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“I should not have underestimated the hold you have over this place,” Eleanor says as she closes the door behind her, shutting away Captain Rogers. Max supposes he is Governor Rogers now, for as long as that lasts. If she has any say in it – which she does – it will. She’s invested too much in it for this chance at peace to fracture under Jack’s schemes or under Anne’s loyalty to him.
Just the thought of the name thickens her throat, and she clears it quickly. “Yes,” she says, voice hard. “You should not.”
Her position is hard won, and the respect she’s garnered over time as valuable as the precious gems behind lock and key not five yards back. It’s time Eleanor understood that. There is a new queen of thieves – a richer, more influential one than Eleanor ever was. One that led Nassau to flourishing commerce. One that captains all across the island answer to without question. She has powerful partners, friends… more.
Now – just as powerful enemies.
“May I ask you something?” Eleanor asks suddenly.
She stops at the window and nods absently, mind miles away. Back with Anne in the cave. Back at goodbye. She hadn’t expected their denouement to be shaken so roughly quite so soon. She had hoped the tender, profound memories they made together would be their legacy. Not this. Not ending up on opposite sides of a battle they had been so close to winning side by side.
“Why are you doing this?” Eleanor asks.
She shakes the thoughts off, frowning. “What?”
Eleanor takes a step closer, resting her wrists on the windowsill next to her and looking out at the dark skyline. Nassau, at peace, civilized. It doesn’t look different to her from here. She doesn’t know if she expected it to.
“A long time ago,” Eleanor says slowly, choosing every word with great care and keeping her eyes on the city. "When you asked me to run away with you… You told me this place is just sand.”
Max remembers. She didn’t think it would hurt anymore – so long ago now – but from Eleanor’s lips, she remembers who she was back then and what she valued – who she loved – very, very clearly.
“You begged me to give it up for you,” Eleanor continues. She looks at her, frown set deep. “Yet now you fight tooth and nail to protect its future. Why?”
Max smiles, a bittersweet, regretful thing. “In your absence, I became you.”
Eleanor’s frown smoothes, and she chuckles humorlessly. “Me.” She shakes her head. “I suppose you have. More than I ever could have predicted. The mantle does not rest lightly, does it?”
Max swallows thickly. “No, it doesn’t.” She pauses, remembering moments she thought she’d forgotten. “Just like you, I choose Nassau.”
“And just like me, you betray everyone around you for it,” Eleanor says without skipping a beat.
Her heart twists at the comparison, but the burning guilt she feels at remembering Anne’s smile, Anne’s trust, Anne’s kiss, tell her she has done no less than Eleanor ever did.
“I suppose in Nassau, love is the price of sand,” she says softly.
Eleanor nods and turns back to the skyline. Max follows her gaze. The streets crisscross below them, bustling with last life before the reclaimed city goes to rest. Her streets. As much as Rogers’.
“Thank you for doing this,” Eleanor says.
Something in her voice – perhaps relief – scratches at her insides, and Max shoots her a sharp look. “I do not hold the streets for you."
“I know that,” Eleanor returns, but it lacks her characteristic fire. “But in doing so, you ensure more than Nassau’s future. If Nassau should fall to the Spanish – ”
“I know what that would mean for you,” she says. It would bring the threat of war between England and Spain, the blame for which rests firmly upon the shoulders of a disgraced governor and the former queen of thieves. “For once, our interests are aligned. Nothing more.”
Eleanor nods, jaw tight. “It seems that is the only time we can speak frankly,” she points out.
“Perhaps.”
She looks out at the view, wondering where Anne is. If she’ll succeed in evading capture, or if she’ll soon be face to face with cruel justice – if she’ll know who brought her to it. She supposes she deserves nothing less. She’d spoken to Jack before he was taken away. He had been so sure she would join him in this, that she would turn the streets and distract Rogers with the unrest at home so that the threat of Spanish gold and invasion would dim to a distant worry. Her stomach twists at remembering it. He’d been counting on her loyalty. If not loyalty to him, then at least loyalty to Anne - enough to offer her a chance at escape from the dire situation he’d put them in.
You almost had me fooled, he’d hissed.
She pushes the memory away and draws herself to her full height. “If this endeavor should succeed and the Spanish be appeased, you will remain here?” she asks, turning to Eleanor.
Eleanor nods. “Yes. There is no other place for me,” she adds.
“There is no place for you here either,” she replies coolly. Eleanor eyebrows rise and contract in rapid succession, and her expression darkens. Max quickly puts up a hand. “I do not say this to anger you, but you are not remembered fondly here. You know this.”
Eleanor’s jaw tightens, but she doesn’t deny it.
“I can change that,” she says simply. “You have seen the sway I hold over this place,” she continues, voice full of promise as Eleanor’s eyebrows pull together with distrust. She’d learned long ago that seducing people into her bed and seducing people into deals required much of the same skills. With Eleanor, it is the first time she has had to do the latter. “I can change their minds.”
Eleanor doesn’t miss a moment, and her face is as unreadable as the times she’d resisted her bed, so long ago. “And in return?”
Max’s lips quirk with a smile. She always relented to her back then as well.
“In return, you will convince Woodes Rogers to spare Anne.”
Eleanor scoffs disdainfully. “What makes you think that I can – ”
“I have seen the way he speaks to you. If he is not in love with you, he will be soon. You are very good at making people love you,” she adds.
Eleanor’s upper lip twists at the subtle jab. “If that’s true, what’s to stop me from making Nassau do the same?”
Max laughs darkly and holds her gaze without flinching. “Do you need me to turn this offer into a threat?”
Eleanor clamps her mouth shut, chewing on unsaid words and threats that she cannot back. She is nothing here. The only chip she has to bargain is her intimate knowledge of Nassau and her connection with the governor, and they both know that it amounts to little if she wishes to bring the masses to her side. She remembers a time when their roles were reversed – when an entire crew wanted her worse than dead while Eleanor reigned supreme, untouchable.
Max’s gaze softens at the memories – how quickly things change – and she takes a small step closer.
“Eleanor,” she says, reaching for her hand on the windowsill. Eleanor’s eyes shoot to it apprehensively, but she doesn’t pull away. “Once upon a time, you and Anne saved me from Vane’s men, from that beach. Despite being the ones to have put me there.”
Eleanor swallows thickly, and Max think she sees a flash of guilt she’d expected Eleanor to have buried by now – but then it’s gone. She brushes it off, and tightens her hand.
“You – the two of you – saved me then. Now, the two of us will save her from what awaits her here."
Eleanor studies her, eyes bright despite the darkness around them. She remembers when Eleanor looking at her like this would set her heart racing – a glance across the room, the hint of a smile as they passed each other on the street, her eyes sparkling with wonder the first time they fell into bed together. She looks like that now, as though she were seeing something that should have been painfully obvious all along.
“You do love her,” she says suddenly, knit eyebrows smoothing with the realization.
Max starts in surprise, heart shooting into her throat, but she doesn’t answer. It isn’t a question. She turns sharply to the window and closes her eyes against the memories. The slow way Anne had surrendered to her touch, turning furtive and ashamed trysts to tender, passionate lovemaking; the gentle smile on her lips that accompanied the turn of her hips up against her; the way she moaned and whimpered when she dug her fingers into her scalp and rose up against her lips. She’s been with many people, but she doesn’t think she’ll ever remember any one person’s sounds and movements with as much clarity or fondness as she’ll remember Anne’s, nor will she ever forget the trusting, limitless way Anne had loved her.
She wishes she could return it as loyally.
Yes, she loves her. Just not enough to give up her dreams for this place.
“It does not matter,” she says finally, softly. “She will not forgive me for this.”
“You don't know that. I loved you when I betrayed you,” Eleanor points out. “Have you forgiven me?”
Max realizes their hands are still entwined on the windowsill. She swallows thickly and looks at her, but finds in her gaze no hope to deny or heart to break. Just a question. It makes the answer much easier.
“It is more complicated than forgiveness. What you did brought me to where I am. I cannot hate you for it.” She looks back out at the darkened city. Her eyes rise higher, to the hills beyond, where Anne is being hunted down by regulars with bayonets and orders to return her dead or alive – orders she did nothing to stop. She drops her gaze, pushing away the thoughts of Anne dead because of her choice. “Especially not now.”
Eleanor squeezes her hand, and Max looks up at her in surprise.
“I will do what I can for her,” she says resolutely.
Max sighs in relief. It isn’t much in the way of hope for Anne forgiving her, but the chance of Anne living, despite hating her, is enough for now.
She squeezes Eleanor’s hand back and gives her the hint of a smile. “Thank you.”
Eleanor nods and tentatively returns it.