The pirate boy (Frerard, Petekey)

Chapter thirty two - incendiary

Chapter thirty two - incendiary

afra n kiara Pls do not kill me

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Father stared in utter bewilderment and slight horror as I clawed at Gerard's chest and cried. Gerard hushed me and held me close, whispering fierce words into my hair that I couldn't make out.

I felt like I was drowning. I may as well have been.

Lisa had awoken, and was watching Gerard in deep disappointment. She knew what he had done. Instantly, she knew. She looked dark, but naive, like she felt completely wasted in all of her efforts. Honestly I felt rather similar. "You haven't fucking changed, have you?" Lisa said. "Ever since we were kids, offering yourself up to take the blame." She shook her head, her expression tight. "That fucking lamp, I remember."

Gerard turned back to Lisa, and I clung to his forearm. "It's a terrible habit, I know," he said.

"Fuck you," I muttered against Gerard's shoulder. "We could have just left here. It would have been so fucking easy, but you had to go and interfere."

"When have I ever been deterred from interfering in the past, my dear?" Gerard shifted and pressed a kiss to a spot below my ear, and I dug my nails into his arm.

Father looked slightly repulsed. I clutched Gerard tighter. "I hate you," I hissed into the creases of his rumpled jacket. There was little fondness in my words.

Gerard was quite the opposite. "I know, darling," he said softly, running his fingers through my hair and twisting his body to shelter me from my father's uneasy gaze. "I know."

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The drums drilled into my chest, and as the executioner briskly tied the thick hanging rope into a noose, my father held me back by my upper arms. I knew that it was futile to resist when there were guards surrounding me on all sides, but I still wasted all of my effort to reach for Gerard out of pure desperation. It was strange what love would do to you.

Lisa stood in the front row of the crowd—a pirate hanging drew quite the audience, it seemed. A bustle of children stood near the platform, brandishing sewn pirate toys and prodding them like voodoo dolls, while their parents smoked elegantly (I'd forgotten posh people's fantastic ability to make even the most mundane of things look ridiculously posh just with the sneers on their faces).

Lisa was mounted to the floor, staring at the column of navymen dressed in the King's bastard colours. Her head was slightly bowed, and the red sash from around her waist was gone. Instead, she clutched the piece of fabric in her hand, pressing it close to her hip like she felt the need to keep it safe near her. Behind me was Dewees, standing steady and keeping a fair and inconspicuous distance from both me and the gallows, prepared for the moment it became apparent that he was required.

Gerard was held stock still by two guards, and many more subtly patrolled the town square. When Gerard abruptly tensed and kicked free, father tightened his grip on my shoulders. Nobody made a move to go after Gerard: nobody knew why he was making an effort to escape, there was nowhere he could go on his own.

Gerard didn't run. He didn't even hurry as he made his way towards me. He just stalked over, like it was any normal morning on the ship—except he didn't throw a punch at me, or flick out his knife and point it at my neck. Instead, he tugged me out of my father's grip and left him to stand and stare, then took my face in his hands and kissed me fiercely. I made a strange sound and threw my arms around his middle, and let him clutch at my hair and kiss me harder than I would have liked. Half of my face was crushed up against his and the sea air was whipping my skin, spattering cold drops of mist from the near tide onto my hands, and I tucked my hands underneath Gerard's jacket and held him as tightly as I could, determined not to let him leave.

A small part of me had been convinced that our last kiss would last forever, but logic (and my father's incongruous strength) won over, and in moments I was being dragged away from Gerard. I grabbed at his jacket and he held tightly onto my arms, and for the first time in longer than I could remember, I saw a look of nothing but distress and fear on his face. "Frank," he said. "Frank, Frank—don't let them—"

"Gerard," I said. "You don't fucking let them. Don't let them take you."

"I gotta, Frank, I'm sorry," he said, and I fisted my hands tighter in his shirt. "You have to stay okay, right? Promise me you'll be okay."

I cried out when my father pulled me sharply back, digging his blunt fingernails into my forearms, and he hissed a reprimanding into my ear. I didn't listen. I didn't take my eyes off Gerard's. "Fuck," I choked out, grasping blindly for some part of him to hold onto. "Fuck, please don't leave me, I love you, I love you–"

"Frank!" Father bit out in horror, and snatched me back into his cold and rigid grip.

Gerard just smiled as the guards started to drag him back to the gallows. "I fucking love you too, pretty boy," he said, his voice carrying. "You fucker."

Within a moment, Gerard was up on the platform again, and Lisa stared up at him. She lifted the hem of her skirt an inch off the ground, and lowered her head in a subtle bow to him. He nodded back, and the executioner tugged on his forearms sharply so that he stumbled on the platform. "Eyes forward," the hooded man said. Dewees met my eyes and gave me an urgent look, like there was something I was supposed to be doing. I suddenly had a sickening feeling that there had been some fantastic escape plan scheduled that I had been too dumb to register my part in.

"Dewees?" I hissed. Dewees just stared at me expectantly, waiting for me to do something I was never going to do.

The executioner fitted the noose around Gerard's neck, and pushed him forwards so he stood on the trapdoor. The rhythm of the drums changed and became more urgent. My thoughts were frantic. I searched for anything I could be doing to stop this happening, but every possibility ended in failure.

Then before I was ready, before I had managed to prepare myself, Gerard dropped from the platform as the trapdoor fell open, and the noose tightened sharply around his neck. I cried out and Father snatched me back when I tried to run.

Gerard struggled, and the crowd hissed and booed, and I almost wanted to hurt them more than I wanted to save Gerard. The fury I felt was indescribable. His face was ash white, and when he gritted his teeth I could see blood staining his gums. After a moment, he fell limp, and I heard Lisa cry.

Every part of me was cold—my blood was cold, my thoughts were cold. I felt like I was drowning. I wished I was.

Gerard had died. He was gone. All the life had been forced out of him. I suddenly understood exactly how Gerard had felt when Ryan died.