Songfic time!
Found a gorgeous Lord of the Rings music vid of this song (the version sung by Mary Chapin Carpenter on the Fly Away Home soundtrack) about a little while ago, and it's been in my head ever since. So, here goes nothing. Time moves a little strangely toward the end of this, and I skip around some lines, but you're an intelligent reader; you can figure it out (and if you're not an intelligent reader, then I don't care). Am using the extended versions of the scenes from the DVD, because I like 'em better than the theatrical cut.
Semi-pseudo-sequel to "Almost."
Reading over this, I'm pretty sure it doesn't go anywhere. Ah well. These things happen. Please review so I can fix it.
***
Ten Thousand Miles
The water's warm and soothing as they wade to shore, but Captain Jack Sparrow doesn't have time for warm and soothing now, not when the Pearl's drifting away on the horizon with that bastard Barbossa and that idiot boy who just had to take things into his own hands. The water slaps at his legs like it's teasing him, like it knows it's carrying his Pearl away from him. He turns unsteadily to watch his fair lady go.
Those grimy strips of cloth that hang from the mast are waving to him, and it's a sad sort of wave, like a man waving to his sweetheart while he's being marched to the gallows. But he's the one being marched to the gallows, really, and the Pearl his sweetheart what's left behind. He's too tired to try to form any coherent thoughts, too drained to slap on a stoic expression or even a cheeky grin. Everything planned out, simple as dirt, and bloody Will had to throw a stick into things and make a bloody mess of it. He'd have strangled the kid, had he not been standing on a nameless island in the middle of the Caribbean with the kid receding in the distance on his own bonny Pearl. With Barbossa. Wretched scum.
"That's the second time I've had to watch that man sail away with my ship," he says to no one in particular.
Fare thee well, my own true love,
Fare well for a while; I'm goin' away,
But I'll be back, though I go ten thousand miles.
His things are drying in the sun, propped on sticks or laid out on the sand, but with the pistol, he takes special care. He isn't quite sure why. There was a time when he counted himself lucky enough that he might actually get a chance to use it, but luck be a strange lady to Captain Jack, flirting with him one minute and slapping him, sending him reeling, the next.
Will's lass has come full circle around the island, though she's barely registering the fact now. She tells Jack that he was going to betray them, that he was going to sell them out for the Pearl. He would have done that gladly, but it weren't his plan, and he's getting a bit sick of these Port Royal ingrates second-guessing his every move.
If they were third-guessing, maybe he'd give them a bit of credit.
They don't understand, though, what it means to love that mass of decks and masts and sails until it hurts. They don't know how much every bit of him aches to be back, how much it stung to be sitting across from Barbossa, calling himself captain, perverting that cabin by his very presence. They don't understand, or they'd be just as willing to sacrifice everything for half a moment back at the helm. Idiots.
He can't quite bring himself to stare out to that spot in the distance where the Pearl sank out of sight, disappeared into nothingness.
Ten thousand miles, my own true love,
Ten thousand miles or more,
He's found the cache of rum, blessed rum, and told the lass how the he was rescued last time, and now she wants to know if there be any truth in her bedtime stories about the infamous Jack Sparrow, wants to know if the infamous Jack Sparrow vanished under the eyes of seven agents of the East India Company, sacked Nassau port without even firing a shot.
"Truth?" says he.
He rolls up his right sleeve to display the ugly blotch of skin, the prominent "P" stamped on his forearm, in mockery of the tattooed bird, flying free above it, and remembers how long he tried to convince himself to be proud of it, not think of it as punishment for a moment of carelessness.
He rolls up his left sleeve to reveal the reddish lightening bolt of mangled flesh, remembers the searing pain engulfing that arm, as if his bones were ablaze, remembers the way it just wouldn't stop bleeding, remembers the way he prayed to whatever god might be listening that he be allowed to die, just to end the hurting. For a time, he was terrified that the skin wouldn't even knit back together (The infamous Jack Sparrow, terrified? Certainly not). That arm hung at his side, limp and useless, for months, and the pain has never quite dulled into nothingness.
(The lass steps back, trying to mask a sickened expression. Probably wishing she hadn't asked, but she can't pull out of it now)
He pulls back the right edge of his shirt to uncover two perfect, red-rimmed circles, remembers telling himself to keep moving, keep moving, the buggers haven't killed me yet, keep moving. He remembers prying the lumps of metal from his chest until the blood ran freely, and all he could do was breathe in relief. Buggers haven't killed me yet.
He bares his soul to the ungrateful lass who doesn't know what to do except stare. Truth?
No truth at all.
The rocks may melt, and the seas may burn,
If I should not return.
And the ungrateful lass isn't so bad after all as they wheel about the bonfire with gleeful abandon, voices rising to the heavens with the thin smoky column. It's a great song, a don't-matter-what-sort-of-voice-you're-singin'-with song.
Through blurred eyes, Jack sees the girl dancing through the flames, honey-colored hair glowing in the firelight, and they hook arms, spinning each other silly. He's genuinely surprised; straight, proper girl like that, thin as they come, and she's still on her feet after drinking like she were born a Tortuga wench, livin' there all her life. He watches the white of her shift press against her slender, wild form as she dances and wonders how well she'll handle on this much rum; Will would kill him if he knew, of course, but it was bloody Will who got them stuck on this rock in the first place, so he's got no one to blame but himself.
Thinking that out takes a good deal of concentration, and Jack isn't quite sure he can think that hard standing up. The lass lands on the sand next to him, holding up the rum like a trophy.
He finds himself talking about the Pearl. Maybe he's feeling guilty that he's replaced his own bonny lass with Turner's, but he can't stop talking about that damned ship. Freedom, he tells Elizabeth; that's what a ship is. Funny, he doesn't add, how a word can mean so much and still fail so completely. Now, in an alcoholic haze, he's finally able to look out to that spot where the sky, peppered with stars, meets the sea, where the Pearl's masts faded beyond view. It leaves him feeling sick and empty, lifeless, despite the rum. He's hungering for the feel of his lady moving beneath him, craving her touch under his skilled hand.
He's not quite sure what she's saying, but the lass' head is suddenly on his shoulder, her tangled, honey blonde hair scratching his neck.
His arm snakes around her shoulders. About bloody time.
Oh, don't you see that lonesome dove
Sitting on an ivy tree?
And Jack's dreaming; he knows he's dreaming, although he couldn't tell you what was happening when he fell asleep. Normally, Jack's drowned-in-rum dreams are pleasant enough (he's had enough experience with them to say this with certainty), but this is a queer one to be sure. The first thing he can see is the Pearl. Every perfect image in his mind's eye all blended together, that's what he sees. And he's looking at her from below. He's chained, hand and foot, at the bottom of the ocean, lying on his back, but the ocean's all rum. Weird. Tasty, but weird.
He's gulping it down, and it tastes funny. Tastes off. Onboard the Pearl, he can see Barbossa's men swarming the deck like flies on a carcass. Jack's crew is tied 'round the mainmast. Gibbs and Anamaria are quietly fuming. Cotton's parrot is trying to squawk something down to Jack, but the rum's garbling everything.
There's someone else on the ship; it's a fair figure in golden flames, dancing about the deck. She's leaping and twisting, now exultant, now tortured. She's the most beautiful thing Jack has ever seen. Her hands stretch towards the heavens, trying to catch the stars, and yellow sparks fly from her fingertips, leaving a glowing trail behind her, but something's wrong, and the sparks are blowing overboard, and the sea's ablaze. The Pearl goes up like a torch; Gibbs sees it, and Anamaria is trying to help Marty slip out from the rope, but nothing's moving fast enough, and Barbossa's lot don't care. They're dancing, wicked eyes bright with glee.
Jack can see now that the fiery maid is definitely Miss Elizabeth Swann, and she's not dancing any more; she's swimming down to him, she's astride him, running nimble fingers over his chest, up the back of his neck, combing through his hair. She's showering him with a thousand burning kisses.
Definitely the more typical drowned-in-rum dream.
He closes his eyes and leans up to meet her dark lips, but he opens his eyes, and there's only the Pearl, all submerged. She just keeps burning, though, won't stop, and Jack's crew is aboard, though their flesh be burnt away. They're a strange sight: Barbossa's skeleton crew all blue with moonlight and Jack's, their bones as red as hellfire.
The flame's reaching down to where Jack lies, now, and he can feel it wrapping around him, eating him alive. And the burning figurehead on the prow of the Pearl, the lady with the bird cupped in her hands, she's shedding hot, salty tears that float away into the drink as she dips down to meet him. That's the last thing he sees before all goes black and another dream claims him.
She's weeping for her own true love
As I shall weep for mine
Barbossa is dead by Jack's pistol, the curse is now another bad memory, and they're rowing out from Isla de Muerta to the HMS Dauntless. Is it a victory? No one seems quite sure. There's right proper cheering from the Dauntless, but Turner and his girl can't seem to look at each other, their gazes glassy and blank, the mask of duty firmly fastened over their downcast faces. He didn't hear exactly what the kid said to her, but given Will's track record, Jack's pretty sure it was something incredibly stupid. Shame, that.
The girl says she's sorry, Jack; sorry, she says. It's a nice sentiment, Jack thinks, but she doesn't have a blessed clue.
He's sitting on the pile of swag that he collected from the cave, the flashy, jeweled crown perched on his head (but oh, what he wouldn't give to have his old, beaten-up hat back again), gold and silver chains in layers around his neck and wrists. He shouldn't be surprised, really. Keep to the code, he told Gibbs. Aye, the code, said he, and keep to the code he did.
"They done what's right by them," he hears himself saying numbly. And what's worse, he's not just saying it. He knows it's the truth, and he knows it's fair payment. He owes them, and they have collected what is rightfully theirs. He can't dispute that. Were he in their shoes, he might do the same. He's in no position to judge.
It's perfectly fair, what they took.
But he'd still like his lady love back, please.
O come ye back, my own true love,
Jack is impressed with the boy's initiative. He is; he'd certainly hoped for this, coming from Bootstrap Bill Turner's son, but he hadn't been sure until the sword flew in under his toes. Now, however, they're at a standstill. Norrington's men won't shoot; Elizabeth has sided with them, and neither Norrington nor the governor would risk firing now, but each side is waiting for the other to make the first move, paralyzed and helpless. Jack's starting to wonder if he can smooth talk his way out of this.
Then he sees Cotton's parrot. It's all Jack can do to keep his jaw from hitting the cobblestone floor.
"Highly improbable" is a phrase that springs to mind. "Please be for real" is another.
And stay a while with me
And of course it's for real, and the triumphant Captain Jack Sparrow is being pulled out of the rocky waters of Port Royal. They give him a somewhat less than graceful landing, but he's so dizzy with relief that he can ignore that for now. Gibbs hauls him to his feet, says something about having figured that the code were more like "guidelines."
Jack knew there was a reason he liked Gibbs.
Captain Sparrow, says Anamaria, and for a painful second, Jack is a bit worried, for Anamaria's not the type to forget when certain parties named Jack Sparrow owe her; she's a fierce girl, tenacious, and worth more than her weight in your average brawl. But her smile is mild, not malicious, as she drapes the coat around his shoulders like a cloak. The Black Pearl is yours, says she.
An absolute angel, that Anamaria.
He tries to keep a straight face but can't stop the smile as he saunters over to the wheel, and the crew looks on, the light in their eyes the kind you see in someone who knows he's just handed someone the best gift in the world. Jack's hesitant smile fades; serious, studious bliss etches into the lines of his brow, eyes and mouth as he runs a hand over her smooth, polished wood, and he's home, love, home in the arms of his own bonny lass, his lady love, his Pearl.
If I had a friend on all this earth,
You've been a friend to me.
He hums a few bars of the song that Miss Elizabeth taught him on the island. It's a fine song, even without the rum. Maybe he'll even make good that promise to teach it to the rest of the crew. He remembers something else she said, though, something else that seems just as fine without the rum. He smiles a smile that only reaches his eyes as he remembers it, as he silently echoes the toast she made.
To freedom, thinks Jack, and he snaps the compass shut.