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

Thomas relished the brush of Antonia’s fingertips. Her gesture sent a cool shiver up his spine that prompted him to lightly laugh.
 
“And to think, I trust you so, after how we met?” Thomas looked up to the dark ceiling, remembering that night with fond clarity. He ran a hand through his hair before his fingers landed absently where Antonia’s own had touched just moments before. “Fate was certainly watching out for me that night,” Thomas narrowed his eyes and raised a brow at Antonia, “though fate demanded quite a bit of silver as payment.”
 
He laughed at his own joke, and slid his now empty mug towards her. “Would you mind?”

Antonia nodded, laughing softly to herself as she reached for the bottle of wine, almost before the words left Thomas’ lips. She poured a generous amount, to the rim, the way he liked it, before setting the bottle down once more. “Oh, listen to you grousing about your poor, lost silver,” she teased. “I think you gained far more than you ever lost that day - don’t you? A nickname to stump most every crewman, dear Silver Fish - and don’t think I haven’t heard their wild speculations what that could possibly mean! It’s all I can do, not to burst out in laughter and give the whole game away. Ah! The strange things bored sailors will conjure in their heads.”

“You gained a lovely crimson kiss to match that lovely snoring face, and you’ve gained a rogue all of your very own. As if [i]that[/i] weren’t enough, well... Only God Himself knows how much gold has found its way to the [i]Skate’s[/i] hold, and the coffers of every last man on that ship because of it! Oh, and that’s no meager boast, and you [i]do[/i] know it,” she added with another coy wink, though her expression slowly grew pensive, some unaccustomed thought, a honest desire to speak something of a truth for once raising its tentative head.

Almost as an afterthought, Antonia reached for the bottle of wine again, and topped off her own mug as well. “Should you like to know, Thomas,” she said, inscrutable grey eyes searching his poor, hurt - yet smiling - face, “Why it is I chose to follow after [i]you[/i], the day you finally found me?”

Thomas grunted his assent. “Aye, there suffers no room for debate that my investment of silver has been most lucrative to all the men, and [i]women[/i],” he smiled anew, “aboard the [i]Skate[/i].” His tone was sincere, but dulled pleasurably with the first softened edges provided by the wine and the night’s earlier spirits.
 
He had leaned back in his chair to listen to Antonia’s words, but her final query brought him right back to lean against the scored and scratched table. His eyes looked to her, seeking for the intent of her asking. Never before had the subject been broached, and Thomas had never truly thought of pursuing it. He was certainly curious, and though Thomas had never been bashful about questioning Antonia, he was yet mindful of her privacy.
 
“I would be most pleased to know,” Thomas said at last, his voice low and quiet, as if his words could break the trance of her sudden transparency.

Antonia wrapped both hands about her mug, lifting it to her lips slowly, taking a long drink before she spoke. It would have been a lie - one among hundreds, untold [i]thousands[/i] in her lifetime - to say there was no small amount of regret on her face at her strange impetuosity, though only the slow working of ivory teeth on the inside of her lip might have given that away.

She took a deep breath, and let it out slowly, before looking up to meet those drink-softened copper eyes with a little half-smile. “You’d have been well within your rights that day, if you’d shot the thief who plied you with drink, with sweet promises for the night - the swindler who added just a touch of something ‘special’ to your grog as well, knowing you’d be sleeping like a wee babe long past morning light - and far, [i]far[/i] lighter by a great deal of silver when you finally woke.”

The young woman laughed softly, and then shrugged with a soft sigh. “And I think that very thought might have crossed your mind when you scared off my next mark. I’m near certain I saw it in your eyes. But for whatever reason… You did not. No… No wait, that’s not quite what I mean… “ 

The tip of her finger tapped lightly against the clay of her wine mug, as if rapping against the stores of thought in her head, wheedling out the truth she wished to say so much harder it seemed than the lies that ran from her tongue so freely, like roiling river waters. “I mean, I think I know [i]why[/i] you didn’t shoot the thief… Risk. Danger. You [i]do[/i] invite it, lovely man. You always have. But the reason I followed you out that door?”

“You turned your back to me when you made to leave. Wide open, and it was no mistake on your part, no thoughtless move. If I’d a mind, I could have slipped a dagger easily between your ribs and been done with you, the one and only man in this world who had ever been able to find me again, to track me down when I’d left him in the night. But you didn’t simply invite danger in that moment. You actually gave me a measure of trust… “

Antonia’s smile felt awkward, strangely forced on her face, but she gave it to Thomas anyway, for it was really all she had. “A second chance to do something… [i]Differently.[/i] No one had ever done that before.” Her voice trailed off for a moment, before she spoke again, her voice firmer, far surer. “That was no small thing.”

Thomas nodded, and his eyes fell to the mug of wine in his hands. Antonia’s sincerity struck a chord within him that was both pleasant and foreign. He knew that it had not been easy for her to admit all she had, and that fact alone buoyed his spirit in ways she would probably never understand. The rogue was the first person he desired to truly know since his adoptive savior, the pirate Lightfoot, had passed seemingly a lifetime ago.
 
He looked back to her, his expression bemused in the shadowy flicker of the candlelight. Thomas viewed himself as a sharp, intelligent, and daring man. One who was determined to make the first and last move of every game of life, and throughout his time in the Caribbean he had been wildly successful at such. But she--the caramel-skinned rogue with eyes of steel, the bite of a snake, the mystery of a leopard, and the wit of a fox--had disarmed him.
 
“I would say,” Thomas said with a soft, but serious air, “that when it comes to you, Antonia…” He paused for a time with his brow knit as if searching for words in a language yet foreign, “…and I, that there exists no such thing as a trifling moment.” He looked deeply into her eyes, “And it is I who must thank [i]you[/i] for that trust.”

Her first inclination was to throw a mask back over her features - some mask, any mask at all would have done at that moment. Let something flippant or coy, irritatingly distracting or even shockingly bawdy dance off her lips, play in her eyes like a fae, false wisp of swamp light, to put some distance, a thousand leagues distancel, between herself and that beautiful copper gaze.

But Antonia fought every last hard-won instinct she’d ever honed in nigh on a decade of the shadowed life she’d chosen, and forced herself to keep her gaze with Thomas’. After one long moment, maybe two… Or ten, perhaps? Surprisingly enough, she found her ease as a certain strange, not entirely unwelcome realization came to her. The long, slender fingers or her hand reached across the short distance between their chairs, to find and then lightly brush his own. 

“You can thank me tonight then, when all is said and done. There are a skyful of stars yet, I still do not know near so well as I would like. What say you, Thomas?”

Thomas’ lips curled into a smile at the same moment his hand reached beneath her own. His fingers curled up her palm until his hand encircled her small, but deadly hand. There was a bubble of elation advancing steadily up from the tips of his toes that at last popped euphorically into his mind, and it made him laugh aloud with happiness. He stifled the laugh quickly, hoping she did not confuse his mirth for something else.

“I would say that the stars will be our theater as long as you should desire.” 

He pulled her hand gently to his lips, and kissed her chocolate skin. It was a gesture that would have been strange to most; a man kissing the hand of a woman who had just killed with the same hands not hours before. But that was what Thomas found so enthralling about the moment. Antonia was cut from the same cloth as he, although she had been woven upon a loom of a much different kind. It was a notion that made Thomas kiss upon her hand once more.

His eyes followed her own as he lifted his head, and she could perceive a thought pass behind the copper irises. A smile soon followed, broad and impish. Thomas stood, not relinquishing Antonia’s hand.

“Shall we?” he said, sweeping to the doorway with his free hand. Thomas anticipated her concern. “I know we have guests soon to arrive, but I believe the roof will afford us both a pristine view of the stars above, and provide us with a means to see them approach.” He bent down then, his smiling face level with her own. At this distance he could smell the spice of perfume, and the lingering scent of wine upon her lips. “What say [i]you[/i], Antonia?”

“I say [i]let’s,[/i]” she whispered, leaning forward just enough to close the distance between them, brushing her lips oh-so-gently against his, a dear, tender touch not near enough to pain that purpling welt rising along his cheek, already spreading its red-black fingers up the side of his temple. She stood then, entwining her fingers in his, gathering the lengths of her dove grey skirts in her free hand as she pulled him toward the back of the tavern, toward the kitchens. 

The light in her eyes said adventure, and laughter, and the delight of a strangely innocent, almost childlike thrill of doing something they really ought not. “Come with me then, I know the fastest way up. No guarantees I shan’t need a hand though! I’ve never tried it in skirts, might need a bit of a lift? Or even a push up? Oh, but that shameless look in your eyes tells me, you’d not mind [i]that[/i] so much… ”