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1.
Gruff makes his way through Waterdeep as quickly as he can. It’s not as fast as he would have days before but it’s faster than he was able to move on his own ten minutes ago. Having two full legs isn’t something he’d ever wanted back - he’s had only one leg for longer than he didn’t - but Illusandra wanted to punish him.
He’s going to have to find a way to make her magic not work on him.
Or maybe magic in general.
Either way Gruff feels she’s gotten what she wanted in the end. Kesta hates him now. As she should since he got her killed, even if it was an accident. Kesta made it completely clear that she wants nothing to do with him anymore. The way she wouldn’t look at him when he was trying to apologize made that obvious.
Now Illusandra has Kesta all to herself.
So he’s going to make himself scarce and never show his face where Kesta can see it again.
2.
It takes only two hours to get from the Fanciful Phantom to the docks. The walk is a mostly uneventful one barring the two guards that (correctly, in their defence) peg Gruff as a criminal ne’er-do-well and try and stop him. He walks away from them with the elder of the two punched unconscious and bloody, barely breathing after Gruff stopped hitting him, and the younger cowering with newly wet pants.
Hopefully also with a healthy fear of trying to stop people well outside their ability to deal with. Maybe also with an idea of how to spot those people in the first place.
It’s still early enough in the day that the city is asleep but the docks are awash with activity. Porters bringing cargo onboard, sailors checking their lines, quartermasters and carpenters and so many other people doing their jobs. Calling back and forth and up and down and it’s easy for Gruff to get lost in the bustle of Waterdeep’s earliest risers. Fishermen, traders, and travelers.
Privateers and pirates too, although those are slightly harder to spot. Unless you know what to look for.
There’s only a few guards in the mix but they’re safely off to the side due to both the need to stay out of the way of those doing real work and the dislike of the guards as a whole by nearly everyone that works in the district.
Gruff gets to The Malcontent quickly once he’s on the docks. Moving through the crowd of sailors is easy. Regular people that just live in the city don’t move right - sailors sway and shift and swing around each other and the cargo being moved and the ropes being tossed in a way that makes sense. The regular run-of-the-mill citizens just walk in straight lines. Boring, unnatural, lines as straight as Grey’s morals.
It’s Snake up in the crows nest that spots Gruff first. Seconds later Kidd and Direcriss are at the side and then it’s Reed coming up between two stacks of crates in the process of being hoisted up into the ships hold with Gloom trailing behind him.
Gloom’s face lights up with all the glee of the child she tries to pretend she isn’t when she looks away from Reed to see Gruff stalking up the pier. Gruff can see her still growing horns start to bob into a run after him. Only to come to a sudden halt - Reed probably stopped her. He is one of the smartest men on the ship after all.
“How soon can we weigh anchor?” Gruff demands as Kidd runs down the gangway to stand next to him.
Kidd, whose head is only a few inches shorter than Gruffs but is still the scrawny and thin-limbed that Gruff can remember being at twelve as well. The boy will probably start bulking up over the next year - it’s what happened with Gruff. Kidd, who falls into step just behind Gruffs left shoulder as Gruff walks up to where Reed is standing with a stack of papers clipped to a piece of board.
“We’ve still got this lot to get stowed, Ridge and Orven are still out but they said they’d stick to the Snake in case you came back but we’ll see-” Reed starts listing off while going over the lists in his hands. The Sleeping Snake, a favourite tavern of the Malcontent specifically for the good-natured jokes they’ll all inevitably make at the expense of their friend and crewmate.
Gruff turns to better see Kidd as the boy steps forward. Eager.
“I can go get them, captain!” Kidd offers. He looks like he’s barely keeping himself from just running off to do the task without even getting the go-ahead.
“Go on,” is all that Gruff gets out before Kidd is off like a shot from one of Ari’s guns.
(He’d thought they were friends now, apparently Ari still hates him,)
(He doesn’t blame her, he’s not worth the time of people caring about him,)
Gruff and Reed both watch Kidd run off through the crowds. Hopefully not picking pockets as he goes because Gruff has been trying to curb that habit of the boy ever since he joined the crew three years ago. At some point the boys inability to actually choose a target to instead steal from everyone is going to get him in trouble.
Gruff would know, after all.
“He’s been asking every day if we should send out a search party for you,” Reed says conversationally, “Ana and I thought we might need to tie him down if you didn’t show up soon,”
For a moment Gruff doesn’t say anything. He knows he’s late coming back. He knows he should’ve had a plan in place if he was taken by someone. But hindsight is twenty-twenty and with the headband on again his is even better than usual. Nowhere near as good as Reeds but that’s not important.
“How long till the ship’s read to go?” Gruff asks again instead of answering Reed’s unspoken question..
“An hour,” Reed sighs. Doesn’t question the turn away from the topic of Gruffs absence. “Maybe an hour and a half if Ridge drags his heels,”
“Good,” Gruff nods before leaving for his cabin and all the paperwork that’s probably built up. “I wanna get out of this gods-damned city.”
3.
It’s actually two hours later that the Malcontent is underway and sailing over Umberlee’s Hoard. Gruff tosses two platinum pieces over, Kidd throws a few copper from his left, and then they’re both off up to the wheel for Gruff to take over for Reed.
Reed hands it over without issue or complaint. The ships quartermaster goes off onto the main deck to help with the rest of the work that goes into the running of a ship.
Once they’re fully surrounded by ocean Gruff lets Kidd take the wheel. Gloom is following Reed around like a loyal puppy, and Krisfarin and Folmar are both too asleep in their berths to be jealous of the special treatment.
It’s distracting, teaching Kidd the ropes of steering a ship. But that’s exactly what Gruff needs.
4.
Only when Gruff is back in his cabin pouring over maps and charts with Norwood at the wheel of the ship does Anastrianna finally manage to corner him. He’s managed to avoid her for a full four and a half hours. Despite the ship only being so big. It will probably be another five years before he manages it again but that’s beside the point.
Dad will be proud when Gruff gets to tell him. Frustrated at Gruff avoiding the ships cleric and his first mate but proud all the same.
With a sigh he lets her take the charcoal and map compass out of his hands and force him into a chair. He’s got a foot and a half on her but she’s got three hundred years on him and so much blackmail. She’s threatened, before, to start telling stories to the crew from when he first started sailing with Mom and that can’t ever happen. He’ll never live it down.
So he does what Anastrianna says when she puts her foot down. Thankfully that isn’t often and rarely in public.
“I was under the impression you detested the idea of allowing someone to use magic to regrow your limbs,” Ana says while pulling up the eyepatch still covering his eye that used to be blind. She looks at it carefully and Gruff does his best not to squint at how bright everything feels with it uncovered even in the dim light of his small cabin. “Despite the numerous occasions I argued towards the benefit of having those spells performed?”
“Witch did it to punish me for getting her wife killed,” Gruff answers. Ana re-covers his eye - to his sighed relief - before moving away from his head and to the rest of his body and the scars that used to be hiding underneath his many tattoos. He’s surprised the spell didn’t see the tattoos as an injury as well and wipe them away too. Surprised but relieved.
“Interesting method of punishing a person, making them healthy,” Ana scoffs. She forces his mouth open and looks in - he was missing three teeth right in the back with two more cracked in half but no longer. His mouth feels entirely too full.
“Not if you’re doin’ it to someone who’d rather be dead,” Gruff points out.
Anastrianna’s face softens as her hands freeze in the action of checking his pulse. Her hand tightens around his wrist. Briefly. Searches his face for a joke she has to know isn’t there. Then she returns to all the checks she has planned.
If she looks just a little bit more sad than before neither of them mention it.
5.
A day and a half is how long it takes for the Malcontent to come across another ship.
The entire crew is immediately on edge as soon as Snake calls out from the crows nest about the sighting. Excited at the possibility of looting. Nervous about getting injured in the initial attack.
Everyone on the crew knows they won’t be abandoned for getting injured but that doesn’t mean that they’re immune from being teased mercilessly about being hurt.
“Krisfarin, Gloom, Folmar, get up in the rigging,” Gruff calls out and it causes a cheer to erupt from the deck. The crew knows what Gruff is about to say. “Lets take that ship,”
Everyone immediately gets to work readying the Malcontent for a fight. She’s only got three cannons aside but between Direcriss and Reed’s combined love for setting things on fire from as far away as they can the six cannons are all the ship needs.
6.
“Captain!” Gloom runs up to Gruff looking full of childish fury twenty minutes after the ship was spotted. “I’m ready to fight!”
“Up into the rigging,” is the answer she gets.
“You said-!” Gloom starts, but is cut off by Gruff grabbing her by the chin hard enough to surprise but not enough to hurt.
“I said get up into the rigging,” He rumbles unhappily and Kidd purposefully turns to look away where the boy is strapping a series of weapons onto his body. Giving Gloom the privacy she only halfway deserves in order to get told off. “You get to join the fights when you learn how to figure out which orders are the ones you don’t argue. You get to join the fights when you can get the jump on me. You learned those yet?”
Gloom knows she hasn’t. Gruff knows that she knows because he has to tell her daily. Still she stays in front of him for a long moment - probably in the hope that he’ll change his mind. “I’m ready! I followed Tate around all day yesterday and he didn’t notice once!” she insists.
Gruff remembers Tate telling him the opposite, that Gloom still hasn’t figured out that shadows exist and that he could see hers all day. Gruff doesn’t tell Gloom that, though. She’s been told by Norwood three times to keep an eye on where she stands and Norwood is even better at not being noticed than Gruff is. If she’s not going to listen to Norwood then Gruff isn’t going to even bother saying anything.
“Into the rigging or into the brig, your choice,” The other ship is nearly within cannon range and he just knows that Gloom picked this moment to argue on purpose.
A small, bare, foot gets stomped in frustration but up Gloom goes into the rigging like she was told. Finally.
7.
Gruff desperately wants to lose himself in the fighting but he doesn’t. His crew needs him paying attention and directing the fight and jumping in to protect them when they get in over their heads.
Kidd is holding his own against a person a few feet to Gruffs left, Snake is weaving around and through everyone just like his name implies, Reed is shooting off potshots at people, and everyone seems like they’re holding their own. It’s a good feeling, knowing that he’s picked and trained his crew well.
The fight isn’t easy but it also isn’t long. The whole of the enemy crew are all defeated in one way or another after only a short five minutes. Dead or tied up.
“You won’t get away with this!” snarls a small elf woman. She sounds angry and the others around her are watching her closely.
Perhaps the captain? Or one of the captains lieutenants?
“I already have,” Gruff grins, toothy and threatening. Turns to where Anastrianna is patching up Orven and Reed is comparing explosive notes with Direcriss. “Bring them down to their timbers. If it isn’t nailed down take it,” and that’s all his crew needs to scatter over the captured ship.
“You don’t know who he is, do you?” Folmar laughs, poking at the tied up enemy sailors with a wooden dagger. Gruff pulls the small girl away, entertained but concerned that she might get hurt. He’s intimately acquainted with how easy it is to still hurt someone even while you’re restrained.
“One pirate is just the same as another,” the elf woman spits. “Murderers and thieves, all of you!”
“Well if you want us to be, sure,” Gruff shrugs. “I was just gonna have my guys set you off on a rowboat but if you want death I’m not picky,”
The small elf womans eyes widen, as do the others she’s tied up with. They all start yelling and arguing. With each other. With her. At Gruff. He lets it happen with a dangerous grin, loving the panic and fear on the captive sailor’s faces.
(It’s nice to feel something other than depression at never seeing Kesta again even if he knows it’s only for a moment,)
They’re just merchants, though. Based out of Neverwinter and on their way down to Chult, sure, but still only merchants. His deal with the Blackstaff makes merchants off limits. Mostly. Gruff can explain away a couple deaths - thankfully for him since there were a few already.
But they don’t know that.
Gruff pulls out one of the many daggers hidden on his body and stabs it through the elf woman’s eye once, flips in his palm so the blade is facing the opposite direction, then again through her chin. Her screams turn into gurgles turn into slumped silence turn into the screams of her fellow captives.
“Now,” he calls out over the screams and yelling. “Anyone else think we’re all just a bunch of no-good murderers ?”
The answers are a new cacophony of noise but they’re all saying variations of the same thing. No, she was crazy, not all pirates murder people, please let us go home to our kids, to our wives, to our parents.
Gruff leaves the remaining captive sailors to their pleading to turn his attention to his own. Anastrianna has moved on to checking on Direcriss who is being teased by Reed for getting injured by falling down a set of stairs. Norwood is stood at the helm of the Malcontent. Snake is back up into the crows nest to keep an eye out for other ships. Everyone else is heading back and forth between the two ships carrying cargo, loot, and everything else they can find.
Everything not nailed down, just like Gruff ordered.
8.
With the hold half full, the merchant ship a burning wreck sinking into the sea, and her remaining crew all tied to the lifeboats with a single dagger thrown into the bottom of one of them, the Malcontent sails off again. Heading north now that they’re in open water and just out of sight of land.
Reed comes up to Gruff a couple hours later with a list of everything they’ve taken in and Gruff is immediately tempted to throw it overboard. The logs are important though. The few times he’s given in to the temptation to ignore paperwork Jax has withheld sex until it was finished. While dressed in nothing but his leather thong. Oiled up with his chest all shiny and waiting.
Jax is very good at torturing people without actually touching them.
So into his cabin Gruff goes.
When Kidd moves to follow Gruff waves him off. “Stay here and listen to Norwood, knowing how to steer a ship will get you more jobs than just being strong,” Gruff says. Of course Norwood nods and grins just a little bit at the praise but Kidd nods seriously as if what he’s just heard is an unchangeable law of the universe.
Gruff sincerely hopes he’d never been like that as a kid but he has a suspicion that Mom would laugh in Gruffs face upon hearing about that hope.
That just means that Mom can never hear about it.
Ever.
9.
Paperwork takes entirely too long to do properly.
But done properly is what Jax wants. And what Jax wants Jax gets.
10.
Four days, three more ships fought and sunk, and an overfull hold later finds the Malcontent pulling into Luskan’s port. Gruff is exhausted. He can tell the rest of the crew is ready for a few days ashore to spend their well-earned shares. Even the kids all look just about ready to kiss the docks once they’re all tied off.
Not before Jax walks onboard, though, following the dockmaster.
“What’cha haulin’?” The dockmaster demands.
“Bit of this, bit of that,” Gruff replies with a shrug but his eyes won’t leave Jax no matter how much he really should be giving the dockmaster his full attention. “Trade goods.”
“Anythin’ to declare?” the dockmaster scribbles something on the parchment attached to the board in his hand.
“Nope,” Gruff hasn’t seen Jax in two weeks now and all he wants is to drown himself in his boyfriend. Jax will make everything better.
“Length yer stayin’?” More scribbles from the dockmaster.
“Couple days, week at most,” Gruff wishes he could stay longer but he needs to get back to Skullport.
“Right,” the dockmaster nods after writing one more thing down. “Pier three.”
“Norwood!” Gruff calls out and the Halfling appears from out of a shadow that should have been impossible to hide in, making Gruff jump. Gloom looks on from her perch on the ratlines with a look of surprise and sudden understanding. Gruff briefly hopes she’ll finally start listening when she’s told something instead of assuming she knows best just because she’s been on the ship for as long as she can remember.
Gruff turns to the dockmaster and motions to Norwood. “He’s the navigator, show him where to go," and off the two of them go, chattering about seaways and water depths, and while a part of Gruff wants to join the conversation? The vast majority of him just wants to melt into Jax’s arms and sleep for the entire week he’s given himself in the city.
He can’t yet, though.
What he can do is finally kiss his boyfriend. Everything else can wait until they’re alone.