Jackson stumbled back a step to catch his breath. He was bleeding from several superficial but painful wounds, and salty sweat mixed with the running blood on his face, stinging his eyes. His fancy green trousers, weighed down with pockets and tools, were torn and discolored, dark bloodstains spreading across them like maps of a defeated island.
He didn't say a word. He gripped his sword tightly and began trying to calm himself. He didn't panic—panic was for the weak—but at the same time, he was confused. A confusion he had never known before.
This was the first time he knew for certain that he would be defeated if the fight continued much longer. Not because he hadn't been defeated before; in the years he roamed the Infinite Ocean, he had fought countless people and won many times. But whenever his pirate intuition told him he couldn't win, he would withdraw. He would flee smartly, never allowing himself to be defeated or captured. But this time... no. He didn't dare withdraw from this fight.
'She's a woman...' he reminded himself bitterly. 'How can I flee from a woman?'
His pride, built brick by brick on the cruelty he lived through his life, prevented him this time. It was a prison he had made for himself.
He had killed before. Yes, he had killed exactly three people. He remembered them well, their faces, their names, and their last breaths, just as he would remember the face of this woman fighting him if he managed to kill her. To him, those men deserved to die. He didn't kill them because he craved blood, but because of the betrayals and filth they committed. As for this woman... he wanted to kill her too, not because she deserved death, but because he had to in order to survive. It was a matter of survival.
Elyra stopped on her own, giving him the time he needed to catch his breath, not out of mercy, but out of confidence. During her fight, she had felt something... something that overrode her initial motive for starting the fight. She might have gotten over that insulting slap. What she felt now was "euphoria." She was intoxicated, as if a part of her lost past life had been revealed indistinctly, an electric current running through her veins with every clash of swords. She wasn't going to let this fight end quickly.
"Come on..." she said in a breathless but steady voice. "Fight with everything you have. Don't tell me you're done."
She gave him a look that made him see the pure savagery in her black eyes.
Jackson had forgotten the stupid motive that started this fight. At first, it was just like amusement; that woman who loved fighting, her lithe figure, her beautiful face. Maybe that's what made him deceived by appearance.
'What could she do in the end but scream, hoping I wouldn't rape her? Even though I wouldn't have done that...'
But she was still solid, as if she had only been warming up. She didn't look tired, and she hadn't suffered any significant wound. He could realize in that moment that she hadn't killed one or two people before, nor three as he had done to make the name he owned feared by many.
'No... she must have, I swear she has killed dozens of people before. She is a butcher.'
"No, I'm not done..." Jackson said, spitting blood on the ground. "I still have plenty up my sleeve, but I won't show it for just a woman. I've never seen a woman like you before."
Jackson took another step back, placing his hand on the bleeding wound in his side, while his breath continued to rise like steam from a dilapidated engine.
He looked at her and decided to try his last weapon: words.
"Join me..." he said suddenly, his eyes watching her reaction cautiously. "I have a crew of tough men, but none of them possess half the ferocity you do."
He took a half-step forward, extending his blood-stained hand:
"Join my crew, Elyra. Be my right hand. You'll have half the loot, and the whole sea under your feet... instead of ending up a corpse in this rusty factory by my hand."
The offer was tempting on the surface, but Jackson's eyes betrayed him; there was a glint of hidden pleading in them. It was a desperate offer from a man seeing his end.
Elyra paid no mind to his words. To her, they were like the testament of a dying old man delirious with fever. She remembered nothing about herself, but she knew one thing about her current reality: as long as this cold metal was in her hands, she owned the life of the man before her.
"I will end this fight now..." she said coldly, adjusting her stance to attack. "You look like rotting scum... I no longer have to waste my breath listening to your nonsense."
She insulted him. She insulted him to the point that his tongue, which had never failed to speak even once in his life, even in the worst circumstances, did not utter a letter. If any of his crew were present, they would have sworn he had swallowed his tongue in shock.
Elyra's foot moved. A final lunge toward Jackson's exhausted body. Her blade gleamed under the dim factory light like an irreversible death sentence.
But in those fractions of a second before the impact, Jackson didn't see Elyra. His soul was leaving the dark corridor to settle in a faraway place... at that old small port, many years ago.
The image of his father, "Mr. Levoy," returned to him, as everyone called him with awe tinged with fear and contempt. Jackson was eleven years old, standing amidst the noise of giant ships loaded with building materials. The steam of engines filled the place with the smell of coal and suffocating humidity. Everyone was working, young and old, carrying boxes and pulling ropes, except for little Jackson who stood watching his peers struggling with the misery of daily labor, in his clean clothes that distinguished him as the overseer's son.
"Come on, you sons of whores! Unload the barrels or I'll throw you into the sea!"
Levoy's voice roared over the children's heads, his whip waving in the air.
Among them were "Virgo" and "Rafa," who were two years older than Jackson. Jackson remembered their appearance well; the torn rags, the faces covered in black grease, and the fatigue that carved early grooves into their small features. Jackson at the time represented the exact opposite of them with his neat clothes and quiet, protected stance.
"Levoy... make your son do something useful instead of standing there like a princess!"
The voice came from behind Jackson, a strong, confident voice carrying the tone of the roaring sea.
The little boy turned to see a man he had never seen before; strongly built, with thick brown hair, and elegant yet practical clothes, befitting a man who owned the sea, not served it. It was Captain Jerrick.
Jerrick looked at the child Jackson, then at his father, and continued in a sarcastic tone as he lit his pipe:
"I see you enjoy your cruelty on these little ones... Do you want me to make a man out of him instead of you? It seems you are too busy for this task."
Levoy retorted angrily, his face turning red:
"Jerrick, you damn rat! Mind your own business, you don't want me to get fired for smashing your face!"
In that moment, little Jackson didn't know that this "damn rat" would be the man who would change the course of his life, the man who would teach him that the sea is the only place where he doesn't need his father's name, but needs a pirate's soul.
As Elyra rushed toward him like an arrow in the present, her blade aiming to slit his throat and end this noise, the world faded from Jackson's eyes.
In that fleeting moment, he didn't hear the hiss of steam or the screams of the homeless, but he heard Captain Jerrick's voice echoing in his memory with perfect clarity, saying:
"Do you want me to make a man out of him?"
Jackson closed his eyes, and waited for the blow.