Ros had initially moved to the Faction Isles for a fresh start.
A new beginning.
New friends, new community, new sense of belonging.
A new home.
Now, as she stood on the pier by the Nightingale base, watching her castle burn - watching her new beginning go down in flames - she felt like a fool.
How foolish she was, thinking that things could be different - that things could bebetter. She let herself believe that the other pirates no longer saw her as a threat, no longer hated her upon finding out her past.
Yeah, right.
Guqqie had been right to call her naïve.
Ros' legs seemed to move of their own accord, bringing her around the side of the Nightingale base, closer to the carnage. She could only watch as months of work, millions of gold, lay in flaming ruin.
Mere minutes ago, she had been cheerfully skipping through the forest, chattering happily to the whispers of the waves as she shrugged off her unsuccessful attempt to withdraw money from the casino.
What had happened?
What hadhappened?
Suddenly, her legs weren't strong enough to hold her weight anymore, as she collapsed against the calcite boulder she stood beside.
Gritting her teeth, she closed her eyes. Some silly, childish voice inside her insisted that if she couldn't see it, it wasn't happening.
Maybe, when she opened her eyes, everything would be fine.
Maybe Guqqie would be alive.
Maybe Bek, Will and Acho would show up to her sleepover.
Maybe the fire, fizzing and crackling, the flames licking at the insides of her eyelids, would be nothing more than a figment of her imagination.
Maybe it would all be alright.
"...Ros?"
And suddenly, nothing was alright.
Guqqie was dead.
Half her guest list hadn't shown up.
Her world was burning to the ground, destined to forever remain a smouldering husk of what once was.
Ros turned around.
Water was stood a few feet behind her, a haunted expression on her face. Ros could see the flames reflected in her eyes.
She stepped over to join her. It was worse now that she was closer.
"Are you okay?" Water asked quietly.
Ros blinked.
Was she okay?
She wasn't sure.
She wasn't sure anything about this was okay.
She wasn't sure anything would ever be okay again.
"Yeah," she lied. "I just- I just don't know what happened."
"I..." Water started, clearly at a loss for words. Ros could see her holding a spyglass, as if you needed any help to see Ros' whole livelihood set ablaze. What a joke. "I walked past, and... and that's what it looked like."
Ros' mouth moved on its own, asking a question she didn't really care to hear the response to. Water replied, but Ros didn't hear her.
Something inside Ros wanted to scream. To cry. To lay on the ground and simply wait until she decomposed into the dirt, just another fleeting existence in the world.
"Do you think Egg Man Jenkins made it out?" she asked instead. Egg Man Jenkins was her kind-of business rival, though she was sure that the rivalry was mainly one-sided, but the thought of another life lost within her castle made her stomach churn queasily.
"What about... that?"
Water gestured to the castle.
Ros ignored her.
"And Gabriel?" she continued instead, remembering the other people that she had invited. The other people that she had led to their potential deaths.
The other pirates were right not to trust her.
Silence.
Water's large, brown eyes were looking her up and down. Confused.
"Do we- d'you wanna... should we go and have a look?" she asked. Clearly perplexed.
Ros didn't answer. She hoped Water didn't see her digging her nails into her palms so hard it stung.
A pause, and then,
"Are you okay?" Water asked, worried now. "You seem fine. Why do you seem fine?"
Within moments, Ros was waving her hands dismissively.
"Nonono, I'm okay!" she said, unable to stop herself from stammering. "I- I just- it just doesn't feel... like it's happened, you know?"
A half-truth.
If she tried hard enough, maybe she could convince herself that it wasn't happening.
Water gave her a look. Pity.
Ros wondered if Water was the only person on the Faction Isles who didn't see her as a threat.
She wondered if being seen as a poor, sad little excuse for a pirate who needed to be pitied was worse.
"...Ros, I have a question."
"Mmhm?"
Water inhaled a deep breath.
"This might not be the best time to ask, I just..." she sighed. "So... when I went to the bathroom during the sleepover, I got kinda... sidetracked."
Ros blinked, unsure how this was related.
The fire was still burning. She could still see it in Water's eyes.
How ironic.
"I had a look, um... in the attic," Water continued.
"The attic? You didn't see the goodie bags?" Ros filled the silence as Water paused. "Did someone take them?!"
"...There weren't-"
"I spent so long on those goodie bags!" she sighed. Jumping on the chance to change the subject, she continued, recounting the handcrafted gifts she'd put in each one.
Not that any of it really mattered.
Half her guest list hadn't shown, and now Ros' attempts at heartfelt gifts for her friends were nothing but kindling, fuel to the fire that was swallowing more and more of her hard work, of herhome, with each passing second.
"Ros," Water interrupted her ramblings, stopping her midway through detailing the flower arrangements she'd put together for each of them. Probably for the best. "It was, like...filledwith TNT. Like, to the rafters."
Ros blinked.
Was this some sort of sick joke?
Some taunting reminder that if she had done so much as thought to take the goodie bags downstairs first, this could've been avoided.
Clearly taking her silence as an opportunity to continue, Water spoke again.
"...I just... thought you were hiding it."
And there it was.
Not even Water trusted her.
It appeared she would forever be Ros, ex-Sabretooth Clan member, untrustworthy and always plotting her friends' demise at any given moment.
Water was still talking.
Ros was responding, though she had no idea what she was saying.
Eventually, she managed to make out Water's concerned "who could it have been?"
"I dunno," Ros shrugged, trying to force a smile. Trying to bring back her usual cheerful demeanour. "I- I should probably sleep though. I'm sure everything will be fine."
Water definitely noticed the way her voice broke halfway through, her brows furrowing.
"Are you sure?"
Ros nodded.
"Yeah, yeah," her gaze drifted back to the castle. The flames were still lapping at the infrastructure she'd spent months gathering resources for, placing by hand. "It'll be fine."
Maybe if she pretended it didn't affect her, eventually she'd forget it was pretend.
Despite Water's offer that she could stay with her at the Heron base, Ros found herself in Pickles' cave, standing before an easel, gripping a paintbrush so tightly that her knuckles were white.
Ros' favourite thing to paint were sunsets. She would spend hours mixing the pinks and oranges and reds, forming a tranquil scene that made her feel warm inside each time she saw it.
Now, however, all she found herself painting were storms.
Dark, gloomy clouds looming over an endlessly turbulent ocean, the rolling, restless waves spraying foam up into the air as they crashed against the sharp rocks on the seabed, salty droplets showering onto the stone like tears.
Harsh brushstrokes painted the outlines of an angry, bitter ocean, the warmth of the sunset long since lost to the cold water and the dullness of the darkened sky.
The canvases were piling up, storm after storm lining the mossy walls of Pickles' cave.
There was paint on Ros' face. She didn't wipe it off.
Pickles was raising his head to the surface of his pool, watching her. He probably wanted to be pet.
The paintbrush traced the jagged line of a distant lightning strike.
Ros wondered if a lightning strike could light TNT.
Her movements faltered momentarily.
Dipping her paintbrush in her black ink without rinsing the white off first, she painted over the lightning. Then the clouds. Then the sea.
Breathing heavily, Ros stared at the canvas, the black dripping from the bottom and landing on the floor.
A waste of her paints, but she couldn't bring herself to care as she removed the canvas from her easel with shaking hands and set it against the wall, before sitting down beside it.
Swallowing the lump in her throat, Ros closed her eyes.
Somewhere in her head, lightning struck.
