Chapter Text
The kid looks haunted when Meagan picks them up. Fingers shaking, teeth glowing with Addermire solution, stinking of brine and something rotten and cloying. They debrief in a cool, collected voice, and then promptly vomit over the side of the skiff.
Billie hands them her flask. It's shit, watered-down rum, so she doesn't begrudge them rinsing their mouth with it.
"Thought you were tougher than that, kid." A bold lie. She thought they were softer. But appealing to pride is a cheap way to reorient them.
"It was smooth sailing until the bloodflies. And Hypatia. Shit." They swish another mouthful of rum between their teeth and spit over the side. Recap the flask and sprawl back. Proper posture washed out to sea, fine mist collecting on their face and collar as they stare up at a gray sky over gray waves. "Outsider's eyes, but I feel bizarre."
Billie knows it's the chemical comedown. The adrenaline and overuse of elixir on an empty stomach turning their brain and guts into a writhing slippery shiny mass. The fishing net straining to hold everything together, the glint of silver as some thoughts escape into the black black black waves below.
Meagan says nothing.
That night in the kitchen, chopping bruised carrots, they're as stiff as a board, gaze a million miles away when they abruptly ask her if she knows a woman by the name of Mindy Blanchard. And Meagan freezes. She doesn't know Mindy, not personally, but there was an ex girlfriend who loved her work, and she's run into her a few times in the black markets. They aren't in the same circle. But there's overlap.
And one time when a friend of a friend was completely out of estrogen Meagan played go-between and traded Mindy two excellent bone charms and a story about the Mark for a tiny bottle still two-thirds full of hormones.
"Our paths have crossed."
The kid turns and faces her fully. Billie lets the silence sit heavy and humid in the air and focuses on her knife and keeping the kid on her periphery.
"She's good at reading people."
Meagan huffs, "she's good at reading you, kid."
She sets her knife down and looks them in the eyes and sees the moment they start to get it.
"Meagan," they sound genuinely aghast. "Have you been humoring me?"
"Your Highness," she says coolly. "I have been humoring you since you got on my boat. Be more specific."
"You figured me out!"
"I certainly haven't done that."
"Do not patronize me."
Meagan sighs. Decides smoothing some ruffled feathers is worth a quiet dinner. "I wondered. I suspected. I was pretty sure by last week. I didn't know for certain until you brought up Mindy just now." Not the whole truth, but quite close.
"Last week... the chart."
"Yes."
"I thought you were teasing me."
"I was. I was also testing your reaction," she shrugs and goes back to the last of the potatoes. "It's not mutually exclusive."
"I thought I was being circumspect."
"Circumspect" Meagan grumbles. "Hand me the carrots. Be useful."
They've finally learned to place the bowl in her hand rather than holding it out. Good. Whip-smart and adaptable. Hope for them yet. The carrots steam up the kitchen.
"Meagan, will you cut my hair?"
"Only if you get the hell out of my kitchen and check the engine. Make sure that knocking hasn't come back."
"Meagan. Look at me."
There's a coldness to them that has Meagan palming the knife when she obliges.
The switch has been flipped again, stillness becoming restless painful energy. Eyes wide, teeth bared, hand flipping that foolish, fancy blade open, closed, open, closed. "Meagan. Meagan I...."
Void, but she's tired. Shame she still comes running at a cry for help, even if the kid is too strung out on their own anger to know that's what it is.
"Go up on deck, sailor."
"Mea-"
"Go up on deck! Sailor!" It's the same tone she used when they spotted the Guard ship as they left Dunwall and she needed them in the engine. She doesn't like using it, feels like Daud at his worst. Do not question. Obey. But unfortunately the kid is coming apart at the seams and this shouldn't happen in the kitchen.
She doesn't fight much anymore. And she knows showing how much she can do is... a bad idea. For many reasons. She still puts them through their paces, shooting dulled crossbow bolts at their darting form, rolling dummy grenades behind their cover. The first time they yank themselves up a level Meagan is momentarily stunned, and then feels like the biggest fool in the isles.
Somewhere, the black-eyed bastard must be laughing his ass off.
The second time, she knows to watch. It's not a transversal. No disappearing and reappearing. It's kinetic, a vector of motion.
The third time, the kid is getting far too confident. Going to pull themselves into Meagan's blindspot. Clever, but too cocky.
Meagan sees where their eyes go. She braces the end of her stump with the palm of her left hand, tucks it in close to her torso, lowers her shoulder, braces her boots, and steps into them.
They go flying, careening to their left and hitting the deck hard enough that Meagan hesitates.
But they haven't tapped out.
Meagan catches them while they're scrambling to their hands and knees. Right knee solid on their spine, left hand on the back of their neck, she pushes them down. Inexorably. They snarl and growl wordlessly like a feral hound but Meagan holds them steady. They eventually tire themselves out and press their forehead into the deck as they slap the wood twice.
Meagan lets them up and fetches a canteen and utility scissors. When she turns back they're propped against a crate, face tilted back, eyes closed against the heavy red setting sun. They split their lip and have a ruddy mark on their cheekbone that will absolutely bruise. Their grin is as wide as she's ever seen it.
"Call me Ward."
Not half as pretentious as she expected.
"Edward Xavier Leo Kaldwin." He (she feels confident enough about that with that kind of name) opens his eyes and the smile turns knife-sharp. "Ward."
She snorts and kicks the crate behind him. "Get on the crate, smartass. You want that hair man-short?"
"Hell yeah."
He's remarkably still for the whole process. Hands primly in his lap. She tries not to think of royal portraits.
She washes her hand in a large bucket of seawater when she's done. "Pick up a razor next time you go out. Should clean this up." She draws a line with a finger at the base of his hairline.
"Are you going to give me an allowance for it?" He kneels beside the bucket and dunks his whole head in. Idiot.
He shakes his head under the water trying to get the little bits of hair out before he sits back on his heels laughing. It's full dark by now, but the light from the Wale's interior is enough to see the shock on his face when he goes to tuck his hair behind his ears and feels the shorn sides instead. He runs his hands all over his own head, eager, hungry, tugging at the floppy forelock she left him. It isn't a very clean haircut, but it is unmistakably a man's. She looks away and begins resharpening the scissors when she hears him start to weep.
He's gone by the time she finishes.