RK1K Pirate AU (beautiful art by the lovely @sayatsugu; commisioned by yours truly)
Disclaimer: Credits for this backstory go to the masterminds @that-android-from-cyberlife & @0-0136 who brought this pirate AU to life during a Tumblr chat discussion months ago. :D I merely helped to compile the ideas here since the original discussion already got deleted. ^^
Markus captains the pirate ship Jericho—a feared and renowned ship and their crew mainly targets huge merchant vessels.
Connor, on the other hand, is a respected naval officer who’s in charge of dealing with pirates and smugglers.
It’s Connor’s mission to track down and capture Markus and his crew.
And it’s made all the more personal because of an incident that occurred years ago, before he was even an officer. When he was younger, he was put in charge of his family’s cargo ship, which Markus and his crew ended up plundering so he’s all too happy to deal with them now, his way of dealing out some sweet justice.
Connor’s ship hits a vicious storm in the dead of night. He’s aboard a very good vessel, but this storm is bad. The ship is thrown into a cluster of rocks just below the water and the ship goes down. Come morning, the storm is gone and the waters calm. Markus just so happens to be sailing the same area that Connor’s ship went down. He can see debris in the water and there are things that have washed up on the shore of a little island nearby so he and a few crew members take a dingy out to see if anything of value is out there. While they’re on the beach searching the wreckage, Markus finds an unconscious Connor, near death and ice cold.
Now, Markus might plunder goods from ships, but he tries not to hurt people and he sends the stolen goods back to the town he’s from to help the people there so when he finds Connor on the beach and realizes that the man looks quite familiar, he can’t just leave him there to die. He takes Connor back to his ship to try and save him, though he’s not sure he’ll be able to.
Connor wakes up in Markus’ cabin and expects to be interrogated, or worse—tortured, for information. Additionally, his current predicament doesn’t bring back good memories. Connor was in a tight spot after his family’s ship got plundered. They never let him live it down and it caused him a lot of problems for years until he managed to get in the navy.
Once Connor sees Markus enter the cabin though, a dark memory from his past unwillingly flashes in his mind.
He remembers the day when Markus and his crew invaded his family’s cargo ship and while Markus was giving a little speech about how he wasn’t there to harm them and that he just wanted their goods, Connor had leapt up in anger and tried to attack Markus. One of Markus’ crew jumped forward and pushed Connor away from their captain. He ended up stumbling back and hitting his head on something. He got a nasty cut and had fallen unconscious.
Connor only has vague impressions of what happened after that. But he remembers screaming. And blood. So much blood.
When he finally woke up, Amanda—the owner of a larger trading company who had sailed with them at that time—was there and she told him that Markus and his men had slaughtered Connor’s whole crew but had spared Connor, Amanda herself and one other person. Which was why Connor had hated Markus ever since, angry that the pirate would do something that cruel when the cargo ship’s crew was absolutely innocent.
Which is also why he immediately attempts to attack Markus in reflex as the man walks towards him. But Connor realizes too late how bad of an idea it was when a sudden pain lances through his body and Markus rushes to settle him back on the bed.
Markus doesn’t understand where Connor’s hostility is coming from, especially as he has just saved the other man’s life. He gets even more confused and shocked when Connor accuses him of being a murderer, that he mercilessly killed everyone on Connor’s cargo ship all those years ago.
Markus now realizes why Connor had looked very familiar. He remembers invading his ship and recalls how Connor tried to attack him but was knocked out. After Connor was hurt, Markus actually called Simon over to stitch his head wound to make sure he would be alright. Then they took the goods and left the ship, and its crew, unharmed.
It takes a lot to convince Connor, but he eventually believes Markus.
Connor is bedridden for quite a while and during his time there, his initial hatred towards Markus starts to shift into something else as he begins to see the man behind all the tales and bounties, that Markus really isn’t the horrible person Connor’s been told he is, that Markus is actually telling the truth.
But if Markus didn’t kill his crew all those years ago, then who did? And why did Amanda lie to him?
Once Connor is well enough to be up and moving on his own, he decides it’s time that he return home. He’s reluctant to admit it, but his time with Markus has been good. But… a pirate ship simply isn’t his place. And it’s time he goes back to his life.
Markus doesn’t want him to go, but he won’t hold Connor against his will.
Connor finds his way home. Markus can’t take him directly back to the port town he’s from as it’s too dangerous, but Connor jumps a couple other ships in some ports and makes it back to Amanda. When he gets there, he asks her about what really happened on the ship all those years ago.
She comes clean and tells Connor the truth—that after Markus sailed away and while Connor was still more or less unconscious, Amanda had her right-hand man kill the whole crew, then put the blame on Markus.
This shocks Connor and when he asks her why she would do such a thing, she simply tells him that Markus and his crew had always been a thorn in her side. That wasn’t the first ship under her trading company that he has looted. What better way to get people after him than to make him a terrible killer with an enormous bounty?
It was obvious that Amanda feels no remorse for what she did. Deep down, Connor suspected. But he didn’t want to believe it. But now that it’s right in his face and he can’t deny it any longer, it makes him sick.
After a few days, Connor just can’t stay anymore. He packs a trunk and slips away in the night. He starts taking passage with cargo ships transporting goods in the hopes that Markus will rob the ship he’s on and he can go back to the place he realized he was actually happy.
It’s weeks and weeks before Connor finally spots a familiar ship on the horizon…
Connor quietly waits below the deck until Markus comes down to inspect the cargo. Needless to say, he’s shocked to see Connor as he never really expected to see him again.
Connor softly tells him that when he returned home, he realized he wasn’t happy. He’d never been happy there. And he only realized it because he was happy with Markus.
It leaves Markus overwhelmed, happy and shocked that he all he could do was to lean in and give Connor the kiss they never got to have before they parted ways.
I am who I am, I am what I am, I am who and what I want to be. I’m just a simple human, nothing more, nothing less.
