Chapter Text
It was in the early hours of the morning when the first cannonball hit.
Hetty had been stuck in the laundry room of Pleasure Ship, the Blue Barge, for what felt like days, pounding a nasty orange stain that had set deep into one of their white cotton towels. She didn't even want to begin to imagine what kind of substance had caused it.
She held it up to the light of the dim torch on the wall, examining the spot where the stain had been. She had managed to get it mostly all out, but her roughness had matted and pulled at the fabric so ferociously that her heart sank, knowing that the cost of it would be taken from her paycheck when they found it. At least 5000 Berry.
Hetty leaned towards the door of the laundry room and pressed her ear up to, listening intently for any footsteps or voices from the hallway.
Blissful silence.
Seizing the opportunity, she flew across the room without even a second thought and pulled open the porthole window. She stuffed the towel through the opening, and then it was gone, floating away on the waves. More free than she would ever be.
The feeling of fright that had been growing in her chest began to fade as the towel disappeared beneath the waves. She went to pull the window shut when a shape on the horizon stopped her in her tracks. A ship. A ship was coming right towards them. She squinted her eyes at the darkness, trying to make out the shape and sigils on the boat. She blinked. Once. Twice. Hoping her tired mind was playing tricks on her.
As the fog cleared, the ship still nearing them, the black flag flying from the mast became clearer.
"Pirates..." she whispered. She remembered where she was. What was about to happen.
She ran for the door to the laundry room, flinging it open and fleeing into the hallway.
"Pirates on the port side!" she yelled, not caring that she might wake the paying guests. "Pirates, help, pirates on the port side!"
Doors to the staff living quarters flung open on all sides. Tired eyes and confused expressions meeting her.
"What are you yelling about, girl?" one of the sailors stepped out into the hall and towered over her, growling.
"There's a ship, a pirate ship," she continued shouting, even though his face was mere inches from hers. "To the port side. Pirates are coming!"
The sailor's face went as pale as that towel she had shoved out of the window, and he ran past her into the laundry room straight to the open porthole.
"Pirates!" he cried, rushing back into the hall and darting up the stairs to the deck. "Everyone to their positions, there's pirates!"
The chaos began.
The ship's horn blast reverberated through all the levels of the ship, right down to the staff quarters where Hetty was still standing outside the laundry room. And then she wasn't. A loud boom sounded, and a blast of smoke and debris burst through the hallway, knocking Hetty to the floor, several feet to her left. The bitter air caught in her lungs, and as she pushed herself to her feet, she started to cough, struggling to take a clean breath.
The ground shook again beneath her as a cannon blow sounded a few decks above. The blast shook Hetty into action and she raced straight for the stairs, running up, past the kitchens and into the restaurant, out the other side onto the next set of stairs. This took her up into the passenger area, where panicked customers were screaming as they ran from their rooms. A flood of people, guests and staff, headed for the stairs on the other side of the ship that would take them up to the main deck. Hetty followed the crowds, preparing to leap over a gaping hole in the floor where a cannon-ball had blasted clean through the middle of the ship when a cry rang out from the doorway next to her.
The lock was still hanging in place, bolted shut, but the wooden panels of the door itself were splintered across the floor, clearing the doorway almost entirely.
"Help me!" a woman's voice called, and Hetty tore her eyes away from the exit to the main deck, ducking through the door and into the room.
A lady, clad in heavy skirts of emerald green silk, with an expression of pure terror distorting her soft features, was in the middle of the room, crouching on the floor.
"My leg!" she called as Hetty stepped further into the room. The lady pulled the layers of her skirts away from the floor, revealing a hole in the floorboards, her leg buried deep inside it.
"We'll get you out of there," Hetty reassured her, rushing over and dropping to her knees so she could better examine how the lady's leg was caught.
The splintered floorboards had caught the petticoat of the dress, which appeared to have wrapped around the lady's leg as she fell. The white fabric was dotted with blood that had begun seeping through from where the broken panels had pierced through to her skin.
"Does it hurt?" Hetty asked.
"Only a little," the woman said, wincing as Hetty tugged at one of the floorboards, trying to pry it loose.
"Ok, we're going to pull your leg out on the count of three," she told the lady, who nodded and gritted her teeth in preparation.
"One..." Hetty began, grabbing fistfuls of the lady's petticoat in her hands, to get a better grip of her leg.
"Two..."
In unison they took a deep breath.
"Three!"
Hetty yelled as she pulled with all her might on the petticoat and the lady screamed as she tried to pull herself up and away from the floor. There was a tearing sound and both women were sent staggering backward as the floorboards gave way, and the lady's leg lifted clear out of the hole.
The lady's face relaxed into a beaming smile as she stood up once again.
"Thank yo..."
There was another blast as a cannonball ripped through the passenger deck again.
Hetty was flung sideways through a weakened wall, and her head clanged against something slim and metal. The boat felt like it was tipping before darkness claimed her.
When Hetty woke, her head felt as heavy as a cannonball. Her neck complained as she lifted it from the sloping cold structure she had been lying against.
Blinking in the harsh sunlight, Hetty lifted a hand to shield her eyes. The sound of sloshing water surrounded her. She gripped the sides of the vessel she found herself in and pulled herself upright.
She prayed this was a nightmare.
The vessel she was floating in was a magnificent porcelain bathtub, rimmed with copper piping, painted in a rich gold to disguise the lesser metal. Still, this magnificent creation surely had cost the Blue Barge more than her entire paycheck for the last three months. Likely even more than everything she had to her name.
As far as her eyes could see, she was alone. Floating in a bathtub in the middle of the ocean, with only the uniform she had been wearing when the attack happened.
There was no sign of the Blue Barge, nor the pirate ship that had attacked it.
All alone.
No food. No water.
Only the blaring heat of the sun, which told her it was near the middle of the day by its position in the sky, was there to keep her company.
Hetty felt dizzy. Her head drifted back against the cool tub, and she succumbed to sleep once again.
It was the rain that woke her the second time.
Torrential rain was plummeting from the cloudy skies, seeping through her single layer of clothing and drenching her midnight black hair to an impossibly dark shade.
Hetty pulled her knees to her chest in a failing attempt to retain her body heat. Every inch of her body was numb, and the water level, starting to rise in the bottom of the tub, was not helping.
Her tongue was sticking to the roof of her mouth. She hadn’t had food or water in what must have been days. Trying not to think about what she was doing too much, she reluctantly turned her head down towards the pooling water and pressed her lips against the surface, taking several deep gulps. Her parched tongue masked the taste of the cool liquid and she started drinking deeper. She took in more water than she thought her stomach could handle, but her throat was the only thing that could prevent the water level rising any further.
She drank and drank and drank until her belly ached.
Immediately she regretted it.
The water came rushing back up her throat and she only just managed to pull herself over the rim of the bathtub in time to puke a stream of water out into the thrashing waves.
Her stomach emptied, and gasping for breath she rolled over onto her back, letting the rain fall directly onto her face.
Stupid stupid idea.
If anything was worse than being stranded at sea with no food or water, it would be adding an illness to that equation.
Her breathing steadied as she focussed on the sound of the waves against the porcelain tub. The rocking of the sea soothed her upset stomach. Her mind once again retreating into the darkness.
The setting sun had glazed the sky with golden honey when Hetty came to.
She was thankful to find that the rain clouds had dispersed, but the aftermath of the storm had effectively left Hetty bathing in the rainwater filling the bathtub as she floated on, the sea level worryingly close to the rim of her vessel.
If she wasn’t rescued today, she was going to die.
Heaving herself up into a sitting position, she scanned the horizon for some sign of life. A sailing boat. A ship. Anything. She’d even be grateful to see a pirate ship at this point.
The sunlight dancing on the empty seas winked back at her. Taunting. She turned to look over her shoulder.
Squinting into the fading light she realised she could see something. A red light, flickering in the distance. She rubbed her crusty eyes, and blinked a few times. There was definitely a light.
The current swelled in the opposite direction.
“Shit,” she cursed, and flung her arms over the sides of the tub, cupping her hands and attempting to row herself towards the light.
Seawater splashed over the sides, but she didn’t falter.
She continued her frantic paddling and it seemed to be working. The light was getting closer. It seemed to be mounted on a dark shape in the distance. A rock? A small island? A ship?
The tub drifted closer, albeit agonisingly slowly, but the light began to become clearer.
“Bar…” she could read. It was a sign.
“Bara…”
Just before she could make out the whole word the sea level finally reached the lip of the bathtub and salty water came rushing in, completely submerging her porcelain vessel.
“Shit, shit, shit!” she cried as the tub sank beneath her, claimed by mother ocean as her newest treasure.
Swimming it was.
Hetty gathered the last of the strength that she had. Her eyes firmly fixed on that flickering sign in the distance, she began to swim.
The current was strong, but her arms pulled her closer to what she could now see was a ship, with a gaping fish head as its figurehead. It appeared to be anchored in place, surrounded by its own private dock with a small number of ships in its slips. The flickering ruby sign above the door on its port side was clear to her now.
Baratie
She fought against the current, metres away from the dock.
“Come on!” she shouted, spurring herself on, and with a last ditch burst of energy she cranked her arms one at a time, pulling her aching body towards the ship.
The slippery wood of the dock smacked against her hand. Feeling across the platform, she found a metal ring attached to the dock and curled her fingers through it. It took a few tries but eventually her foot hooked up against a post and she dragged herself onto the dock.
Laying flat on her back, her matted hair sprawled over the wooden planks, she looked up to the purple clouds of the bruised dusk sky and started laughing to herself. She had done it. She was alive.
Her chuckles turned to coughing and she staggered to her feet, slipping and stumbling her way up the dock to the door beneath that wondrous sign.
She braced a hand against the frame and lifted her other to give a weak knock against the wood.
It took a moment, but the door creaked open to reveal a slender man in a well-fitted black suit. His slick blonde hair covered half of the annoyed expression on his angular face.
“Dinner service is in an hour,” he said, and made to shut the door again.
“Please…” Hetty croaked, holding her hand out to keep the door from being slammed in her face.
The man pulled the door ajar once more and his eyes raked the entire length of her. Over her salt-matted hair, her sunburned cheeks, her dishevelled stewards uniform, and down to the pool of seawater at her feet.
“You look like you’ve got quite the story,” he said, cocking his head to the side, a smirk tugging at his lips. “Do you want to tell me about it over a bowl of haddock chowder?”
Hetty nodded and the man held out a hand to her. She tripped forwards and gripped his arm to keep her upright as he guided her into the ship.
“Welcome to Baratie, madam.”