The world was a kaleidoscope of crimson and gold as the sun bled across the horizon, painting the bruised sky in colors too beautiful for a place like this. From my perch atop a massive, overturned boulder, I watched it sink. Each breath was a fresh agony, a reminder of the ice-stitched ruin of my chest, the shredded ruin of my arm, the two dead, black handprints of darkness seared onto my back. The scars weren't just on my skin. They felt deeper.
The sounds of the clean-up operation were a distant hum. Moans of the wounded, the clanking of chains as the captured Titanic Captains were led to the brig, the shouted orders of my commanders. It all felt a million miles away.
My own brain was the loudest thing here. A constant, replaying loop of the fight's final, gruesome moments. The crunch. The texture. The taste.
I swallowed, and the phantom sensation of it rose in my throat, a coppery, vile memory that made my stomach churn.
"It is done, my son."
I didn't have to turn. The footsteps were as familiar to me as my own heartbeat. Pops. Whitebeard. He had arrived with the reinforcements, too late for the fight, but in time for the aftermath.
"He's dead," I said, my voice a raw, empty rasp. I didn't look at him. I couldn't. I kept my eyes fixed on the sunset.
"We saw the body... what was left of it," he rumbled, his voice heavy with a sorrow that wasn't for Teach, but for the son who had to do this.
I laughed, a short, ugly, broken sound. "There wasn't much left. I ate him."
The words hung in the air between us, stark and monstrous. He didn't reply. What was there to say?
A soft, warm hand settled on my shoulder. Smoothie. Her touch was an anchor in the storm of my thoughts, but even it felt distant.
"Gunnar," she said softly.
I flinched away from her touch, standing up and turning from them both. "Don't."
I am a monster.
The thought wasn't a question. It was a statement of fact, echoing in the cavern of my skull. A king doesn't do that. A hero doesn't do that. A man doesn't do that. I looked down at my own hands, half-expecting them to be claws, stained with something that would never wash off.
I started walking, a slow, detached shamble through the wasteland I had created. The ground was a graveyard of candy and dreams, littered with the broken bodies of pirates. My pirates. His pirates. It didn't matter. They were just bodies.
Am I any different from him? Teach took power. I took his life. I devoured it. The same hunger, the same finality. I closed my eyes and I could see it, feel it again—the grinding of bone between my teeth, the hot, coppery spray. The satisfaction.
Gods, the satisfaction.
That was the worst part. The small, dark, primal part of my soul that had roared in triumph as I swallowed him down. The beast that wore my face had enjoyed it.
"I'm a monster," I whispered to the wind, the words tasting like ash.
I was so lost in the static of my own self-loathing that I didn't hear the small footsteps at first. But I heard the voice. A tiny, clear bell of a voice that cut through the fog in my brain like a sunbeam.
"Papa?"
I froze. My heart, which I was convinced was now a cold, dead stone, gave a painful lurch. I turned slowly.
There, standing not thirty feet away, having somehow wandered away from the safety of the Moby Dick, was Iris. My daughter. Four years old, with her mother's impossibly long legs and my own stark white hair and golden eyes. She was a perfect, tiny miniature of us both. An angel standing in the heart of my hell.
Her little face was scrunched up in confusion, her golden eyes wide as she took in my ruined state—the blood, the dirt, the jagged ice-sutures on my chest.
"Papa," she said again, her voice trembling slightly. "You're hurt."
And then she ran. Her little legs pumped, carrying her across the broken ground, straight towards me. Straight towards the monster.
My first instinct was to back away. To hide. Don't touch me. I'm not clean. I'm not worthy of you.
But my body moved on its own. I dropped to my knees, ignoring the searing pain in my chest, and opened my arms.
She crashed into me, her tiny arms wrapping around my thick neck with a strength that defied her size. She buried her face in my shoulder, her small body trembling.
"You're okay, Papa," she whispered into my neck. "You're okay."
And that's when the dam broke.
I wrapped my own massive, trembling arms around her, pulling her tight against me, terrified I might break her, terrified to let her go. A sound I didn't recognize tore its way out of my throat, a choked, ragged sob. The pressure in my chest, the guilt, the horror, the self-loathing—it all collapsed under the weight of this tiny, perfect little girl.
Tears, hot and shameful, streamed down my face, washing away the grime and blood. I cried. I cried for the man I was, for the monster I had become, and for the father this little girl still saw me as. I hugged her tighter, burying my face in her soft, white hair, inhaling the clean, innocent scent of her, an antidote to the phantom taste of blood in my mouth.
A second pair of arms wrapped around us both. Slender, strong, and warm. Smoothie knelt behind me, enfolding us in her embrace, her head resting on my shoulder. She didn't say a word. She didn't have to. Her presence, her acceptance, her love, was its own language.
Here, in the arms of my wife and my daughter, in the heart of the devastation I had wrought, I wasn't a king. I wasn't a captain. I wasn't a monster.
I was just a husband. A father.
And for the first time in hours, I felt human again.
[A/N: Damn, I dropped too many chapter today. Hope you all liked it. Tomorrow's chapter will be special. This chapter, and tomorrow's chapter, are special chapters.]