Salvation

By Naic

Please read and leave a comment, it will be much appreciated! Rated M for mention of drinking, drugs as well as men having sex.

The sea is vast and unforgiving; dark and relentless. On the sea the hearts and minds of men are constantly tested in a harsh battle for survival. Taming the wild ocean has always been the ultimate test of strength for the individual as well as the nation.

But the sea is also beautiful and full of mystery. On it there is peace for a troubled soul and escape from the difficulties of life. When looking out over the empty expanses you can feel that you are alive and rejoice in the splendour of Mother Nature.

James climbed surely up the rig towards the crow's nest; the sun beaming down on his bare back, tanned from months in the sun. He pulled himself up, arms and legs working the ropes, muscles playing under his sweat slicked skin. As he climbs his mind is blank, focused on the task at hand.

Working a ship brings him serenity, lets him know he is still master over the sea. In the pulling of lines and raising of sails he controls and submits to nature and so he knows he is still a man.

Things used to be different, he used to have a bright future –everyone constantly told him so. He had graduated with the best recommendations from his superiors, he was made captain over his own ship at an age most men were still mates. His station in the Caribbean had been an opportunity for him to show himself and what he was capable of. Off course it had all gone awry from there.

He pulled himself up with a last heave, fingers gripping the banister tight as his legs swing up. Slightly out of breath he took a moment to calm himself, hands pulling back tussled hair from his face. After all this time he still isn't used to it. Sometimes when he is tired he still reaches for his wig, for the outfit that used to tell him he still lived in a civilized world; the clothes that had separated him from the common men so often gone savage out here where the end of the enlightened world is so close.

He quiets his wandering mind, what use is there to cry over time that had passed and would never come back? His mistakes were his own and he had paid the price.

He looked out over the vast sea, empty and eternal. The sunbeams broke on the crests of waves travelling to locations he could only dream of. As they splintered they made the water glitter and shine. It always took his breath away seeing the ocean in its entire splendour, today she is benign, a sound eastern wind is carrying them steadily where they need to go and the sea is calm.

It can change fast; the sea is as fickle as any woman, or man. One moment smiling in your face and the next trying her best to kill you with storms and unpredictable currents. But not today, at this moment she is playing the role of the adoring mother, guiding them safely on their way.

He stands holding on to the mast as the breeze dries his sweat and stills his mind. He drinks in the serenity and calm of the sea. Letting it fill him, and at this moment he is at peace with his life. It might not have turned out the way he had planned, far from it in fact, but there is a certain beauty in that.

He spares a glance down towards the deck where men scurry around attending to all those things that need attention on a ship. They are friends of a sort now, men that he had spent most of his life hunting down. Had he been them he would have killed himself on sight. He still did not know why they let him on to their ship, why they seemed to trust him.

After his shameful failure to capture and hang the pirate Sparrow and subsequent betrayal he had spent weeks in a drunken haze; slowly but surely spending all of his accumulated wealth on drinks and dice. He had been determined to loose himself, drink himself to death and he had very nearly succeeded, but for one man.

He didn't even remember it but he had been told that he had found him beaten and mugged in a rundown back ally in Port Royal. His body had been broken and mind rotten from too much drink and opium. When he woke to consciousness he had screamed and raged at the fact that he was still alive. Heart filled with nothing but hatred for the man who had taken everything from him.

They had tied him down, coarse rope burning wounds into his wrists and ankles as he tried to break free. In the end his rage had burned itself out and he had been left empty, a husk of a person. Where Commodore Norrington had once been nothing then resided.

At that point he had come to him, swaggered in with his hat askew and a bottle of rum in hand. He had sat down next to James and told him the bottle was his own. James, he informed him, had drunken more than his share for an entire lifetime already. After that James ignored him, and he had just sat there, not saying anything either.

Eventually they had untied him and given him a hammock and put a broom in his hand, at first he had just stared at it. As he was no one, how could he do anything? It took a person to wield even a broom. However, they never pushed and never yelled and after days of staring blankly in front of him laying in the hammock clutching the broom, one day he just went up and started to use it on the deck.

Every day he had lied there he had come to sit beside him, he had never spoken and James had forgotten how to talk. For a while each day he just sat on the deck beside the hammock, legs crossed and a rum bottle in his hands. Sometimes he would doze off and snore and sometimes hum to some tune and after a while he would smile a crocked smile at James and strut off.

It never made sense but then with Jack Sparrow, what did?

James returned to the present as a seagull squawks and lands next to him. The bird sit there pruning its feathers, resting from a long flight.

"You are lucky bird that you found us, there is still a long way to land," The seagull looks at him with its black eyes, seemingly to say that for the one who looks for it, there is always land in sight whether you are a bird or a man.

The bird flies off in search for whatever it is seagulls look for, leaving him and the Black Pearl behind.

James continues his searching across the horizon, the moment he spots their target he has to act. Being the lookout is easy work as long as you stay alert but nonetheless not highly favoured, mostly because of the risks. Climbing the rig is never completely safe and at any time the weather could change and you be stuck up there, unable to get down and nothing to protect you from the full force of the storm. The danger could take human form as well, shooting at the crow's nest was custom, since without a lookout the opposing ship would have less tactical awareness.

James had volunteered today. The sea had been calling him and he had answered. Up here he could gaze upon her in all her splendour and glory. The rolling crests of the waves is a mixture of blue, green and black swirling like if the aurora borealis, northern lights, is reflecting up from the depths. In front of the ship a shoal of grey dolphins are jumping on the waves, rolling and playing in the surge created by the bow.

James's gaze sweeps back down onto the deck in the direction of the stern of the ship, towards where the captain is standing proudly at the helm. Jack is nothing short of a figure of mystery and imagination. His mind does not work like others and this is the fact that had made him impossible for James to capture. He had assumed, wrongly, that Sparrow was driven by the same things as other men; it had been the most spectacular oversight in his career.

James still does not know what drives him, Jack's mind seems unfeasible to penetrate, his motivations changing as fast and as unpredictably as the sea. It is the irony of it all that even though Jack had been the, perhaps unwillingly, cause of his disgrace he had also been the small piece of flotsam that had saved James's life.

James sets his eyes on the horizon and lets a part of his mind wander back into the past as the other keeps a steady gaze on the line that divides the sea and makes way to the heavens.

As he had scrubbed the deck of the Black Pearl James had regained something of himself. In the manual labour the last physical memory of his debauchery had disappeared as the sweat rolled of his back. As the days passed his skin had darkened and muscles returned, he started to do other things unprompted; he coiled rope and lashed lines. This was a ship and he knew how to work a ship.

Still, everyday Jack would appear at his side, holding a line for him or just standing, sitting or slouching close by. Sometimes watching him and sometimes not. In the beginning James had felt uncomfortable with his eyes on him, but he soon got used to it. It became a comforting presence. In Jack's company he regained something of his mind, as he was studied he could slowly but surely feel himself being put back together. He didn't understand why but in the proximity of the other he was becoming somebody again. He still didn't speak but he regained some of the spring in his step.

Soon he was working side by side with the rest of the crew; they became used to him and the fact that he didn't use words. He was still a capable sailor and they treated him as such. He came to understand that they trusted him, seemingly because Jack did. Why Jack did he didn't dare think about.

At one point they had been stuck in doldrums for the better part of a day and a half and the crew was restless, the ship sitting motionless in the calm. All afternoon they had gathered in the bow drinking rum and dancing to a pipe while James had been mending a sail in the stern. Listening to the music with half an ear as his fingers, now callused from work quickly sewed the gash together.

A noise to his left made him look up; Jack was standing by the rail looking not at him as was his want but out to the sea.

"I never see you look at the water Jamie boy. You always look at the deck or on your fingers. How come you never look out at sea?"

James' hands came to a stop quivering slightly. Since that first time denying him rum Jack had never spoken to him. He had assumed he never would, that this calm voyage would never end and he could stay like he was now in this limbo state. He put the sail down and wiped his suddenly sweaty palms on his legs. Without pondering it further he stood up and walked over to stand beside the captain, gazing out over the ocean. It stunned him to his soul.

The sun was setting and reflecting its golden light on the water surface. The sea looked like it was burning, like embers were residing just below the surface. From where he was standing and all the way to the sun an eternity stretched out, a space so vast it was unimaginable. Yet a good ship could sail to the horizon and look beyond it. It was utterly beautiful and calm.

He lost himself in the infinite distance and as the sun finally set he had to blink away little stars the bright light had burned on his eyes.

"The sea is a good mistress, she forgives everything past. Whatever a man was before doesn't matter for her, she takes him as he is and makes him new. She is trickery itself tough, so be careful, but as long as you are true to her she will always be true to you. After she has had her payback she will always forgive you. A man can make much worse in life."

James looked at the man by his side, leaning lopsidedly with his hat in his hand, a smile playing at the corner of his mouth. What sort of wisdom was this coming from a pirate?

Jack chuckled: "Do with it what you want Jamie boy, I am just talking out loud."

Had he really spoken? Was Jack replying to his words or had he read his mind? He looked on in stunned silence as Jack turned around to leave.

"Wait!"

Jack stopped and turned towards him, dark eyes burning brighter than the setting sun had, in a face James could not read.

"Why am I here, why did you take me onboard?" It was a question that had sprouted in him over the past weeks and now he could not keep it in anymore, it had grown too large for him to contain.

"We all deserve a second chance James, which is what the pirate life is all about. We live on the sea and we obey her rules. You will always be welcome on my ship."

As Jack left to join the shenanigans in the front James turned back towards the sea. The colour was turning darker; the waters growing blacker as the sun moved further away. Soon stars would rise and the sky and ground would be as one, as dark sky met dark waters.

Jack had been right, he had not been able to look at the sea, he had decided to die and leave her behind. When he owed her everything, he had betrayed her.

"I am sorry" he whispered into the dark "Never again."

After this he changed, the new person Jack had started to help him create became whole. He began to laugh and join in with the crew and they accepted him as if he had always been there. The pirate hunter Norrington was dead and now only James was left.

The calm ended after a couple of days and soon they took on a Spanish galleon transporting silver to the Empire. Jack had insisted that James be down with the canons. Afterwards he was glad, down in the dark the only thing you could focus on was the hard work off manning the 12 pounders. The screams of the dead drowned out by the boom of the cannons.

He would get used to it though, killing people he had earlier been protecting. A pirate was after all who he was now.

James springs into sudden action; he can see the tip of a mast rise over the horizon. He shouts down towards the deck.

"Ship spotted at south, south east"

Down below frenzy ensues as Jack shouts to hoist the jib and the foresail and full speed ahead.

"Raise the colours" The shout echoes all the way up to James, and he can feel himself grin with his entire face. This moment is the one pirates lives for. Others claims it is gold and treasure but it is all wrong. It is the thrill of the chase and feeling of expectation, who knows if the ship is even the Portuguese barque they have been after or if it would even have the rumoured treasure. Right now the thrill is real and the sea is with them.

James raises the colours, skull on dark black fabric unfolding in the wind, flying majestically over their heads.

"James you son of a whore get down here!"

"Ay ay Captain." He shouted back, grabbing a bowline and swinging himself down onto the deck. As he lands, bare feet meeting deck scrubbed smooth over the years Jack flings him his sword and meets him at the rails, manically beaming from ear to ear.

"Now James my mate we fight for treasure and glory." "Oh and rum of course" he adds golden teeth glinting in the sun. Together they turn, side by side, looking out expectantly towards the approaching vessel.

As James settled into his new life as a pirate Jack stopped his daily visits. Instead he kept his distance, treating James as any other member of his crew. James found himself missing the quiet company; he had become so used to Jack's presence always at his back that he felt naked without it.

He found himself observing the captain whenever he could. He just couldn't understand him. What was it he wanted with him? And what did he himself want with the pirate?

In lack of something better he just resumed their old habit, although he was now the one seeking Jack out, sitting or standing quietly in his presence whenever he could. Jack didn't say anything the first time he came and stood beside him by the helm but James could have sworn he was smiling under his breath.

The rest of the crew didn't say anything, perhaps they felt that this was not something that concerned them. James didn't mind as he himself had no idea was it was to be concerned about.

Then one evening he found Jack sitting, legs dangling over the edge, perched precariously on the taffrailing taking swigs from his ever present rum bottle.

"That doesn't look safe." James said as he came up beside the captain.

"Not suppose to be mate."

James chuckled and climbed up beside Jack, the stars was out, and a waxing moon was spilling a silver light over everything. The Pearl looked like a different ship, all her blemishes that made her what she was covered by the hoary light.

Jack handed him the bottle of rum and James took it, to baffled to resist.

"I thought I was the only one on this boat not allowed his daily rum ration?"

"Don't call my Pearl a boat. And I think you are safe by now. Can't have you too clean now can I." Jack smiled impishly at him and James took a cautious sip and coughed as a forgotten burning filled his chest.

"You have been following me around." Jack said and took the bottle back, drinking eagerly. When James didn't answer Jack swiped his mouth on his sleeve and continued: "It might give a man ideas."

James looked over at him unsure what he meant. The same burning eyes from previous met his and suddenly he was quite sure that those eyes were exactly why he was following Jack around. Before he could properly think this through and before he was forever scorched by those flames he leaned forward and kissed the pirate captain who, in one way or another, had been the centre of his life for all these years.

Hungry lips met his and the rum bottle was thrown away as their hands reached out for each other. Jack tasted like rum and musk and sea and wind, all at the same time. A second ago James might not have known that this was what he wanted but right now there was no doubt in his mind.

Suddenly they lost their balance and fell backwards in a pile of arms and legs on the deck. James couldn't help it but laughed aloud at everything. This would have been impossible for Commodore Norrington, but then that man was dead and here was James the pirate. And that man knew what he wanted; his own piece of land on the vast sea.

Above him Jack's dark head appeared: "Something funny I should know about?" James just smiled and pulled him down towards him and Jack was not late to respond. They embraced there on the deck under the starry sky and the moonlight hid James's blush as Jack spread his legs apart and introduced him to a different sort of pleasure. As they moved frantically together James sent a thought to the sea that forgave everything and always offered everyone a second chance. Then further reflections were impossible anymore as he met Jack's thrusts until finally he had to scream his name into a kiss.

James pulls his other boot on and readies his musket. The ship is indeed the Portuguese barque they have been searching for and the Pearl is gaining steadily. Their prey lies heavy in the water, suggesting that she is indeed loaded to the brim with things to steal and plunder. Below the deck their cannons are being readied and soon they will be able to move broadside and fire. Then the air will smell of burning powder and residue sulphur will burn in his throat. Pirates will scream and throw their grappling hooks and the defenders in turn will and grab for arms and run for cover. There might even be a short fight on the deck before the merchant ship surrenders.

James looks over at Jack who smiles at him, eyes meeting his and for a second James can't help but think of skin shining with sweat against skin, Jacks fingers and mouth on him and the sound Jack makes when he allows James to turn him over on his stomach.

Jack grins and winks at him as if he can indeed read his mind. On the other hand, who knows, maybe he can? Stranger things has happened whenever Captain Jack Sparrow is involved.

James looks out over the ocean beyond the fast approaching ship, out towards the open sea. The water looks azure blue from down here and the horizon seems closer and larger at the same time.

The sea might be vast and unforgiving; it will easily consume the weak and betray the lazy. To sail the seas of the world is to live in a constant battle for her good will. The pirate knows this best of all. Because the sea is the pirate's true home, ports are just places to spend the time before you can return to your true mistress. A pirate would never dream of taming the ocean, he knows she must be free. Only then will she be his ally.

The sea is indeed beautiful and contain so many mysteries that man will never solve them all. In the company of others seeking the freedom of the sea a man previously condemned can find serenity. Sailing that infinite splendour had become James's salvation; there among outcasts such as himself he had found peace. In the end, perhaps he had even found something else. He smiles, looking at Jack's profile as he stands gazing out over the sea.

-The end-