Disclaimer: I do not own anyting related to Pirates of the Caribbean, not matter how much wish otherwise.
Summary: They'd both left marks on each other, yes, but were they just scars or something more? How an urchin became a pirate, and a good child a cut-throat. Their tale started out happily enough. AU & Beckett and Jack centric.
"We've had dealings in the past. And we've each left our mark on the other."
-Cutler Beckett
T is for Traitor, P is for Pirate
He lay on the floor in chains, silently observing something beyond the bars of his cage. His normally neatly trimmed and chin length hair was askew, clumped together with the sweat that poured off of him in waves. To himself and everyone around him—he was a mess. But, just this once, he didn't seem to mind at all.
He groaned and lifted himself into a seated position, taking care not to rattle the chains around his legs, and the cuffs on his arms. His body still smarted from when he'd struggled and twisted trying to take them off with sheer force. He tiredly smiled. Nothing he felt now amounted to what had dumped him in there in the first place. The smell of smoke still clung to his skin and soot covered clothes and brought a constant reminder of his loss.
CLANG!
He jolted backwards, slamming his back against the rundown brick wall that was just behind him. Nobody had come to visit him since he'd been thrown down into the jail cell and so he was suprised that someone would want to visit him.
Three pairs of perfectly polished shoes met his eyes first and a pleasant scent (certainly, considering the smell of vomit and waste wasn't to pleasing to the senses) wafted through the open door and knocked him off balance for a moment. It's had been a while since he'd taken in the sweet aroma of the sea. Who knew when he'd smell it again? He breathed in deeply and coughed. It seemed he wouldn't get a true sniff of it while stuck in such squalor.
The feet snapped together, neatly and all in line. He had the urge to quip bitingly about something concerning little toy soldiers and something or other. He didn't know. His head felt a tad too spinny to be thinking things all the way through.
A cough echoed through the small chambers. He nodded absently, focusing on the particularly stubborn spot of soot that wouldn't remove its person from the tip of his boot. When a second cough broke the silence that had been constructed from their arrival, he knew they wouldn't be leaving too soon.
"Yes?" he asked quietly, waiting for the list of charges that were about to be read off. He didn't know if he'd be one of the unlucky ones who'd be charged with more than one crime—to lessen the load the nobles would say. Something about not finding all perpetrators for all crimes made the empire look bad, so they'd just pick up some random culprit and add a few charges to satisfy other cases—the King would be happy to see and tell just how great and orderly his people were. He found himself giving a snort to accompany the thought. The King never came, so why bother pleasing him?
"Jack—Jack it's me!" the whisper was urgent, and more than just faintly familiar so he pulled himself out of his thoughts and shook aside his dirty curtain of hair. The pointed nose and insistent eyes begging for a response. Yes, it was Cutler, though why he was here instead of one of the Admirals or other lowly law spreader, he didn't know. Seeing the bars between them, he had to bite back a laugh. There was no reason in it though, it was just a whim. The spinning head before him and the blending colors of the scenery he was casually observing was funny.
"Jack! What's wrong?" the shout followed him into oblivion as his world went black. There, he laughed again. Why was the world so funny?
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He was a child. Half-bred, but still a child. So when the townspeople of the little seaside town gave him a little morsel of food for himself and his mother and shooed him away with looks less than kindly, he took it as a part of the mysteries of life and scurried on his way home.
He'd be bleeding sometimes, from a fall or scrape. Others times, when the other children decided to have some fun when their toys became boring. He didn't care. He'd just run as fast as he could home with that day's earnings, and fall asleep with a large smile as his mother sang him a lullaby goodnight.
When he'd wake up his cuts would be bound with some extra material laying around the shack and his mother, her skin a beautiful dark contrast to the morning sky, would be humming and preparing a little something for him to keep his energy up while he ran around searching for some extra bit of food. But, one day that cycle changed.
He'd been out begging again, earning strange (he didn't understand it then), looks from strangers. Funny how that would turn out. One woman, really pretty he had said, approached quietly and placed a shilling in his hand before walking away. He smiled, and she smiled a pretty little smile before turning and extending her parasol as the sun rose higher.
She was pulled aside by the grungy looking woman he always bumped into during his trips, not that he was one talk, and by the conversation's end, the smile was gone and replaced with a scowl. He didn't know what to make of it then, so he walked on. It had become an almost daily occurrence, but he as glad at receiving any money at all.
The closer he had gotten to the sea and the town's dock, the more shouting he'd hear. His father wasn't due to be back for a while, so he ran quickly to see what it was stirring such a fuss. A majestic ship, a quality of which likes he had yet to see elsewhere was moored ,and a trio of figures stood just at the edge of the plank allowing exit from the ship.
His dirty brown hair was shaken as he turned his head left and right to see someone who would explain what was going on. No one would, so he took it upon himself to approach as close as he would dare and spy a closer peek at the three people who had arrived.
They were surrounded by a large crowd who were each taking turns bending in half and mumbling little comments quietly to the trio. He personally thought it was a silly thing to do. Why would you bend down just to speak to a person? The closer you were to someone's face, he reasoned, the better the chance they'd be able to hear you. He nodded and held in a snicker. His mother would get a laugh at hearing about what he saw. It wasn't often that he was the one able to tell stories. He skipped away delightedly. A pair of curious eyes followed him until he disappeared from sight.
His mother would be happy, he was sure, and maybe the dizzy spells she had started to have would fade into a memory he could store away to think about when it was far in the past enough to chide his mother about. When he was bigger, of course, and strong enough to stop pirates from doing their evil deeds.
A thought struck him as he passed the bar and heard none of the shouts of the men who were normally rowdy and loud. They were a nice understanding lot who usually brought him word of his father's adventures, and he typically left with a shilling or two to give to his mother. It was quiet; so he brushed the strange feeling he got from the silence, and figured that they had probably gone home to sleep. A good idea he thought, but he stood still in the center of the street, lost in thought.
If his father was a pirate, did that mean he was evil too? A grimy hand met the side of his face and he growled. His father was his father, and he probably wasn't a pirate anyway. The people who followed him and stopped him from staying at home longer were probably mistaken. He was a bad person for even thinking so ill of he person who made his mother smile for days even after his many departures. Anyone that made her smile was a good thing, as she usually didn't smile when the people who lived nearby talked to her.
He continued his run now eager more than ever to tell his mother the news. He didn't notice the blood and bullet shells that littered the floor of the tavern. Nor the group of people who emerged in clean uniforms and disciplined poses. The guns clinked against each other as they walked single file away from the bar and towards the dock. They were on their way to clear the way for nobility from their mother country, they wouldn't fail in cleaning the filth away from this dump.
A/N-It's a little plot bunny that wouldn't leave me alone, so I decided to write it out. Its an AU where Jack and Beckett have a bit more history than was explained in the movie. Cheers!