“Would you wake up, you stupid— ugh!”
“Oof! Ow, hey, what the hell are you doing!?” Kavo shouted at the very rude awakening he received, in the form of a small boy collapsed on his chest.
“I was just trying to get you up, ‘cause Hawk told me to, but you’re, like, a really heavy sleeper, so I was trying to shake you, but then I fell, and…”
“Are you going to get off any time soon?” Kavo ground out.
“Oh— I guess I should, huh? You’re actually not as uncomfortable as you look, though— has anyone told you that?”
“Aizel… Get. Of—”
“Hey, Aizel, ‘s he up ye— …” Torian paused in the doorway, staring. Kavo and Aizel blinked back at him for a while before it seemed that it hit Aizel why he was staring so blankly at the two of them.
“Oh— oh god, Tor, it’s definitely not whatever you’re thinking it might be. I just fell— he and I, we’re not…”
“No, definitely not!” Kavo agreed. “I mean, he’s like twelve, and a boy, no less, an—”
Torian laughed somewhat suddenly. “Of course. How silly, Aizel doing that with you. C’mon, Aiz. I wanted to see you.”
Aizel was blushing as he climbed off of Kavo, quite clearly embarrassed. “Right, he’s up now,” he said, as if it weren’t obvious enough by now. “Oh—Kavo, Hawk and Gwendolyn wanted to see you on deck once I managed to get you out of bed. You can find that on your own, right? I think they figured you might try to kill me if I escorted you, so…”
“Aizel,” Torian interrupted. “He doesn’t need to hear anything that you just told him. You need to be careful, remember?”
“Right… sorry…”
“C’mon. Let’s not be late. Kavo, know that if you mess things up again, even Gwendolyn’s favour won’t stop either Hawk or me. We will make sure you don’t continue to ruin our lives any more.”
Kavo had thought Torian was more friendly that that when they had first met. Apparently he didn’t take kindly to some of the things Kavo had done and was likely to do in the future. Then again, Kavo didn’t imagine many people should; he was capable of being quite horrible, and he utilized that ability as well as he could.
“Alright. So, um, bye, Kavo. Sorry I fell on you, but it’s good that you’re awake now,” Aizel said awkwardly. He waved, possible even more awkwardly, before Torian led him out of the tiny bedroom, glaring at Kavo all the while.
Kavo finally sat up, brushing a hand through his hair. He could really use a shower by now, he was sure. He doubted Hawk’s half-ass sponge bath while he’d hardly been conscious had cleaned him very well. Being wiped down hardly sufficed after all he’d done and been through.
He wondered what Hawk and Gwendolyn could have wanted with him. If they wanted him woken and sent to the deck, it wasn’t likely to be anything good. Of course, he probably didn’t really deserve anything good, and it was fine that way. He didn’t exactly want them to be comfortable in the least.
It looked like his feelings would have to change slightly, though, because Hawk and Torian were becoming increasingly volatile. If he stepped out of line any more, he may not be granted any more second chances, whether Gwendolyn was taking pity on him or not. One person’s favour wouldn’t be enough to sway the opinions of the rest of the crew, considering what he’d done. He didn’t blame them, of course. If someone had murdered his captain (before he was the captain), he probably wouldn’t have been able to keep from killing them, even if his new captain told him not to.
Resigning himself to his new and quite undesirable fate, Kavo swung out of bed. The longer he put it off, the more he imagined things going poorly— well, even more poorly than they were likely to go, which he had to admit already wasn’t good. He would have to keep in mind that pissing people off when they were in charge of whether he lived or died wasn’t exactly a good idea.
Kavo slowly wound his way up to the deck. He didn’t pass a single person on his way. If the ship lost any more of its crew, it wouldn’t be able to function at all. He would have to keep that in mind for when they landed; maybe that would be how he could escape.
“Kavo,” he heard Gwendolyn’s silky voice say. “It’s about time you rolled out of bed. Did the government not believe in wake-up times?”
“The government believed in alarm clocks,” he explained.
“In any case, we’re making a stop today. Hawk says one of the islands is getting low on supplies. If you interfere with anything today, we will make sure to give you the same treatment you gave Ryk. Is that understood?”
Kavo fought not to say anything about how they couldn’t really be sure what he had done to Ryk, seeing as his body was probably thousands of miles away by now. “I, uh… yeah,” he sighed. “I mean, erm… yes? Yes ma’am?”
Hawk crossed his arms over his chest as Gwendolyn placed a hand on a bare hip. “I suppose that will have to suffice,” she said. “Anyhow, stay with Hawk once we land. He’s the only one of us I can be sure you won’t even try to kill, so please behave.” She stalked off, likely in the direction of the airship’s navigation systems.
Hawk and Kavo stared at each other. Neither of them seemed too thrilled to be with each other yet again.
“So… I feel like the universe is trying to tell me something,” Kavo said.
“I can agree with you on that.”
“And I feel like that something is along the lines of, ‘Please kill yourself already.’”
“That is interesting. Is the universe’s coercion working yet?”
“I don’t think so.”
“That is a shame. I cannot say I am looking forward to being your babysitter today.”
“Sorry to be an inconvenience.”
“No, you’re not.”
“You’re right. I’m not.”
“Stop being a pain. I have actual work to do.” Hawk turned and walked abruptly. “Follow me. It seems I have to cart you around today.”
“Well, don’t sound too excited,” Kavo mumbled, trailing along behind him.
“I will try my best to contain my enthusiasm.”
Hawk led the way to the lookout post, which brought back some less than happy memories for Kavo. He had seen Hawk from there when he’d fired the arrow that had re-charted the course of his whole life.
“Are we… going up there?”
“Where else would we go?”
“I don’t know. Somewhere that actually made sense in this day and age? Who really uses lookout posts still?”
“We do. It is easier to fire arrows from here, and our radar systems are not always more advanced than the stealth systems of the government. Sometimes it is better to see your enemies. If you had been making use of a lookout post, then perhaps you would have spotted us before it was too late.”
“I will have to keep that in mind for later, then,” Kavo remarked half-heartedly as Hawk began to climb.
It was actually fairly impressive, watching him climb up the pole. Kavo had never really had the chance to watch anyone climb the enormous tower, and Hawk did it like he’d never done anything else in his whole life. He didn’t even look like he was hoisting nearly two hundred pounds up the thing while they were flying thousands of feet above the ground.
He was rather graceful, truthfully. Kavo supposed he should have known; Hawk had always moved gracefully. But watching him climb was weird, like he was some sort of enormous feline in the wild. The next thing Kavo knew, Hawk flipped over the edge of the basket and sprung up like an acrobat. It was making Kavo’s mind nearly explode just to watch him.
“Will you be joining me?” Hawk called down, his voice loud and booming from the projection.
Kavo squinted up at the basket. He didn’t trust himself climbing all that way, particularly for the first time while they were still soaring through the air at possibly a hundred miles an hour, but it didn’t seem that he had a choice. After all, he had to stay close to Hawk. It was hard to tell what would happen to him if he didn’t concede.
With a reluctant sigh, Kavo began climbing. The venture was long, and it seemed that although he kept pulling and lifting and pulling again, he was hardly capable of moving. By the time he wrapped his fingers around the lip of the basket, every muscle in his arm ached with fatigue at even the consideration of movement. Hawk
towered over him and stared down expectantly, apparently either waiting for him to request help or to heave himself over the edge.
And then it all went downhill.
Kavo’s hand began to slip; he lost his grip. He scrabbled to hold on, but his hands were damp with sweat from the exertion to reach the top, and his muscles were tired. The wood, rough against his fingers, began to splinter at his effort. Finally, though, the friction wasn’t enough to hold him up against the pain and exhaustion; Kavo fell.
The stop was sudden and rough, and jerked him in a way he hadn’t expected. The warm and firm surface dug the splinters deeper into his hand, irritated his skin, but he couldn’t say he minded. More gently than Kavo would have anticipated, Hawk lifted him over the side and set him on the floor of the basket.
“I… don’t think I want to do that again,” Kavo breathed. His heart hammered in his chest, pounding against his rib cage. He could feel the adrenaline pulsing along with his blood, pumping through every inch of every vein in his body, as he tried to regain control of his suddenly gelatinous limbs.
“I had not guessed that you would want to attempt it the first time,” Hawk remarked, still standing over him like a statue.
“I didn’t. Didn’t have much choice, either, though.”
“You did. You simply picked the better of the two without much thought. It seems that you are occasionally capable of being somewhat rational.”
Kavo sat up, wincing. “I wish I could say thanks for that, but I’m pretty sure it was more of an insult.”
“No.” Hawk cast him an odd look. “It was a compliment.”
“Oh. Well. Thanks, I guess.” Kavo tried to stand, but he had to grapple for support. Even if he weren’t physically and psychologically exhausted after his near-death, the post seemed to sway quite dramatically in the wind. Kavo wasn’t sure how anyone could stay upright, let alone steady enough to shoot an arrow with the precision of a homing missile. “So where are we headed?”
“We will be stopping at Sol, and then we are landing on the Lucia Island.”
“You all seem especially protective of the Islands.”
“After what happened to my village, I think we have a right to be. We do not want a repeat of that disaster.”
Kavo still didn’t believe that the government, the same entity that had supported his entire family for generations, could be evil enough to destroy an entire innocent village, yet that was how Hawk said it was. He couldn’t have been blamed for not trusting Hawk at all.
“I know you do not believe me; I can understand why you would not. However, what I say is the truth. I would not lie, even to you.”
Hawk didn’t seem like the type of man who would lie; Kavo could agree with that. Even so, he couldn’t believe that the government had attacked a peaceful village so cruelly and without warning. Surely there was a secret reason that Hawk wasn’t aware of, or that Hawk didn’t want to believe… there was something else that at least Kavo hadn’t been made aware of.
“How much longer until we’re there?”
Hawk glanced at the sun, which hovered above them like a blindingly white pearl. Kavo could see the golden glint of his eyes when the sun hit him just right, like it lit a spark somehow in the mysterious man.
“It should not be much longer. At the most, an hour; more probably, twenty minutes.”
That was quite a difference in times to Kavo, but he had to admit that it was impressive for Hawk to guess where they were geographically with not much more than a thirty-second glance at the shining sun.
“If you would like, you may sit and rest. I understand that you may not be used to today’s exertion.”
Kavo frowned. Hawk made him sound weak and girly, like he’d never worked a day in his life. Just because he wasn’t used to climbing twenty feet up long wooden posts didn’t mean that he was unused to exercise. In the academy, he’d exercised quite rigorously; on his ship, he hadn’t had the luxury of slacking off on his training, not to mention he’d grown extremely used to a daily routine of exercises. And besides, a large portion of his exhaustion could be attributed to the turmoil that near-death experiences inflicted on one’s psyche. He’d been sure he was going to die.
He hadn’t, though. Hawk had saved him. Had he thanked him yet? No wonder everyone hated him.
Sighing, Kavo decided he would try being nice, even if only for a moment. “Thanks, by the way. You didn’t have to catch me, and you probably didn’t want to, but you still did, so… thank you. I do appreciate it.”
“There is no need to thank me. You have done your best today not to anger anyone; that alone proves to me that your life is worth living. I would not let anyone capable of changing his way perish if I could help him at all.”
“Well. Even so, thanks. It’s nice to know that someone would save my life on this ship after all that I’ve done.” It touched Kavo that he could be forgiven in the slightest. Hawk not wishing him dead was a start, even if a small one. He liked the idea that he could be trusted enough to be kept alive.
Even if he knew that he couldn’t be, and shouldn’t be.
He sat down as Hawk had suggested, slouching against the wall of the bin they were standing in. Hawk could do his job; Kavo saw no reason to attempt to assist him. The pirates were probably going to Sol only to steal supplies. So far, Hawk was the one to show him kindness; that was saying something, with as cold as the man was.
Kavo supposed Aizel hadn’t been too bad, either, and Torian’s threats had been fair. But he wasn’t one to put even trifling grudges behind him quickly. Hawk had only won him over for the time being; once things had settled back down and he was on somewhat sturdier ground, Kavo would likely hate him all over again. But for now, with no one to witness this slight weakness of feelings on his part, Kavo could pretend that things could be somewhat normal between the two of them.
Because, face it, Kavo and Hawk were far from normal. One minute they were at each other’s throats and the next they were reasonably companionable, and Hawk was saving lives as opposed to ruining them. Individually, even, they were insane. Hawk was a modern-day Captain Hook— except he wasn’t the captain, of course— and Kavo had probably every complex known to man in one form or another. It wasn’t exactly unheard of that two people who were very different from the rest of society wouldn’t be similar to each other in any way, shape or form.
“If you want to rest, I will make sure to wake you when we arrive, if you wish.”
“I don’t really care,” Kavo muttered. He didn’t want anything to do with their thieving plans.
“That is okay, as well. I simply thought you may want to get off the ship for a while. Sometimes it can feel like a prison. Although I know it technically may be yours, we will not confine you entirely to it. I, at the very least, will be willing to escort you on land.”
“I’ve seen Sol enough. I’d rather not be awake to be witness to whatever crimes you plan to commit there. But I’d like to take a walk on the island.”
“I understand. I will be sure to alert you when we land at Lucia.”
“Thanks.” Kavo closed his eyes and set back. He could allow this; Hawk understood the circumstances of the day, having been with him through its entirety. He may not have trusted everything about Hawk, but he trusted that he was safe to relax and perhaps nap for a while.
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