A button

heartoferebor:

Silver’s
buttons are brass. They have been carefully chosen, down to their engravings –
Silver has always cared about the way he appears, but now that his name is
feared everywhere, they have to send a message just like everything else that
he wears. They speak of attention to detail, are obvious without being too
flashy; they show they belong to someone who knows who he is and what place he
can take in the heart of men.

Ironically, it
has been Flint who had given them to him. Flint, who has looked at him and the
heavy blue coat he was wearing and taken him to the house that had once
belonged to a woman named Miranda Barlow. There was a little wooden box there,
unadorned and now covered in dust that held all sorts of buttons; with a nod,
Flint had gestured at it and then at his coat.

Silver has
always wondered who they belonged to first and how they ended up in his place,
but the buttons that he has chosen suit his coat well. They leave right after;
it is clear that Flint does not want to linger and Silver does not think he has
the power to make the ghosts choking the man disappear. Not here, not where
they are so strong that their cold touch makes him shudder.

Talking to
Flint has always been easier when nothing of his past was between them, no
physical reminders of everything that has passed. It is in such moments that
Silver begins to feel a kinship with the man. Now Flint sits on a chest in his
cabin next to him, his fingers deftly sewing the buttons to Silver’s coat. Not
long ago, the silence would have made Silver uncomfortable, but now he is
almost used to it, like an old blanket you shrug on when it’s cold and you need
the comfort of warmth.

“There,” Flint
says and hands the coat to him. Silver takes it and shakes his head at how
neat the needlework is. Their fingers touch and for a second they remain in their position; then
Flint stands up and stalks over to the door leading back on deck.

“Thanks,”
Silver calls after him and Flint just nods, not saying a word.

Madi’s fingers run
over the buttons later and there is a smile in her eyes when Silver tells him
who has sewn them on.

“A man of many
talents, Captain Flint,” she says, but does not elaborate more. But the smile
stays on her face whenever she looks at him.

***

They might have
been brass once, they might have been silver; the buttons on Flint’s coat are
so tarnished by time and saltwater now that it is hard to tell. He has given up
polishing them long ago; once he used to take pride in his uniform, the shining
fruits of the struggle to get where he was. Now his clothes have ceased to
matter beyond their necessity; he does not feel pride when he thinks about who
he is now.

His coat is as
black as the buttons on it and when one comes loose he considers for a moment
not to put it back on at all; but it irks him, this slight misshapenness, and he
frowns when he sits down in his cabin to sew it back on. Many of the pirates
know how to repair their own clothes; there is no one else here who would do it
for them. He was faintly surprised to find out that Silver did not seem to know
how. But then, Silver is a man of many surprises, something wholly unexpected
that has grown from the lousy rat he once was.

He can feel it whenever
they stand side by side, whenever their arms brush and their skins touch; it
has been a remarkable journey that has been privy to.

Madi laughs
when she sees that his button has been righted.

“First his
buttons, now yours?” she asks, her eyes shining with delight. Flint shrugs; he
still isn’t sure just how they are standing to each other, but he does know
that she is as formidable an actor in this game in her own right as Silver is.

“Why, is that a
problem?” Flint replies testily. He is not about to be ridiculed for doing
something that everyone should know how to.

“No. You two just…”
Madi shrugs and for a moment sadness crosses her face before the smile returns
again. “…remind me of my father and mother.”

Flint glares at
her back when she walks away, but he cannot help but finger the buttons on his
coat. Father and mother, he thinks.
He wonders what Miranda and Thomas would say, could they see him now.

***

Madi’s buttons
are fine, almost invisible as they hold her clothes together. They have been
carved by one of her father’s friends, as a gift for her when she was young;
she has kept them ever since and they have changed clothes multiple times.

She curses when
one of them springs off as she gets dressed, rolling across the floor and
coming to a stop at Silver’s foot. He bends down to pick it up and give it back
to her with a little smile and she rolls it in her palm before putting it in her pocket.

“Maybe you
should ask Flint to sew it back on for you,” Silver suggest with a little
glimmer in his eye.

“Maybe I will,”
Madi shoots back. She doesn’t want to tell Silver that she’s never really had the
patience for small needlework; her mother is good at it and she can do what she
has to, but she takes little delight in it. And thus it is no wonder that they
find themselves in Flint’s cabin not much later, his fingers patiently working
the thread through the tiny button and the fine cloth beneath.

The two men in
front of her are both conundrums, although each of a slightly different sort; the
bond between them is of a kind she has seen before, in whispered words in the
night and the fearful taste of what might be lost. Still, she does love one of
them and respects the other more and more each day and little will ever change
that; the three of them will be the ones to steer the fate of this part of the
world, of that much she is certain.

If only that
fate would go beyond blood stains in the sand and into a future that holds
happiness for all of them.