Luke was sitting up in bed, painfully but successfully. He decided it was just about time to give up on ever getting to sleep. The rocking of the ship was growing more and more violent, although it had never been comfortable to him. Not in the state he was in. He groaned as the bandages wrapped tightly around his middle constricted his movement, wondered if he had bled through them again. He did not know the time, but it was probably past midnight. He had become a very light sleeper, in those precious few stretches of time when he did manage to sleep.

Sprawled on a cot across the room was Jesse. Luke squinted in the half light, noted that someone had thought to hammer nails into the cot to hold it still. The air tasted like hurricanes. It was a familiar flavor now...or perhaps he had never quite forgotten it, had never quite gotten past the crackle of lightning in the sky and the heaviness in the clouds that had heralded the disasters of a fortnight past. He thought to himself, there on the hammock that had been his father’s, that perhaps every day would be etched with those memories now, and so he would continue to relive every instant for as long as he lived.

Luke’s musings were interrupted by the creak of the cabin door. He felt his body go rigid, alert– he thought briefly that he was truly becoming paranoid. It was only Anna, after all. She came every few hours, to change the dressings. And yet...well, he didn’t know the time, but...hadn’t she just come only an hour before? He sat silently as she crept toward him, and he knew without needing the light that her eyes were ringed with dark circles, that now there was a thin scar on her cheek like a silver thread where a blade had left its mark.

Anna, her feet steady even on the rolling floor, made her way to the hammock. Her eyes refused to focus, or maybe they were just blurred. Tears? She did not know, could not care. A dream held her in its grip, as a lioness gingerly holds the heads of her young between her shining teeth.

“Papa...Papa...” Her voice was plaintive, in the exact pitch and tone of her childhood. Luke felt her hands reaching, and felt a sadness welling up in his chest. He rested a hand on her head.

“Anna...it’s me, Luke. Are you alright? It’s Luke. Not...not Father...”

He was aware of the words, aware of the fact that they must be burrowing into her now, penetrating the fog that had surrounded her in the aftermath of what must have been another nightmare. He was aware that the words were probably like poisoned darts, piercing her bloodstream with yet another rude awakening. Her body gave a small jolt, as though she had finally opened her eyes, or the truth had sunk in once again.

“Oh...I’m sorry, Luke...it was...”

“A dream?”

And when she hung her head and nodded, he felt the sadness once more. It spilled out, flooded his senses with the knowledge of loss. They had lost everything, after all. Or, everything that had mattered. Their family was broken. Their father would never be coming home. For an instant, he wished that Anna was seven, maybe even eight, so he could tell her gently and with some semblance of honesty that the Pirate King was merely away at sea again; that he would return in a few winters, maybe even in a few springs...

“It was only a dream. You don’t have to worry. You want to stay here with me and Jesse?” Luke assumed that it had been a bad dream. Anna had been having one almost every night; he would hear her scream as he slept in the Captain’s cabin, wake with a start to find that his hands had curled into fists.

Anna shook her head. “No, I’m fine...it wasn’t a nightmare...” He thought there was a hint of wonder in her voice, a sort of awe that it had not been a nightmare. She raised her head, looked at the outline of her brother’s shoulders. “I just felt, somehow, that I had to come in here. I had to...I had to come see Papa.” The childish nickname fell from her lips before she could control it. The dream still slurred her thoughts.

Luke did not answer. He listened to the slow creak of the hammock’s strings as they strained against the metal rings they were tied to. The Pirate King had been loath to sleep in a bed while he was out at sea. Matanza had never been outfitted with more than this hammock, in terms of her Captain’s comfort.

Her Captain. Luke shuddered in the darkness, and was glad that Anna had buried her head in her arms. She would not see his uncertainty. She would not see how terrifying it could be, to turn a corner in your mind and suddenly slam into the fact that you are now the Pirate King. Luke shook his head in the manner that he had when he wanted to clear his head, erase his thoughts. He told himself it was ridiculous to be so unstable, when he had a brother and a sister who needed stability...when he had a fragmented fleet and what was left of an army of pirates who all needed him to lead them.

“This is a bad storm,” Luke said, quietly. Anna nodded, her head still hidden in her arms. She was sitting on the floor, her knees tucked under her chin. She gave a muffled reply.

“You feel it too, huh?” And she sniffed, for she had been crying, the tears streaming out of her eyes. It was strange that she had not felt it, had not known at all that she had been crying. Raising her head, she looked up at the ceiling. “What will we do? We can’t stay out here. Matanza won’t hold, and Reina is missing half of her mast. We can’t tow her along through the whole storm.”

“We aren’t far from the island.”

They stopped, stared at each other through the dim light. Their eyes had adjusted to the darkness. Anna was the first to look away.

“There is nothing to go back to. Is the house even standing?”

Luke laughed bitterly. “Surprisingly, it only lost a quarter of the roof. That’s what the bosun reported. And when the weather was clearer, the sentries saw from the crow’s nest that all the Royal ships had gone.” There was yet another bitter laugh, to punctuate the sentence. “The surviving soldiers had no choice but to leave their General, apparently. Maybe they left him for dead.”

“He isn’t dead,” Anna said, blankly. It was odd that she should state something so obvious; Luke had known the man wasn’t dead. But he said nothing, knowing she was still shaky from whatever dream had plagued her. “They don’t know that, do they?”

“Oh, but they do. They do. Because one of the other soldiers we took, he was screaming so loudly, remember? And some of the others who were leaving turned around and saw. So they know he’s alive...or at least, some of them do. They might come back.”

“They won’t, not in this weather. We can go back to the island and wait out the storm, at least. We can leave right away, as soon as the sea allows it.”

Anna fixed her gaze to the night sky outside the porthole. It was studded with cold stars. “He keeps calling me Sarah,” she said, her voice suddenly as distant as the moon.