A/N I wrote this for a friend after AWE came out as a kind of exercise to work out why Barbossa seemed to have chnged his mind about the Code. Hope you all like it.
More Guidelines Than Rules
Perhaps it was being dead that made it easier. Somehow, when there was only the moonlight and your own rotting flesh before you, everything paled into insignificance. The desire to feel was so strong that flouting the laws once so close to your now still heart seemed the work of a moment; an action of slim consequence compared to the seeming eternity of nothing which stretched out before you.
But then there was cold and heat and light and dark and life, so suddenly and vibrantly laid out before you once more. And the code?
The code was still there, despite all your protestations that it made no real difference. That was when you discovered that the code was who you were, who all of you truly were; the thing that made you different from other men, the thing that made you a pirate.
Of course the fact that the code would give you exactly what you wanted didn't hurt either. The court, the code, calypso, they couldn't lose. As the Pearl drew nearer Shipwreck Cove, Barbossa smiled to himself.
