She came back before I could even think well enough to speak. I was still lying on the floor nearly in pieces when I registered that she was sitting on a crate only a few feet away, watching me. She had a little book in her lap, and every few minutes she would flip a page. Every few page-flips she would pause to look and watch me. Her eyes would meet mine, taking in her handiwork, no doubt. Taking in the agonizing process of my reformation.

Eventually I began to examine her as she was examining me, when my mind would allow it. I saw that she had cut her hair quite short, almost shaved to the skin. It caught the light like velvet on her scalp.

Her skin had gained a healthy, glowing tan from the sunlight. I knew that same sunlight spelled death for me these days. I wondered if she found safety in it for that reason. There was a splash of freckles across her nose. I had freckles too. Not for long, I wagered. They would fade with time until they disappeared forever, since I would never see the sun again. If I lived long enough for them to fade, anyway.

She wore trousers and a loose shirt. I didn’t think they were her own clothes. I remembered she wore mostly dresses on the happier days of the voyage. The boots she was wearing were considerably too large for her as well, so they weren’t hers either. A practical choice, though. At least for now. If she had to climb the ratlines, I imagined they would be no help to her balance, and she’d do better barefoot.

How was she faring, I wondered, handling the Kestrel? Was she trying to at all? I hadn’t noticed any undue tossing or rocking, but perhaps that was simply because of the amount of time I spent unconscious. That was dangerous. I was the one of the two of us who knew even the slightest thing about sailing. But, I wondered, if it came down to dying to the sea or dying to myself, which would she pick? I supposed she’d actually made that choice quite clear.

After a while of us staring at each other, I finally felt well enough to speak.

“You don’t smell as strongly as you did yesterday,” I remarked from where I had slumped against the bars.

She looked up sharply at that. “What?”

I still wasn’t strong enough to shift myself to a more upright position, so when I gestured apologetically I did so limply with my arms mostly still hanging by my side. “Your blood, I mean.”

“Oh.” She frowned. “Yes, the wound’s closed up since yesterday.”

“That’s good.”

We were silent again for a moment. She set the notebook aside and picked up the musket again from where it had been propped against her thigh, resting it now on her lap. She seemed to know I wasn’t quite in the state to need that threat yet, and so she did not point it in my direction. Perhaps we truly were making progress?

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“How did you get hurt?” I ventured to ask another question.

She scoffed softly and looked away. There was no immediate answer, and when she did speak, she was vague. “I was being stupid,” she said, and did not elaborate.

“Mmm,” was all I could say to that. I didn’t press, afraid that my luck would run short if I did. My efforts paid off when a short moment later she surprised me by addressing me directly.

“I didn’t think you were still … in there,” she said hesitantly.

I was confused only briefly before I remembered—the webbed wings, the fangs, the grey skin and pallid eyes. It had moved like an animal. It had not spoken a word of its own thoughts, only snarled and shrieked like a beast beyond taming. When it did speak, it spoke in the voices of the dead, mimicking our friends to lure us in and devour us just the same. That’s what she thought I was, I realized.

“I see,” I muttered.

“I’m still not sure if you are—yourself, I mean. I’m not sure if that’s really you, or if it’s some trick.”

I moved slowly, gently. My first shift caused her grip to tighten on the musket and she moved it to a more ready position, but she didn’t fire immediately, allowing me to sit up entirely. “I would say it’s not a trick, but of course that would hardly ease your mind,” I attempted a joke. The smile I was met with was dry, and in-genuine, but it was a smile nonetheless. It even came in tandem with another little scoff.

She fell silent again after that for some more time. When she spoke again it was to say something—to ask something, rather, that I hadn’t allowed myself to even try and answer. “What are you?” she asked.

I didn’t know.

“I don’t know,” I said it out loud.

She frowned. I hoped honesty would persuade her, at least a little bit. I knew it was unlikely that this one conversation would be enough to spare me a bullet this particular evening. Honestly, with the rumbling I could feel in my bones, the hunger I felt, the bullet might even be a relief as it had been the night before. But it wasn’t really my fate I wanted my words to change, it was her. Now that I knew more of her, more of her thoughts and concerns about me, I was more determined than ever to sway her, if only to persuade her to allow me more of her company.

She had asked me what I was. I knew I wasn’t human any longer, but speaking to her made me feel the closest I had been to human since that first ugly death. I didn’t want to give that up. I needed more of her, even at the distance she needed to keep.

So when she finally stood again after a long, long silence, I didn’t beg this time—not for the bullet nor against it. I shifted instead to kneel at her feet as she pushed the musket’s barrel through the bars that separated us, bracing to feel the cold metal against my forehead.

I was surprised when, instead, I felt it under my chin. She hooked the muzzle under my jaw, raising my eyes to meet hers. As I knelt at her mercy, ready for what I knew her judgment would have to be, I felt that for the first time it might be fair. It wouldn’t come from the same place it had before, at least. There was no chance I would be spared completely but I had at least convinced her to pause. To think of me at all. Was that not a victory, then?

She read my eyes, scanning them for the words I could not say to sway her. Then, her brow furrowed, and her frown turned into a scowl as she pulled the barrel away. I wondered what she had seen in me that had earned such a reaction.

I didn’t flinch as she repositioned the musket to its rightful place between my eyes and squeezed the trigger to seal my fate once again.