Chapter nineteen - gangsters don't cry

(therefore therefore i'm mister misty-eyed)

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"You up for another round?" Gerard asked breathlessly.

We had been fighting since the cold morning hours, and by now it was mid-afternoon and I'd had no sustenance all day. Gerard was panting and half covered in bruises, and a messy streak of blood from when my sword caught him ran across his cheekbone, but he still seemed determined to keep fighting until the sun went down. Or until the sun burned out.

I just wanted to go to bed.

"C'mon, pretty boy," he teased. "Don't tell me you're beat already."

"No," I said. "Just a little bored."

Gerard laughed. "Sure, darling." Then within about three seconds he was at my throat with a knife again, still laughing breathlessly as I wrestled his arms away and forced him off me so I could kick him to the floor.

Sometimes Gerard acted so similarly to the way he used to, it was impossible not to forget anything had happened. But then I would catch something insignificant– or seemingly so– and the gravity of the fact that a man so close to Gerard had committed suicide not a month ago would weigh down on me like heady saltwater on a vessel at the bottom of the ocean; pummelled with pressure it could never escape.

Gerard, meanwhile, was just floating by the whole issue like a piece of driftwood: all this chaos was still erupting under the waves below him while he passed by unharmed. The whole crew was still at a loss about Gerard. Had he really managed to cast out all emotion and feeling in a night, and had not allowed it back in since? It was one of the more disturbing pirate tendencies to form deep bonds, then wreck them, and deny the fact that any emotion had ever been present.

But not on the Freighter. We were different; more human– we had thought so, at least.

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I had found that being at sea, although I still had a suitably large conscience, I had lost the majority of my morals. It was just routine to come along to help pillage and steal when we made port. I would have no part in kidnappings though: possessions and gold were material, impermanent and replaceable, but lives were invaluable, and not to be toyed with.

I found repercussions of my former life to be all the more distressing each time they resurfaced, and this only made it more irrevocable for me to stay at a firm distance away from the affairs of others. I wanted to be the only one to have to endure being drowned in memories of a life snatched from you, especially as now it was a fairly high priority of mine to stay on the ship and out the water.

Soon we made port at Hartville, a village of little wealth with close to no produce, but Dewees had been restless.

"I haven't smashed anything in weeks," Dewees complainer. "I want to steal shit– I need to steal shit. It's what keeps me alive." His voice had turned wistful and almost philosophical. "It's my raison d'être."

Stump pulled a face. "What, stealing?"

"Yes," Dewees said serenely.

An incredulous snort left Patrick's nose.

"Excuse me," Dewees said indignantly, "But what kind of a pirate must you be if you don't get a kick out of stealing?"

Patrick raised an eyebrow and sighed dully. "I just like killing people," he shrugged, a bored settle to his small shoulders. He glanced at me as if to ask why I was here, and I nearly choked on the incredulous laugh that burst out of me.

"I'm only on this ship because Gerard dumped me here," I spluttered. "Although, the stealing is quite good, to be honest."

"Ha!" Dewees cried, pointing his finger accusingly at Patrick.

Patrick remained morbidly unfazed.

"I told you! I fucking told him, didn't I, Frank? Didn't I–"

Gerard thrust his knife under Dewees' chin and huffed out an infuriated breath. "If you don't stop fucking screaming, you little cull," he hissed, "I swear to god I will carve out your fucking voicebox."

Dewees stood, rather bewildered, his eyes wide, and his mouth open. "All right," he half-laughed.

Gerard snarled and lowered his dagger. Dewees took a step back, and I subtly put more distance between myself and Gerard.

"The fuck crawled down your throat?" Stump asked Gerard, his eyebrows rising ever higher.

A gruff noise left Gerard's mouth, and he turned on his heel and stormed off, leaving a wake of dust and hot air behind him.

Everyone looked rather bemused after Gerard left.

"Somebody ought to go after him," Patrick said in a bored voice.

"I nominate Frank," Toro perked up, materialising behind Patrick.

"I second that," Dewees said cheerily.

"Fuck you," I grunted, then trudged away to counsel Gerard.

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Gerard was not in his cabin. He wasn't in the stock room, and of course, I had come to expect that he would be nowhere near the rum. He seemed intent on numbing himself with sobriety. When I found him however, I came to the conclusion that the numbness wasn't really erasing his emotions at all, only hiding them from others– and apparently causing them to overflow in very disturbing ways. He was sat cross legged on the floor of my bunk, tangled in a distressed pile of crumpled scraps of paper, worn and weathered maps and scrawled strange symbols on torn sheets of parchment– and there were smears of blood scraped over almost every page in the room.

I was frightened to say the least. It looked like he was trying to summon a demon.

"Gerard," I said.

He didn't move. Either he was staring very very intently at what looked like a child's scribble, or he was possessed, I decided.

"Gerard," I repeated, with slightly less confidence in my voice. When he stay hunched over, I took a few cautious steps towards him and went cold all over: vicious cuts littered the backs of his hands, and bloodstains sullied his clothes. "Gerard," I said more urgently, kneeling down beside him, wary of disturbing the eccentric order of the papers. I touched his shoulder.

His head stayed bowed and grim, but from closer I could see the tenseness in his body and feel him tremble at my touch. "You're supposed to be my scorpion boy," he said.

"What do you mean?" I asked in exasperation. "I'm sick of this. Just tell me what on earth is going on."

"You're supposed to be mine," he said, as if that explained anything at all.

My mouth dropped open incredulously. "Well, I'm not!" I said. "I'm my own person, Gerard. No one's claiming me, no matter how important it is to you for your fucking demon summoning."

His head snapped around. "Is that what you think this is?" he hissed. "Some idiotic, superstitious fad?"

"Yes, that's exactly what this whole scorpion child business is. Face it. It's just a birthmark," I said coldly.

Gerard looked stripped raw of all his hostility. "You are supposed to be my key," he uttered.

"Key to what?" I demanded. "What is this all about?"

"Are you a virgin, Frank?" he asked suddenly.

I was taken aback to say the least. "What kind of a question is–"

"Just tell me. Are you a virgin?"

"Yes, I am," I grated out. "But what in the name of god has this got to do with–"

"Everything. It's everything."

"Look," I said. "I don't know what kind of deluded plan you have in your head, but I'm telling you, I'll have no part in it."

Gerard tugged at his hair in distress. A few of the unformed scabs on the backs of his hands split, and he made a small sharp noise of pain through gritted teeth.

I carefully pulled his hands away from his hair by his wrists and held them in my own. "What are you doing to yourself?" I asked.

His words became entangled with themselves and he just shook his head. He snatched his hands away from mine and scrabbled through the papers to find a map with a smear of blood along the side. He dropped it in my lap, rose to his feet, and fled out my room.

I stared at the parchment in my hands. Every nerve in my body felt cold and hot at the same time. "Oh," I uttered.