blood_is_thicker_than_salt_water [One Last Fire]

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===== Ghost in the Page =====


The graphite in your pencil snaps. 

You unhunch yourself and blink several times, finally emerging from the zone you’d slipped into for… you don’t know how long. You reach for the blade of the pole arm you’d been using as a sharpener, but the aching in your left hand causes you to glance down. A fat red mark mars the dip between your thumb and forefinger, and the wooden pencil clutched in it has been whittled down to just a toothpick’s worth of length. You discard the pencil and rub your strained eyes, then glance up at what you’ve been working on for what feels like eternity. 

Spread out across the floor in front of you are dozens and dozens of sheets of paper, each one occupied by a grey scene. You see dolphins leaping alongside bows of ships, owls watching you from the dark, the Chosen scrambling off a net above a circling fish. 

You stare at the loose papers, and a hundred familiar faces stare back. You wonder if this is all you will ever get to see of them again. Grey eyes amid grey faces watching you, while the real people fight and die just outside these walls. It’s infuriating. It’s destroying. Knowing that you’re locked away in here while the Original Book attacks your friends. 

And amid all the scenes, showing up in places they never were, one ghost follows you endlessly. A salt-stained beard, ugly pink scars, eyes belonging to a stranger… 

//Finn.//

The only place that might have been harbouring him, that might have allowed him to stay… is empty. It is just Wick, just Wick, as it has been for so many years. 

Where do you go from here? How can you just move on when Finn was your everything, and you… it seems you were his nothing. No, worse. You were his anchor. The thing holding him back. That he couldn’t wait to be rid of. 

He promised you. He promised you, damn him. 

A loud popping sound bursts from behind you. You spin yourself around just in time to spot an item fall from mid-air. Instinctively, you reach out and snag it before it hits the ground with your good hand, cradling it towards your chest. You look down at it, and in your hands is a familiar ship encased in a bottle of glass. Your bottle. 

Tenebrus came through for you. 


===== Blood is Thicker than Salt Water =====



You stare at the bottle in your hand. Through the thick glass, you can make out the drooping sails and slack rigging of your brother’s ship. It looks so sad. So entrapped. Waiting for someone else to say its time to sail has come. Not like the day it left port, carrying your brother away from you. You remember seeing the ship for the first time that day, as Finn had hurried up the gangplank. You remember…

The memory takes over you in an instant. 

//You stand on a chilly pier in the morning mist of a brisk, Brighton dawn, watching your brother walk up the gangway to a ship ready to take him away. Despite the long discussions you’ve had, despite the reasons Finn put forward for his need to leave, it still just feels so sudden. You and your brother have always been there for each other. But now…//

//Finn pauses at the top of the gangway, and for the first time this morning his eyes stop scanning the docks long enough for him to look at you. Seeing your face, his gaze softens, and he descends the plank again. “Hey,” he offers, placing his hands on your shoulders. “It won’t be forever. We’ll see each other again someday.” //

//“But how can you know that?” you sniff.//

// “Because I promise you, we will. And have I ever broken a promise before?” He grins, but it looks sad. //

//Behind him, the ship’s gangplank is raised, its moorings are cast off, and the sleek vessel begins to slip down the dock. //

// “I’ve got something for you, you know.” Unslinging his pack, Finn pulls out three items: a ship in a bottle, a map, and a letter. The ship is a perfect replica of the one pulling away from the jetty now. “These are for you. To remember me by. Until I come back.” //

//Carefully, reverently, you take the items from Finn. You look up tearfully into the eyes of your brother, the only family you’ve ever had, and the only one you could always rely on to take care of you. Tears are beginning to well in his eyes as well, and the next moment he has pulled you into a fierce hug. //

//“Just know Wick, that everything I do, even if it doesn’t make sense at the time, I do to protect you. Remember that.” You nod, squeezing back hard. //

//And then, far too soon, he’s gone, stolen away like the breeze. When you look up again, Finn has leapt aboard the ship as it passed the end of the pier, waving back to you as his ship slips out of the harbour. //

//You wave back, and as you do, you become only faintly aware of a group of three burly men jangling with expensive jewellery come sprinting down the pier, pointing and yelling towards Finn’s ship. No, not towards the ship, towards Finn. The lead man reaches the end and stares after Finn, screaming and shaking his fist, but his words are snatched away by the wind before you can hear them. Instead, you simply watch his lips move, mouthing a phrase you missed the first time around. //

// “I’ll hunt you down, Delthyn Harper. I’ll hunt you and kill you if it’s the last thing I do.” //

//Meanwhile, on the ship, Finn’s eyes flick to the man, and in an act whose cause was easily misconstrued by a child as the biting cold, he shivers. //

And then you’re back in the Heart. 

It takes you a few long moments to process what you’ve just witnessed. Your brother left… because he was being hunted? 

The ship in a bottle is still in your hand. You glance down at it, at the entombed ship, and a strange sadness overtakes you. A ship shouldn’t be trapped like this. 

Placing it down on the ground and taking the butt of your pistol in your left hand, you crack a corner of the bottle. Giving it a few more knocks, you break the glass away until the little model ship is fully in the open. Raising it up to eye-level, you think you can even see its sails lift slightly, sensing freedom. 

You smile, then notice that the raising sails have revealed a part of the base of the mast previously draped in them. The mast has a tiny corner of paper sticking out of it. 

Eyes wide, hand gentle, you place it back down on the ground and gently work at the mast. After the briefest moments of resistance, the mast pops out of the deck, and out flutters a single, slightly curled, yellowed piece of parchment. Even before you unravel it and the handwriting confirms your suspicions, you know who it’s from. 

//Heya Wick,//

//By the time you figure out where I’ve hidden this message, I hope that you will have realised that I’m not coming back. I stole the wrong thing from the wrong person, and now I know I will be hunted down for the rest of my life. But I can live with that. So long as they never find you.//

//I’m going to make a name for myself. A name of such infamy that the people hunting me down will never not know where to look. So that they’ll never lose the scent long enough to go after you. //

//I’m going to have to bury the person I once was. I can’t be Finn the brother of Wick anymore, so I’m going to be Delthyn the pirate. But know that no matter how deep I hide it, no matter how many doors I lock it behind in my heart, I will never give up the love I have for you. Because you are my brother, and no matter how many oceans separate us, nothing will ever change that. //

//I bet you’re feeling kinda empty right about now. Hell, maybe you hate my guts for breaking my promise. I don’t blame you. //

//But you’re Sedgewick Harper. I know you’re going to bounce back, just like you’ve always done from everything life has thrown at you. I’m proud of you, little brother. Never forget that. //

//Now go out there and give life hell from your big brother. //

//Thinking of you until the day I die,//

//Finn//

You stare at the page. Carefully, you raise it to your lips and kiss the parchment. “Goodbye Finn,” you whisper. Then you roll it up, slip it back into the mast of the ship, and gently slip the model into a pocket just above your heart. The ship fits snugly, as though it were meant to be placed there. 

Then you turn around and behold the rest of the Heart. You know now that there’s nothing left for you here. There never was. Just like for the second half your life, you’ve been searching for something that was never there. Chasing others’ wakes. 

But now…

Now you know what is here. Aster is here. The other Chosen are here. The Original Book is here. 

And you, Sedgewick ‘Wick’ Harper, are here. 

No more maybes. No more ghosts. It’s time to give hell for the people who matter to you right here, right now. 

You turn to the hearth of the Heart, still flickering weakly.

“How do I get out of here?”
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