Blurred Horizons

Scarlett's heart was in her stomach. Not once did she let go of Gigi's blanket, sometimes rummaging and organizing her clothes as the ship sailed and the crew searched for Nathaniel, who may or may not have even had her baby. Ben was extremely off, as well. She'd never seen him so furious and stressed in his life. She knew he was getting close to a breaking point when he punched Elliot in the stomach after the man asked him a question Ben apparently thought to be stupid, and Scarlett had to cut in. She grabbed Ben's arm and yanked him back as the other men pulled Elliot away before he threw a punch right back.

"You stand in the corner and wait for me," she told Ben.

"But I-"

"I'm the captain," she said.

Ben pursed his lips and did as she asked, and Scarlett turned her attention to Elliot.

"What's the issue?" she sighed.

"I was just wondering why we have to-"

Scarlett cut him off by punching him in the stomach again, not giving him time to recover from the last blow.

"Ben didn't let me finish either," he squeaked.

Scarlett looked over her shoulder and found Ben with a slight smile on his face. They were distracted by some shouting in the sea, and they quickly ran to the railing to find that the mermaids had returned, the one called Theia waving at them.

"We found it!" she yelled.

It didn't take long for the entire crew to get to work, turning the ship around with the directions of the mermaids and sailing at full speed. The Cutlass didn't have much of a head start. It was bigger and sturdier than the Spirit, but the Spirit was much faster. They caught up and caught the ship, swinging on ropes and running across planks to board the ship. The crew seemed startled, but Nathaniel was nowhere to be found. Scarlett started to grab a rope to swing across herself, but Ben caught her around the waist.

"You're hurt," he reminded her.

"Not as hurt as I'll be if I don't get my baby back."

Ben didn't argue with her this time. Instead, he picked her up and took the rope himself, swinging them both across. One of the first people Scarlett saw when she landed on the other side was one of her crew members wrestling with another one of her crew members. One of them must have been the traitor. She directed Ben's attention towards it, and he nodded.

"I'll take care of it," he said. "You go below deck and find Gigi. I'll watch your back."

Scarlett nodded, pausing to pull in Ben for a deep kiss before leaving.

"That one was for luck," she said softly. "Be safe, Ben."

"You too," he said, kissing her forehead before they parted ways.

Ben and the rest of the crew guarded Scarlett's path as she ran below deck. Even Thomas and Doc were fighting. Doc surprised Scarlett with how skilled he was with a weapon. It must have been something he picked up when he escaped prison and his death sentence. She jumped down the steps two at a time, wincing softly at the pain of her wounds as she looked around. After a bit of looking around, she heard a faint cry come from an isolated room in the back. She knew that whimper anywhere. She listened to it more often than she liked. She ran towards it, bursting through the door into a closet sized room and finding Gigi dressed in the same thing she'd been wearing when Scarlett first left and standing upright inside a trunk filled with old, ragged blankets, holding on to the edge of the trunk to. Scarlett quickly picked her daughter up, murmuring words of comfort to her as Gigi buried her face into Scarlett's hair and chest. Holding Gigi close made Scarlett almost forget about the stinging wounds on her back.

"Oh, I'll never even think of leaving you again," she said, holding back tears.

"You best come to peace with that idea."

Scarlett gasped and held her baby close as she turned around and saw Nathaniel standing there, glowering at her. He had burn scars along his right side from Emily's little gift to him a while ago, and it seemed that he had a long time to think about how much he hated the lot of them since then.

"Leave us alone," Scarlett snapped.

"I wanted to kill the baby," he said, ignoring her. There was a slight change in the tone of his voice, like he'd been driven mad with obsession over the last year. "I heard you had a baby, so I sent one of my men to kill that baby. I wanted you to live the rest of your life suffering, knowing what a terrible mother you are. He, however, had a different idea. He brought the baby back, because we knew that you'd suffer twice as much this way. Instead of putting her at peace with death, we'd be sure that she never felt peace again. And that would torture you. But you just had to enlist your fish friends to find us. And now I'm going to kill all three of you."

"You can't," Scarlett protested. "You were one of the people who kept me from my happy ending. Now that I have it, I won't give it up for anything."

Nathaniel glared at her, grabbing her arm and yanking her towards him while Gigi began to cry again.

"People like us don't get happy endings."

"People like you," Scarlett corrected, whipping her knife from her belt and hitting him square in the nose with the hilt, knocking him back a little bit.

She took the opportunity of him being distracted to run up the deck, trying to comfort Gigi and run away at the same time. As much as she hated Gigi crying, she had bigger priorities. She had to get her off the ship. Scarlett reappeared on deck and held Gigi close as she looked around for a safe path to run through while everyone fought, but there were none. From further away, Ben skewered a sailor and saw the two of them, looking immensely relieved that Gigi was safe. Scarlett started towards them, but shrieked when Nathaniel grabbed at her again, causing her to lose her balance and fall over. She turned so she wouldn't fall on Gigi and would break the baby's landing, though making sure Gigi remained unscratched meant landing on her own wounds. She cried out in pain and Gigi cried out as well, startled by rolling out of her mother's arms, even if she wasn't hurt. Nathaniel stood above Scarlett, pistol in hand.

"You took my sons from me," he growled. "They both chose you."

Out of the corner of her eye, Scarlett noticed that Gigi had spotted Ben, and was wobbling as she stood up.

"I didn't take them," Scarlett said, distracting Nathaniel. "They left you. You left them, so they did the same."

"I hate you," Nathaniel said, his finger on the trigger and his hand shaking with anger. "All of you. You and that stupid husband of yours, and that little pest of a sister he has. I'm going to kill you all, one by one."

Scarlett glanced over again to see that Gigi had taken a shaky step forward, towards Ben as he fought off another attacker. He saw her, kneeling down and holding a free arm out to her as the other blocked attacks. Gigi took another shaky step, and then another before falling over. Scarlett looked away to see Nathaniel still pointing the gun at her head.

"I hate children," he added, eyes crazed. "Always have. Oh, I tried. I tried to like Colt. But the crying and the filth... And then came the second one, who cried twice as much. I should have beaten them more. They would have become better men. I won't make that mistake this time."

"They're both fine men," Scarlett spat. "You're the monster."

She glanced over once more to see that Gigi had stood again, and was now steadily taking slow steps, one at a time, until Ben was close enough to scoop her up.

"Why, you little-"

Nathaniel clicked the safety off his pistol and was about to squeeze the trigger when a blast of aether pierced through his shoulder, knocking him back and making him fall to his knees. Scarlett looked over to see that the shot came from Ben, who was holding Gigi with his free arm.

"You've ruined your own family," he said. "You're not ruining mine."

Nathaniel lifted his arm as if to shoot him, but there was a second shot, this one piercing clean through Nathaniel's skull. He fell back, instantly dead. As soon as it happened, the entire ship went silent. Even Nathaniel's crew seemed confused. In a way, relieved. Then, one by one, everyone put away their weapons.