[she does look like she's got a lot on her mind. definitely like she could use a break, which means he can be stubborn about it for her own good.]
Charity? What, you're making too much money now?
[he's only half-teasing, being of typical pirate stock in that he values goods over services and nebulous future favors. fortunately he's capable of recognizing how valuable what she's offering actually is, especially in a place like this, where freedom comes down to the dotted line.
when she approaches, he reaches for her, in time for his wrist to be caught. not having the context for the unexpected question, his confusion stops him from pulling her closer.]
Who? [not maxi. she knows maxi better than he does. it's probably pretty obvious that he's trying to remember if he's met another max here in the city.]
Making friends to make more money. Offer a crumb of advice, and people realize you're smarter than you look.
[She is very pretty, which honestly does make people think she's not always as smart as she is. But.
She smiles, gently, for an instant. It's fleeting; she really has been puzzling this over, turning it over in her head, again and again. She runs her fingers away from his wrist to his hand, taking it in both of hers, catching his ring and twisting it a little.]
Max. From Nassau. Some woman who you -
[She's thinking what she really wants to know.]
Have you raped someone before?
[She's not moving away from him. She's not afraid of him, or disgusted by him. She's asking him a question, and she wants an answer, and there isn't a tremor in her voice.]
blanket cw for this thread of rape talk and pirate standards of accountability
[immediately his demeanor changes; his jaw goes tight, his posture rigid; he doesn't snap his hand back from hers, but it curls slowly into a fist nevertheless. he's shared pieces of his past with her already, things he'd rather not discuss at all, but having it come up out of literally goddamn nowhere would have made him lash out immediately at anyone else but her.
all of this is probably telling, though almost certainly of the wrong thing. what he wants to know before he starts baring more of his gruesome past to her is what gave her the reason to ask him that question in the first place.]
What the fuck have you and Jack been talking about?
[She doesnât pull away. Whatever sheâs thinking is impossible to tell, her eyes level, inscrutable as any cat. If she thinks his reaction told something, she isnât acting on it.
So.
She just blinks, gently.]
He told me a story. About how you lost your crew, and how Anne killed the rest of them over a woman named Max, because she was being raped.
Just came up over the course of a few drinks, did it?
[he trusts her to have a good reason for asking, and he thinks he trusts jack to have a good reason for telling, but he's definitely not a fan of being ambushed by the aftermath of whatever comes out when the two of them are left to their own devices. it's why the snide question is rhetorical. he'll tell her, because she asked.]
Did he tell you she was working off a debt of five thousand pesos in pearls?
[that would amount to a six-figure number in 21st century currency. there's an edge to his tone as he says it, not cruel this time but urgent. that's a substantial fucking number even without accounting for the fact that his crew fought for every single coin of it.]
[She's not going to bring up how it came up. She still doesn't think Jack quite feels what is going on.]
He explained that she owed your crew money. I understand that. He also told me you weren't there for most of it, too.
[She's very good at sorting out facts and she's been doing this all night.]
I want to be clear - if she's paying off debts through sex, then that was her business. I don't have any great moral or ethical resistance to sex work. If that's how it worked best for her, then that's how it worked best for her.
[But.]
I also don't doubt that a bunch of angry men who lost an enormous sum of money to a woman who they had in their power wouldn't then get angry enough to be violent.
I'm not particularly interested in what your crew did. I'm interested in what you did.
[There's a sea of calm underpinning her words, a lack of judgment, and she thinks that might be important. This is Daphne at her finest, the part of her that has dealt with wolves and their hair-trigger temper as well as fat CEOs of multibillion dollar companies who can't bear to hear the word no.]
[it's a reliably effective tactic, and extremely so with vane in particular; for as good as he is at ramping the violent energy of an interaction up to 11 with very little time or effort, it isn't always because he's looking for a fight so much as he simply anticipates one and refuses to be caught unawares. being blindsided put him on edge, but having daphne face him with an even tone and no direct accusation gives him no traction.
he still looks and sounds very suspicious, as is often the case when he doesn't quite understand.]
What I did?
[what he did was turn the most profitable whore on the island over to his own men to spare himself, and jack, from having to stab their way out of a well-deserved mutiny. it wasn't just a matter of refilling the void in their coffers, because jack was still on the hook for that - someone needed to suffer consequences. the men wanted someone punished. vane let max be that person, knowing that they were violent men with violent appetites with whom he'd run that island like a pack of wolves, increasingly unchecked, until the hammer blow fell.
the fact that he didn't make use of her services himself isn't something he'd have considered to be either in his favor or against it.]
I didn't fuck her. But I let them have her. She knew the risk she was taking when she offered Jack that schedule.
He told me it was Eleanor, who fueled it. By blackballing you.
[She's not saying this like she doesn't believe it. She doesn't think that either of them are lying to her, and she knows that ultimately, this isn't fair. This isn't a fair thing she's doing.
But he knows about Asher, he knows about Uma, he knows some of the nastier bits of her own life.]
I'm not trying to start a fight. I don't claim to understand everything that you've done. You made choices that you had to make. God knows I'm not perfect. You know I'm not perfect.
[Her fingers start to grip his wrist a little tighter, then.]
But if I'm in love with a man who could rape someone himself, as a thought of justice, then I deserve to know.
[he experiences the fleeting angry thought that jack rackham is sharing a whole lot of information about him without consulting him at all, either before or after the fact. but that's nothing new in this place. another reminder of being the afterthought while jack takes his steps to put the life he's building here into its best order.
it's not a constructive thought at the moment. with some difficulty, he pushes it aside.]
I am not a decent man, Daphne-- [by pirate standards as well as civilized ones; he twists his wrist out of her grasp, but doesn't withdraw.] --but there are lines I would cross only with a gun to my head. And even then, I'd consider my chances.
[It would not help, to know that she could confirm that. Daphne is a jealous creature but she is also one who ultimately doesnât want to see the men she was careless enough to fall in love with suffer for any reason. Itâs largely why she keeps her relationships so separate.
She feels a tension unspool from her stomach. Okay.
She believes him.
Itâs an odd thing, to be comfortable with murder, with violence to a degree that most people would find sickening, but to draw the line there. But it matters.
She takes a careful step forward.]
Do you need time away from me?
[Which is a better question than are you angry with me.]
[it is a much better question. neglecting to put the word angry on whatever he's feeling doesn't allow him to latch onto it and make angry his point of equilibrium.
instead she keeps them on even ground together, and doesn't let that well of inner rage within her feed his. what he hears is that she understands where his anger is coming from, and is still on his side as well. the anger ebbs out of him, slowly but surely. he's guarded still, but there's less of a snarl with it now; for a moment or two he simply regards her - warily - without answering the question.]
Be honest. [there's something like a smirk that flickers across his mouth, but it's gone quick, with no humor in it at all.] Did you ask because you were afraid just what kind of man I might be after all?
[She says it without hesitation, without a moment to toss the question around, without any fear that she might be lying to him. She's not. Fear was never part of this equation.]
I know the man you are with me. Fear has nothing to do with it.
[She keeps her hands to herself, even though she wants, desperately, to reach out, to move his hair away from his face, to press her mouth against his shoulder.]
I'm not deluding myself. I know you're a violent man.
[he believes her, when she says it, not just because she sounds sincere but because he wants that to be the case. he wouldn't love her like he does if not for his belief that she understands him on this level: that he is a violent man the way that jack is a clever man, the way she is an assertive woman, the way max was a seductive woman, because that is the gift they have to put to use in the world, the tool they most effectively wield to keep them alive.
charles vane is not ashamed of the man he is or the things he's done to keep himself going. but daphne has welcomed too much of him already for it to be so simple with her. he doesn't give a fuck if most people believe he's even worse than he really is, and in fact would encourage it, but not her. she ought to be able to see the lines he wouldn't cross.]
What I did to her - it wasn't personal. [that matters, in his mind. it mattered that max knew it at the time, and it matters that daphne knows it now.] I did what I had to do, and so did she.
[Her eyebrows smooth; there was a little tension in her forehead and it eases.]
I know.
[She says it softly. She does know. She reaches a hand forward, to bridge the space between them, to his wrist, but doesn't quite touch him. Not yet. It's an offer, more than anything.]
You're a violent man, but you're not a senseless one. I also know that if anyone hurt me like that, even if I did something to deserve it, you would ruin them. You would do worse than what Anne did.
[She moves into that space like she's always occupied it, like it's the only space in the world that matters. She looks right up at him.]
I am.
[She says it, and she puts her arms around his waist.]
This isn't your fault. Me, and my thoughts. I'm a lawyer. I was trained to look for the things that people do, and why people do them. I'm a queen. I have to know these things. I'm curious.
[god, he really fucking loves the feeling of silk. absolutely worthless from a functionality perspective, but it's smooth and soft against the curves of her skin. exactly the kind of thing to take his mind off of whatever he might have been angry about. although her words draw his eyes back to hers, instead of following the ripple of her blouse under his fingers.]
Jack told you how Eleanor responded. [that wound was deep. it festered and didn't heal.] He must've told you the effect it had. On me.
[his jaw sets. once again his eyes narrow as he looks at her, but this time he doesn't draw away. seems she's in the mood for hard questions, as though she either senses his resolve to be honest with her or is testing the limits of it.
then he reaches up, and brushes her hair back.]
Yes.
[it is the truth. weak as it may have been.]
I let myself believe something could be salvaged between us long past the moment she proved otherwise.
[The idea of doing something like that to him makes her stomach curdle. If she ever meets Eleanor, she thinks that the pain she'll inflict won't be enough.]
I don't think I would like her very much.
[She says it and she catches his hand, brings it to her mouth, a kiss right on the edge of a rough knuckle.]
[that's when he smiles, his thumb running along the soft pout of her lips.]
No, I don't suppose you would.
[under different circumstances, maybe she would have. if daphne and eleanor lived in the same time and place and their interests aligned, vane knows, thinking about it now, that their reach would have been formidable indeed. but as soon as their goals conflicted, it would have been destroyed. eleanor was no stranger to betrayal.
his touch slips beneath her chin, where it pauses for a moment as a thought occurs to him.]
Did he tell you anything else?
[just how big a chunk of backstory has been shared, exactly.]
[he's not looking for an excuse to correct her. it's a pretty crucial distinction, and since he didn't hear the story being told, he wants to be sure she understands.]
Jack's lucky I didn't kill them both.
[he doesn't say it to imply that jack should be grateful for getting beaten and humiliated on a daily basis instead. it's simply a fact. vane should have killed him, especially by his own standards of justice. but that was a line he couldn't cross. and in any case, he knew the choice he made would hurt worse.
however, he can tell daphne's eyes are starting to glaze over. it's late, and she's clearly had a lot on her mind all day. once again vane lifts his hand and touches her face, tucking a lock of hair behind her ear.]
I'll tell you the rest, if you'd like. But let's get out of here.
[She smiles a little, at him, and nods, then moves just enough to take go get her bag.]
Sure. It doesn't have to be today.
[She thinks she's probably wrung enough out of him today. She's inordinately pleased that he didn't lose his temper. That he let her blindside him like that, and he just answered the questions.
She loops her bag over her shoulder and reaches to take his hand, tangling their fingers together.]
![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
no subject
Charity? What, you're making too much money now?
[he's only half-teasing, being of typical pirate stock in that he values goods over services and nebulous future favors. fortunately he's capable of recognizing how valuable what she's offering actually is, especially in a place like this, where freedom comes down to the dotted line.
when she approaches, he reaches for her, in time for his wrist to be caught. not having the context for the unexpected question, his confusion stops him from pulling her closer.]
Who? [not maxi. she knows maxi better than he does. it's probably pretty obvious that he's trying to remember if he's met another max here in the city.]
no subject
[She is very pretty, which honestly does make people think she's not always as smart as she is. But.
She smiles, gently, for an instant. It's fleeting; she really has been puzzling this over, turning it over in her head, again and again. She runs her fingers away from his wrist to his hand, taking it in both of hers, catching his ring and twisting it a little.]
Max. From Nassau. Some woman who you -
[She's thinking what she really wants to know.]
Have you raped someone before?
[She's not moving away from him. She's not afraid of him, or disgusted by him. She's asking him a question, and she wants an answer, and there isn't a tremor in her voice.]
blanket cw for this thread of rape talk and pirate standards of accountability
all of this is probably telling, though almost certainly of the wrong thing. what he wants to know before he starts baring more of his gruesome past to her is what gave her the reason to ask him that question in the first place.]
What the fuck have you and Jack been talking about?
no subject
So.
She just blinks, gently.]
He told me a story. About how you lost your crew, and how Anne killed the rest of them over a woman named Max, because she was being raped.
no subject
Just came up over the course of a few drinks, did it?
[he trusts her to have a good reason for asking, and he thinks he trusts jack to have a good reason for telling, but he's definitely not a fan of being ambushed by the aftermath of whatever comes out when the two of them are left to their own devices. it's why the snide question is rhetorical. he'll tell her, because she asked.]
Did he tell you she was working off a debt of five thousand pesos in pearls?
[that would amount to a six-figure number in 21st century currency. there's an edge to his tone as he says it, not cruel this time but urgent. that's a substantial fucking number even without accounting for the fact that his crew fought for every single coin of it.]
no subject
He explained that she owed your crew money. I understand that. He also told me you weren't there for most of it, too.
[She's very good at sorting out facts and she's been doing this all night.]
I want to be clear - if she's paying off debts through sex, then that was her business. I don't have any great moral or ethical resistance to sex work. If that's how it worked best for her, then that's how it worked best for her.
[But.]
I also don't doubt that a bunch of angry men who lost an enormous sum of money to a woman who they had in their power wouldn't then get angry enough to be violent.
I'm not particularly interested in what your crew did. I'm interested in what you did.
[There's a sea of calm underpinning her words, a lack of judgment, and she thinks that might be important. This is Daphne at her finest, the part of her that has dealt with wolves and their hair-trigger temper as well as fat CEOs of multibillion dollar companies who can't bear to hear the word no.]
no subject
he still looks and sounds very suspicious, as is often the case when he doesn't quite understand.]
What I did?
[what he did was turn the most profitable whore on the island over to his own men to spare himself, and jack, from having to stab their way out of a well-deserved mutiny. it wasn't just a matter of refilling the void in their coffers, because jack was still on the hook for that - someone needed to suffer consequences. the men wanted someone punished. vane let max be that person, knowing that they were violent men with violent appetites with whom he'd run that island like a pack of wolves, increasingly unchecked, until the hammer blow fell.
the fact that he didn't make use of her services himself isn't something he'd have considered to be either in his favor or against it.]
I didn't fuck her. But I let them have her. She knew the risk she was taking when she offered Jack that schedule.
no subject
He told me it was Eleanor, who fueled it. By blackballing you.
[She's not saying this like she doesn't believe it. She doesn't think that either of them are lying to her, and she knows that ultimately, this isn't fair. This isn't a fair thing she's doing.
But he knows about Asher, he knows about Uma, he knows some of the nastier bits of her own life.]
I'm not trying to start a fight. I don't claim to understand everything that you've done. You made choices that you had to make. God knows I'm not perfect. You know I'm not perfect.
[Her fingers start to grip his wrist a little tighter, then.]
But if I'm in love with a man who could rape someone himself, as a thought of justice, then I deserve to know.
[She squeezes, again, just a pause.]
no subject
it's not a constructive thought at the moment. with some difficulty, he pushes it aside.]
I am not a decent man, Daphne-- [by pirate standards as well as civilized ones; he twists his wrist out of her grasp, but doesn't withdraw.] --but there are lines I would cross only with a gun to my head. And even then, I'd consider my chances.
no subject
She feels a tension unspool from her stomach. Okay.
She believes him.
Itâs an odd thing, to be comfortable with murder, with violence to a degree that most people would find sickening, but to draw the line there. But it matters.
She takes a careful step forward.]
Do you need time away from me?
[Which is a better question than are you angry with me.]
I know I blindsided you.
no subject
instead she keeps them on even ground together, and doesn't let that well of inner rage within her feed his. what he hears is that she understands where his anger is coming from, and is still on his side as well. the anger ebbs out of him, slowly but surely. he's guarded still, but there's less of a snarl with it now; for a moment or two he simply regards her - warily - without answering the question.]
Be honest. [there's something like a smirk that flickers across his mouth, but it's gone quick, with no humor in it at all.] Did you ask because you were afraid just what kind of man I might be after all?
no subject
[She says it without hesitation, without a moment to toss the question around, without any fear that she might be lying to him. She's not. Fear was never part of this equation.]
I know the man you are with me. Fear has nothing to do with it.
[She keeps her hands to herself, even though she wants, desperately, to reach out, to move his hair away from his face, to press her mouth against his shoulder.]
I'm not deluding myself. I know you're a violent man.
no subject
charles vane is not ashamed of the man he is or the things he's done to keep himself going. but daphne has welcomed too much of him already for it to be so simple with her. he doesn't give a fuck if most people believe he's even worse than he really is, and in fact would encourage it, but not her. she ought to be able to see the lines he wouldn't cross.]
What I did to her - it wasn't personal. [that matters, in his mind. it mattered that max knew it at the time, and it matters that daphne knows it now.] I did what I had to do, and so did she.
no subject
I know.
[She says it softly. She does know. She reaches a hand forward, to bridge the space between them, to his wrist, but doesn't quite touch him. Not yet. It's an offer, more than anything.]
You're a violent man, but you're not a senseless one. I also know that if anyone hurt me like that, even if I did something to deserve it, you would ruin them. You would do worse than what Anne did.
Am I wrong?
no subject
he shakes his head.]
No, you're not.
[there's dying, and then there's dying badly. he can be very creative about both.]
But that's because you're my woman.
no subject
I am.
[She says it, and she puts her arms around his waist.]
This isn't your fault. Me, and my thoughts. I'm a lawyer. I was trained to look for the things that people do, and why people do them. I'm a queen. I have to know these things. I'm curious.
no subject
Jack told you how Eleanor responded. [that wound was deep. it festered and didn't heal.] He must've told you the effect it had. On me.
no subject
He told me you fucked off. Somewhere.
[Which, frankly, is both understandable and not a bad instinct. It's one she absolutely agrees with, truth be told.]
After she took everything, did you still want her?
no subject
then he reaches up, and brushes her hair back.]
Yes.
[it is the truth. weak as it may have been.]
I let myself believe something could be salvaged between us long past the moment she proved otherwise.
no subject
I don't think I would like her very much.
[She says it and she catches his hand, brings it to her mouth, a kiss right on the edge of a rough knuckle.]
no subject
No, I don't suppose you would.
[under different circumstances, maybe she would have. if daphne and eleanor lived in the same time and place and their interests aligned, vane knows, thinking about it now, that their reach would have been formidable indeed. but as soon as their goals conflicted, it would have been destroyed. eleanor was no stranger to betrayal.
his touch slips beneath her chin, where it pauses for a moment as a thought occurs to him.]
Did he tell you anything else?
[just how big a chunk of backstory has been shared, exactly.]
no subject
[She sighs, a little, and she looks up at him. She looks a bit tired, now.]
I can't claim to understand much of it. It doesn't matter.
[She shakes her head.]
That's about it. A story about how Anne killed a crew.
no subject
[he's not looking for an excuse to correct her. it's a pretty crucial distinction, and since he didn't hear the story being told, he wants to be sure she understands.]
Jack's lucky I didn't kill them both.
[he doesn't say it to imply that jack should be grateful for getting beaten and humiliated on a daily basis instead. it's simply a fact. vane should have killed him, especially by his own standards of justice. but that was a line he couldn't cross. and in any case, he knew the choice he made would hurt worse.
however, he can tell daphne's eyes are starting to glaze over. it's late, and she's clearly had a lot on her mind all day. once again vane lifts his hand and touches her face, tucking a lock of hair behind her ear.]
I'll tell you the rest, if you'd like. But let's get out of here.
no subject
Sure. It doesn't have to be today.
[She thinks she's probably wrung enough out of him today. She's inordinately pleased that he didn't lose his temper. That he let her blindside him like that, and he just answered the questions.
She loops her bag over her shoulder and reaches to take his hand, tangling their fingers together.]
I'll blow you as an apology.