“I trusted him.” [ for thomas, post-reunion, probably about silver (8 ]

This was not the first time James had spoken of the man who brought them back together in such a conflicted manner. Thomas did not pretend to understand the nuances behind it all, or act as though he was not grateful to a pirate whose motivations would never really be known to him. All he could do in these moments was offer his ear and play advocate to a stranger in the hopes it might ease something that continued to bleed in the man before him. 

Idly, he raised his hand and stroked it through James’ hair, seeking to soothe as much physically as he could while this storm brewed between them. “Are you sure you were wrong to?” A dangerous inquiry, he was quite sure – he didn’t know the whole of it, and he doubted James would ever tell him. Just as he would never tell James, the whole of what had become of himself in the decade during which they had been so cruelly separated. 

The narrative he received would be only the one James was comfortable in sharing, though that did not mean Thomas could not read between the lines, and infer truth left unspoken. He didn’t know Silver from Adam, but he did know one thing – and that alone was enough, to give him the strength to play these games and bleed out the poison that continued to twist inside James’ chest.

“You chased death for so long – can you really say that the man who stopped that chase, and offered instead a life that need not be fought for – was truly not, in some way, a friend?”