Kaleidoscope || t. scamander

Risk At Sea

"Ready?"

Roo turned her head and winced when she felt the slightest echo of a headache throb through her skull. But she nodded up at Theseus anyway. They both turned to look at the harbourfront filled with boats, and as her eyes grazed over the cobblestone streets  and followed the passerbys down rows of brick houses, she wondered if she'd life long enough to see them again, that view that she was seeing right now.

For all she knew, this could very well be the last hours of her life, and for once they weren't joking about it.

Everyone who was present last night was still trying to get over their hangover; Newt had been vomiting since morning and according to Tina, never was a great conductor of alcohol. Tina was fine for the most part, except that she felt like her brain was constantly fried. Adam was the worst. They practically had to drag the young man out of his house and he was sitting in a shady corner of the ship, holding his head in the palm of his hands with a glass of water at his side.

Roo herself didn't feel so great, but Theseus seemed to be the only one that was unscatched by last night. His steely blue eyes rested on the horizon, lips presses into a thin line and jaw clenched hard enough that a vein bulged along his neck.

"Hope you all said your goodbyes." Theseus stated, "we're not coming home for a while."

"We're not coming home, period." Adam moaned from his seat.

"Well someone's optimistic," Roo turned to raise an eyebrow at the said man, who only shrugged and muttered, "I'm just telling the truth."

They departed in the early hours of the morning, when the sun was still rising on the horizon. They hadn't bothered hiring a Captain for the job and instead used magic to guide the boat, considering that they weren't sacrificing someone else's life for this task. A sullen silence fell over the group the more they advanced, and something squeezed tightly in Roo's chest when she turned to realize that the harbour had vanished, only to be replaced by ocean waves.

The first night went by slow and uneventful. Without the luxury of having rooms to themselves aboard the small ship, they took turns napping in the singular cabin while others would take watch, checking to make sure that they were going in the right direction. Food wasn't a luxury and so they munched on what food they had gathered that would last over long periods of time; apples that they kept cool inside the cabin, bread that they hoped wouldn't turn stale so soon, crackers, biscuits and canned tunas and other types of meat. 

Roo had taken over first watch, for she knew that she wasn't going to fall asleep so soon, not with all the swirling thoughts inside her head, voices echoing through and jumping around her skull at the decisions and the choices that had brought her here. The memory of last night's events suddenly eroded her thoughts; Theseus accompanying her home and her getting sobered up while he had spilled his heart right in front of her. If she closed her eyes and tried hard enough, she could still make out the raw sobs that fell from his lips, the glistening tears that seemed to be endless, unstoppable. Roo had been scared that Theseus had lost himself, for the way he had looked at her then, was similar to a man that had lost all the will to live. He looked broken and torn and just so sad that she wanted to wrap her arms around him and let him know he wasn't alone. 

Losing someone was bad enough. But losing someone in battle brought another layer of guilt into the equation.

This morning had been awkward for Roo. She wasn't sure whether he wanted her to erase all memory of what had happened last night. Heck, she was even expecting him to snap at her and act indifferent, cold. But surprisingly enough, Theseus was as normal as he ever was, raised eyebrows and all. It made her slightly happy to think that he trusted her enough to let down his walls.