TIC: A Little Spark

The Isa Chronicles Part Two: A Little Spark

Note on Chronology: A Little Spark is based before Lighten Up, Would Ye?



A/N:

Yes Yes it's here, finally. Sorry... can you beleive I forgot? LOL. Been quite sick for a while, busy as hell with work, family shit, etc etc. you know, the usual authorian excuses.

To answer the questions I've gotten twice, yes, this is a prequel, so no sex... but likely a lot of wanking. LOL.

This and the next chapter are rather dark (with the usual frivolous goofiness interspersed), you've been warned.











“It is necessity and not pleasure that compels us.” ~ Dante Alighieri



(Two Months BDG: Before Drinking Game)



TIC 2.3



*~*~*~*~*~*



Isa:



I never thought a floor would be so comfortable, or the change of stench so wonderful, even if the new stench consisted of a few dozen unwashed bodies. Even knowing where I was right now, more or less in the belly of the beast, I could find solace in the fact that I was no longer a slave to Captain Williams or the Chrysalis, and neither was Grandmother, Thomas, Nahanni, or… hell, I forgot the little girls name… but they were free, probably on dry land by now. They’d better be or the new Captain’s gonna find out what my fist tastes like.



One of the sea-monsters gave me a tattered blanket too, and though it didn’t block much of the cold it was better than what I had on. The robe was warm, sure, but it was soaked. I didn’t have a pillow but my arms were used to carrying the weight of my head by now. And if I bundled my hair properly it made a better head-rest than the fluffy pillows Williams had in spades in his own cabin.



I took to bed quickly after I was led down to the crew’s quarters. I didn’t even care that Williams was less than 20 feet away and within easy killing reach, I was just too damned tired and too sore to bother with him for now. What was planned once I woke up was another story altogether.



My mind wouldn’t allow me rest just yet though, racing through the events of the past few hours, picking up more details and analyzing everything. It all happened so fast and my body and mind were in reactionary mode the entire time. If I had taken the time to think things over during that ordeal it might have come out differently… for better or worse, who knew… but still…



Staring at the rotted timbers of the bunk above me I couldn’t help but muse over my new Master. No. Not master… Captain. I’m crew now, not a slave. I’m a willing crew-member. And he’s my Captain.



I pictured him standing next to my old slave-master Williams, and was hard pressed to judge who was worse. Sure, the new Captain… what was his name?... looked a little strange, something even beyond the stories of my people, (who were pretty damned imaginative when it came to our monsters), but it was his eyes… expressive, human, and bright. Williams, on the other hand, was human, if barely humane. Handsome if one were attracted to boyish looks, but fat and greasy, and, remembering some of the more unpleasant nights on the Chrysalis, his eyes were either lifeless and bloodshot or gleaming with maniacal sickness.



In the few moments in the new Captain’s company I could tell he was more reasonable than Williams. He was scary as hell, cruel, but willing to negotiate. And he wasn’t moved by any sort of insanity, his mind obviously intact, and that was already MUCH better than Williams.



Laying here in the dark, alone with my thoughts essentially, I could finally admit to myself that this new Captain was in his own way fascinating. Especially his eyes. They shifted colour with his mood, a near-white when he was seriously pissed, and a blue when he was amused. I wondered what other spectrums they’d touch, and had to frown at myself when I thought, well, you’ll have a hundred years to find out…



What really confused me was his willingness to help me calm down Grandmother. He could have very easily had them all killed and taken me prisoner or killed as well and just been done with it. But no, he honoured our agreement, stood beside me and went so far as to point out where the nearest land was (I hoped), and put a good show on for the old lady… why?



I could have stayed awake all night analyzing his actions and not gotten anywhere. I told myself to sleep and think about it in the morning…but I couldn’t get that image of him smiling down at me, all smug and victorious at finally capturing me, and something inside me quivered.





I hadn’t even gotten three hours of sleep before I felt something foreign drag up my leg. I’d been happily dreaming of a plate stocked high with meat and bread and a full bottle of fresh water, could practically taste it, until the strange feeling woke me up.



It was completely black in here, and all I could hear was the loud snoring of the mutant crewmembers and the slap of the ocean against the hull. Whatever was running up my leg had reached my thighs and was trying to worm its way between them. Out of reflex I lifted my knee and struck at whatever it was, nailing something hard against my kneecap.



“Ahh!”



I knew that yelp. “WILLIAMS!” Oh, that’s IT.



“Will you two shut the fuck up, we’re tryin’ to sleep here!”



“One beating wasn’t enough for you, huh?” I pushed him over onto his back, straddled his waist and started pounding his face with my fists. The feeble bastard only blocked a few of my punches, and I couldn’t help but wonder how the hell he got to Captain status being such a pathetic fighter.



Bulging arms wrapped around me from behind and dragged me away from Williams before I could fully transform his skull into a mash of boney soup. Williams was nabbed up as well, and we found ourselves hauled roughly from the crew’s quarters down some stairs to the brig. The sailor with the shark head shackled my ankle to one wall, and that little one that looked like a lobster bound Williams’s ankle to the opposite wall.



“Now maybe we can get some bloody rest. You two feel free to kill each other… if you can reach,” said the pirate with the coral fan-head. Palifico? Something like that…



Experimentally I walked towards Williams and was thwarted by the chain, just before the halfway point in the middle of the room. Oh goddamn it. Just out of reach!



The crew laughed and tromped off back upstairs, leaving me and the beaten Williams alone, so close, and yet too damned far.



I’ll kill you yet, you piece of shit…



*~*~*~*~*~*~*







Davy Jones:



After playing with my organ… I played my organ. Maybe it was the two bottles of rum I drank in celebration of the new recruits (one in particular) and whacking off again that got me so worn out, but I’d passed out swiftly after giving up on coaxing decent notes out of the pipes, conking out where I sat.



My dreams were strange, to say the least… I had the viewpoint of a starfish on the wall, only able to see from one angle as the drama played out below me.



Isa and Williams in the brig, chained to opposite walls, just out of reach of each other even if the chains binding them were stretched to their limits. Williams though was hunkered down against the wall, while Isa sat calmly on the floor as close as she could viably get to him, just smiling.



Williams was badly beaten. His nose was busted and bleeding, his lip split open, and his face already turning a deep purple in spots. His eyes rested warily on the cross-legged woman as he dabbed at his face with his shirt. Just her presence so close terrorized him, and I knew he would get no rest tonight despite her being chained.



Finally, she began to speak in a voice both worn and determined… guttural.



“Y’know, I’ve been waiting for this a loooong time. You, me, a nice dark room, some chains…” Her voice had a tinge of teasing, yet her fury was palpable. “And now that we’re alone… I’m not about to give up my chance to have my way with you.”



I couldn’t help but grin to myself at her double-meaning. If she ever said something like that to me, in a different context of course, I might have just taken her up on it.



My attention was drawn to her again when I heard a metallic clunk and the chain binding her to the wall went slack. How the f… she lifted a small pin in front of her eyes and smiled evilly at Williams, who’d begun to shake visibly. Where the hell does she keep getting those?



The woman palmed the pin and hid it within the folds of her robe, then rose to her feet, still smiling that quiet malevolent smile. “I don’t like torture.” She said in an offhand way, like she was speaking of the weather, “I always said that when it’s my time to go, I want it quick. Maybe mid-battle, have my head chopped off or something. Simple, easy, and fast.”



She kicked the chain away from her, cracked her knuckles, and looked down on the quivering mass of ex-Captain Williams with something akin to disgust. “But one thing I’ve learned in my life is that some people really do deserve a long and painful death.”



In two steps she was right in front of him, kneeling down and looking at him much like I did when I recruited sailors. Williams didn’t move to stop her when gently she lifted his chin in her hand to look her in the eyes.



“You deserve a painful death, Williams. And you’ll get it. But I won’t draw it out like you would.” She sighed. “To drag it out would make me just as filthy as you. I was sort of hoping these people would save me the trouble, but…” She shrugged, then released his chin and wiped her hand on his shirt, like just touching him made her hand dirty. In a whisper, more to herself than to Williams, she said, “If this makes me evil, so be it. I can live with that.”



Her hand suddenly snapped up and grasped a handful of Williams’s scruffy hair and pulled it back so his face was tipped upwards. “I remember something you said when you first had me alone, Williams… it kept me up nights for weeks, the nightmares I had afterwards always had you saying those words to me…”



He finally managed to ask, “What?”



She leaned extra close to the sweating man, sneered, and growled, “I want to hear you scream.”







I woke up when he finally screamed. There wasn’t much to see, Isa’s body and her full robes blocked most of the view, but I glimpsed her feet resting in a growing red puddle that eventually seeped into the cracks of the floor and Williams’ kicking legs eventually slow and lay still.



I sat there, trying to rid the images from my head, and her voice, her hum of satisfaction. It wasn’t repulsion at what she did in the dream that had me shaken… it was what her words implied. I want to hear you scream…



“CAPTAIN!”



Son of a bitch.



They’d been knocking for two minutes straight. Ignoring them was no longer an option, as the constant pounding at my door was starting to give me a goddamned headache.



I sat up straight and rubbed my eyes with a couple of tentacles, then roared out a yawn. The men on the other side of the door finally quieted down now that they knew I was awake.



Where the fuck’s my hat? After a careful search I found it stuffed under my bed, covered in dust. I shook it off as best I could and plunked it on my head, wondering why in the name of the gods I put it under there in the first place.



I cracked open the door only to see Maccus and Koleniko standing there looking like they were expecting a thorough ass-kicking.



“Right, what is so important that you two had to batter at m’ door this early in the mornin’?”



Maccus elbowed Koleniko in the belly, and Koleniko began to speak. “Erm… uh... sir…”



I groaned. “Get on with it!”



“One of the new recruits is missin’ sir.” Maccus blurted.



Well, you got to keep ‘er for… 7 hours. Congratulations, you dolt.



These two knew an angry Captain when they saw one… both prepared to run as I stepped quite silently out of my cabin, casually clicked the door shut, and took a very deep breath.



“YOU STUPID SACKS OF CRAB-DUNG! SEARCH THE SHIP!”



Maccus in an effort to placate me ducked his head in supplication. Koleniko took off in a dead run.



“Cap’n, we’ve already searched the ship. No sign of Williams anywhere!”



Wait… Williams? I stopped. “Williams?”



Maccus looked up. “Yessir, Williams. He and the new girl kept goin’ at each other whenever they got within reach so we chained em and threw em in the brig.” I lifted a brow at Maccus, remembering my dream, not wanting to believe it. “He wasn’t there this mornin’ when we checked up on em, and he’s not hiding anywhere on the ship. If he left the ship, he didn’t take the longboat…”



Hmmmm… I was teetering between being pleased that I wouldn’t have to put up with that putrid sub-human trash for the next hundred years, and angry that he’d attempt escape. When I found him, which I would, I might just give the new woman the vengeance she craved and let her flog him til her arm got tired.



Th’ new girl… Isa… if Williams escaped, why didn’t she?



Unless… unless that wasn’t a dream.



“Where is Isa?”



“Who?”



I growled and yanked one of Maccus’s many back-legs. “Isa, yeh fool. Th’ new woman. Where is she?”



“Oh! Still chained in the brig.”



Ahhhhh, yes... I should have searched her before retirin’ for the night… No, if yeh searched her yeh wouldn’t have bloody stopped…



…yeh should’ve searched her.



“Search the ship again, find Williams, bring him to me.” I ordered, stalking off towards the brig. I had to see this for myself.



I found her alone in there, just like Maccus said. Bootstrap Bill and Clanker stood guard outside the cell, both looking worried and a little confused, especially at seeing me appear at the entranceway.



“Leave.”



The two men rushed out, leaving just me and Isa alone in the brig. Between the bars I observed the cell, finding nothing of Williams but an empty chain and cuff, and a dark stain on the floor not unlike the one I saw in my dream, and Isa, leaning back against the opposite wall, still chained by the ankle. Her eyes were closed, in all appearances asleep. Her knees were tucked up close to her chest, robe stretched taut over them, her bare toes peeking out from underneath it. A small smile curved her lips and her forehead was un-creased and relaxed. She looked… satiated.



I unlocked the cell using a set of nearby keys and stepped in, and only then did the young woman open her eyes. Immediately she shot to her feet, fully aware and ready for anything.



I took a few moments to look her over again. The bump on her head was still swollen but had lost much of the redness it carried the evening before. Her face was cleaner, but not much. I saw a bucket of water in one corner and made the connection she must have washed up. Her hands were clean of blood, and what blood spattered her robes could have been from herself or the crew she trounced the night before. When she disembowelled Koleniko there was quite the arc of blood, and it hit her more than anyone else. There was no way to distinguish that blood from what could potentially have been Williams. Even her hair was wet, like she’d just washed it, and it was less knotted and wild, more tamed and straight. She looked even better by the dull light of day seeping in the cracks in the walls.



I knew what happened already. Williams must have been absorbed into the ship. I’d seen it happen before, with crew that had gotten injured beyond help, their tattered bodies melting into the floor or the walls. It was disturbing at times to think that every day I walked on the corpses of the dead. Right now though, it gave me an odd sense of satisfaction that Williams would forever be under my feet, and hers. If what was said in the dream was true, it was much deserved.



Back to the matter at hand: there was no evidence that Isa disposed of Williams, even though my dream told me so. She was bloodless and chained. She could quite easily claim she slept through the whole thing. I could just imagine trying to explain my justifications to the crew… especially now that I was unsure myself. There had to be something…



*~*~*~*~*~*







Isa :



He just stood there, looking at me. I’d fallen asleep waiting for whatever interrogation these people would likely put me through on the disappearance of dear dead ex-Captain Williams, and suddenly, He appeared out of nowhere, surprising me. I thought I’d have heard him coming, with that distinctive limp of his. I assumed he’d come tromping in here and order me flogged or thrown overboard, but he just stood there, silent and unmoving, except the slow slide of his tentacles.



Just to protect myself, I made sure to brush and wash as much of the blood and hair off me after it happened, but I may have missed something. I sure as hell hoped not. If I could keep up the pretence of Williams escaping, I might just get away with it without consequence. This new Captain didn’t seem like the type to suffer insubordination, and now that I was his for the next hundred years, anything I did had to be carefully thought out.



But I couldn’t resist killing Williams. I just couldn’t. When would I ever have had another chance? And oh, did it feel good. In the moments I had my fingers within him I felt guilt… but brushed it off for later. Torturing him made me just as bad as he was, maybe to a lesser extent, but even so, that didn’t make it right. But I couldn’t resist. Nobody deserved it more than he did. And I kept my promise of not dragging it out all night like I very well could have. At least the world wouldn’t have to put up with him anymore, and I wouldn’t have to work beside him for the next century. For the rest of the night I struggled between feeling guilty for the crime and feeling wonderful for finally getting vengeance.



The Captain in front of me took a deep breath and asked “Where’s Williams?” There was something in his tone that said he already knew, and that I’d better not lie.



Play it dumb! I just shrugged, not trusting my voice to stay neutral and calm.



His blue gaze burned into me as if searching out the truth. I worried he’d find it, but at the same time, sort of wishing he would. I couldn’t say why.



He took a step closer to me and I wanted to move away, but I was already pressed against the wall and chained by the ankle (by my own hand, no less), so I wasn’t going anywhere.



The Captain growled deeply, a resonating sound that could have shook the walls if it had been any louder, and the tentacles that made up his beard curled and wriggled in what I could only assume was irritation. He wasn’t dumb like the crew, he saw right through me. Fear crept into me at that look but I fought it down. I show him any weakness and he’ll take advantage…



Suddenly he was right in front of me, little more than a hands-width away, staring down at me with glowing eyes. I couldn’t stop a shocked gasp at his speed and unexpected closeness. He cocked his head, smirking, then without a word his right hand, the one that was more human looking, dug into an opening in my robe. I tried to jump back but there was nowhere to go. The huge crab arm of his shot out and blocked the only escape route, effectively boxing me in. If I wasn’t aware of how big he was last night, I sure as hell was now.



I felt his strange hand brush against the flimsy shirt I wore underneath and scrape against my skin as it went deeper into my robe. He kept his gaze locked on my eyes and for the life of me I couldn’t look away, frozen in place.



His hand was warm. I’d assumed he’d still be cold, like last night in the rain, but no, right now, his hand radiated heat as it sifted through my clothes, occasionally brushing my ribs, the longer finger wriggling around my back. For only a second, I feared he was going to go further, feel some flesh for his own satisfaction… but I realized quickly, he was searching me.



Damn.



Wait… what?



Suddenly he grunted, and his hand came out from under my robes. He looked oddly pleased, like he’d found… ohhhh, shit.



Without looking away from my eyes, he lifted his hand between our faces and chuckled deeply. My gaze dropped from his and fell on the little pin he had in his fingers… DAMN!



Casually he tucked the pin into a pocket, then leaned closer to me so I could feel his breath course over my face. “Ye’ve been naughty.”



Something in his tone told me he wasn’t as angry as he seemed… and that quip didn’t help. Even so something inside me clenched.



Okay, okay, you won, quit drawing it out and just flog me already! One of my inner voices snapped, impatient. Another got smart assed and retaliated with, aren’t you just the eager beaver?



Quiet both of you…



I must have smiled or something, I couldn’t help it. Sometimes my internal thoughts went far beyond anything called sanity and made me laugh at completely inappropriate times…. like right now with a pissed off Captain hovering over me.



Bad, bad time to grin. He looked me up and down slowly then backed off half a step.



“MACCUS!”



I jumped at his abrupt noise, watching as he withdrew the pin from his pocket. “Unlock yourself, lass.”



Not bothering to feign innocence anymore I took the pin and unlocked the chain from around my ankle, but he stopped me before I could weave the pin back into my robes, snatching it away with a sharp glare. “Nice try.”



His hand shot out again, this time wrapping around my upper arm, the longest finger coiling tight and sticking to my skin. The little suckers held fast as he proceeded to walk out of the cell with me in tow.



I didn’t bother to struggle. Hammer-Head (Maccus?) met us halfway up the stairs and the Captain threw me at him. Maccus caught me, long talons piercing the sleeve of my robe.



“The young Missy here seems t’ find our ‘misplaced recruit’ situation funny. Five lashes for insubordination.”



He left it at that, not mentioning at all his suspicions… no, knowledge, that I was responsible for Williams’ disappearance. I quirked a curious brow at him but he ignored me, just followed us up the stairs and out on deck.



By the light of day… well, they still looked nasty, but I could see much more detail and colour on the other crewmen than I could last night. I could even go so far as to call a couple of them pretty. Not that I could focus for long on them, being tied to the grating and all.



“LEGS!” called the Captain.



What about my legs?



“Yessir?”



Oh. I couldn’t see what was going on behind me, but I heard the whip drawn out of the bag and it hitting the deck.



“Take that robe off ‘er,” growled the Captain.



*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*