[u][i]Collab with Igraine and AmongHeroes[/i][/u]

“Ah, you’ve got me there,” Thomas said, leaning back into the wooden chair. “There’s no greater injury than losing the affections of a woman to another woman. Even more so when the woman is playing as a man.” He chuckled lightly, watching Antonia maneuver around the bar area. Thomas propped his chin upon his arm, his fingers lightly tapping at his uninjured cheek.
 
“My reputation would be irrevocably stained,” he said almost to himself. “They’d say ‘There goes Thomas Lightfoot, the buccaneer captain that couldn’t court a proper woman, and thusly lost his ship in a fit of melancholy.’”
 
Antonia offered him the mug of cold ale, and he thanked her before gingerly pressing it against his face. “God’s wounds,” he breathed, “that bastard gave me a proper hook.” For several moments he just sat there, quietly relishing the sensation of the cool clay against his face. A smile slowly replaced the expression, and a devilish gleam came to his eyes. “Though I dare say, I think the stinking cur was the worse for it.”
 
Thomas took a long drink of the wine as Antonia spoke of the First Mate and the sea- artist. He shrugged and once again sat back into his seat. “I trust them to be in good spirits, in spite of tonight’s exercises. Or perhaps not?” He conceded, tilting his hair to the side. The move prompted a hazel-blond lock of hair to fall across his eyes, and he shooed it away. For a time he said nothing, merely thinking and enjoying the rogue’s company. When at last he spoke again, his eyes were affixed upon her grey gaze.
 
“Tell me truly, was I too barbaric, too quick to draw blood in the Boar?” His eyes narrowed. “I have my own opinion on the matter, of course, but I shall not shift your words just yet with my own.”

Antonia’s dark brow lifted curiously, the young woman obviously taken aback for a moment by the question. She’d known Thomas Lightfoot as few did, their private conversations revealing a man far more circumspect than most any would credit an already infamous pirate captain, but this line of thought caught her off guard. “He had a blade to your back, Thomas,” she said finally, perhaps a bit incredulously. “What in any sane world [i]else[/i] were you supposed to do? Smile blithely while he gave you the blood eagle? If your pistol hadn’t taken him in the face, if I’d been just a little closer… “ 

Her voice trailed off softly for a moment, the sudden scowl on her face masking the true depths of the still-lingering fury that she [i]hadn’t[/i] been that much closer, that she’d failed so miserably, to foresee the knife at his back. 

“Suffice it to say, that your bullet may have been the quickest mercy he could have [i]ever[/i] prayed to receive. Why do you ask such a thing, lovely man? What is going on in that head of yours?”

Thomas waved her admonition away, understanding her confusion. “I wasn’t referring to the bastard with the knife to my back. He accused me of cheating, and thusly he had already sealed his fate, not to mention the blade at my gut. I was speaking to the others. I fired the second pistol ball into the gang from the [i]Feather[/i], and it was I who precipitated the death of several of these men.”
 
His voice trailed off, and he looked about the Parakeet as if to watch his words drift lazily in the eddies of calm air. Antonia knew him better than anyone alive, and even with that there was still much that both of them held as mystery. Truthfully he could not say why exactly he had asked after the rogue’s opinion on his deadly incursion, not one that fit into words anyway. It was more a feeling, nothing like guilt, but something wispy and intangible that tugged upon his thoughts more and more in the past days and weeks.
 
“I suppose,” Thomas began, looking back to Antonia, “that I fear that the pursuit in defense of my own honor and prestige will pass into something beyond mere swift reprisal, and move simply into nothing more than a lust for murder.” At the word murder his face contorted into a scowl. Thomas brought the mug to his lips, and drank.

Antonia kept her silence for several long moments, letting his words, their import, what was said and what was not, linger in her own thoughts. “I’m no man’s conscience, Thomas,” she said finally, taking another long drink of her own wine before she continued. “God Himself knows I’ve done things that would taint even the sweet light of day. But if you’re going to begin a life of senseless murder and mayhem, probably best to start among the innocents - say, massacre an entire orphanage perhaps? Or cut down a church congregation come together at Sunday Mass? Because no man with so much as an ounce of sense is going to weep for the loss of the crew of the [i]Crimson Feather.”[/i]

“Think, Thomas. Just for a moment longer at least, without a guilty eye to your own vast well of sins, would you? Do you think those corsairs would have been contented to simply continue drinking their grog, playing their cards - when you shot one of their crewmen?”

“Oh, Heaven above knows I’m uncannily fond of my Silver Fish, but you know me well enough to know I’ll tell you straight when you’ve done something mightily stupid. And Heaven knows just as well, you’ve done many a [i]breathtakingly[/i] dumb thing. But [i]this[/i] night at least, you acted rightly on your instincts. Best to claim the high ground, take the offensive position than to sit back and let your crew be taken unawares. Would you have preferred seeing your own laid to waste there in the Boar, all because some drunken, murderous piece of offal felt cheated at cards?”

Thomas smiled to Antonia. It was a slow smile, and one that was rare upon his features. Her words rained upon him like a welcome and cleansing cascade. He thought of his own words, and several times he began to reply to her, but every time he found himself at a loss for witty speech. The words fluttered within his mind, coalescing into retorts or counterpoints, and all seeming completely ineffectual beneath the empathetic gaze of the rogue.
 
Finally, he looked to her in a way Thomas Lightfoot had never looked at anyone. Then, lost in that moment, he found his words.

 “At sea we trust the stars, the great beings in the sky, to guide us and show us the way when we have nothing but the indifferent waters churning beneath us. You know that above all we trust one star, one singular point in the inky night that ushers us with unwavering vigilance.” He paused, the words welling in his throat happily and genuinely. “I have found that it is not the only star the cosmos sends to guide us. Some,” he said, “are lucky enough to get a star that walks beside them, and in quiet moments of doubt, guides them ever homeward, and where they truly belong.”

Antonia listened to those lovely words from her lovely man, her own slow, slightly incredulous smile growing by the moment as she watched the truth in those incomparable copper eyes shining. There was nothing she wouldn't have given at that moment, to be alone with her lovely man in the crow's nest of the [i]Skate,[/i] with the vast dark ceiling of midnight stars above them. 
 
But here in the relative quiet of the tavern, in the shadows, Antonia could at least pretend to be the star Thomas seemed to think she was, and that smile shone brightly on her face as she reached to his face, letting the backs of her fingertips run softly along the length of his unhurt cheek. "How fortunate for [i]you,[/i]" she said with a small, sweet laugh that gave just the tiniest hint that once, somewhere, there may have been an innocent, happy young girl beneath the roguish spider, "Not everyone has two Home Stars in their world, looking over them."