[ficlet]

[stem_the_tide]

Word Count: 742
Characters: James, Zyphire
Notes: This takes place in an AU fusion with His Dark Materials.  Zyphire is James's daemon, an osprey, and this fic takes place during DMC, after Jack has pestered her into attacking him. This AU is also one in which Jack and James knew each other and were lovers as young men, before Jack was branded. There is perforce a metric fucktonne of history and tension and grief and blame flying around.

They are both enough shaken by it that after her attack on Jack, Zyphire gives up her enforced aloofness and allows James to come to her.  More than allows, she doesn’t say, though they both know, and as they sit, she sidesteps over to her accustomed place on his shoulder, and begins to pick apart the strands of his hair.  It’s tangled, crusted with salt and neglect, in need of a comb and a dousing in clean water; unpicking it is as much a kindness on her part as it is a way for her to avoid the necessity of speech.  It is good to be close.

‘Why did you do that?’

James speaks first, as Zyphire had known he would, though it’s a silly question for a man to ask his own daemon.  She breaks off her work, and presses the crown of her head against his ear.

‘I was angry.’

More than just angry, to break the great taboo and attack him.  Even in battle, Zyphire has never done that, a law so basic it transcends even the madness of combat, a line that even national enemies will not cross.  That was the first time Zyphire has touched another human since she and James were young, and she used sometimes to nip at Jack’s fingers, to allow him to stroke over her breast.  When they were both far stupider, and allowed such vulnerabilities without thought.

It’s not the first time she’s wanted to.  In the months preceding their engagement to Elizabeth, she had often felt the strange, illicit desire to land on her shoulder, where her mockingbird Faolan usually perched, to test what strength was really in those slender fingers should Zyphire bite softly at them, to let Elizabeth stroke them over the crown of her head and the soft place where her wings meet.  But she never did, of course. 

‘We’re too often angry,’ she mutters, sounding angry even as she says it.  ‘I don’t like it.  I should never have done that; I wouldn’t have, before.’

‘Things change,’ James drawls, low and bitter, and Zyphire bites him again, though not hard. 

‘You go and hit him next time.  You want to.’

He cannot deny it; it would be useless, to her, and she ruffles herself, wings lifting slightly as she lets her feathers fall back into place.  ‘I think,’ she admits, faintly disturbed to even voice it, ‘he forgets we are us.’

James’s brows furrow and he turns to look more directly at her, lifting a hand so that she might step on.  ‘What do you mean, forgets?’

Zyphire ruffles herself again.  ‘He pesters me so he doesn’t have to pester you.  As if it were not the same thing.  Do you not see him and Mayra?  They are almost never together.’  She doesn’t think James has noticed, though she has.  The way the cheetah seems to be forever lounging on deck, lazily taking in everything around her; she doesn’t even join Jack when he sleeps.  Zyphire can’t imagine sleeping away from James.  ‘So I had to fly at him, though it ought to have been you.  He thinks I am safe, while you are not.’

James snorts.  ‘Safe?’  His mocking disdain is as it should be.  Zyphire is no more safe than James is, and she has claws to prove it.

The rest of what she’s said, he’s mulling over in his mind, Zyphire can tell, and she does not press.  She hadn’t told him expecting an answer, simply because it is his right to know.

They sit in silence, and James’s eyes slip slowly half-closed, watching the horizon from under his lids, though he is for once not drunk.  Zyphire sits with him; she’s troubled, as is he, anger and regret mixing uncomfortably with borders crossed.

‘Do you suppose he’ll throw us off once he’s wrung the use out of us?  The situation is not, I don’t think, to any of our tastes.  It’s plain we’ve lost our appeal to Captain Sparrow, whatever that may ever have been.’  Half asleep, James has slipped into morose reflection.  ‘Too many people who know us on this damn boat, anyway.  Jack, Elizabeth.  Even bloody Gibbs.  All that’s needed is for Mr. Turner to arrive to make the joy complete.’

Gently, Zyphire nips at his ear.  ‘Go pick a fight with Jack tomorrow.  We need it.  As does he need sorting out, and I am not the one to do it.’