[Captain Del]

Thank you, mates!

Not much I can say about this one. It's special to me, because it's the first time I ever cried while writing a story.

Remembrance

August 29th, 1725
Tortuga, Hispaniola
7:23 AM

By morning the storm had drastically settled down, the tide slowly receding back to the bay with only a blanket of gray clouds still lingering overhead. The street was littered with assortments of objects swept up by the small flood and carried out in to the middle of the road, which varied from boxes and crates to the bodies of dead livestock whose owner was too negligent to shelter them properly. A rancid smell filled the streets; a dank, rancid smell that often stayed close to the swamps and the ghettos of the gypsy quarters, but had now split out in to the main part of the city with the overflow of the marshes that sat unkempt at the side of the city. Many of the towns local residents, who were far enough from the swamps of the port to not care about the poorer districts, now felt sorry for themselves that they had to put up with such a disgusting atmosphere.

Delmaria couldn't sleep that night. Ramona's words echoed in the back of his mind long after the crowds had quieted down in the tavern and she had slithered in to the recesses of the rain. Darkskull had moved to the back door of the King's Arm to watch her sway in to the darkness, and even hours after she was gone he stood there, leaning on the banister as he stared out in the courtyard. It was only after Johnny had ferried him to an empty room for what remained of the night that he moved, but even then he stood near the window above the small desk in his room, staring out in to the void.

By now he had set himself up so that he could look out the window in to the town square as he wrote down in his small, black, weathered journal. His quill ran furiously over the pages as he spilled out anything that he was thinking, or anything he could think of, his handwriting swerving and spinning over the blank pages. He wasn't so much as writing a well-constructed entry as we was rambling, throwing down poorly connected sentences and phrases that came to his mind. It eerily reminded him of the journal of Sir Francis Drake that his father had so fruitlessly hunted down and tried to protect, and at that point he wrote down "El Draque the --------" and began scribbling over it angrily, at one point tearing the page across from side to side. It was a part of his past that made him angry, to think he had wasted his life for his father's ambitions. Delmaria slunk back in his chair as the sun banked over the horizon above the buildings, throwing his dripping when quill pen on the floor and slapping the ink jar off the desk. It shattered on the crisp wall at his side, splattering ink all over the wall.

Darkskull huffed, throwing his head back and looking up at the ceiling. He still wondered why he had kept that journal of his, it's binding falling apart at the seams and nearly every page torn and ripped at the edges. Perhaps it was because he knew that he could not escape his past no matter how far he tried to put it off - after all, the past can always be found in the present. He leaned forward and laid a big hand down on the small book, pulling it in to his lap and he propped his feet up on the desk. He began flipping backwards through the pages of the journal, smiling at his entries became older and older. Some of them told of celebrations, others of battles, skirmishes and wars, and some of them were just mental vomits that he had done only a few moments ago. Yet as he neared the inside cover of the book, he came to a page that was completely salvaged by time, with only two small words scribbled in the center.

Hello John

John.

Nobody had called him his real name in such a long time, that even reading it on a piece of paper was a shock to him. Whenever he read something, we would usually put a voice to in inside his head, usually a voice that he had created himself and had little to no connection to the person who had written it. This time, however, he read it in a very real voice - Maria's.

Delmaria closed the journal quietly, letting his hand drop to his side and taking the book down with him to smash in to the floor. The sound of his wife's voice sent a chill down his spine, though it wasn't as much a sound as it was remembering what it sounded like. It reminded him of the years that spent with her, where they lived and loved with whatever they had. Luxuries were a rarity, and they took life as it came. It was a hard life, but it was a beautiful one - and Delmaria distinctly remembered the day that it had ended.

1

January 15th, 1714
Padres Del Fuego
10:57 AM

Delmaria poked his head behind the soft cloth that covered his home's window, looking out over the vacant courtyard. The stone buildings rested quietly around him as the sun ascended overhead, casting a shadow that seemed to reach out to him from the opposite side. Not a soul was seen or heard, which relieved Delmaria for just a little bit as he turned back to his modest home. The fireplace cackled quietly in the back as Delpadros and Marina played with a few small rag dolls that fell limp in their hands. Maria paced back and forth in between the table, which sat to the right end of the room, and the cubboard at the left end. She worriedly wiped her hands on her blouse, leaving the mess that had built up from cooking that morning on her accessory before taking it off and placing it across the table. Her black, elegant hair still feel straight from her beautiful soft face, and even though she was covered in dirt and grime, Delmaria saw past that to the true beauty that sat beneath it. But, now was not the time to think of such things.

"It doesn't have to be like this, you know." Delmaria said, resting his back against the wooden door. A small ray of light that snuck in between the broken shingles of the roof fell directly on to Maria's face, lighting it as she turned briskly to face him. Her dark, tanned skin was illuminated, and her eyes sparkled like gems for a brief moment before she stepped out towards him.

"Be like what? How it always has been? We've been living in this same, decrepit house for years now, and you expect it to get better now?" Her light Spanish accent still rolled off her tongue with every breath as she spoke.

"If you're so eager to leave this house, then the only thing we can do is leave this god damn island!" Delmaria heated up, stepping off the door.

"You say it like it's so simple." Maria shook her head, turning to the back of the room and hurrying over to a small metal pot that hung over the giggling fire, checking to see how it's contents were going along. Delmaria chased after her, stopping roughly five feet behind her.

"Maria, think of them." Delmaria said, pointing a hand down to the two children that sat on the ground. Even though only a year older than her (he was 8 and she was 7) Delpadros still attempted to instruct and guide Marina on how to play with their small cache of straw dolls that Maria had woven for them as a Christmas present.

"Think of them? You? You would rather take them out on the seas and risk their lives than have them stay safe on this island?"

"RIGHT, because if the British find them they won't kill us all for having such close ties to one another. We either head out now, and try to save them, or we wait here for the soldiers to come and kill us!" Darkskull became enraged, throwing his hands around as he tried to drive his point to Maria.

"AND WHOSE FAULT IS THAT? You're the one who wanted to trust that Victorio! Now look where that has gotten you!" She scoffed, shaking her fist at him.

Delmaria violently gripped her arm, making her wince under the pain as he gripped her tighter and tighter. "I did it for the best interest of all of us." He gritted his teeth. "If it wasn't for me you'd have been dead by the time they found you!" He pushed her, sending her stumbling back and hitting her hard against the wall, causing her to slump down just at the side of the fireplace. Marina let out a little cry and started to sob like any child would when they saw the fighting such as this transpire before them, while Delpadros just covered his ears, trying to block out the world. While the children cried, a blanket of shouts could be heard far off in the distance, like a unity of men and women walking back and forth.

Delmaria ran to the window and quickly peered back through the cloth, relieved that there was nothing going on in the courtyard in front of his home. Still, he turned back around to the chaos within it, and shouted "WILL YOU SHUT IT?" at Marina, which only made her whimper and cry even louder as she started to crawl back, away from the general direction of her father.

Delmaria turned his attention to Maria, who was pulling herself up off the ground by the wall. She gave him a very cold, unworthy glare, and his heart sank as he saw what he had done to her - a large, red bruise covered her entire right forearm, so twisted and irritated it almost seemed like it had been burned. She swatted her hair out of her face as she gathered her balance, and began to stumble forward, towards him. "I see how much you care for them!" she growled in a low, disgusted tone.

She walked right up to him, and past him, to the small wooden door that waited quietly behind them. She ran her hand through her hair again, before opening the door, and beginning to storm out. "Where the hell are you going!?" Delmaria called after her, his angry overtone still lingering in his voice.

"Away from you!" she shouted over her shoulder. She knew that he didn't have it in him to run after her and subdue her, because she wouldn't be turning around for quite some time. "Goodbye, John!"

Instead of chasing after her, Delmaria slammed the door shut with all of his force. He stared at the empty, black wooden door for a few good minutes, and in that time the world had become quiet to him. Marina's crying had halted, Delpadros had calmed down, and even the fire that sat in the back of the room had gone from laughing to whispering as he stood there, staring at the door. He tried to look through it, but he couldn't - he felt that looking at that door was the same as looking in to a mirror, because behind the great beard that covered his face and the black dye that covered his naturally blonde follicles, he could find himself - but on the outside, he wasn't there.

He finally lost his control, taking his fists and repeatedly smashing them in to the wooden door as he pounded the boards over and over, making them splinter and crack with each blow he gave to them. She bellowed a deep, diabolical roar, that didn't so much came from him as it did the hellish demons that resided within him, louder than any noise that had ever come out of his mouth. He rocked the door with one final haymaker, so powerful that the board it made contact with snapped in to two halves, both of which flew out of the door and landed in the courtyard a few good yards away from his home. The door itself broke off it's top hinge, flinging out wildly and nearly smashing off the frame.

Delmaria stepped back, panting heavily as he looked at the destruction he had created. He looked down at his hands, bloodied and splintered, and wondered why anything he had ever done with them was necessary - why all of the bloodshed, the crimes, the betrayals, and all that he had ever done with them, had been necessary. For a change his own blood was spilled on his palms, almost in a bittersweet kind of fashion. The only thing that stood unscathed on his hand was the small, glimmering wedding band that sat quietly on his finger, which he was glad for. He was only glad that his wife's blood had not been on them.

Just as he turned back to the room, he heard it - a loud, awful gun being shot off in the distance, followed by an eruption of terror and screams that shrieked over the clashing of metal on skin, teeth and bone. He hurried to the doorframe, and watched as a few men ran by, many of which he had known and men, charging with pitchforks, muskets, and even small swords down the alleyway to the main area of Padres. Delmaria couldn't see it, but he knew just by the feeling that slithered through him that something had gone wrong. He turned to his children, who had huddled to the back of the room, and told them to calmly "Wait here."

He dashed down the length of the walled-in courtyard, turning sharply to his left as he hit the Ratskellar and running underneath the archway to the larger port of Padres Del Fuego, the rolling, enormous wasteland of small crevices and geysers the rolled up plums of smoke in to the sky. But that was not the old smoke he saw - across them, at the farthest and largest of the mounds just before the branch off to the Fort, a large group of citizens were caught in a skirmish with the local red coats, perhaps showing disdain for the now-tyrannical rule of Don Victorio in the shadows of the city. Though their efforts proved to be fruitless, as each one of the men who tried to rebel were struck further and further back by the Navy, each man who tried to storm them being shot or stabbed through the chest.

And admist the chaos, Delmaria could see very clearly a fair-skin maiden, black hair waving in the wind, being shot down by a passing soldier.

In certain moments in life, time seems to slow down. It seems as though the world around you has taken a moment to stand at your side and gasp with you, like all other life forms for just that one moment had become insignificant for you. The blood runs to a chill as your skin shrivels in it's place, and as the face of death descends down from the heavens, you feel struck, as though you have just peered in to the face of God, or in some cases, Satan. All of the feeling in your body is gone, and the only feelings you have then are indescribable, as they are conserved for those moments only. Poets would describe it as a moment of truth, priests would call it a divine experience - but only men know that, in those times, the weight of the world both falls down upon you, and drags you forward in to the light. And no matter how much you try to deny that the light is there, it is there, growing stronger and stronger with each beat and pulse that has become but an afterthought, reduced to only a feeling that can only be perceived by looking for it. And as the light shines down upon you and you feel it's embrace, you push it back, for it is unwelcome. But, it never leaves.

Delmaria couldn't make any sound other than a blunt, forced scream as he sprinted with all of his power towards Maria. He felt everything come back to him one by one - first the gusts of air that hit against his face, then the stone beneath his boots that rocked his hardened knees, and then the scent of fire that rocketed up his nose. He nearly fell as he stumbled up on of the smaller mounds, scraping his hand on a small rock that left a trail of blood whirling through the wind as he pumped his arms faster and faster, to the beat of his fiery heart. And then, he finally felt his body collapse as he fell in to the middle of the fight, landing just at Maria's side.

Life is real. Pain is real.

He struggled to grab her hand, his shaking so quickly under pain that he fought just to find them. Her eyes looked lost as they peered blankly in the sky above him, and gone was the unique shine that always warmed him when he awoke next to her every morning. He found her hand resting just above her heart, where he blood came out in a constantly steam, staining her shirt a dark crimson. He grabbed her hand tightly, his wedding ring touching against hers as he tried to look in to her eyes one last time. When he did, they didn't follow like they always had - they didn't look up and down his face, which followed by her hand brushing against his cheek, and her soft lips kissing his forehead. They didn't peer in to his mind and soul like they always had, igniting in his heart the connection that he had always looked for. But most of all, they didn't see him - they looked beyond him, to where she had gone.

"M-m-maria, don't you leave me!" he said playfully, pretending like she could hear him. He shook his head rapidly back and forth. "No, please don't play! Please!" He tried shaking her hand, but the blood still poured out of her body, and her soul went with it. "Pleas..."

He looked at her again. She didn't move - she didn't run up to hug him, or run her fingers through his hair, commenting how she missed it's blond flow. She didn't laugh whenever he looked at her funny, or perhaps made a small joke, or picked up Marina in one arm and Delpadros in the other and spin them around. She didn't turn to him in the middle of the night, and spend hours looking at him like she used to, telling him how much she loved him. She didn't rub his back as they stood down at the docks, watching the sun fall down behind the horizon as the world ignored them for once. She wasn't there to love him anymore, although he knew he would always be there for her.

His lips murmured before he let out a bloodcurdling yell, far louder than the noise he had made minutes before. He tossed his head back - he wanted his voice to reach the heavens, so that he could talk to her one last time. "MARIA!!!"

2

Delmaria looked out the window in to Tortuga, watching the trees sway off in the distance in an early-morning gust, just catching the back end of storm. It seemed so quiet outside, just as it was inside - the floorboards in the room next to him creaked, the glasses in the tavern below clanked as they were cleaned, and Delmaria's breathing echoed through the room. His hands still sat quietly in his lap, and throughout that painful experience of remembering, he hadn't moved. He didn't want to.

Delmaria picked up the quill and journal from the floor at his side. He placed it down on the desk, and flipped to the very last, clean page. With whatever ink that remained in his pen, he wrote down in the very center:

Goodbye, Maria.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Be sure to comment.