meet me in the hallway

Just let me know I'll be at the door, at the door
Hoping you'll come around
outfit | @boom

She was... Well, she wasn't sure what she was. Olive had woken up yesterday and had gone off to work, she had steadily avoided Bryce and his bruised face and his irritation, and she had run errands for Wu so that she could have a break. And today? Today she was somewhere else. She was on a boat. She was... Well, she was very scared. She didn't want to be on a boat, she wanted to be... This was better than nothing. This was something. She was on a boat, she wasn't in Kolna, and she wasn't as scared as she was yesterday. It was just so strange. She was trying to wrap her head around it all, and she was coming up with a lot of issues. What was Berry going to think? What were the other muggleborns going to think? Was Ros going to be mad? What was Bryce going to tell them? She thought, briefly, that she could get some sort of message to Berry, but she realized that wouldn't really work. How was she going to contact her and say that she was fine? She couldn't send any owls. One, she didn't have an owl. And two? That was stupid. That would get her caught and sent back to Kolna, and she didn't want that.

Olive also wasn't quite sure where they were going, and she... Well, she wasn't planning on leaving. Even though she was literally sitting in a corner on the deck of the boat, she had decided that she very much liked the idea of becoming a pirate. She didn't know if they were planning on dumping her somewhere, out of the way, but she was staying. She had made that decision herself. They didn't normally let her make those choices, not really. Kolna just shoved her back and forth from her job to the apartment, and Hogwarts never let her make any important decisions. Bryce had made the ultimate decision that she was getting kidnapped, and before that, everyone else had made the decision of where she was going to sleep. So Olive didn't get to make important decisions, not really. She had to just do what they wanted her to do, and that was annoying. So now? Now she had made the ultimate decision that she was staying on the damn boat, and nobody was going to get her to get off of it. Even if they tried to pick her up, Olive was staying.

She had wanted to carve her name into the side, but she didn't know Kirk well enough. He might yet at her, and she... She didn't really like yelling. So Olive just sat there, in her little corner, holding the pocket knife she had asked one of the deckhands for. All she had to do was look sweet; that was enough to get it, apparently. She held it in her hands and then stared at the deck, trying to decide what to do. Maybe she could make a little 'O' and that would be enough. She could claim the ship in the name of 'Olive' and then refuse to leave. That was a good plan. Smiling to herself, she looked out towards the water, and then towards the deck. 

he really doesn't make an effort

Oriel was doing better. He wasn't fine, he didn't think he would ever be fine, but he was getting better. Most days he could get out of bed, some of them he could get out of the cabin, and the waters around the ship didn't sing to him anymore. Didn't welcome him or whisper bad things. The books in the cabin kept him entertained, he could brew potions or paint or sketch, and he'd even regained some weight. Those were the good days, where he could string sentences together and talk to Kirk and move about, eat, even smile. There were bad days, too. Less than there had been before, rarer, but they did happen. On those days, O could barely breathe or think at all, and when he did manage to grab one of his many passing thoughts and understand it... well, they weren't good thoughts. Kirk tried to stay with him on those days, or cheer him up on some way. The problem was that Kirk had things to do, a ship to attend to, crew to manage, and whatever pirates did that made him come home with chests full of jewels. He often brought them for O and laid them at his feet. On bad days, he could barely manage to look at them, but on good days things were better. On good days he could examine them, wear them, even pick out ones on which to experiment. Kirk did his best to look after him, to talk to him, to be gentle with him. It helped too, because Kirk was warm and often held him, and it seemed like that helped even though he didn't know why. Slowly, he was improving.

It was a good day today, even though yesterday had been a bad day. Being so close to the British shores took its toll, what with  O's past there and what was going on. He'd asked Kirk to see if he could catch something about D but nothing had come up. At least there hadn't been any incidents at the school this year, so far, but these were all things he had been told through the thick air of the cabin when Kirk got back. When O started to recover, when they started to depart. He didn't like being so close, he felt as if it sucked something from him. Kirk knew he couldn't set foot on land, but there had been something he absolutely had to do. A pick up of some sort, but O didn't ever get much information about what they did when they went on land. It didn't much matter to him either, he was fine where he was. The crew treated him well, most of them saw him as an extension of Kirk's will, except for Number One and Kara. If they saw him, that was, and at first he'd just been "that one bloke Kirk brought on the ship who never came out of his cabin". Kirk said he'd just told them all that O was his. He couldn't say that he minded the terminology, because like that he could just walk around and not do anything on the ship. He wasn't made to help, and he didn't think he'd have been able to even if he wanted to.

Still, as a good day on which Kirk was a bit too busy to be constantly in bed with him, O had managed to get dressed and get out of the cabin. He'd even eaten a bit for brunch and picked out a book. With slow steps he was making his way on deck, though he knew that Kirk still got nervous when he went up there alone. There would be crew members all around, O wasn't suicidal anymore. It would be fine. Kirk just had to calm down, and when he went back to the cabin and saw that O was gone he would at first panic and scramble around looking for him. Then he would find him and relax. Like he should. He could smell the fresh, salty air around them and the crashing waves were loud and chaotic. He'd gotten his sea legs a while ago, so he managed to walk and find a spot. Only... there was someone there. Something. A child. He'd never seen a child on the ship before. Was it supposed to be here? "What are you doing?" He'd come up behind the little thing, but he could still tell she had a knife. Who had given a child a knife?

She was a bit confused about everything, but that wasn't out of the ordinary. Olive had really thought that pirates were just in books, that they didn't really exist in real life. An actual pirate was definitely a shocking experience. Because pirates were supposed to be bad. Pirates were usually the bad guys in her books, even in the 'Jacky Faber' books. The pirates were bad, they were the ones who hurt people. Kirk wasn't bad, though. He took her from Kolna and he had taken her onto the boat, and even if she didn't know why he had agreed to help she had just thought that it all was far nicer than pirates were supposed to be. Then again, she didn't think that thieves were the good guys, either, and Bryce had given her a necklace and had gotten her to Kirk to get out of Kolna, and Ilana had asked her to come over for Passover. So maybe all of the people that were normally the bad guys were actually the good guys. That made sense to her. The people that she had trusted; the magical police, the teachers, the grown-ups... They had failed her. And the people who hadn't were the ones that she had thought were the bad guys. 

Was that what growing up was like? Did everything turn backwards? She had hoped that things would make more sense when she got older, but it was just getting more and more complicated as she got older. She had gone to Hogwarts with the thought that she would understand magic, but she was also more confused. How could you make a boat magical? How could people be fine with making kids live in Kolna? Well, they were going to be moved to a new school after that... But now she wasn't going. What was she going to do? Was she going to have to teach herself? Or was Kirk going to try to take her somewhere where she could learn? She wasn't going to go, though. She wanted to be able to just stay somewhere, and she didn't get to understand things if she was being moved place to place to place. Besides, she didn't think that Kirk would lie to her. Pirates lied, they did in her book, but she wasn't going to let him. She wanted to know what happened to her parents, how to be a pirate, why he had agreed to help take her away.

"I'm thinking about carving my name," she murmured, the answer coming before she even realized what she was saying. She couldn't just talk to people on the ship, could she? Would Kirk be mad? She waited a few seconds before turning to see who had spoken to her, and her eyes widened. She did not know who this person was. He didn't look like someone who worked on the ship, not really. Mainly because he had on a robe. The crew members didn't have robes on. So who was this? She held tightly on the knife, not willing to let go of it in case he got super angry. She was scared, but she was normally scared. At this point, Olive couldn't remember a time when she wasn't extremely terrified. 

Oriel tried to make sure to look after himself, these days. Life had been hard and pointless for many months, throwing him into a downward spiral that he couldn't seem to claw his way out of. The thoughts had been familiar, like a song he could once sing in his sleep that he'd since forgotten. Now, they returned to carve themselves on the inside of his skull. When left to fester, they took over his head, making his senses all and his thoughts vague and imprecise. They left him only with an overwhelming nothingness, a heavy body, and crippling self hatred. It took a lot of work to combat this infection, it took daily attention and care. It came with an acceptance of his bad days, coupled with a continued seeking of escape to any kind of warmth. A book, a voice, an embrace, a ray of sunlight. Something to focus on, something pleasant to allow to take over him so his thoughts wouldn't wander to colder places. Then, on good days, self care meant making the most of things. Not lying back and waiting for the other shoe to drop. Going out on a walk to breathe fresh air, drawing or painting something and allowing his fingers to create. Reading something interesting, feeling something good. That was all he had been looking for, on this particular Good Day. Instead, he found a small child with a knife. Thinking about carving something into the ship.

It was rare for O to feel intense emotions. Lately, the only times he felt strongly about anything was when he was in bed with Kirk, and those were completely different things. This was why he didn't like children. They ruined things, they didn't think about others, they didn't think about consequences and didn't mind their damn manners. The feeling was anger and some sense of indignation, washing over him as he processed the words. Carve into the Stargazer? Into Kirk's beloved ship? Into Kirk's home? "Why would you do something as insensitive and rude as that? This ship isn't yours, don't carve into it like a dog pissing on its territory. Are you completely daft?!" He glared at the child, coming down to stand in front of her firmly. Oriel was aware of what some of the crew thought of him. Kirk's wife, Kirk's bedwarmer, the madam. It didn't matter, it was all true. He looked after Kirk like Kirk looked after him. This brat- she was lucky that O wasn't in the habit of carrying around his wand, otherwise he would have summoned the blade right out of her hand this instant.

"Whoever allowed you to have a knife? Hand it over." He held out a hand, his no nonsense Hogwarts Professor voice returning in his anger. He didn't care who it had been. It could be Kara or Number One or ever Kirk himself. All bloody idiots, these pirates. Giving a child a knife, allowing a child to have a blade. They were all daft and he would give every single one an earful as soon as he find out who was responsible. Then they would likely get another earful from Kirk -if it hadn't been the man himself- because O was sure as hell telling him about this as soon as he laid eyes on the man. "Who are you anyway? What are you doing on board?"

Her lower lip immediately started trembling, and it was all Olive could do to keep from crying. She hadn't teared up too often at Kolna, even with everything that they had done to her. She was stronger than that. She could ignore what was going on around her because she had to. She had needed to just to get through the day, most of the time. She had thought that she would be able to be a normal kid again, that she wouldn't need to have to bottle up her emotions. She had cried when Kirk had grabbed her, and through most of that meeting. Olive had thought that she would be able to show those emotions clearly, now. She had thought that someone wouldn't be judging her through it all, that she would be getting at least a tiny amount of help from her surroundings. She was a misfit, now. A runaway misfit. Weren't all pirates misfits? Then again, the person in front of her didn't seem very pirate-like. They seemed very Mad Mum-like, which was different from what she normally dealt with. Before Kolna she had to deal with her Grumpy Mum, and during Kolna she had Not-Your-Mum-Go-Away Bryce and Not-Your-Mum Rosalind. This was different, and she was trying to figure out what she had done wrong, but it just seemed like... everything, really. 

They had magic, didn't they? If Kirk didn't like her artwork he could have vanished it, or gotten rid of it. She wasn't sure; Olive hadn't had enough magical training for that. She wasn't sure how anything worked. With her face arranged in distress and putting all of her will into not crying, she clung desperately to the knife and refused to let go of it. "I'm sorry," she insisted, looking immediately down to the deck. "I'm sorry, you're right. I'm stupid." Maybe everyone at Kolna was right. She was stupid. She was stupid, she shouldn't have thought that she could stay. She was a dumb little muggleborn-- she refused to say the slur, even if the guards called her that. She refused to give up the knife even before the stranger demanded she give it away. Ilana would be upset if she gave up her weapon. Bryce would be furious if she followed directions. Medea would just be sad. They weren't there, but they were her guardians through this all, and she refused to give up their strong words that were pressed into the back of her mind. 

She stared at the ground. If she looked up, Olive knew that she would be faced with angry features. She hoped that they didn't have a wand, because wands sent curses and those... She hadn't faced one, yet, and she was trying to keep it that way. In Kolna she had escaped because she kept her head down and because she didn't do anything bad. And now? First day with freedom and she was already getting in trouble. Kirk probably should have left her in Kolna. "Olive," she croaked out, holding her sobs in check. She wasn't going to cry. She was finally not an enslaved muggleborn, so she was not crying. "From Kolna. Kirk took me out." Olive held the knife close to her chest, closing her eyes. She didn't  want to get yelled at, but it was too late. But there was no way that she was letting go of the knife. It was the only thing keeping her safe. Her fingers tightly kept it close, refusing to let go.

Oriel had taught at Hogwarts for three years and while it hadn't been a job he enjoyed all that much, he had been proud of it. He'd finished his apprenticeship in record time and gotten a job at one of the most prestigious schools in the world, all before the age of thirty. While teaching hadn't been something he loved and he didn't really like children, he'd done a good job of teaching all his alchemy students how not to die. That was, in his subject, the most important lesson one could give. Everything else was secundary because all knowledge was subjective. He taught which combinations were deadly, which combinations were a sure things, and how to combine everything else so they could investigate for themselves. Needless to say that the majority of his students had been Ravenclaws, capable of following his eccentric, accelerated rambling. He didn't like slowing down an he didn't like explaining things over and over, what he did like was talking about possibilities. It was why he'd been a very good teacher when it came to a more elitist class such as alchemy. He had never, however, liked children. His students had all been NEWT students, thankfully. This child didn't even seem like she was of age to take her OWLs, though. Was she even of Hogwarts age? Surely, they weren't that small.

"It's not stupidity, it's bad manners. There's a cure for the second one but not for the first, so you're lucky." Ugh, she was crying. He hated crying people, children especially. Yes, she was in trouble, but this was just ridiculous. If she were truly that remorseful she would hand the knife over, but she didn't. She also didn't tell Oriel who'd given it to her. He supposed he would just have to take her to the crew rooms and ask because this could not stand. Kirk, apparently, had taken in this child and she thanked him by wanting to carve into his ship? It didn't matter if it could be fixed, it was the pure principle of it. One doesn't break things that don't belong to them. It's just plain rude. No amount of crying was going to get her out of trouble. Kirk brought her here? He hadn't told O a single thing. Not that O ever asked, but he was feeling better and thought he might've liked to know anyway. About a child. Kirk would never hear the end of this. It seemed that one of the things he needed to feel better was getting righteously pissed off about something. "Did he now?" He didn't know what Kolna was, nor did he care. "Without mentioning it, huh? That man."

He scowls and reaches out, pulling her to her feet by a forearm. Not roughly but also not gently. "Stop skulking about. What do you even want a knife for anyway? You don't need one. We're taking it back to the kitchen." With an annoyed huff, he started walking along the deck, grip on Olive tight but not painful. There went his peaceful afternoon, reading a book while smelling the breeze. Who left a child unattended? Who gave a child a knife?! Were they all stupid or useless or careless or all three things at the same time? Maybe O had been the only one to actually work with children before but it took a big lack of common sense to do this. It better not have been Kirk or Kara or Number One. "I ask again. Who gave you the knife? And stop crying already, get a grip."

Olive, while knowing that pirates were occasionally mean, did not think that she would immediately be faced with someone she would classify as a 'mean person'. She thought that she had avoided it when she had gotten out of Kolna, and she had been certain that everything would be fine in the end, but she was wrong. She was... She had wanted to be in a place where she wasn't being yelled at, but she couldn't be picky. She didn't choose where she was going to end up, she wasn't involved in the bargain by any means. That was all Kirk and Bryce, not her. And she was grateful, really. It beat wandering around Kolna, it beat curfews and shouting and being terrified that something dreadful would happen to her. But she didn't like this stranger. Olive was fine with people not liking her. She knew that it came with being a muggleborn, at this point. It didn't matter how she acted, people were going to dislike her. She tried not to let it bother her, at this point, but there was something in particular that was hurting her with how this complete stranger seemed to just hate her for existing. He didn't know who she was, that she was a muggleborn. He just hated her because she was there, and that stung worse. Was it because she had wanted to stay? 

"I won't touch anything on the ship," she told him, still keeping her eyes fixed on the floor. She wouldn't do anything that could get her yelled at, then. Olive was good at following orders. She could help around the ship, she could do what the crew wanted her to do. She didn't want to go. She didn't want them to take her off the ship, and she was sure that this stranger would have that happen in an instant. It didn't seem like the others particularly minded her, but she knew that she could be wrong. She was wrong a lot, anyway. Olive would help as much as she could because she couldn't go. She couldn't go back to Kolna and she didn't want to be anywhere else. She liked the ship. She had only been there for a little bit but she liked the ship. It was nice and pretty, and she liked the way that the sea looked. They could go anywhere, and she had a phone so she could play Candy Crush, and she could read at her heart's content. "Did he not tell you? He got me when I was walking home from work. He took my wand away."

She was wrenched to her feet and she held tightly onto the knife, refusing to let go. She hadn't wanted to get up, but Olive thought it was better to just do whatever the angry person wanted her to do. "It's not a kitchen knife," she grumbled, looking at the deck. Now she was going to get other people in trouble. Stupid Olive, she thought, trying to will her feet not to move. She didn't want to get someone else in trouble. If he was mad, she should've been the only one in trouble. It wasn't fair. "I'm not telling you. If I give it back later will you let  me go?" She wasn't getting anyone else in trouble and she also didn't know anyone's name. She hadn't been there long enough. And this person was mean, so they would yell, and they were already hurting her a bit. Olive just wanted to go. "I'll go sit belowdecks and out of your way, I promise. Please don't tell Kirk to take me back to Kolna. They'll curse me or something for running away." She didn't stop crying, though, but she did stop sniffling so that he couldn't yell at her for that.

O had to admit that after coming to live with Kirk he may have become a bit spoiled. Kirk loved taking care of him, giving him anything he wanted. O never felt the need to demand anything unreasonable, really, but that was because he was always given anything before he could ask anyway. On occasion he would ask if they could go back to the island, or if they could eat something in particular, but it wasn't that which made him spoiled. It was the jewels and the silks and the way Kirk gave him everything there was to give. The crew also knew this, they knew that O got anything he wanted wether he bothered to ask for it or not, and even Number One and Kara knew better than to argue with him too much. Not that they did, it was usually bickering, they didn't care enough to contradict him whenever he had enough energy to actually talk. He hadn't realised how used he'd gotten to things being in their place and to being kept happy and content at all cost until... well, until this. This child. He just never understood children. He didn't see the point in having them, first of all, but beyond that he just didn't understand their behaviour. Like now. What point or purpose was there in carving her name on the ship? The ship belonged to someone else. The ship belonged to someone who had taken her in, apparently. Why would you damage something that belonged to someone else, even if it could be fixed. It was just harmful.

"It's not that hard, don't pretend you don't understand. It's not about touching. It's about doing harmful things." Did he have to spell it all out for her? Merlin and Morgana, really? He thought his time for talking to children had been over, now he had to go back to that patiently and slowly explaining everything tone that he absolutely loathed. Still, if it got her to stop being a nuisance then he guessed it would be worth it. He just had to step on his annoyance for a bit, even if her next words brought it flaring back to life again. Oh, Kirk had gotten the child and brought her on here without telling him? Wonderful. When exactly? Took her and took her wand without warning anyone? Was he kidnapping children now? Bloody pirates. There was absolutely no logical explanation for this right now, he had to be missing something. Kirk might be a bit reckless but he wasn't stupid and taking children was stupid in every sense of the word. He'd see what Kirk had to say about this later. "He said he was going on land for a pick up. I'm assuming that was you. What possible reason he could have had, I'll make sure to find out tonight."

He pulled Olive along, walking slowly but away from the corner so he could get a good look at her in the light. Held her there with his hands on her shoulders, not holding her tight but still steady. She was tiny and obviously scared and still crying. She looked too old to be crying like this, it was childish. He wasn't even hurting her, for heaven's sakes. And she wasn't going to give him the dagger, huh? Well, he wasn't about to let her keep it either. He hated compromising but he hated dealing with bratty kids even more. "No, I won't. Children shouldn't have daggers, it's dangerous and you have no need for them. You end up carving things into other people's belongings. If you won't give it to me, you still can't keep it." He pointed at the sea to the side. "Throw it in the water." And she could be sure that he would be finding out who gave her the knife anyway, wether he asked the crew himself or he told Kirk about it. He could not be happy to hear the kid almost carved her name into the ship, he valued it above anything at all. And he truly did mean, anything. "Running away, huh? I don't tell Kirk what to do." Well, he did. He could pout and scoff and not talk to him and get him to take the brat back, but now that he thought of it... he had heard that name before. Lachlan, in the caves, he'd said it. Wasn't that... oh, Kirk took her wand. Would that be the wand with the tracker that they got? There had been a lot of runaways in the sanctuary. "Muggleborn, right? Registered. Did they take you from Hogwarts?"

Olive just needed to cope. She was good at that, anyway, so it wasn't like it was going to be all too difficult. She didn't want to get sent off the ship, and she didn't want to get into any more trouble, especially with how frightening she was finding the situation. She realized that, whoever this was, seemed to be much more important than the other pirates, the ones that she didn't know the names of. They could be second only to Kirk, because she knew that Kirk was the one in charge of it all. She didn't want to get in trouble, she didn't want to get sent off the ship, so she was going to cope. She knew that whoever this was was smart, anyway. Kirk was smart. Kirk didn't seem like he would be with stupid people, even if he did talk to Bryce on time. Weird, maybe, because she still held that some of the criminals that she knew were a bit strange, but not that stupid. So this person, they were smart also, they knew what they were talking about. And she had tried to ruin the ship, which was on her, even if she didn't like what he was saying. Sometimes, right and wrong were hard to figure out. Olive wondered how the adults ever figured it out, but she supposed that asking would be getting herself into more and more trouble.

She kept her mouth closed, for a moment, paying attention to the words. Morality was a difficult subject, especially since they were on a pirate ship. "And ruining other people's things is harmful." Well, at least he had explained himself. Explanations were helpful, and nice, and she liked the fact that he didn't just demand she understand and listen. She was still petrified, really, but that wasn't going to change anytime soon. He was scary in his robe, and she was almost positive that he would be scary in any other clothes. He reeked of mum-scariness, like those angry ones who toted their kids around the malls over the summer, shrieking that their kids needed to stop talking and hurry up. One of them had made fun of her for wearing her clothes inside out, and she had just stared at them blankly. Why would her wearing her clothes inside out affect someone else? That didn't make any sense. "Do you think you could tell me when you find out? Please?" Because she knew that Bryce had asked, but she didn't understand why Kirk had decided to do it. There wasn't a correlation.

Olive wasn't liking the situation any better, but she had calmed herself down enough to stop the almost-crying. Because it was rough, really, trying to talk to someone that she wasn't familiar with. She wasn't supposed to talk to strangers, but she had kind of forgotten that rule since last year. Since they took her from school. Everything had gotten messed up and confusing and... She just wanted to go back home, but she didn't think she even had a home, not anymore. And... "But I don't have my wand. What if I needed to protect myself?" she asked, widening her eyes. She wasn't trying to be difficult, not anymore. She just wanted to go take a nap and maybe cry some more. "I'll give it back, 'cause throwing it in the water is worse. It's not mine. I only have a phone, really." Even if she wanted it to be, she didn't own the dagger. She didn't really own much. Maybe they would let her keep things when they did pirate stuff in the future. Maybe she could get a cool pirate hat. "Yeah--yes." And she didn't get to say good-bye to Berry, and she didn't get to say good-bye to her parents, and she... She didn't know if she passed her classes, either. 

Whatever energy he might have had at the start of this promenade over the deck, it was hastily evaporating. What wasn't evaporating was his annoyance. He could just let this all go and return to the cabin, of course. What did he care if she stabbed someone or cut herself by accident? It was on whoever had given her the dagger and since he was not told she would even be here, it wasn't his problem. If Kirk didn't want her carving her name on the ship, he should have told the crew not to give her sharp things. Who even gave a ten year old a dagger? What kind of imbecile did that? O could just leave her be and not give a shit, go about his day and take a nap or paint something or even eat. He had eaten today, he was sure he could eat again. Instead he was here, trying to teach morality to a brat that seemed too dense to let words permeate her skull. Of all things. Of course, one couldn't just blame her for this situation. Oh, no. He was also blaming Kirk. He, after all, brought a kid onto the ship and left her to wander around with nothing to do and no one to mind her. Admittedly, someone her age shouldn't be childish enough to need a babysitter, but then again pirates shouldn't be dealing with children anyway. There were lots of shouldn'ts happening around here, today.

"Exactly, especially if those things belong to someone who's helping you. Like Kirk." At least she had stopped crying. That was something. He absolutely loathed crying, he himself rarely did it and he had tried to kill himself on more than one occasion. Crying was just mindless whimpering, messy and loud. Useless. If one had to suffer, suffer in silence. Not that this was anything to cry about. One would think she had never been told off in her life. Even if she tried to chalk it up to being in a strange new environment; not carving one's name into things that belong to other people was just common sense. One would think that she ought to try not to do stupid, careless things when in an unknown place. If she was so scared, she might try not doing things that would obviously piss people off. She was just lucky it was O that had caught her and not Kirk. He wouldn't have hesitated to turn the ship around and take her back to whatever place he had snatched her from for whatever convoluted reason the man had dreamt up. "No, you can ask him yourself. I'm not your babysitter or a messenger."

O was Kirk's partner, he thought. They may not be in love, he didn't think either of them could be in love ever again, but they did care about each other and help each other. Or so he thought. Kirk had told him nothing about this. Kirk told him nothing about any of his raids, ever. To be quite honest, he rarely shared anything about his days unless it included bringing O some riches. Otherwise, he was always asking about O and his actions and hobbies. He knew better, but it did make him seem like more of a pet or a bed warmer than a partner. "Protect yourself from what? They're pirates, not savages. No one hurts kids on here." At least, not kids that were brought on board by the captain, at least. "I'm not leaving you alone with a knife. You have three choices; throw the knife away, give it to me, or you take me with you when giving it back so I can make sure it's dealt with." Reasoning. Either-or solutions were usually taught to kids as young as four years old. Surely, that would be basic enough for her. His tone, of course, was less irritated now but no less final. "I was a professor at Hogwarts a year or two ago. I'm also a muggleborn." He sighed and rubbed his hand over his eyes. Of course the kid was sort of losing it, but so was O and he had no patience to spare. He'd never had much of it in the first place. "Listen, kid, we're not sending you back there. That place is barbaric."