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Summary: Everyone knew to stay away from the untamed coast, because that’s where the pirates were.
A young man would storm out of his parents’ house, and never return. A child would wander away and disappear.
“Another one taken by pirates,” the adults would say, shaking their heads. “A terrible shame. That’s why you don’t go near the coast.”
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Tired of life in a town all but run by smugglers, Kairi wants to become a pirate. And then she disappears, presumably kidnapped by one. Sora never thought he'd be the vengeful type, but if Kairi needs help, he'll go to her. But how terrible can the pirate be, when despite the cautionary tales, he's mostly targeted smugglers?
Day 10 of AUgust: Pirate AU.
This was fun to write! I think it would also be fun to explore in a bit more detail, as I was a bit limited on time, but I still enjoyed it. This is another one that's fairly gen, but on a longer timeline would end up with the three together.
Everyone knew to stay away from the untamed coast, because that’s where the pirates were.
If you had to go near the sea, you did it at the docks or at the port town a day to the north. Never on the wild stretch of coastline that stretched to the south.
People did disappear. Not every year, but sometimes more often. A young man would storm out of his parents’ house, and never return. A child would wander away and disappear.
“Another one taken by pirates,” the adults would say, shaking their heads. “A terrible shame. That’s why you don’t go near the coast.”
After all, the cliffs were steep, the rocks were sharp, and if you got caught out as the tide came in, you were done for.
“Tidus says that the pirates aren’t real,” said Sora. “He says that it’s just a story to get younger kids to stay away from the cliff so they don’t get swept out to sea.”
“The pirates are real,” Kairi insisted. “I hear my father talking about them all the time when he thinks I can’t hear.”
“Okay, I believe you,” Sora said. If Kairi said the pirates were real, then they were.
“But I don’t think the pirates are the ones who take kids,” she said. “Because that’s almost never what he’s worried about. There was that one Lord’s son that disappeared, but that’s the only time he’s ever worried about it. He says the pirates keep ‘intercepting shipments’.”
“From the merchant ships?” Sora asked.
“I don’t think so. Yesterday he was yelling at someone in his office about it. He said ‘That’s what I hired you for! I can’t very well report it to legitimate authorities, now can I?’”
Sora winced. Smugglers, then. An open, if unpleasant, secret in the town.
Kairi stretched out in the grass and looked up at the sky. “I think I want to be a pirate.”
Sora laughed.
Kairi’s interest in becoming a pirate did not wane. She snuck out on fishing boats to learn how to sail. Never anything that would be gone for more than a day or two, lengths of time that could be explained away as visiting a friend.
She listened at her father’s office door more often, keeping notes that she wrote in a code that only she and Sora could read. Notes about the pirate, whose name was apparently “Silver”, that caused the most trouble for her father, and notes about her father’s “unofficial shipping routes.”
And then they saw the pirate. Or at least his ship.
Just a glimpse, through a stolen spyglass. But the ship had black sails and no merchant flags.
Sora had believed her, but seeing the pirate definitely changed things a bit. He still remembered years spent thinking of pirates as the thing children were told to fear above all else. Seeing the boogeyman, even from a distance, was far from comfortable.
Though if, like Kairi said, Silver was mainly engaged in intercepting smugglers, then maybe he wasn’t so bad. The smugglers were certainly too comfortable throwing their weight around town, all but running it these days. Anyone who could succeed at moving against them probably wasn’t all terrible.
Kairi’s father began making pointed suggestions about her needing to “settle in” to a household of her own. She ignored it, preferring to continue her piecemeal research into piracy.
Until he began introducing her to his “business associates” with a clear expectation that it would lead to a marriage.
“To ‘strengthen the business,’ he says!” she ranted to Sora, pacing the confines of his workshop. “They’re all smugglers, every one of them! As if I haven’t been hearing all about them for most of my life.”
“Your father doesn’t know that you’ve eavesdropped on him for years,” Sora pointed out. “And are the smugglers so very different from pirates?”
She looked more offended at that question than she did at her father’s attempts to marry her off.
“Yes. The smugglers here all work for my father, making him richer, while terrifying and threatening the rest of the town. Pirates work for themselves.”
She talked more about codes of honor, and Sora stifled a smile. He’d heard it before, but was glad to hear it again if it distracted her from worse things.
Kairi disappeared.
The black sails of the pirate ship were close enough to be seen from shore, even without a spyglass.
“Another one taken by pirates,” her father, and the townsfolk said. “A terrible shame. That’s why you don’t go near the coast.”
Sora had never considered himself particularly revenge-minded, but if a pirate had taken her, he would learn to be.
He used every scrap of information he had learned secondhand from Kairi’s interest, and eventually bartered labor for a spot on a ship. It was one of the smuggling ships, and he pretended not to know. It was just a means to an end.
The smuggling ships had been hit more and more often as time went on, and the whole crew was on edge. Silver had last been seen heading back toward the town; either their ship would cross his path, or they would miss each other entirely. The crew hoped fervently for the latter; Sora secretly prayed for the former.
And Silver obligingly attacked. Sora was sure he was going to die. He wasn’t important enough to keep as a hostage or as a survivor sent back as a warning. He just wanted a chance at Silver first. Instead of fighting, he held up his hands in surrender, trying to think of Kairi’s insistence on a code of honor among pirates. As if it had done her any good.
He was thrown to his knees on the deck of Silver’s ship. “The Way To Dawn”, it was called. Seemed an optimistic name.
“Who are you?”
Sora looked up. The man standing in front of him had to be Silver. His hair was indeed that color. The man looked like the romantic fantasy of a pirate, broad shouldered and tall.
“You don’t look like a smuggler,” the pirate continued. “Perhaps that just makes you a good one.”
“What do you do with the people you take?” Sora asked.
Silver paused, looking bemused. “Take? Is this something to do with the charming cautionary tale your town has invented?”
“Sora!” The cry came from above him, on the higher deck.
Sora almost stood up, before realizing how likely that was to end poorly. “Kairi?”
She leapt down, hitting the deck at a run to rush toward him. “Riku! This is the man I told you about!”
“Well, isn’t that convenient,” said Silver. “Saves us a trip and everything.”
It was Sora’s turn to look bemused as Kairi reached down to pull him to his feet.
She looked good. She was dressed… like a pirate. In breeches and a loose shirt instead of a dress, her hair tied back so that the wind wouldn’t tangle it in her face.
“I wanted to find you,” he said, voice cracking.
She threw herself at him, pulling him into a hug. “We were coming back for you,” she said. “We’ve been trying to get close enough for me to come ashore and get you. My father’s ships kept us away.”
“But, Silver…”
Kairi stepped back towards the man, who was watching their reunion with some interest. “His name is Riku. He saved me.” She smiled up at Silver—Riku—, gently pulling one of his hands into her own.
“Saved you?” Sora asked.
“My father sent me out to meet another of his ‘associates’, except this time the man planned to take me away with him. Maybe to try and make me marry him, I don’t know. Fortunately, Riku intercepted the ship, thinking it was an ordinary smuggling run, and I begged him for help.”
“Apparently my better nature is being relied on quite a bit these days,” he answered dryly.
Then he bowed, somehow more gracefully, perfectly formal than Sora had ever seen, and also seeming to mock the very idea of a bow. “Riku, called Silver. Pirate devoted to the dismantling of smuggling lines across the coast.”
The bow along with the name jogged some memory of Sora’s. “Riku? The Lord’s son who was…” he trailed off.
“Kidnapped by pirates?” Riku finished his statement with a small smirk. “It is a convenient excuse to explain anyone choosing to leave their expected life behind, isn’t it? Kairi did ask that we return to the town for you, if you wished to join us. This saves us a trip to the coast, if you wish it.” He offered his hand.
Sora cautiously reached out, and then with more enthusiasm took Riku’s hand. There was only one possible answer. “Yes!”
