Silhouetted by the Sea

Disclaimer: Not mine.

Author's Notes: In reference to review I received on Fanfiction.net, I've never heard the term "Tempest's Wing" before, but if someone has used it in a fic before me, I do apologize. It was not stolen, but neither is it exclusive. I just thought it would make a cool pirate ship name;)

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Silhouetted by the Sea
by Kristen Elizabeth

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Barbados

"I don't understand." Lord Treize Kushrenada paced behind his wide, oak desk. "She was supposed to arrive two days ago."

Quatre Winner, the son of Treize's late father's best friend, lifted his shoulders. "I wish I knew what to tell you. Perhaps they strayed off course or they could have run into a storm. There's an endless amount of possibilites."

The older man studied his companion. After Quatre's father died when he was eight, the boy had come to live on the Kushrenada plantation. As Treize had grown up, he had come to feel a brotherly affection for Quatre, once the rivalry of adolesence passed. "There's no real way to know, is there?"

"There haven't been any reports of a storm here," Quatre pointed out.

Treize continued his pacing. "One could have sprung up on the high sea..." He stopped and sighed. "The only way to know is to go out looking for her."

Quatre scratched his cheek. "Her as in your fiancee, her? Or the *Lady Anne*?"

"Of course I'm worried about Millardo's sister. And the Baroness," Treize replied. "But Quatre...I can't lose that ship. If she's lost, we have to go find her."

"It could be like searching for a needle in a haystack," Quatre warned him.

Treize nodded. "But I'm willing to try anything."

Quatre continued, "And it's only been two days."

"That's two days too many." The master of the plantation plunged his hands into his ginger-colored hair. "Can you do this for me, my friend?"

The blond man nodded after a moment. "But I can't do it alone. I'm going to need help."

Treize spread his hands, indicating the piles of papers on his desk and the vast sugarcane fields outside the house. "I would come, but I simply can't leave the plantation."

"I was thinking of someone else actually." Quatre hesitated. "He's served most of his sentence, Treize."

"No."

"You have the influence. You could get him released from jail."

"I won't do it."

Quatre folded his arms. "He knows the waters better than any man alive and he sails a boat better than I do."

Treize sat down in his chair and picked up his quill pen. "He's a thief, Quatre. A proven liar and cheat and..."

"The best person for this job," Quatre interrupted. "And you know it."

The older man set down his pen without having even dippedintointo the inkwell. "You're seriously suggesting that I pull enough strings to get Duo Maxwell released from jail so he can sail the high seas in search of my ship and my bride?" Quatre nodded. "He'd simply steal the ship I sent him in and disappear into America."

"Well, that's why I'd be going with him. To keep him in line."

Treize rubbed his clean-shaven jaw. "All right. I'll get him released. But you are in charge of him, Quatre. If anything happens to any of my ships...or my bride..."

"I understand." Quatre smiled at his friend. "You can trust me."

"Trusting you is not the problem." Treize's brow furred. "Maxwell on the other hand....that's a different matter."

****

The necessary strings didn't take long to pull. Within a few hours, Treize was overseeing the preparation of one of his other ships, *The Rose Queen*, for departure while Quatre headed for the tiny, Barbados jail in search of Duo Maxwell, famed island explorer and notorious troublemaker.

It had been a sad day when Treize's father, still alive at that point, had sent Maxwell to jail after he had been caught distributing stolen goods to the slaves on the Kushrenada plantation. Quatre's sympathy lay with the mistreated Africans and he had lobbied hard for a light sentence for Maxwell, but the oldest Kushrenada hadn't listened at all.

That had been two years ago. Treize's father died shortly after, but Duo lingered in jail. Quatre had visited him once or twice in the beginning until his responsibilities on the plantation became too great to afford him the extra time. He found himself wondering, quite often, how the jovial man was doing in prison.

His first thought upon entering the jail was that something simply had to be done, and very quickly, t tht the living conditions. The cells were no more than old horse stalls with a makeshift bed and a chamber pot. Quatre lifted a handkerchief to his nose to block out the pungent odors of urine and the stale hay that lined the cell floors.

"I'm looking for Duo Maxwell," he informed the lone guard, in Spanish. "He's to be released to me."

"On who's auity?ity?" the surly black man asked.

Quatre handed him the necessary papers. "Lord Treize Kushrenada." The guard barely gave the papers a glance before indicating that Quatre should follow him. Apparently, the name alone was enough.

There were only a handful of prisoners in this particulail, il, which accounted for there being only one guard. Maxwell's cell was the very last one on the right. Once there, the guard produced a rusted key and pried the barred door open. "Go in," he ordered Quatre.

Taking a breath, Quatre did so. The cell was dark; the odors even more overpowering in the confined space. Duo Maxwell lay on his tiny bed, hands cushioning the base of his skull, feet casually propped up on the wall. His clothes, Quatre was upset to see, were the same ones he had worn on the day he was put into this place: black breeches and jockey boots with a flowing black shirt and black waistcoat.

"So," he said before Quatre even began to speak. "What does the master's little boy want with me?"

Quatre cleared his throat It shouldn't have surprised him that Maxwell could understand Spanish. As far as he knew, the man knew every language of the Carribean. "He has a favor to ask of you."

The prisoner sat up, surprised. His hair had been shoulder length at the time of his incarceration; now, it reached down to his waist in a messy braid. "Kushrenada wants a favor from me?" After a second, he began to laugh. "And he just expects me to want to do it for him?"

"Well...it would certainly be better than staying here," Quatre pointed out, indicating their horrific surroundings.

Maxwell shrugged. "The place has kind of grown on me. I get cornmush three times a day and I don't have to empty my own pot."smilsmiled, baring teeth that were somehow still white and straight. "Why would I want to leave?"

"Because you miss the sea."

The blond man had hit on a truth and Maxwell's grin fell. "Maybe I do," he said after awhile. "Doesn't mean I want to be indebited to slave-owning scum like Kushrenada."

"You wouldn't be in debt. Afterwards, you'd be free to go. Providing that you don't return to Barbados. That's Treize's only condition."

Maxwell scratched his head. "How gentlemanly of him." He stood suddenly and stretched his long arms. "All right. I'll do it. But only because it's you who asked."

Quatre blinked. "Me?"

"I don't forget a kindness," Maxwell said, serious for perhaps the second time in his life. "You're the only person who tried to keep me out of here." A moment passed before Maxwell smiled again. "So...what will we be doing? Carting rum to England? Running silks to Spain?"

"We'll be searching for a lost ship." Quatre started out of the cell with the other man on his heels. "Feel up to the challenge, Maxwell?"

His new companion laughed heartily. "Never been known to turn one down. And the name's Duo."

****

Hilde had done her best not to cry when she took the helm of the *Lady Anne*, turning her around to start back to American waters. The *Tempest's Wing* had become smaller and smaller until it was nothing but a black dot on the horizon, leaving her alone on the ocean.

Sailing a ship such as this was a huge task for one person, practically impossible. But Hilde had grown up learning how to do it; her self-confidence did not waver even as her loneliness grew. She spent most of her time at the helm, only anchoring the ship when she needed a small break to eat or rest.

By noon on the fourth day, she was lost. Several hours into her voyage, she had the vague thought that she might be heading the wrong way, but had ignored it, figuring that it was just her imagination. But now, she was convinced. She wasn't heading for America. She was heading further into Carribean waters.

The realization brought about the tears she had managed to hold back for four days. She dropped anchor, went below deck and curled up in what had most likely been the pretty blond woman's berth. Relena Peacecraft. The only woman ever, as far as she could recall, to make Heero change his mind.

She chewed thoughtlessly on a hard biscuit, practically the only foo boa board as she tried to relax and enjoy the feeling of soft sheets against her skin. When she was done with her supper, her tired eyes spotted three large trunks heaped in the corner of the tiny cabin.

The baron's sister's personal belongings, Hilde realized. Trowa must have gone through them for jewels, but on Heero's order, he had left the dresses, even though they could fetch a pretty price. With as much energy as she could muster, she got up and kneeled down to examine the trunks.

Hilde soon set aside the first trunk as it was filled with un-interesting and rather painful-looking undergarments. Corsets and stockings, petticoats and hip pads to hold skirts out from the body. She rolled her eyes. Why did other women insist on weighing themselves down with such unpractical things? And why did suddenly want to try everything on?

The second trunk was full of hats, small straw leghorns, soft, cotton mob caps and frilly, collapsible cals, ss, slippers in every color of the rainbow, white powder that was to be formed into the pale base makeup fashionable women liked to paint themselves with and, finally, one large, ugly white curled wig. Hilde scrunched up her nose. Did the Baron's sister actually cover her beautiful blond locks with this horrible thing?

What she was really looking for was in the third and largest trunk. Relena's dresses. Never in her life had Hilde seen such clothing up close. The Robe a la Francaise with their waterfall of fabric in the back, the Polonaise with the drawn up and puffed outerskirts and the Robe a l'Anglaise with slimmer skirts, fashionable only in England. Of course, Hilde did not know all of these things. All she saw were lovely gowns in colors she had only ever imagined.

Hilde lifted one gown out of the trunk and held it up to her body. Before she quite knew it, she had stripped off her breeches and shirt and unbound her breasts. She carefully slid her arms into one green and gold patterned frock. She would not even need to put on stays, she decided. She was a bit skinnier than the gown's owner.

A piece seemed to be missing. The dress, even in spite of her tiny frame, did not meet in the middle. She searched the trunk and came up with a velvet bag. Contained within it were several strangely shaped pieces of material that matched the patterns of each dress and a pin cushion stuffed with pins. Hilde was puzzled for a minute, before some innately feminine sense of style came to her and she realized what to do.

When the stomacher was pinned in place, she glanced down at herself and gasped. The tight bodice pushed her breasts up and out, creating wonderful cleavage at the low neckline. For the first time since they had started to grow, Hilde felt no desire to hide them.

She slipped into a pair of matching slippers and pulled a mob cap out of the second trunk. No mirror was needed to tell her she looked different. She felt it. Hilde the pirate felt like Hilde the princess.

Hilde fell asleep in Relena's clothes and woke again when someone tapped her on the forehead.

****

He had missed the sea. So much so that being back on it, feeling the salt breeze push through his hair, tasting the briny spray of water on his lips, hearing the slap and crash of the waves against the bow was like a rebirth. Duo Maxwell felt alive again, as though he had merely been existing for two long years.

Of course, the journey had not started off so well. After the hour long bath Quatre insisted he be given and the powders to get rid of the fleas and lice, Duo had been clean for the first time since he could remember. Fresh clothes had been found for him, black by his demand. His boots were new, his hair trimmed, but not cut...he had decided to keep the braid, having grown accustomed to it...and even his nails were scrubbed.

But clean as he was, freedom was still not completely his. Quatre was, he had discovered, his reluctant guardian, a rather humiliating thing for him to endure. And he had been made to sign a contract in front of Treize himself, promising that he would never return to the island.

The worst surprise that waited for him was the fact that his beloved ship, *The Devil's Proxy* had been commandeered by Treize, stripped down, re-fitted and re-christened as *The Rose Queen*, no doubt another honor to Treize's lost love.

He did not dwell on Kushrenada's sorrowful past. In fact, he didn't give a damn. All he wanted was his ship back and now, he could never have it. Still, he set sail on *The Rose Queen* with Quatre and a crew of fifteen Barbados natives. Because, as Quatre had put it, it was better than prison.

Two days had passed without event. On the third day, they found the *Lady Anne*. She was anchored and seemingly abandoned.

Quatre joined him on the deck when he was informed of the find. "Well...so much for the needle in the haystack."

The braided man shrugged. "We have the devil's luck on our side."

Duo led a small party on board to conduct a thorough search. They crossed to the other ship quickly and were most disturbed by what they found. Dried bloodstains splashed across the deck, a bad omen if ever there was one.

From the other ship, Quatre called out, "Check below."

Duo nodded. He would have done it anyway. Taking one man with him, he started below deck. The captain's cabin and office were empty as were the crew's quarters. The last place Duo checked was the state room, the guest quarters.

He stepped inside carefully as the boat rocked. There was someone asleep in one of the berths. Blinking to make sure he was seeing correctly, he deduced that it was a young girl, dressed in an expensive looking gown. He approached her and tapped her forehead.

The girl's eyes opened. Soft cornflower blue. Duo gave her a wide smile.

"Rise and shine," he told her cheerfully. "You've got a lot of explaining to do."

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To Be Continued