It’s dark now. The sun fell almost an hour ago, and I’m still waiting. It’s been seven and a half hours since the pillaging, and it’s been seven hours since I knocked on Vann’s door. Since then, I’ve been standing here. Waiting. Not patiently, but at the very least without training my resistances. I can’t imagine the effect it would have if he called me in and I was covered in blood.

So, I’m standing here. My exhaustion protection went up a level an hour ago, which was nice. I also sent Moleman a message about what happened with Vann while we were pillaging, though I’ve yet to receive a response. He’s so busy nowadays that it’s almost worrying. The last time he messaged me, he told me that he was trying to get a falsely accused human acquitted, an effort I encouraged.

While I was waiting, Coda brought me supper, which I ate standing.

Another hour passes. The time is now eight in the evening. I’ve heard him in there, walking around. At one point I could hear him writing a letter before tearing it up and throwing it out the window. A waste of paper, but I’m in no place to scold him. He kept writing the coming hours, as well.

Another hour passes. And another, and another.

Midnight comes and passes, marked by Nazzo coming to visit me again, bringing a few pieces of crackbread. I eat it gratefully, sharing a few with him. We talk in low tones, and then he leaves. I wait more.

At half to three in the morning, after over twelve hours of waiting, I finally hear a response.

“Come in.”

I enter. The room is lit by a lone oil lamp sat on the desk, which is also covered by a pile of torn-up paper and spilt ink. A few of the papers have fallen to the floor. Coda’s collection of wanted posters has been torn down from the wall and is missing—I presume they’ve been tossed out the window. This includes my own poster. I can’t find it in me to feel indignant about it.

I instantly locate Vann on the bed, though it takes a moment for my eyes to realize that he’s beneath the covers and not atop them. Closing the door behind me, I move towards the bed, taking a seat at the foot of it. “Hey,” I say to the bundle of covers and hides. “Are you in there, Vann?”

“...Monster…” I hear him mumble from inside the covers. “You’re a monster…”

I turn to look out the window. With the stars dangling down in the sky, and their reflections bouncing up from the quiet tar sea, it looks as though the entire world, as above, so below, is covered in nothing but stars. I take a little breath and look back at the pile of covers. “You aren’t going to join us, are you?”

Now, finally, his face peeks out from within the covers. REDdened eyes set in dark circles: wide and big yet infinitely wrathful.

I smile slightly at his beyond-obvious answer, but it falls off just as quickly. “Then, what do you want?” I ask, genuinely. “You don’t want to die. I know you don’t. Someone who wants to die wouldn’t be writing letters for people to read once they’re dead.” I weave my fingers atop my lap, feeling how cold my skin is; no warmer than my claws. I clench them. “How do you expect to live when you refuse the only option you have?”

From within the covers, comes only a tiny murmur in response, “—ve me…”

“...I’m sorry?”

He sits up, removing the covers from his upper body. His mane is completely tangled, his cheeks sunken with exhaustion and his brow furrowed by grief, but his eyes are clear, almost glittering as he speaks again, saying with absolute certainty, “Save me.”

I can feel my face scrunch up in confusion. “What are you…?”

“Save me,” he says, again. As though repeating it is supposed to make everything clear.

“I don’t…” I pause to shake my head. “I am trying to save you! It’s just that you won’t accept my help. There’s only one way for you to survive this week, and that is to—”

“No,” he says. “You can save me.”

“I can’t.”

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“You can.”

A frustrated frown forces itself onto my face. “Oh, yeah, okay, sure,” I sneer, “I could save you. All I have to do is kill my friends, leave one alive so I don’t clear the floor, and then single-handedly steer Frisk to port, all the while dragging a hostage ship with us. Yeah. That’s realistic. And what should we do at port, huh? Keep the final one as our pet? Or maybe you’ll want to go your own way, and leave me to mine? Of course. Because, after all, I’ve only known these people for close to a year. Killing them will be easy peasy, right? Hand goes in—heart comes out. Easy. Simple—”

I bite my own tongue. My jaw snaps shut and I quickly swallow the bit-off part, regenerating it in a matter of seconds. During that time, though, Vann started talking again.

“No, not like that. Not that extreme.” He makes a face. “I don’t want to live at the cost of someone else.” He sits up straighter; closer. “There must be some other solution. A world in which I live, and you don’t have to kill anyone to make that happen. That’s what you want, isn’t it, Fennrick? For me to live?”

I turn away from him. The answer forces its way up my throat like a fat toad. “Yeah,” I croak. “I want you to live.”

Carefully, he removes the covers, and takes a seat on the side of the bed, next to me. “I want to live. Everything else, about me joining your pirate friends… It’s as irrelevant as it is impossible. I’ve been trying to tell you this for almost a month now.” I can’t bear to look him in the eyes. My gaze lies square on my hands, clenched tightly across my lap. “You gave me the choice to either become a murderer, or to die. I gave you my answer to that cruel dilemma. You didn’t like my answer. What is the solution?”

BLACK hot shame burns my head all the way to my ears. “There’s none,” I mumble, even though I know I’m wrong.

His hands reach out and touch my clenched hands. “There is,” he says, tenderly. “There is a solution.” I can hear the smile in his voice when he says, “Isn’t that wonderful?”

My hands relax. I blink down at them. But that… But… Out of pure confoundation, I look at him, finally. “Is there really…?” But I’m struck frozen when I see his smile, and the tears welling out of his eyes, streaking down the creases made by his smile, down his chin. Making the front of his shirt damp.

“There is,” he says with joyous finality.

Something dark and heavy lifts off my chest and I can finally breathe again after three weeks of drowning. “There is a way?” The words don’t even feel real, but then my head catches up to my heart and the words are quickly followed by real, tangible logic. “Well, yes, I guess, with the hostages, then…” I continue talking aloud to myself, hand stroking my chin. “If we took you up in the middle of the night, and then boarded the hostage ship, and hid you somewhere, maybe with the help of the hostages… Then, when we trade in the hostage ship, you’ll be safely out of our grasp and maybe even with a group that might treat you well…”

Vann stares at me, eyes wide and foggy with yet unshed tears. “So, there is a way?”

I hesitate to answer, but since it isn’t technically impossible… “Yeah.” I nod sharply. “There’s a way.”

“There’s a way…” he mumbles back at me, and then his eyes flutter closed, and he collapses back onto the bed, already asleep when the back of his head touches the pillow. Just like that.

I watch him for a second. Then, softly enough to not wake him, I mutter, “But I might not be able to…” The words elude me. I shake my head, stand up, and put the covers on him again. “I’ll be back in the morning,” I say, mostly to myself. “So don’t go anywhere, alright?”

I leave him, making sure to close the door behind me. A deep sigh tumbles its way up my throat. “What the heck should I…”

Nazzo stares at me. I stare at Nazzo. My brows wrinkle up. What in the—

Before I even have time to recognize that he’s there, he folds into a bow, eyes facing the floor. “—Please let me help!”

My eyes widen. “H—hey! How did you—” His massive ears waggle. Damn it. My eyes dart back and forth through the hallway and I take a hissing breath. Some people are still awake. Damn it, damn it, damn it… “Be quiet, Nazzo! Someone could hear you!” He quickly falls silent. Good. However, he’s still facing the floor. Not good. I clench and unclench my hands. “...How much did you hear?”

“Everything,” Nazzo says. “Exactly everything.” While I’m still trying to find the words to tell him off, he quickly adds, “That’s why I ask that you please let me help.”

I almost want to ask why I should trust him, but I know that it’s the wrong question. Rather, I ask, “What makes you think I’ll actually go through with it?”

After almost a full minute of bowing, he looks up at me, the shining face of sheer confusion. “Why wouldn’t you?”

His question strikes true. Why wouldn’t I do it? It’s basically foolproof. Vann would survive, I can’t imagine him trying to report what happened to the authorities, and even when Coda notices that he’s gone missing, they can’t punish me in any meaningful way. If I let Nazzo help, we could even construct a false narrative to make it seem as though he was still in his room even after the hostage situation is done and over with. So why am I hesitating? Has Coda’s position as my captain taken such a hold of my heart that I can’t even imagine disobeying? I don’t know.

Logically, everything points to this being the best choice. A compromise.

There is no reason not to do this.

I let myself sigh. “I don’t know. Sorry, it was a…” I shake my head. Then, I look him up and down. “Are you sure you want to help? If we get caught, Coda might punish you too.”

He smiles simply at me. “Yeah, but that’s only if we get caught.”

His confidence is almost blinding. Worst of all, the more I think about it, the more I find myself agreeing. And after a moment of thought, I finally say, “Alright. Fine, you can help. But if I find out that you ratted us out…” I inch closer to him, letting my size speak for me. “I won’t let you off with just a single bite. You got that?”

The smile on his simple face doesn’t even twitch. “Got it!” And not even a hint of fear in the air.

With Nazzo’s assistance procured, I head to bed. The next day, in the morning, I speak to Vann again, presenting the plan with more detail, including dates and specific times. The hostages would be turned over in two days, so we decided that on the evening of their being turned over, the plan would be put in place. We decided not to enlighten the hostages about the plan—unless they discovered us, that is. Once the hostages were turned over, Vann would pretend to be a stowaway who somehow sat out the entire ordeal.

It was simple enough, and I had little reason to assume anything would go wrong.

Funnily enough, on that day, it rained. Rain on the tar sea was rare, and when it happened, the first hour or so would be horrible; the entire sea filled with the hissing of water being turned to steam, the steam itself being so hot it was impossible to be outside. After that first hour, though, the upper layer of tar cooled down enough to not instantly vaporize the falling water. A few hours in, the rain was still falling with a smattering vengeance, thunder crashing across the heavens, the tar sea covered in a thick mist that made it next to impossible to see anything beyond our own boat and the hostage boat.

When the sun fell and darkness came to reign, the rain had become little more than a drizzle, and everything was ready.