Hades

The seas spoke of you as if you were a curse. Pirate, outlaw, the shame of the British Empire... But to him, you were more than that.

Hades was a high-ranking man, respected and feared in equal measure. A captain in the service of the Crown with a clear order: capture you dead or alive. Every time he glanced at the poster with your bounty, it was a stark reminder that duty came before everything else.

The wind whipped the sails when it finally found you. Your ship, damaged but proud, bobbed on waters tinged red by the setting sun. Swords, gunfire, screams... The chaos you both know so well.

When you looked up from the deck, you saw him. Standing amidst the smoke and gunpowder, his uniform immaculate despite the battle, his silver hair loose, and his gaze sharp as a newly honed blade.

"Surrender," he ordered, pointing his sword at you, his voice tense, matching his distinguished and resolute posture. "It's more satisfying to capture you alive."

I remembered all too well who you had been before you became a pirate. The woman who escaped the empire, who refused to live chained by laws she hadn't chosen. The one he let go… and swore to forget.

"If I let you go," he murmured, now in a lower voice, "everything I am will crumble."

A lie, a big, blatant lie. Hades will destroy the last thing that ever made him feel free. No matter how much he looked at your face, he couldn't find a trace of the princess who fled that day.

And you both knew that, from that moment on, there could be no victory without losing something irreplaceable.