bakerstreet | ( quote prompt )

i. / ii. / iii.

[ So here's the thing about the ocean:

It's kind of big. And kind of deep. And kind of dangerous.

More than a few men saw their ends because they failed to acknowledge how unpredictable, how unforgiving the seas could be, their lives reduced to a few half-hearted mentions, passed back and forth at taverns. "Do you remember John? Patrick? Barclay? Idiots must've died at sea. Haven't seen 'em in years."

And there were other reasons to fear it, Peter was told from a young age. Strange creatures dwelling in its depths; blood-thirsty beings that appeared only in the mist; monsters that wanted little more than kill and feed on the blood of man. When Peter was growing up, he had thought they were fairy tales told to children to frighten them away from the docks and the coasts; once he was roped into the service of a pirating vessel, he learned that wasn't quite the case.

Or, at the very least, the pirates seemed to certainly believe the tales, took the omens to heart and tried to sway luck on their side with funny little rituals. As the years passed, Peter found himself believing those superstitions, too, at least a little. But he didn't believe all of the tales, especially not those about the ghostly ship that haunted every inch of ocean, and he met every hushed story that spilled from men's lips about the devil on the seas with a roll of his eyes. He had to draw the line somewhere.

The storm takes them by chance – dark clouds hidden by the night, turbulent waves that rock their ship. Lashing rain, howling wind, flashes of lightning, claps of thunder, and the noise of it nearly drowns out the shouts of the men on the ship as they struggle to keep their vessel under control.

Peter's up in the rigging, trimming the sails, when the wind grabs hold of his mother's old necklace and rips it from his neck. He flails out to catch it, hands slick with rain, and he swears he feels the chain rasp against the tips of his fingers before the gales snatch it away, send it falling into the water. He hardly thinks after that, moving on pure instinct. He doesn't hear the others shout at him as he scrambles atop the yard, ignores the men screaming at him to take up position again. He simply runs, balanced precariously on the spar, and when he reaches its end, he leaps into the frigid, churning waters below.

The ship sails on without him as he struggles in the black water, casting around for the trinket – like searching for a needle in a haystack, a small part of him bitterly thinks – and he kicks out, swimming deeper and deeper. His efforts are rewarded when he catches sight of a faint flicker. He swims harder and by some miracle, grasps the chain of the necklace, wrapping it around his hand before he spins, aiming himself upward.

Surfacing, though, is the real challenge – and his lungs burn as he swims toward the dim glimmer above him. The waters batter him, the currents impeding his progress by dragging him downward again and again. Panic and desperation makes his movements sloppy, and everything in him hones in on that need to breathe. His lungs scream, and what little breath he has left escapes from him in a plume of bubbles. Instinct forces him to inhale, despite his best efforts to the contrary, and he sucks in a lungful of water, chokes and coughs on it until he draws in more.

A distant part of him wonders what sort of stories they might tell of him, later. (Remember Quill? Idiot died at sea, jumped into the waters in a storm like a damned fool...) His vision dims, and his body goes limp, and the current drags him down, down, down, into the darkness. ]

( ooc; No apologies, and please keep to brackets if those are your preference! I stick to prose because it makes tagging from my e-mail at work easier. )

They had interrupted something beyond their knowledge. Gone were the days when sailors knew that they pushed into certain storms at certain times of the year at their own peril, despite their little rituals to keep him and the likes of him appeased. There was no forgiving walking right into a force of nature, and Davy could do nothing to save the ship as it began encroaching upon the walls of the working he was shaping with the local spirits.

So while he stood at the center of the storm, working his magic with arms raised, he watched irately as the ship sailed into what could have very well been its doom. He could and would do nothing to save it or those upon it, at least until he saw a figure very deliberately diving from the ship. Serpent spirits told him that the fool of a man was seeking some trinket that he had dropped, a necklace.

Davy swore and apologized to the spirits as his curiosity got the better of him and he put a pause to the working, letting its power settle into another space and time til it could be called upon by him once more. In time, the storm would dissipate like any normal storm, but for right now it was still raging.

The faerie king dove down into the waters and began to slice through them with quick, powerful strides. He was seeking out the drowning man and eventually found him with the aide of the serpents. The power of the ritual was still roiling through the waters and it began to bend space around them. Davy couldn't alter the flow of magic without altering his original work that had been put on hold, so he took hold of the man around the waist and decided to ride out the flow of power.

There was a rush of power that lifted them up through the dark water and out into a bright night full of countless silver stars set in a blue velvet sky. The air and waters were calm, and Davy could easily maneuver them to an island nearby. They were no longer in the realm of mortals, but that didn't mean that this man couldn't die by drowning.

Davy hauled Peter onto the shore and dropped him on the sand before turning about and giving him a slap across the face meant to shock him into coughing up whatever water he'd inhaled. He was surly, still, to be sure, but this man's actions had managed to take hold of his attention.

[ He's not aware of much – hazy and drifting as he is in the dark. He knows even less about whatever complicated rituals he might have interrupted, and even if he did, he probably wouldn't have given it much thought. More of that weird nonsense. He's limp and unresisting as they travel between realms, as Davy hauls him up to the surface, and he offers little complaint as Davy drags him to shore.

The slap across the cheek, though, jars something, and Peter inhales sharply, his body roused by the surprise – except there's little space in his lungs for air. He shoves himself over, rolling to his stomach and propping himself up on his elbows, coughing and spluttering out water for long enough that he wonders if he might suffocate, then and there.

It's a long while before he manages to properly suck down a breath, ragged and strained; his fingers dig into the soft sand beneath him, eyes screwed shut as if that might make the simple task of breathing easier. He lets his forehead fall to the sand, the taste of salt in his mouth and the scent of the sea an almost permanent fixture in his nostrils.

After a few more seconds of heaving in breath after breath, he rubs at his still stinging cheek and he rasps out, ]

That hurt.

It at least alleviated some of Davy's ire that the man hadn't died on him, because that would certainly complicate matters. He didn't need to deal with a mortal dying on him in this place, but then again, he wasn't ever exactly about people dying. Most people, and so far this guy was in the crowd.

"Good." Davy rolled his eyes and walked off from the man a few feet just to take a look out at the island. It wasn't a familiar one, but there was a welling surge of power radiating out from the heart of it. Green forests, like the northern forests of the mortal world, stretched out fore miles and miles, and in the distance a small group of mountains stood as sentinels it. The faerie's nostrils flared as he took a deep breath and considered the options that lay before him. Them. And then he looked over his shoulder at Peter and turned about to go and help him stand up.

"I am going to assume the man climbing the rigging and diving after a little trinket wasn't the captain of the ship, so I won't hold you responsible for intruding upon my storm, but now you're going to help me clean up the mess." He'd grabbed hold of Peter by his underarm at this point and hauled him up to his feet with what might have seemed an unnatural strength; Peter, for all his muscle, was still like a rag doll to Davy.

"Take some more breaths, sailor."

[ A part of Peter's brain still hasn't caught up with the rest of him, intent as most of it is in reminding him to breathe, to suck down more gulps of air and cough up more salt water – both of which he does with enough force that his throat feels raw and torn, his airways still stinging a little from the salt.

For a second, he knows he doesn't recognize that voice, but it's a distant realization, like noting the color of someone else's shirt. Unimportant, and surely nowhere near as interesting as marveling over the fact that he's alive, on dry land, when only moments before he remembers the inky, churning black of the ocean.

Peter wipes at the back of his mouth with his wrist, and only when he feels his breath start to even out does he bother to lift his head. It looks like a forest – but not a stretch of woods he recognizes, and he especially doesn't recall being anywhere near land. Just as he's puzzling over where the hell they are, the other man hauls him upright in a near fluid motion, dragging out a startled noise from Peter. ]

What in the hell—

[ And he turns, finally getting a good look at his rescuer, and he jerks away, stumbling. He still feels unsteady, limbs exhausted from the strain of fighting against the currents, but he manages to stay on his feet. ]

Who the hell are you?

Not an ounce of time could be spared trying to get this one to believe who Davy was with just words. He bared his teeth in frustration, because this sort of display was obscene in his mind and it put him at an edge to something he did not like to entertain. Desperate times, however, called for desperate measures.

Sparks of blue flame grew in Davy's eyes til they burst fully into starry orbs. In one moment, Davy was all man-shaped and standing at a normal height, and in the next he was bursting up to three times his height, his whole body starry-shadows, raging winds and waters coursing in the same of a horned demon. He loomed over Peter and when he spoke, his voice ran deep as a midnight storm.

"I am Davy Jones, devil of the sea and you owe me a debt for saving your life, so shut up and move." In the next moment, Davy had shot back to his normal size and shape and he was turning back to the forest, trudging in its direction.

"Or I suppose you can fend for yourself here, if you'd prefer."

[ Peter jumps back as Davy shifts, as he changes from man to beast in the span of a breath. It's terrifying, like the first time he was a child on a ship at storm, huddling below board and hoping the raging waves wouldn't capsize them.

Maybe a lesser man would have fainted dead away, then and there; or maybe another man would have bolted, would've turned tail and run as fast and as far as unsteady legs could take him. Peter, though, stands there and gapes, a hand grasping for the hilt of his sword. He freezes, though, once the other man states his name.

Davy Jones. Davy goddamn Jones, and for a second, Peter wants to laugh and claim that was impossible.

But then again, warping into a demon-shaped storm was also impossible, but considering that's exactly what Peter just witnessed, perhaps he ought to be a little more credulous of the claim.

It's a long moment after Davy has reverted to his original form and has started stomping away, and Peter stares at his retreating back. It takes another moment before Peter can draw in a deep, fortifying breath and before he can ignore the hammering of his heart against the inside of his ribs. And one last moment before he can will himself to move, hurrying to catch up to the other man. ]

Could've said "please."

[ Though the joke comes out smaller and quieter than Peter would like; he's still reeling from it all, bombarded by all these things happening at once. ]

Where are we going?

For a moment Davy wonders if he had gone too far with that display of power; it would have only confirmed that relying on that truly unearthly aspect of himself was a mistake, beyond what bit of it kept him immortal and free to roam as he willed. But Peter is following along, and he supposes that it wasn't entirely a mistake. In fact, he actually manages to laugh at the first thing Peter says to him. That certainly is a good sign.

"We are heading up there." They were close to the edge of the woods now and Davy made sure to stop and point to the mountains far in the heart of the woods. The main peak was already starting to develop ring of clouds about the summit, stark white, almost glowing in the dark.

"The interruption," and just because Peter had made him laugh, he wouldn't throw out specific accusations anymore, "caused a significant portion of the rite's power to dislodge itself and take a mind of its own. Normally, I wouldn't mind something going sideways, but I was helping someone with that, so we need to get it back under control." As if the clouds had heard Davy from so far away, they began to crack with silent bursts of lightning. Davy narrowed his eyes at them and then proceeded to lead Peter into the woods.

"If you're quick, on your feet, we should make it by midnight tomorrow."

[ Peter still has no idea what the hell's going on, really. Talks of rituals and interruptions and intruding on man-made storms – though it's not really man-made, if the stories on Davy Jones were true, devil that he is. And that's assuming the man truly was who he claimed to be – though Peter would be hard-pressed to find anyone who would want to claim to be Davy Jones.

Taking on that particular identity seems like it would invite lifetimes of bad luck.

When Davy gestures up toward the mountain, to the glowing clouds spiraling at its peak, Peter frowns, though it turns into a wince as they flash with lightning. ]

... Midnight tomorrow.

[ He echoes it back flatly, an edge of dismay in his voice. But he doesn't have much of a choice, does he? Stuck on an island he doesn't recognize, with a man claiming to be the scourge of the seas, to whom Peter apparently owes his life. Considering Peter's position, he has very few options, here.

He scrubs at his face with both hands, though he follows after Davy without further complaint. Questions crowd on his tongue, clambering over one another to be voiced, and the first one that manages to break through is, ]

What's this rite you're talking about? What were you trying to do before the— [ How had Davy put it? ] —the interruption?

"That is none of your concern." Davy said it immediately, defensively. He bit his tongue a bit after saying it, because that would clearly give away that it was perhaps not something all too good. Of course, as far as he was concerned that mattered on perspective and the sort of perspective Peter might bring to this might just did not matter to Davy. Other people weighed far more important in this ordeal.

Davy brushed his hand along a tree trunk here and there as they wended through the woods. As he did so, clouds of glow-flies rose from the wood and scattered about, casting a soft green light to accent their path.

"I was putting up a wall, of sorts," he finally volunteered. "To keep your lot from doing what you normally do."

Well, that was one of the least reassuring things Peter had heard tonight, and considering he had washed up ashore, survived nearly drowning thanks to the assistance of the devil of the sea, that was saying quite a lot. Peter studied Davy for a long while, trying to discern intent from him, trying to figure out what, exactly, it would mean to continue following after the man.

His eyes widen as the path lit up before them, startled by the abruptness of it. (And a little awed by the whimsy of it, the prettiness of it, if Peter were in the habit of being honest.) Davy's doing, it seemed, if the nonchalance, the lack of any reaction, was any indication. Just full of surprises, it seemed.

When he offered the explanation, lacking though it was, Peter let out a soft breath, recognizing the allowance for what it was – a pittance. A bit of a bread crumb, meant to satisfy, and Peter let out a quiet sigh.

"And what's that, exactly?" His tone was dry, almost flat. "What do we normally do? Sail?"

Davy barked with laughter at that response. Had he ever been so naive? Perhaps so, enough to one day get himself burned alive. As much as he loved the sea, he had eventually realized that he had been but a cog in a growing clockwork that would put the whole world under its sway if it could. His laugh seemed to stir some of the local creatures in the forest, as the greenery around them began to rustle off into the distance. Davy paid it no mind.

"Where men sail, kings and merchants follow, leaving nothing but ruin in their wake." It was a bit of a personal issue for Davy, which was why he had been willing to help the local spirits in creating a defense for themselves. Humanity was getting too precocious these days. As he walked, he kept brushing his hand against trees, lighting the path with fireflies.

"Have you heard tales of the devil's sea or the dragon's triangle? An area where ships vanish into thin air?" The tales had been around as long as Davy had been sailing, but it was only when he became the devil himself that he came to truly learn what those places could be. "They are places where your kind should not go, because they are a last stand, a line in the sand. You cross them at your peril."

Davy was nonchalant about that much.

"You've all forgotten that you share this world."

The noise of movement in the underbrush startled Peter, and he glanced around warily, waiting for something to spring out of the bushes. The man at his side seemed unfazed by the noise, but for Peter's part, he wrapped one hand around the hilt of his sword, keeping an eye on the thicket. His clothing clung to his skin, water-logged and heavy, and the night breeze left a chill that settled into his bones.

Davy's words might as well have been nonsense, for how little they actually told. They sounded like the words of some mad doomsayer to Peter, and he cut Davy a dubious sort of glance.

"And who, exactly, do we share this world with?" He asked it hesitantly, though the narrowing of his eyes gave away the doubt he felt. Peter had never been quite as quick as his shipmates to believe in the tales of strange, gigantic monsters and creatures out at sea, bloodthirsty and wild – but then again, he also never quite believed in Davy Jones, either, yet here the man was. Perhaps Peter could stand to keep a slightly more open mind.

"Are there more... beings like you?"

Davy stopped walking and held out his palm for a swarm of those fireflies to condense into a buzzing sphere of light. The swarm acted enough like a flame that when he turned about to look at Peter, his face was well-lit.

"We share the world with everything, boy." The last word was added for effect, but it was pretty hollow on his tongue. He had never been fond of trying to make anyone feel small by calling them such. Even the quirk of his lips gave away how much it sat poorly upon his tongue.

"Or I suppose I should say 'everyone.'" Davy shrugged. "Every rock, every tree, every river, ocean, island, animal, bush, and so on. Do you think because you don't listen to them they're not actually there?" Davy held up his palm overhead, and the fireflies began to brighten enough to illuminate the trees around them. The circle of them about Peter and himself would have eyes glowing faintly before them at their crowns in various shades of ghostly flame.

"And as for me- I am more complicated than most."

( quote prompt )

peter quill | mcu | ota

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sorry for the length; let me know if i should redo!

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