“Does it hurt?” Kyungsoo asked Jongin again, lightly trailing his fingertips over the younger’s newest bandages. They were only wrapped around his right arm, but it still felt so intimate, he couldn’t help but blush.

“A little.”

“It pains me, to see you being wounded like this for me…” He sighed, frowning a little, but Jongin only smiled in return.

“It’s for you. I don’t mind. Besides, the others get hurt too.”

“The others all signed up to join the Siren willingly, though. You-”

“-told you in no uncertain terms that I wanted to fight for you. It’s really okay.”

The ocean whispered from outside their window, and the wind sang sweetly as it swirled around the Siren, filled the sails, sent her on her way. Jongin felt the sheets being placed over him properly, as if tucking him into bed.

“Jongin, when all of this is over, I…there’s something I’d like to ask of you.”

Kyungsoo’s voice was quiet. So quiet in the dark, it was almost lost to the song of the wind and waves.

“Yeah?”

“…actually, I’ll ask you later.” A soft kiss to Jongin’s lips, as every night, and a gentle touch tracing the scars down Jongin’s cheek.

“I’ll be waiting.”

 

One hand on his cheek, one tight around the hilt of his sword, Jongin waited in the hold of the Sapphire vessel to make his next move.

For such a tiny ship, it had been surprisingly packed with sailors not unlike a can of sardines. Unfortunately, most of these men had been armed just as they had been in previous engagements, and with so many opponents in a tiny space, it had been all too easy to become overwhelmed.

Which was how Jongin ended up in the hold of that Sapphire vessel, his back pressed against the door, trying to steady his breathing as he contemplated what to do next.

Sehun had bailed him out of his last predicament, thankfully, spiked club making quick work of the knees and legs of the sailors surrounding Jongin as well as making them far easier to transport to the top decks without resistance, to where Yifan was waiting for them. Unfortunately it wasn’t before one of the men had managed to get in a solid punch to Jongin’s chest, sending him to the floor with a wheeze. While Sehun had dragged the Sapphire sailors, once incapacitated, up to the top deck, Jongin had quietly made his way to the hold to breathe, to recover.

To wait.

The Oberon was a bizarrely small ship; possibly the smallest that Sapphire Country had. Which made it all the stranger that such a ship would be so far out from Sapphire Country when it was obviously incapable of carrying much in the way of cargo.

Not that it was carrying much cargo, as Jongin quickly found out when his eyes adjusted to the darkness in the cramped room.

Accidentally catching his cheek with the small length of wire still knotted around his finger, Jongin moved his hand away from his face and instead went to inspect the small pile of crates and barrels sharing the hold with him. His steps were slow, deliberate, as he listened carefully to the thuds and shouts and yells surrounding him, surrounding the hold on all sides.

A mop discarded carelessly on the floor.

Jongin picked it up, using it to help him walk steadily across the room until he reached the crates. Brushing some of the thick layers of dust away from one crate, he opened it, coughing slightly at the overpowering dust and damp.

The crate held only spare sails.

The next held tools.

One barrel, the last of what appeared to be a supply of fruit for the journey.

Curious.

This ship has no cargo. Jongin sat down on the dusty floor of the hold with a sigh, coughing again as he accidentally inhaled a whole lot of dust. His throat was almost as tight as the walls around him, in that tiny room. He held onto the mop still – partly to steady him, partly out of a strange sense of nostalgia. He held the mop close, closing his eyes. This ship isn’t carrying any cargo at all. Why is it here? What are all these armed sailors defending if they don’t have any cargo?

“Jongin?” A strong knock on the door of the hold, from a strong hand. Yifan. “Are you alright in there?”

“Y-” Jongin tried to reply, but ended up breathing in more dust instead. It was thick in his throat, in the air and all around. “Yeah.”

Yifan entered the hold too, blinking a little as his eyes adjusted to the lack of light and pulling his shirt up to cover his face from the dust. “Sehun was worried about you. Come on, we’re not done yet. This side of the ship is pretty much cleared out, but they’re all hanging around in this one hallway for some reason. Let’s go.”

And the taller man helped Jongin up, up to his feet, out of the hold with steady steps. He let Jongin lean on him as they walked, smiling a little as he took a breath of air that finally wasn’t thick with dust (but still rather damp and unpleasant.)

“You know,” Yifan mused as the pair made their way through the corridors, the shouts and stomps growing louder and louder, “you’d think, if they were all going to crowd in one part of the ship, they’d be protecting the hold.”

“There’s nothing in the hold.” Jongin croaked, trying his best to swallow so he could speak normally again. Yifan paused beside him.

“Nothing?”

“Nothing. I don’t know what they’re doing out here, Yifan, but they’re not trading. We have to tell the captain – something is not normal about this ship.”

The blonde frowned, letting Jongin stand on his own again. He reached for one of his swords, his other hand resting on the small pouch around his waist where his pistol was kept. “I don’t know where the captain is, but I’ll let the others know if I see them. They must be up to something…”

Patting the fabric pouch, Yifan left for the top deck again, to resume his post watching over the hostages (Jongin could only hope someone else had taken over when Yifan came to look for him…) and Jongin continued down the hall, sword drawn, ready to strike as soon as he was seen.

It wasn’t too long.

“Pirate!”

“Another one!”

“Jongin!” The last voice was Minseok, and everything started happening at once. A flurry of arms and legs, clashes of swords. Jongin did his best to remember Yifan’s advice from the days they spent training on the Opal Coast, before they last set out.

Aim low to aim high. Yifan had told him, and Jongin did just that, aiming his blows at the sailors’ legs for the most part to knock them to the floor. Pirate or not, he couldn’t help but cringe as Minseok, expression frighteningly unfazed, swung his blade into one of the sailors’ knees before kicking him onto the ground with relative ease.

“Out with you.” He thudded the Sapphire sailors’ heads against the walls to subdue them, before smiling serenely at Jongin. Minseok really was quite scary at times, such a peaceful smile on his face while ignoring the blood (that was not his own) all over his sword, hands, clothes. “Help me take them to the top deck?”

Jongin was about to do just that, when something caught his eye. Behind a large crate, an odd sight to see in a hallway like this, appeared to be…a door?

“Minseok, there’s a door there.” Instead of taking one of their new hostages, Jongin headed for the crate, pushing it aside. It was too light. In fact, Jongin had reason to believe the crate was empty. He tried the door.

It didn’t open.

“Locked?” Minseok raised an eyebrow. “Maybe that’s why all the sailors have been hanging around here, instead of around the galley or hold.”

Locked doors were suspicious – Jongin knew that all too well. It was for that reason that Kyungsoo had left the door to the captain’s quarters unlocked back when Jongin used to guard them, so long ago.

And with nothing in the hold, all the armed sailors must have been guarding something…

“I’m going to open it.” He unwound the length of wire from his little finger, poking his tongue out in concentration. “Will you cover me, Minseok?”

The quartermaster nodded, and waved Sehun over from down the hall to help him take the hostages above deck where they could be watched over properly. Keeping his weapon close, Jongin crouched down and began to carefully pick the lock on the door.

It took an agonisingly long time – he was pretty out of practice when it came to doors, specifically, and it was difficult to keep a steady hand with the sounds of battle either side. Sehun and Minseok, on returning from the top deck, appeared to have taken their places further down the hall from Jongin, one either side, to prevent any Sapphire sailors from interrupting Jongin’s work.

Light clicking from the lock, drowned out by strained shouting, clangs of metal, thud-thud-thudding of what sounded like a small army’s worth of boots on those endless wooden boards. On and on, endless like Jongin’s attempts at picking the lock. His legs were starting to ache, knees sore from their place on the rough floorboards.

Click.

With the most beautiful, satisfying creak Jongin had ever heard in his life, the door slowly began to open. Propping himself up on his sword, he quickly slipped inside the room and shut the door behind him, so nobody would know the difference.

The room was even smaller than the hold, but thankfully not as dark with a single round window in the far corner. The dust and damp weren’t quite as strong in that room, but it still wasn’t particularly nice. Jongin didn’t have much time to look around, however.

“Eek! Who are you?! Why are you in here?! Are you one of the bad pirates? Oh please, oh please don’t hurt me!!”

A child on board.

Jongin looked around for the source of the voice, high and desperate. It reminded him a little bit of something familiar…partly of his young friends back on the Opal Coast, the young girls with their high-pitched squeals as they played together, but partly of something else.

Blonde curly hair from behind a barrel, and Jongin approached it slowly, uncertainty swirling in his stomach.

Luhan. It reminded him of Luhan.

The accent was exactly like Luhan’s.

“Please don’t hurt me! Please!” The little voice, clearly belonging to young girl, had descended into terrified tears by the time Jongin made his way around the barrels to see just who had been hiding in the locked room. On what Jongin could just about make out as a pile of sacks sat one of the smallest little girls Jongin had ever seen, but she didn’t look much like any other girls he knew.

Unlike the little girls Jongin knew well, the child wasn’t wearing rags, oh no. From her seat on the pile of sacks, ruffles and frills from her gown of deep purple silks made the girl look almost like a piece of candy in wrapping. She wore shoes, jewelled shoes that caught the scarce hints of light from that tiny round window. Her shoes weren’t the only thing catching the light, though. There were the gemstones on her dress, the panicked tears on her face.

The tiny tiara atop her head, resting in those blonde curls.

“P-please, I’m so scared!” She wailed, hiding her face in small, gloved hands. It broke Jongin’s heart to see her cry (not to mention he would most certainly be caught if anybody heard her) and he shushed her quietly, setting his sword down on the floor.

“Shhh, it’s okay.” He whispered, holding up his hands to show he was unarmed. “I’m not a bad pirate, I promise. I won’t hurt you. I’m just here with my…friends. And we’re looking for something. We’re not here to hurt you.”

The girl sniffled sadly, but did pluck up the nerve to peep at Jongin between her fingers. “Y-you’re not going to hurt me?”

Jongin did his best to smile reassuringly. “I promise.” His smile widened just a little, when the child moved her hands away from her face, instead nervously twiddling her thumbs in her lap. “But what are you doing on this ship? In a little room like this?” Jongin frowned slightly, but kept a playful tone in his voice. “You’ll get your lovely dress dusty.”

The girl swallowed hard, smoothing out some of the creases in her dress as she thought for a moment. She looked no older than about seven or eight, by Jongin’s guess.

“Please, sir, I’m from the Amethyst Kingdom.” That explained the accent. “I’m the princess.”

Oh.

“And what might the princess of Amethyst Kingdom be doing on a pile of potato sacks?”

“I’m going home.” The girl – no, the princess – moved along on her pile of sacks, apparently an invitation for Jongin to sit. “I’ve been in the Sapphire Country with my mother and father, the king and queen. It was ever so much fun, like a big party every day! It was a little bit cold in that country, but they decorated so beautifully. It was almost like a festival back at home.”

From what Jongin could tell in the dim light, the small princess had stopped crying now, though she wasn’t quite ready to look at him properly yet. He just smiled and nodded, encouraging her to go on with little interjections of ‘yes?’ and ‘your tiara is very pretty’.

It took Jongin back a little, to memories he thought he’d forgotten. Of course, even in his own childhood there had been times when royal families from other countries would visit the Sapphire Country, and they pulled out all the stops to host their guests well. Jongin didn’t remember them as being massively different to his usual day to day life, being the kind of child kept well out of the way of most of the festivities. He did remember those times being a lot more colourful, however. He remembered some of the townspeople being in far more charitable moods and giving him food or sweets or small change, and the wealthy folk visiting the town in the hopes of rubbing shoulders with royalty made excellent pickings while they were distracted.

His experiences of those visits were probably very different to those of the princess.

“But…they told us that there were bad pirates around the Sapphire Country, and they worried that my mother and father’s ship might get attacked on our way home.” Jongin placed a hand on her tiny, frilly shoulder. She was trembling. “So it was decided to keep me safe, I would be sent home on a small ship like this, so that if the pirates got my parents, I would still get home.” She quietened, getting a little choked up again. “I-I’m so worried! If pirates found me anyway, what about my parents? I miss them, I want to go home!”

Jongin patted the princess on the shoulder as she started to cry again, mind wandering back to the enormous, grand looking ship they had watched sail by earlier that day. Luhan was right – it must have been the royal family’s ship, but missing one very important member. He told her what he had seen, of the Amethyst royal vessel sailing past unharmed in the early morning, and it seemed to calm her once more, reassured that her family was safe.

It twisted something inside Jongin, to be honest. He knew how it felt, to worry about his family despite being powerless to take care of them. It was that feeling which enabled him to draw his sword time and time again, finally wielding the power to protect his new family.

The sword lay on the floor, however, the jewelled hilt twinkling a little in the evening light.

“They told us that they would get rid of all the pirates before we left.” The princess produced a small handkerchief and dabbed at her eyes with it. Jongin’s eyes widened a little at the beautiful embroidery on the little square of fabric – certainly worth far more than anything he had owned in his youth. “They told us they had armed all their sailors so that the pirates would be all gone ready for our journey home…”

That explained an awful lot. Why the Sapphire sailors had been handed weapons with such urgency they couldn’t even be trained first. “Honestly, I don’t think they understand pirates as well as they think they do. But it’s okay, because nobody is going to hurt you.”

“The captain said all pirates were bad, though…” She hiccupped, covering with the handkerchief as Jongin assumed was proper. It was funny, he thought – Luhan often did the same thing. A habit of the nobility, perhaps.

“Are you friendly with the captain of this ship?”

“Oh, yes. He often tells me stories of-”

The door suddenly opened, and Jongin was quick to rise to his feet, taking up his sword once again. His hold was unsteady, but he stood firm as the Amethyst princess hid behind him.

But it was nothing to worry about, as a somewhat bothered Captain Kyungsoo entered the room, closing the door behind him. His expression swiftly changed from one of frustration to relief when he spotted Jongin on the other side of the room.

“Ah, I was wondering where you were. Minseok told me you had been unlocking this door.”

“That I was.” Jongin was conscious of the little girl cowering behind him. “Any luck?”

Kyungsoo didn’t seem to say yes or no, instead rolling his eyes with a sigh. “Not the ship we want, but I know their captain. He was the quartermaster that day, of the ship I need to find. I’d never forget his face…” Jongin tensed. A familiar face? But Kyungsoo didn’t seem quite as happy as he should have. “I tried to get information out of him, about his former ship, but he wouldn’t tell me anything and ended up getting himself knocked out as he resisted me. He was no use…”

“I-is the captain alright?” A tiny voice whispered from the shadows behind Jongin, and Captain Kyungsoo straightened up immediately. He glanced around, until Jongin stepped aside.

The princess held on to Jongin’s sleeve as he told Kyungsoo everything he needed to know. About the princess, about her family’s royal visit to Sapphire Country, about the Sapphire efforts to take out the pirates before the Amethyst royals returned home. Kyungsoo didn’t take his eyes off the little girl the entire time Jongin was speaking, but showed he was listening with the occasional nod of understanding. The princess hid behind Jongin a little more, squeaking nervously.

“That makes sense, then. The sudden increase in trade to Emerald Bay was to quickly bring in supplies for the big events celebrating the visit, as they wouldn’t have the time to make the long journey out to other territories.” He fiddled with his earring, in thought. “While arming every Sapphire ship they had was supposed to get rid of us so the Amethyst royal family could return home safely.”

“They obviously don’t know what kind of pirates we are, thinking we’d attack the Amethyst royal vessel over a Sapphire ship like this.”  Jongin grinned at his captain, before a tug on his sleeve took his attention.

“Mister pirate, sir,” the princess was looking at Jongin properly now, perhaps to avoid making any eye contact with Kyungsoo, “is the captain of this ship alright?”

“Yes.” He replied without thinking, quickly glancing to Captain Kyungsoo for some confirmation. The older man just nodded wordlessly. “He’s…asleep, for a minute, but I’m sure he’ll be just fine soon enough.”

She sat down on her pile of sacks again, straightening her tiara with a sigh of relief. “Oh, excellent. He’s terribly kind to me, you know. When the water is rough and I get scared, he tells me stories about the ship he used to work on, to cheer me up.”

Jongin froze. So did Kyungsoo. It was almost as if time had stopped completely in their tiny little room for a moment, down to the very dust particles in the air. The captain’s eyes were wide, staring the princess down in a mixture of shock and…something hopeful.

“The ship? Just the one?”

“Yes, mister pirate, sir.” The girl nodded, hiding her face behind her handkerchief again and retreating behind Jongin, mostly out of sight. “Just the one. Before he was promoted to captaincy on this ship, he worked on one other ship as the-”

“-quartermaster. Little girl. Princess. Do you remember the name of the ship?”

“I…” She swallowed, tiny frame trembling again as Kyungsoo’s gaze continued to follow her. “I don’t know.”

“Odd.” Jongin reached back to pat her shoulder comfortingly again. “Until now, she’s had quite the loose tongue. I’ve been hearing all sorts about-”

His words were interrupted then, by a thunderous BANG coming from somewhere above their heads. It felt almost like the boat had been rocked by the sound, and the princess began to tear up again, covering her face completely with her hands. Jongin’s heart practically missed a beat, and he looked to his captain in confusion.

Kyungsoo appeared just as alarmed as he did.

“A gunshot.” His voice was strained. “If that wasn’t Yifan, we’re in trouble.” Looking around uncertainly, Kyungsoo was speaking unusually quickly. “I’ll go and see what happened. Stay here with the girl, just in case she knows anything.”

“And if she doesn’t tell me, captain?” Their eyes met in the low light of the storeroom, as Kyungsoo took a step closer to Jongin. Time wasn’t quite frozen now, but it was slow, oh so slow as neither one of them broke their connection. It was an effort to breathe. “It would kill me to fail you.”

Kyungsoo’s hand on Jongin’s chest. “You couldn’t possibly fail me, Jongin. Your way with children is nothing short of miraculous. If she knows anything worth knowing…she will tell you. You have my confidence.”

Another gunshot from above, and the princess began to cry on her little pile of sacks. The moment broken, Kyungsoo took up his sword and left the room, taking care to close the door as he went.

Tension in the room broken, Jongin sat back down on the sacks, smiling gently at the tearful princess beside him.

“I’m afraid.” She whispered behind her handkerchief, nervously tapping the intricate floral designs with her fingertips.

“Well, you don’t have to be afraid. I’m here to protect you. Why don’t you think about those stories the captain would tell you, all those other times you were afraid? Tell me about them.”

Jongin didn’t know how long they were sat there in that room, the room that gradually darkened as the sun set outside. The previous ruckus of battle around them had quietened now, into near silence, as the girl began to recount the tales the captain of the ship had told her about his work on the other ship. They were nothing particularly exciting for Jongin; tales of visiting different ports, making important trades, but it must have been fascinating for a girl like the princess, living a sheltered childhood within palace walls in one of the most prosperous kingdoms around. It did, however, give Jongin some insight into what kind of ship they were looking for – as the tales went on, it became apparent that the other ship was prestigious, taking on highly important missions of trading valuable goods with all manner of countries.

“The ship sounds very important.”

“He told me, she was the queen of the Sapphire fleet, and it was a great honour to be on her crew.” She smiled a little. “Almost as great an honour as to work on my family’s ship, I think. Apparently most sailors on that ship would never give up their position, but he was offered the chance to be the captain of this ship, so he took it.”

From such a large, prestigious sounding vessel to a tiny one like this? “But why would he want to captain this ship?”

“Because this ship is important too. It’s so small; Sapphire Country uses this ship to transport important people and goods without drawing much attention. They may be worlds apart, but this ship is just as important, maybe even more so, as the….the….” She pursed her lips, taking her tiara off her head and frowning at it thoughtfully.

“The…?” Jongin prompted her to go on.

The princess sat there for quite a while, quietly mumbling in thought as she worried her small, gloved hands. She poked out her tongue a few times, as if the name of the ship was right there and she just couldn’t grasp it. Her mumbles became quieter and quieter as she continued to think, practically drowned out by the barely-there sounds of her jewelled shoes tapping the floor.

Then, she sat up a little straighter, placing her tiara back on her head. She began to smile brightly, as though she had just thought of something very, very important.

The little girl certainly looked a lot more regal like this.

She beamed at Jongin, clapping her hands together in delight just in time for Kyungsoo to open the door once again.

“Titania!”

 

The sky was almost completely black when the crew of the Calling Siren finally disembarked from the Oberon.

“Remember, nobody can know that we found you in here. So what will you tell the sailors when they find the door unlocked?”

“That I hid in a potato sack, and nobody saw me at all.”

“That’s perfect. Thank you, princess.”

 “Thank you, pirate, sir. Please, take this with you. I hope you find what you’re looking for – I suppose not all pirates are bad.”

Idly tracing the floral patterns of the handkerchief in his hands, Jongin couldn’t help but smile. If only the little girl had known just what would happen when Kyungsoo found who he was looking for.

Captain Kyungsoo…he’d been strangely quiet all evening, barely touching his dinner. He spoke little, only to respond to Luhan’s question of why didn’t we take their supplies this time?

(Of course, it would have been dishonourable to do such a thing with a child on board the ship.)

“That explains why the hostages were so resistant.” Yifan mused over his dinner. “I actually had to use warning shots to keep them in line. And Sehun’s club helped there, too.”

“It got a lot of work in today.” Sehun just grinned. Jongin kept eating quietly – he had seen just how good a job Sehun’s crude spiked club had done as they boarded the Siren once more, and it wasn’t pleasant. Some stains never come out of floorboards.

“I’m just glad there were no fatalities today, with a child on the ship.” Everyone nodded in agreement with the quartermaster. “What did you say the ship we’re looking for is called?”

“Titania. The ship is called the Titania.” Kyungsoo’s voice was distant. It had been all evening, like he was somewhere else entirely. His eyes had been wider than normal, too. Jongin only hoped his captain was alright. “As soon as she said it, it all came back to me. That’s the one we need.”

“And it’s not appeared on our list yet! Now we don’t need to waste time attacking random ships anymore!” Luhan beamed. But Kyungsoo didn’t return the smile.

Jongin continued to worry.

He worried all night, until he returned to Kyungsoo’s quarters. Before he could so much as announce himself, he was pressed back against the door, which slammed behind him with a bang.

“Captain?” But he got no response, Kyungsoo pressing his lips to Jongin’s firmly without so much as a word between them. He pressed so close, so close…apparently his chest wound was healing well, as there wasn’t even a centimetre of space separating them now.

“Three years…” He murmured against Jongin’s lips, before lightly resting his head on the younger’s chest. “For three years I’ve been sailing, searching for something, without really knowing what I was looking for….and now you’ve helped me narrow it down so much further…”

“Ah, there can’t be that many ships left in the Sapphire fleet, Captain. I’m sure you’d track it down soon enough even without-”

“It suddenly feels so much closer…” Kyungsoo shook his head, his hair tickling Jongin’s face and making him quite unable to resist a smile. “Like we’ve gone from aimlessly drifting, to almost where we need to be. It’s like there’s a purpose again, a drive. I just feel so…so…”

Jongin gently placed his hands on the captain’s back, holding him a little closer. “Sounds like you’re feeling a lot, Captain…”

They stayed like that quietly for a while, pressed so close together in the dim captain’s quarters. Those dark, wooden quarters that held so little in the way of furniture yet so much in the way of memories, feelings for Jongin. The handsome wooden desk where Jongin would wait during the early engagements, where Kyungsoo hauled away a would-be attacker without the slightest hesitation. The handsome wooden bed, where Kyungsoo would kiss Jongin with so, so much hesitation. But that somehow made it all the sweeter.

Jongin’s chest was still a little bruised from before, but it was okay. Everything was okay, with the captain so close to him like this.

Kyungsoo’s fingers tightened into a fist, tugging on Jongin’s shirt a little.

A whisper so soft, it was almost lost to the singing of the wind outside. So soft, Jongin could barely believe it came from the man resting on his chest, eyes closed as he listened to Jongin’s heartbeat.

“I love you, Jongin.”

Somehow, it wasn’t the huge shock Jongin thought it would be. The earth didn’t move, the waves didn’t crash, the wind didn’t howl. There were no tears; there was no desperate, passionate kiss as they finally shared their true, hidden feelings.

It was kind of like he’d known for a while. Like they both knew.

“I love you too.”

The earth didn’t move, but there was no denying that when Kyungsoo kissed Jongin again, it was perfect.