Pelagic [Voltron/Refuge AU]

Recovery

Whoo sorry for the long wait and short, choppy chapter, guys! There's this new AU that I've really been wanting to get started on, (Ashie, you know which one I'm talking about ;) and the planning for that one has kinda gotten in the way of writing this one.

But here's this train wreck of a chapter. 

. . .

Chyra lowered herself carefully onto her hammock, wincing as her rib cage protested the action. Sendak had really done a number on her, and for what? She hadn't even been successful in getting him to release the merman from his precarious and undoubtedly dangerous trap. Although, she honestly should have expected that, based on her experience with the Galra pirate clan.

She'd been trapped for almost ten years.

Chyra carefully felt around her ribs, checking for fractures. Fortunately, she didn't seem to have any broken ribs. Unfortunately, she felt like a walking bruise. Every bone in her body was aching from the impact of hitting both Sendak's fist and the stack of crates she had landed against, and she knew she would be feeling this even worse tomorrow. She hauled herself to her feet and staggered over to her mirror, which was firmly attached to her cabin's wall.

Since she was both Sendak's second in command and the only female on the ship, Chyra was awarded her own private chambers. They were small and cramped, and they were only made smaller by the multitude of trinkets and objects of interest that Chyra had picked up on her voyages, but it was her own little corner of the vessel, the one place she could have her own thoughts. Plus, it was much better than sleeping belowdecks with the other crewmen.

Her little cabin consisted of a desk, a couple of barrels of supplies that didn't fit belowdecks, a pair of chests containing all of Chyra's personal belongings, a basin, a couple cupboards, a hammock, and the small mirror firmly fastened to the wall beside the door. Chyra leaned over the basin and inspected herself in the mirror, trying to alter her appearance so it didn't look like she had just been launched across the deck of a pirate ship.

In short, she looked like shit.

Her freckled face was twisted into a persistent grimace of pain that wouldn't go away no matter how hard she tried to make her face relax. The darkened lighting in her cabin didn't help with her complexion or the dark circles beneath her amber eyes, which were brought about by long nights on watch high up in the crows nest. Her brown hair was tangled, which was to be expected because of the salty sea air, but it was in need of cleaning; soon it would start to look like she had dreadlocks. Chyra scowled when her hurried attempt to brush her fingers through her hair was met with fierce resistance from the auburn locks. She tied it up into a braid and decided to deal with it later.

Sighing, Chyra turned away from her bedraggled reflection and walked over to her desk in the corner of the room, lowering herself carefully into the seat and shoving aside several miscellaneous maps, compasses, and other navigational tools to make a clear space on the desktop. She rifled through her cluttered drawers and extracted an old leather bound notebook and a scraggly looking quill, the feather of which was not much more than a long shaft with a few stray feather fluffs clinging to its length. Chyra dipped the sharpened end of the quill into a small inkwell set into the back corner of the desk and allowed the nib to hover over the paper, unsure of what to write.

Usually, when she was recording her thoughts in her journal, she at least attempted to make it appear as though she was doing something productive, like filling out ship logs or navigating. This time, however, she didn't even pretend. Her fingers closed hard around the quill, and she clenched her jaw as anger boiled inside her.