@intolerablexsacrifice plotted !!
Something nagged at him – something more insistent than guilt or even frustration. He was intimately familiar with the sensation that he had forgotten something important, and knew better than to chase it. It would come or it wouldn’t, but if he tried to grasp onto whatever his mind was trying to tell him, it would inevitably become impossible to obtain until days after it was actually relevant.
So he kept speaking, insisting that they would not kill Flint, merely depose of him. That he would personally see to it Flint and the Barlow woman were secured in the wake of it, sent off with their pardons. It was an ideal solution, the best option available in light of the brewing mutiny and the fact Flint was losing all track of how to exist without a fight. There were men who would kill to be pardoned, to be offered the chance to live the quiet life this hell robbed them of.
Still, that nagging, hassling sensation –
Wait. He had it – or rather, it had him. Flint was a man who killed to appease the fact he would never be sorry for what he was robbed of, only that he didn’t fight to keep it then. To threaten him with exile was crueller than the promise of mutiny – if only he had thought of that sooner!
“No – I suppose that won’t work for you at all, will it?” He deflated – as much as he hated this situation, he also had no intention of making an enemy of Flint. The situation was fucked, but he had spent too long beside this bastard not to want to see him off well. “So we’re back at an impasse then.”
There was only one thing for it – if he couldn’t exile Flint –
“I resign. When this is over – how you get out of it is your business. As for me – I’ll find my way elsewhere.”
Ocean Archive 