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Guaxinim sits, tiller in hand, at the helm of the small boat they had dubbed Isaura, a sailboat that he captains with the confidence of someone long used to the sea. He seems at peace out here on the water, with the rolling of the waves and the silhouette of the island disappearing on the horizon, the weight he's carried on his shoulders dissipating with the lull of the sea.
Pac doesn't feel the same. The further they get from the island, the further locked within himself he feels. He's restless. Anxious. Paranoid. Not even a day at sea and things are starting to feel unreal, like he's only halfway attached to his body. Every slap of the waves against the hull sounds like a gunshot, and he's been focusing mostly on not flinching ever since Mike started giving him worried looks around the third time it happened. It's been hours since then.
Guaxinim says he can read the stars, and that by heading Northwest they'll reach Cuba in a few days, and there they can disappear for long enough that the authorities will have no clue where to look. It's a solid plan, he knows. Every coastal town and port back home in Brazil would be on high alert for a suspicious vessel, and the shorter voyage would never be worth the higher chance of being thrown right back in that hell-hole of a prison. But staring out at the open horizon and endless water is getting to him, he thinks.
To add to his troubles, they have no fresh water and barely any food. Just some passion fruit, guavas, and a sense of dwindling hope. He hasn't touched any of the fruit either, leaving them mostly for Guaxinim who is the only one among them who can actually navigate and sail.
Somewhere in first hour of their journey, Mike had ask Guaxinim to teach him enough that if anything were to happen, he would be able to get them to shore, but Guaxinim had laughed him off, asking Mike if he thought that he was in the business of making himself expendable.
BANG. The boat comes down off a small swell and lands right on top of another. Pac grabs the gunwale tighter and tries not to think about the gunshot. Or the cave. Or Cell screaming his name.
His mind feels dizzy with the enormous amount of water surrounding them in every direction and he thinks this must be what it's like to be held by God: a consuming vastness, so unrelenting in its presence that you feel as if you're being swallowed whole.
He wishes Cell could have seen it. Maybe he would have liked the freedom. At least, that's what Guaxinim calls it; To Pac, it feels like an utter lack of control.
As the buzzing in his head and chest travels down to his hands, he wonders if maybe this is what JV felt like in his last moments: everything that led up to that moment playing through his head and the world entirely too big. Maybe he can get some rest now that Cell is dead, but Pac's uncertain whether JV could ever rest at all.
JV may have been using them, but it doesn't mean that he deserved the end he got, or that Pac doesn't feel sick to his stomach when he thinks of how much blood covered the walls and soaked Cell's coveralls.
He wonders if Cell will haunt him now, too.
The need to scream or sob or curl up into Mike's side, to cry into his shoulder until he falls asleep bubbles up inside his throat until he feels like he's drowning. Normally he would give into the instinct, but his body feels locked in place and the buzzing in his head only worsens thinking about moving. Besides, he's still a little jaded towards Mike after everything that's happened.
He's actually pretty sure he hates Mike right now. If he thinks about it, it was Mike's fault for saying they should steal for more than just food and chump change. It was Mike who got them tied in with Ryan and why they kept doing bigger and bigger jobs. It was Mike who broke out of his holding cell and killed that officer. It was Mike who convinced Pac to try and escape with him, Mike who ruined his chance for a shorter sentence and got them both shoved in Alcatraz. And of the two of them, it was Mike who agreed not to tell Cell about the plan.
Maybe if Mike hadn't been so ready to betray Cell, maybe Cell wouldn't have killed JV, wouldn't have tried to get him and Mike to kill each other, and wouldn't be dead right now because the only options they gave him were to either kill himself or starve in the cave they had trapped him in. But the boat could only carry three people and Guaxinim was the only one who knew how to sail. So, if Cell were still alive, either Pac would have to let Mike kill him, or he'd have to kill Mike.
Only a few hours ago, Pac really had wanted to kill Mike, and if Cell had given the knife to Pac instead, maybe it would have happened. If Cell had lingered a second longer with Pac after saying that he trusted him, and if he hadn't given Pac that apple and he was just a little bit hungrier, just a little more desperate, maybe it would have happened. But despite how ready he was to please Cell, he's not sure he would have been able to go through with killing him. Throwing Mike to the detective for a lighter sentence was easy, but he can't imagine seriously sticking a knife into his best friend, even if Mike was willing to do the same to him.
But Cell is dead, and instead of killing Mike, Pac had walked away while Cell screamed his name, and he had run to the boat to leave the island while Cell had used his only bullet to blow his own brains out.
His stomach flips and he throws his upper half over the side of the boat and dry heaves over the water. There's nothing in his stomach to come up.
He distantly feels Mike grabbing at him and pulling him back into the boat, and he goes limply, collapsing into his friend's side.
He feels empty. Drained. Like he needs to scream. He wants to ask why Mike was so ready to kill him and why Mike had thought it was a good idea to kill Cell instead. The words catch in his throat though, and Mike's arms coming around him are an old balm. The sob that was building in this throat bubbles out and he chokes once, wetly, before he shoves his face into Mike's neck and silently cries. Guaxinim is silent next to them, and despite his best efforts, he doesn't even have the energy to feel embarrassed.
Honestly, he doesn't understand why Cell or Mike didn't just kill him, why his life was worth more than Cell’s.
Maybe Cell is haunting him already.
His stomach drops as the boat rides up a swell and slams again into another —BANG— and he flinches.
It's likely, he thinks. He's pretty sure he can hear his voice in the waves.