Just a little more in detail about the story before you begin:

Pairings: Quinn/Santana, Puck/Kurt, Brittany/Santana, Rachel/Quinn
Mentions: Quinn/Finn, Quinn/Puck, Santana/Puck, Rachel/Finn
Other Characters: Artie, Mike, Will, Russell & Judy Fabray, Matt, mentions Sue
Length: 27,800+ words in 14 chapters
Rating: NC-17 for a few chapters but mostly PG-13/R
Author's Note: Dear sweet gods...finally! I have no idea how long I've been working on this but it feels like it's been a really long time.

-Chapter 1-

The smell of salt. The fresh, open air. The complete and total freedom. All things Captain Quinn Fabray loved about her life. She'd loved the ocean and had been fascinated with ships ever since she could remember. This early morning late in the summer she lay awake in her comfortable bed she had "acquired" from another ship's captain in a "deal" they'd made ("I get what I want from your ship or you get tied to a cannon and tossed overboard," she'd politely offered, the tip of her steel pressed against his chin) and she let her mind wander and drift into memories, some more innocent than others. She inhaled the scent of the ocean that lingered in her cabin and smiled. Today was going to be good.

She'd been on ships since she was born. As a matter of fact she was actually born on a ship owned by her father's trade company which is how she got her name, after the ship Quintessence. She knew the ins and outs of how the sails worked and could tie almost any knot by the age of seven. Her father couldn't be more proud. When she was on vacation from the elite private schools she attended in her home city of New York she would go with him on one of his trade routes up and down the coast of America and he promised her that when she finished school one day he would sail her away to Europe to see the finest art and taste the best food the world had to offer. When she got a little older he talked about how one day, when she married, her husband would take over the trading company and Quinn would follow in her mother's footsteps of being an obedient wife who was spoiled and showered with the best things money could buy. Quinn protested saying that she would be the one taking over the company someday. Her father just chuckled and said that someday she'd learn her place.

It all changed when she was sixteen. She began courting Finn Hudson, a young man her parents definitely approved of. His father was known as a war hero throughout the Royal Army and even though he was slightly dim, he came from good blood and a good name and that was what mattered. When it became known that another young man, Noah Puckerman, had successfully wooed Quinn one summer evening the courtship was broken and Quinn was disowned for being a "filthy harlot" and "a complete disappointment to the name of Fabray". She was just happy there were no lingering consequences in the form of a bastard child she would have to be burdened with for the rest of her life.

Quinn did the one thing she could think of to do at that point and found a captain, Sue Sylvester, who allowed women to work on her ship, the Cheerio, and immediately joined up. She traded away her beautiful pale blue dress she had been wearing when she was disowned for black pants, sensible shoes and a few loose white shirts. The captain gave her an old piece of steel and Quinn fell in love with the weight in her hands. She practiced every day with whoever was willing. Ducking, tucking, rolling. It took very little time for her to become proficient in swordplay.

Quinn met another girl her age on the ship and they immediately gravitated towards each other. Santana Lopez had worked her way up in the ranks and Quinn knew if she stuck by Santana and shared her knowledge of trade routes and how professional ships worked that she would soon be second to the captain. And in a year's time, she was. Santana didn't seem to mind much, mostly because when she would try to protest Quinn would shut her up by bedding her for hours on end until the Latina girl could barely walk. Quinn knew what she wanted and she would do anything to get it, Santana included.

Quinn was twenty when the captain retired and left the ship in her hands. She hired a few new crew members because although she did respect Captain Sylvester very much, the cook was horrible and served very little food. Sylvester insisted it kept the crew in shape and on their toes. While on her search for new crew members Quinn somehow managed to run into the young man that stole her innocence and got her into this whole mess when she was sixteen. She reluctantly gave him the cook's job after the crew tasted his food at a tavern and demanded they get whoever prepared the meal as their cook. He said it was no deal unless his young "assistant cook", a very feminine boy with pink rosy cheeks named Kurt Hummel, came with him. Quinn made the deal but could tell right away that Kurt had absolutely no cooking skill at all and designated him as her personal messenger. She quickly grew attached to him even if he was kind of annoying.

When Quinn recalled all of these things on occasion she didn't have any regrets, really. She was captaining a very successful ship at the age of twenty-five, she had Santana as her first mate and occasional lover, she wasn't rich like she would have been had she just followed her father's orders and saved herself for her husband but she still had quite a bit of wealth tucked under her belt. She'd just finished "visiting" a few ports in Europe to get away from the colonies for a while because her ship was constantly being hunted by the Royal Navy. It had been almost a year and she was ready to return to sell off the treasures they'd "acquired" in Europe and so they were sailing through the Atlantic on their way back home.

"Captain!"

Quinn opened her eyes and looked over at the messenger boy. She rolled her eyes at his choice of clothing for the day. His shirt was pink and he had a gray jacket complete with tails over it and of course his tight black pants and shiny black shoes.

"What kind of color is that for a pirate?" Quinn grumbled at Kurt's bright pink shirt. "Are you trying to look like a mermaid or does it just come naturally?"

"The launderer mixed in one of my red handkerchiefs in with my white shirts," Kurt sighed. "I'm not too disappointed though, I think it's a rather magnificent color. I'm not sure if Puck agrees…he ripped the other one clean off me last night." He smirked.

Quinn groaned. "Have you talked to the navigator this morning?" she asked, getting out of her warm bed into the cool air of her cabin. She stepped behind the screen in one corner and changed from her white nightdress into her loose black pants, white shirt, long red vest, and black knee high boots while Kurt rattled off latitudes and longitudes. Quinn stepped out from behind the divider and went to her desk to look at the map and plot the points Kurt had recited.

Kurt made his way to the table in the middle of Quinn's cabin where a large glass container held a small orange octopus that was swimming around. He carefully shifted the lid and then pulled a few live shrimp out of his small leather bag and dropped them into the tank.

"Good morning to you, Juliet!" Kurt cooed.

"Why do you insist on speaking to my octopus as if it can understand you, Hummel?" Quinn paused looking at her charts to pull her hair up in a bun.

"Because she needs someone to talk to."

"I will never understand you."

Quinn turned her attention back to her desk and dipped her quill in ink again before scribbling a few notes in her captain's log and checked her calendar.

"Eighteenth of August," she mumbled while she wrote. "Year seventeen forty-three. Weather patterns normal for location…"

Kurt sighed and moved away from the glass container. "Exactly how much longer are we going to be out here, Captain?" Kurt whined. "We're running low on soap."

Quinn looked at her charts again. "A month if the wind keeps up, month and a half at the longest. Carolina will be on the horizon before you know it." Quinn dropped her quill and grabbed her belt containing her sword and strapped it to her waist, sword hanging to the left. She strapped her loaded pistol on and it hung to the right and grabbed her worn leather three-cornered hat.

"We need soap."

"Assuming his European trade routes haven't changed, which they never do, we're due to run into a cargo ship soon," Quinn said, looking at the map again. "Let's go see what my worthless crew is up to this morning."

Kurt sighed and followed Quinn from her cabin out onto the main deck. The crew was working diligently scrubbing every inch of the ship. Santana wasn't at her post by the navigator at the wheel and Quinn knew exactly where she was. Judging by the look on Kurt's face, he knew too. The pair made their way up the steps to the quarter deck where the navigator was checking his compass. Their suspicions of Santana's whereabouts were confirmed when the Latina emerged from the hatch that opened to the bottom of the ship and a hand reached up and smacked her backside. She squealed and looked up at Quinn and Kurt who were staring down at her furiously. The Latina only smirked and climbed the remaining steps up to the main deck and then ascended to the quarter deck.

"Have a good morning?" Quinn growled.

The Latina glanced at Kurt.

Quinn turned to Santana and grabbed the collar of her shirt and pulled her in close.

"I'm getting sick of having to tell you this you little harlot," Quinn hissed. "My bed is the only one you lie in, Santana. And you especially don't lie in Puck's."

Santana leaned in and pressed her lips to Quinn's. The captain growled and pulled away.

"I'm the captain of this ship and you will follow my orders. Sylvester left this ship to me. You are mine."

Santana shrugged. Quinn dipped her hand down into the Latina's shirt and groped her for good measure.

"My bed tonight," Quinn demanded before stepping over to the navigator.

"When someone calls for me I answer." Santana nodded.

Quinn looked down onto the main deck at a few members of the crew who had stopped their work to watch the scene.

"What are you all gawking at you filthy dogs?" Quinn yelled. "Back to work before I hang every last one of you!" There was a collective gasp before everyone scrambled back to their chores.

Quinn talked with the day navigator, Artie (a young man who couldn't walk due to a swordfight gone horribly wrong but could navigate with astounding accuracy), about their course to the Carolinas and the wind and other weather related things while Kurt stood by and glared holes into Santana's head. Santana slipped her arm around Quinn's waist and settled her chin on the captain's shoulder.

...............

While Quinn was enjoying her lunch in her cabin Kurt burst in unannounced and Quinn made a mental note to reprimand him for it later by taking away his soap for a week.

"What do you want, Hummel?" Quinn wiped her mouth and finished the large glass of wine before her.

"They've spotted a ship, Captain."

Quinn dropped her fork and hurried out onto the deck. She ascended the mast to the crow's nest and grabbed the spare telescope from its case that was strapped to the railing.

"How long do you think until we catch her, Captain?" Mike, the day lookout, asked.

Quinn looked out and sure enough there was a cargo ship flying her father's flag. She could see the layout of it in her head because all of her father's ships were exactly the same. She knew where each individual cargo item was stored and exactly how to get it. The ship was deep in the water which meant it the hull was full and they could catch up to it easily.

"We could do it right now if we wanted, she's deep in the water and moving slow. We'll wait until nightfall though, as always. And it's the Glee which means Schuester which means an easy capture and offload."

The man nodded and Quinn climbed back down to the main deck and then up to Santana and the navigator, Kurt followed close behind.

"Have them run up the French flag while there's daylight," she told Santana. "We'll stay far behind until nightfall but I don't want to take any chances."

Santana nodded and went down to the main deck to start barking orders.

"Keep them in your sights," Quinn told Artie. "You know the drill at nightfall. Follow the lights and get up to the port side."

"Aye, Cap'n."

This was definitely a good day.