air is calming, and you step to the edge of the ship to cool off, trying to keep your emotions under control.
Wooyoung was hurt, is all you can think. People hurt him.
How could anyone hurt a person like Wooyoung?
You let out a long, shaky breath as you look down at the rippling surface of the sea. Your image is distorted, reflection half glancing off with the lights coming from the harbor, the other half submerged in darkness. There's a feeling that only builds in you, deep and roiling, far beneath the surface, somewhere deep within you, like the beginning of a tidal wave.
Fury.
Like waves lapping at shore, slowly but surely, eating away at the edges. You glance up at the white ship a little while off, and thunder rumbles in the distance from the sea.
You're furious.