AN: Hi, this is a Vane x Eleanor backstory. It's also been posted in AO3 and tumblr under saltycrow. Hope you guys enjoy this!

The very first time Charles Vane laid eyes on her, she was but a girl of thirteen. Eleanor Guthrie. The men around him whispered as a small thing walking their way approached. A blonde little girl she was the first time she walked past him, he standing with his crew just returned from long weeks of blunder. Her walk was determined and un-ladylike to say the least, her hand was holding up her skirts to make her march easier, revealing her stockings in the process but paying absolutely no mind to it. With the free hand she was ripping the pale bonnet from her head. If he had looked away from her, he could have seen Mr. Scott trying to catch the girl, yards behind her. Alas, he did not look away from him, and in a moment he was not the only one watching, for her determined marched slowed and she turned her head to face the pirates whose looks she surely must have felt on her. She looked right to him, for some strange reason, the look was unwavering, unnerved and most of all fearless. The corner of her mouth lifted almost in an involuntary fashion. She nodded her head to them. "Gentlemen," she addressed them, and turned to continue her fast paced stride down the beach. That was their very first encounter, a moment both Charles Vane and Eleanor Guthrie would return from time to time, both to marvel how such a small, almost insignificant rendezvous could have caused all that followed.

Eleanor Guthrie had received the best possible education from the best possible tutors her father had managed to ship to Nassau. She was taught in the arts of music, painting and French. The best possible education indeed, for a woman. Her father paid no mind in getting her a tutor in maths or history. Oh no, those were a waste of time for what would a husband do with a wife who could count? No, what he would want was a pretty song bird who could fill her time with painting the same landscape she could see from her window over and over again until the point of her death. Had Mr. Guthrie known hid daughter at all, he would have known this was not the life his daughter wanted, or was meant, to lead. So it was up to Eleanor herself to fulfill her destination and learn the things no one was going to teach her. She took great pride in it. And as she reached her sixteenth birthday, she put down the books as not all things could be learned from the pages. Some things you had to learn yourself, in practice. One of those things being running the trade in Nassau. It was her fate, her destiny, the thing she was meant to do, and what Eleanor Guthrie set out to do, she meant to achieve. By any means necessary.

Charles Vane on the other hand hadn't had any sort of education in the sense Eleanor Guthrie had. His tutors had been the people trying to put him down since childhood. Those were the people who kept tripping him down, and made him rise up again and again. However much he despised those years in his life, he could not deny the effect they'd had in molding him to be the person he was today, a member of the feared Blackbeard's crew, and his trusted mentee. Pirate's life came easy for him, natural like breathing. Strength and will were the currencies in this world, and he had plenty of those. Somewhere between all the pirating at the seas and trying to fill his needs in the Inn, he found himself in the need to rum, and in the Guthrie Inn. It was overflowing with people, so many men eating and drinking, making a terrible raucous. It was not a place where Charles would have ever thought to have his second encounter with Eleanor Guthrie. Not that he had ever imagined their first encounter being on a beach, yet somehow this one stroke him as something else. It had been three whole years since their first encounter and Charles had not paid it any mind in those years. Yet now that she was here right in front of his eyes again, he could not seem to be able to tear his eyes off her. The contrast to their first encounter was striking. Gone was the proper and fine dress she'd wore that day, and the bonnet she had ripped off. The hair on her head was the same, yet nothing else was. This time it was not a little stubbornly marching girl in front of her, it was a young beautiful woman, with that same determined look on her face as the poured ale for the men, dressed in a more practical attire than Charles had ever seen a lady wearing, not that he had met that many ladies of her social standing. This time she did not look up to him, and like a fly to a light, he walked to the counter, to her.

Working the tavern floor was exhausting work, Eleanor admitted that to even Mr. Scott, but she refused to give it up no matter how much her ward tried to make it so. With her iron will, she got her way. The business of the place meant hard work, but it also meant many people she could observe. Knowing the people in this place was the key to making business here, she knew it.

"There you go, gentlemen," she said and put down the ale for the men on the counter with a pretty smile she had learned by observing the other people manning the bar. The service smile.

"You keep calling people gentlemen when in reality there's not a gentle bone in their body," a deep raspy voice said quietly, clearly meant to only catch her attention. She turned around only to find herself staring into the blue eyes of no other than Charles Vane. He was leaning on the counter, only a foot away from her.

"If one spends money on my establishment, they're all ladies and gentlemen. No matter their standing. All money is equally received here." Eleanor replied. "So what can I get you, Mr. Vane?" The corners of his mouth tugged a bit, searching for a smile.

"Rum," was all he said, no pleasantries for her. She turned to grab the rum and huffed to herself.

"Here you go, sir," she said with the most forced service smile she could muster, which seemed to amuse him for some reason, but he said nothing, just took his rum, left some coins on the counter and disappeared into the crowd. Eleanor huffed again, for something in that man had managed to get a rise out of her. It wasn't unusual for the customers to be rude and dismissive toward her, yet something about his behavior got under her skin. She tried to force the irritation out of her mind yet it kept nagging on the back of her mind for the rest of the evening. In the early morning hours the tavern was finally starting to clear of people. She sighed of secret relief, envisioning her feather bed and cushions. She took out the broom as her final task of the night to swipe of the sand the patrons brought in with their boots, and only then noticed the corner table was not unoccupied. There he was, with his feet on the table, like he owned the goddamn place, which of course irritated her to no end, for it was she who owned the place. The smoke of the cigar was still thick in the air as the put it out and finally removed his fucking boots from the table, standing up just few feet away from her.

"Have a pleasant evening, Mr. Vane," she said through that fraudulent smile she had been wearing all evening, and had to wear for the one last time tonight, for him. He took a step closer, the smell of smoke and salt invading her nostrils. She swallowed.

"Don't have to wear that smile for me, Ms. Guthrie," he said as if he'd just read her mind. And in a split second it melted away from her face, which oddly enough merited her with a smile from Charles Vane. He was not a man known for smiling, but right then Eleanor truly thought he should be.

"It's Eleanor," she said, for some unknown reason even to herself.

"Charles," he replied and offered his hand, which she took without hesitation. The hand was calloused and hardened with all the work at the sea, and the grip was strong. She tried to match it but could not help but to be aware of her own small dainty hand that was smooth as silk. She was the first to let go, but their fingertips lingered against each other for the shortest of moments.

"Goodnight," he rasped and turned his back on her and walked out. She was left there in the middle of the empty tavern, trying to process the events that had occurred. Even then it had felt significant on some level, but neither of them could fully grasp the significance of those two first encounters at the times they took place. Those meanings would be clear to them much later, when it became obvious to both, perhaps more to the other, that their fates would forever be intertwined.