Disclaimer: I don't own any of it... I just l like to borrow it all now and then, and Disney doesn't seem to notice!
Author's Note: Yes, dear friends, the Pirate Cat is still alive and well, sailing the seas of imagination. Its been a very long time since I have published anything, keeping my little stories selfishly to myself these days. Anyone who is familiar with my own POTC universe knows that I have a very different view of Captain Jack Sparrow, a view that peeks behind that mask of his, and sees a different man than is presented in the movies... he hides from us all, and we see only what he WANTS us to see in the motion pictures, most times... the legend he's built up with lies to protect himself and a woman that he loves, far away, in a land where he spent his first years in my stories.. please read the tales that I've woven, if you are so inclined.
I remove that mask of his, and behind it, Jack is very, very human... flawed, just like the rest of us... and as we see, in fleeting moments of the movies, he is sometimes worn down by what he's had to do to survive in a pirate world he hadn't wanted...enjoy my one shot... *raises a tankard of rum to Jack and his worldweary, saltwater heart...*
He stood in the warm Caribbean waters, up to his wasp thin waist in the tidal basin that was upon this deserted coast of the island of Tortuga... his slender, small body was needing the sea, the sounds of solitude, the lonely cry of the gulls above his dark head...
He hated things... he hated everything right now, and his affable nature was sitting in a backwater tidal basin of its own... the tidal wave of anger, disappointment and self loathing was almost pulling his heart under with its overwhelming strength...
His ship was gone... it had been just out of his reach, once more, and was somewhere, out there. That bastard, Hector Barbossa, had taken her outward toward the coast of South America, and he had paid dearly for this information.
He hung his head so that his long black braids dipped themselves into the salty water, and he felt a lump form in his throat. Aye, he'd paid dearly, alright... by paying for that information with the only money that he had, and with his body to please the owner of the most prosperous brothel on the island. She was a wise one, and she prized her conquest of the comely dark one who had been asking veiled questions about the cursed ship with black sails if only to prove to others her talents in carnal ways... never mind if it wasn't what he'd wanted... never mind that she had turned him into the prostituted one because she had knowledge of bigger and better things, in his mind... there was never any pleasure in it for him...
He'd hated it...he'd despised every millisecond of it... and he finally had taken his leave of her after only an hour with a look upon his face that told her that she must never speak to him again, as he wanted nothing to do with her or her ilk... she'd thought him rather peculiar, a handsome young pirate captain with a burgeoning reputation as a ladies' man and seemingly no desire to actually prove that reputation to the ones who would find him most attractive.
As he stood in the warm water, naked and now up to his chest in the tide, he fought the fury of having to lower himself into a doxie's bed and resisted the urge to vomit... he could even smell the odor of the one who had been there before him, and he nearly gagged, now, to think of it. He thought of another whom he was trying to protect from the noose for being his one true love... and he thought of what he had just done... and he despised himself for the lengths that he'd taken to find his ship and the lies he'd spread about himself to protect his woman and himself against the life he'd been thrown into. Only one other time had he done this, and this time he felt even filthier for it... oh, how he wished he was home, in her arms, and not on this godforsaken, deserted beach, alone... feeling like worthless scum...
He had to cleanse himself of it all, hence, he went to the sea, as a young man, to try to breathe in blessed freedom that had been taken from him, forcibly, so many times, even then... his gypsy mother and pirate father had whelped him at sea, aboard his father's fine ship, and everything that Jack Sparrow had aspired to had freedom humming in every fiber of his being ... he had once been a decent sea captain, and now he was reduced to this by having a set of morals that granted freedom to others and had earned him a hard shove into the world of piracy, he thought bitterly... he looked down at his right arm, in the clear waters, and the white scarred initial of that unwanted life burned into his flesh, nearly crippling that right hand...
Mother Sea was now sending small currents to massage his leaden sea legs...
He closed his eyes, and finally took a deep breath... he would not feel cleansed in a very long time, he sighed... and as the warm, salty water reached his shoulders, he finally opened his eyes and looked out at the far off horizon... toward home, toward her warm arms, in Ireland... far across the Atlantic...
And tiredly, he left the water, and he pulled on his clothes and slapped that cocksure and smiling mask over his drawn face once more... the tide had at least made him feel a bit more refreshed... and he pulled on his boots, and began to walk through the sand that he hated... he hated everything, right now... especially the spiritual tide that overwhelmed him, in heart and spirit... one foot stepped in front of the other, away from sympathetic Mother Sea...
And Captain Jack Sparrow made his way toward town, head bowed and heartsick, to barter passage away from this place, and after his ship that would take him home to her... he needed his ship like he needed to ease his sore heart and heal his weary soul... his ship, the mighty Black Pearl, borne on the ever loving tide and the boundless sea and fresh salt air... his freedom, aye, and the source of what very, very little pride he had left...