DISCLAIMER: All canon characters and suchlike are borrowed- borrowed, without permission, but with every intention of giving them back. (Norrington may come back suspiciously disheveled, but I will admit to nothing.)
Thanks to Nytd, for patiently enduring my constant inability to correctly spell "murmured," and to MorganBonny, for explaining to me the other day the basic mechanics of how ships move through the water.
"And all that you ever thought
Will fall to the ground like snow,
Clearing the air you breathe,
Whitening all you know
And all that you ever see
Is never the same again
Your eyes will be opened wide,
Then you will understand." – Threshold, Light and Space
Jack gritted his teeth and plunged the dagger into the obscenely oversized heart, and as the blade tore through the resistance of rubbery muscle, the world shifted. No, that was imprecise; the way he felt the world's existence shifted.
He had thought he knew the sea. No man could claim to understand her, but he had thought her to be embedded in his soul deeper than his own name; so firmly a part of him that he couldn't not know her. He'd imagined he could sometimes hear her calling to him, whispers in some ancient language that reverberated in his bones.
He had been a child. He had been a mortal. He had been deceiving himself. He had never known the sea. The shock of all that it truly was hit him like a blow to the head, and for the first time in his life, he knew what the sea's whispers had been trying to show him. It flooded into his head, savage and devastating.
I am the all-encompassing, the primeval. I am the cradle of all that life has ever been, the grave of the last ghosts of what will ever be. I am the unrelenting. I chew history to dust with softly rippling teeth. I cannot be mapped. I cannot be held or conquered. I love you and yet I will devour you alive . I know you, Captain Jack Sparrow, but you will never know me.
You are the bridge between this world and the next, now, the shepherd of all who die within my expanse. You are the ferryman, the keeper of the final gate. You are not a god, for gods cannot survive in my domain. There have never been gods of the sea, only servants, as you now are. I grant you understanding without thought, sustenance without hunger, shifting pathways with neither end nor beginning to roam as you will. And you will give me everything.
"Yes," his lips framed the word soundlessly, though the reply was not needed. He had already spoken it long before the dawn of man, and its echoes had merely waited until this moment to sound. A thousand mysteries unfolded in his mind, mind-twisting patterns of angles and forces, rhythm and time, shatteringly simple and profoundly complex. Understanding without thought. He saw pieces of the same whole that had never touched one another and never would, and how they constantly cast ripples through each other nonetheless. Shifting pathways with neither beginning nor end. He saw the skies beyond the sky, the colors that burned in the darkness, heard the sweet, unbearable sounds that could only be heard in the spaces between death and life.
He felt a ship moving towards him, not over the water, but passing through the dimensions like light through glass. The ship was meant for him. But there was part of him that was and would always be a man, and that man belonged to one ship and one ship alone.
All ships are magic; any ship might cross worlds, had it only the proper captain. You can keep your barnacle-encrusted algae ship; I've got the finest lady ever to sail these waters right under my feet. He smiled slightly, and felt the Pearl's response in his mind, like a bird stretching long-furled wings, like the stirring of a sleeping woman under his lips. Yes. There's a love. Live for me.
"Jack? Captain Sparrow! Jack? Jack! Cap'n?" He came back into awareness of his body and looked through his own eyes once more to see the crew all crowded around him, staring anxiously into his face. It would have been less than a fraction of a second's work to send the echoes resonating through himself and see, but old habit overruled supernatural ability and instead, he raised his hand to his face to check for tentacles.
No, same old face. So it showed on the outside in a less tangible way, then.
"That was… interesting," he murmured to himself, then gave the crew a reassuring smile and spoke in a louder voice. "No cause for alarm, mates. The whole immortality and powers of the sea whatsit has a bit of a kick to it; I needed a moment to get acclimated, as it were."
"Looked like it knocked the ten bells out of you for a moment," ejaculated Gibbs. "You certain you're all right, Cap'n?"
"Oddly enough, yes," Jack reflected, his brows creeping together with thought. "Now, men, I'm going to offer you all a choice, and regardless of which option you take, I'm not holding it against you. The Black Pearl is coming with me, but this is not a trip I expect all of you will relish the notion of making. All those who choose to stay with me are signing on for some old-fashioned adventuring of the sort a man hears tell of in stories, not the ones nurses sing to babes, mind you, but the kind told on the dogwatch on nights when the stars can't be seen. Heavy on the eldritch creatures of myth, and light on the happily ever after, savvy? There will, however, be considerable amounts of treasure involved; desirable bits of shine from every age have found their homes on the sea bottom, and I've a mind to rescue a good many of them from their loneliness." There were murmurs of both interest and unease among his men, and Jack nodded abruptly.
"I'll give you all the night to think it through. No more worries about the Flying Dutchman and her crew; Jones is dead and the Dutchmanwaits on my command now."
Jack turned and was about to head for his cabin when Will stopped him with a hand on his arm.
"Jack, would you mind doing one last thing for us? Me and Elizabeth, I mean?"
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The wedding was held on the Black Pearl. Though it was a bit unconventional—the bride wore travel-stained men's clothing, one of the 'bridesmaids' lost his wooden eye as the vows were being said, the parrot unexpectedly chimed in with its own "I do,"and the borrowed rings resumed their places on Jack's fingers immediately after the ceremony—but what it lacked in style, it made up for in laughter, company, and genuinely well-wishing guests.
Jack had improvised the marriage vows with a creative flair that had everyone on deck howling with laughter. Elizabeth's vows did not include an injunction to obey, but rather "to always have his back in a fight, refrain from burning his rum, keep a firm hand to his tiller"— she'd not worked that one out until she'd already said it, to the delight and amusement of all of the crew—"and beat the tar out of any other wench who tries to crawl into his trousers." In return, and Will's were "to always have her back in a fight, keep her well-provisioned and steady in the water, defend her against any scum that tries to board her, and throw her down and ravish her regularly."
Their kiss was certainly a good deal more passionate than propriety would have allowed if they had been back among the cream of Port Royal society, despite the whistles and suggestive comments of the ragtag wedding party. The toasts were certainly cruder, as each and every pirate took it upon himself to offer the couple helpful suggestions for their wedding night, and by the end of the supper, Elizabeth was giggling helplessly, her face buried in Will's shoulder, and Will was blushing and trying to pretend he wasn't.
They waited for most of the wedding party to get good and drunk before they slipped away to their cabin, and Jack was one of the few who was still coherent enough when they left to be amused by the sight of Will trying to descend down the hatch with Elizabeth in his arms so he'd be carrying her over the threshold. Jack stayed out on deck for the night. Although he was all for the two of them consummating their marriage as much and as enthusiastically as they wished, his cabin shared a wall with the newlywed couple's and he didn't particularly want to listen to it. He climbed up into the rigging with a bottle of rum instead, letting the caress of the warm wind and the rhythm of the ocean flow through him.
Captain Jack Sparrow was a pirate, but before he had been a pirate, indeed, before he had even been a grown man, he had been a musician. The music in his blood, his bones, his soul was the music of the wind and tide, of the moon and the water and the angles of the earth, a music that could not be contained or broken, a music that could only be felt. He'd learned how to angle the sails to catch an elusive wind as a violinist learned to tighten the strings of his instrument until the notes sang true. He'd learned to feel the sea's moods in the motions of the deck under his feet and how to make his ship a part of her song rather than fighting her unstoppable rhythm.
Yet he'd only heard a fraction of it, before. Through the velvet night, he listened and heard the song anew; deep, subtle harmonies and descants rising through the melody that made his soul burn with beauty. More than ever before, he was where he belonged.
As the first dim light of daybreak was kindled in the eastern sky, he heard a soft creaking sound from below and looked down to see Elizabeth climbing up to where he was seated. She was moving with the liquid, loose-muscled grace of a cat, he noted, raising an eyebrow at the picture, and a more satisfied expression would be hard to imagine.
Well, full points to you for the wedding night, Turner, Jack thought wryly. Never knew you had it in you.
"Good morning," he said aloud. "I'd have expected you'd be sleeping around this time."
"If I sleep, I might wake up and find that this has all been just a wonderful dream," Elizabeth replied with a smile that was a little tired and for once, completely without artifice. "I'd been lying there, watching Will sleep, but I was beginning to get a bit silly, so I came up here for a bit. The wind feels good. And I wanted to talk to you."
"By all means," Jack said, waving his hand in an almost regal gesture. "Rum?" He proffered the bottle.
"Oh, I'm already drunk on Will," Elizabeth laughed as she found a perch in the rigging nearby. Jack pondered that for a second and couldn't decide whether the comment was a poetic sentiment or just vaguely obscene. He said nothing, however, still curious about what the lass wanted to discuss. Elizabeth took a deep breath.
"I wanted to apologize," she said tentatively. "For acting like such a… well, you know. I'm sorry for provoking you all the time, leading you on, and especially for letting you take the blame for what happened on the beach yesterday. You are a good man, Jack, and the best of friends, and I hope my marriage to Will hasn't… hurt you in any way." She looked up at him with worried dark eyes. Jack couldn't help but smile.
"As I once told you, Lizzie, it would never've worked out between us. You're pretty as sin and distracting as all hell, but my heart was claimed by another a long time ago."
"Really?" Elizabeth leaned forward, her eyes lighting with interest. "Who is she?" Jack laughed.
"She's right here, love," he told her, patting the Pearl's mast fondly. "The lady of me heart."
"You're talking about the ship?" the young woman asked incredulously, then bit back an amused smile, her face radiant with afterglow in the dim predawn light. Distracting as all hell.
"Wouldn't expect you to understand," was all he said. She sighed.
"Anyway, I just wanted to apologize and make sure you understood-"
"Oh, I understood. You'd been trapped in a cage all your life, and you finally got the chance to fly free at the same time as you discovered the power your sex gives you over men. You couldn't resist playing with that power for the short while before the cage bars closed back in on you. I recognized your game for what it was and played along, but you were never in danger of hurting me, love. I am, after all, Captain Jack Sparrow. I chose not to turn it into more than a game, for the lad's sake, but had I decided otherwise, you wouldn't have resisted me, and you know it.
"I could have had you when we were marooned on that island, Elizabeth Turner. I could have had you a dozen times over on our voyage from Tortuga. I could have had you on that beach if your beloved hadn't interrupted us. I'm not entirely sure I couldn't have you even now." He gave her his slow, wicked smile and watched her stare at him in shock and outrage. Then she rolled her eyes and let out an exasperated breath.
"Keep telling yourself that, Captain Sparrow," she told him, shaking her head. "Meanwhile, I am going to go get some sleep." She yawned. "It's funny, the dawn's making me feel tired in a way the darkness didn't." Jack watched her swing down from the rigging and head belowdecks, and smiled to himself.
Oh yes… I could have had you, Mrs. Turner. But as much fun as that might have been, it'll be far more entertaining to watch you wreak havoc on the world, because I know what I'm giving you and Will for your wedding present .
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The following morning, Jack took the Turners aside as soon as they emerged from their cabin. Jack untangled one of the ornaments, a small, foreign bronze coin, from his hair and turned it over and over in his fingers with a thoughtful expression on his face as they stood facing him, Will's arm draped loosely over Elizabeth's shoulders.
"What's wrong?"
"I have certain responsibilities," Jack began carefully, "that I will not be able to carry out in my capacity as a servant of the sea—responsibilities as a pirate. My first thought was to pass them on to a relation, but he has duties of his own to the Court, and he'd not much appreciate being pulled out of retirement, if I guess rightly."
"The Brethren Court?" Elizabeth asked, eyes lighting with interest. "So, it's true then, you really are a Pirate Lord?"
"I wouldn't lie about a thing like that," Jack said, his trickster's eyes going dead serious. "Wouldn't survive long if I did, either. Us Pirate Lords tend to be rather emphatic about setting aright exactly which captain has sovereignty in each domain, even if we don't always fully respect that sovereignty, savvy?"
"So, you need us to send word to another captain that the title's been passed on to him?" Will asked.
"That was my first thought, aye," the pirate lord said. "But truth be told, I don't like the idea of putting the lordship of the Caribbean into the hands of any of the scurvy wretches that linger in these parts nowadays. It was a proud post, once, graced by the likes of—" he bowed his head in reverence as he spoke—"Henry Morgan, Bartholomew Roberts, and Pierre le Grande. But the truth of it is, that age is over, and though it's not half the honor it used to be, I'm reluctant to hand over the title to some bit of scum that doesn't even abide by the code. So, I thought to myself, who do I know who would honor the Code and the pirate traditions of old?" He looked up from the coin in his hands and straight at Elizabeth. "I must admit, the answer came as a bit of a shock even to me, but such a thing is hardly unheard of. In fact, the Pacific has been held by the iron fist of Mistress Ching for a good many years now."
"But… I'm not a captain," Elizabeth blurted out, staring at the coin in his hand with both fear and longing. "I'm not even a pirate!"
"Not in practice, perhaps," Jack acknowledged, "but all the members of my crew who are ruthless enough to bear the title better than you could will be coming with me, I'd wager. Don't fret now; the role's been held in an honorary capacity before. A pirate lord doesn't actually have to be out pillaging settlements and gutting merchant ships to hold the post. However," he added, holding up a finger, "There's also the question of getting you lot home, because there will be other places I'll need to be very soon. That added to the fact that I coincidentally happen to have come into possession of a ship that I am not in fact using…" He pointed without looking to the Flying Dutchman, waiting in the nearby waters, then remembered as he saw the puzzled looks on the Turners' faces that it was still underwater. "Oh, blast it," he said, and told the Dutchman to rise.
"Mind you, she could do with a spring cleaning and a bit of repair work," he added as the seaweed-covered sails broke the surface, "but the Pirate Lord of the Caribbean not having a ship is bloody embarrassing and not a situation I would want to leave my successor in."
"Jack." Elizabeth stepped forward, looking very young and very awed. "You're serious, aren't you? You're really doing this?" He grinned playfully.
"Well, we can't have you becoming some dull, domestic little wifey, can we? Poor Will would be bored to tears in a week."
"I somehow think it would take longer than a week to domesticate Elizabeth," Will laughed.
"Oh, hush, you two, this is serious!" the wife in question interrupted, elbowing Will. "Isn't there, I don't know, some sort of ceremony?"
"Well, there's the one used when it was given to me," Jack said with a shrug. "'Ere, catch." He tossed the coin at Elizabeth, who fumbled catching it and nearly dropped it. She looked at him expectantly, the coin held tightly in her hand.
"Well?"
"That was it." He grinned insouciantly at Elizabeth's incredulous look. "Of course, some words were spoken to me when I was given it, but I'm afraid they wouldn't apply in your case."
"That's not quite fair," Will argued. "Are you making her the pirate lord, or not?"
"Yes, well, she's a woman," Jack said, looking a bit uncomfortable. "They wouldn't apply." Elizabeth narrowed her eyes.
"As the Pirate Lord of the Caribbean, I order you to conduct the complete ceremony as it was spoken to you."
Jack considered pointing out that generally when a pirate lord gave such an order, it was at gunpoint, but if he did say so, he suspected she'd actually pull a gun on him, even if she had to go borrow one from one of the crew.
"If you insist…" He cleared his throat and said in a mock formal tone, "Now don't lose the bloody thing or spend it on some cheap piece of skirt, Jack. And pass me some of that rum, will you?" Elizabeth blinked at him.
"That's what the last pirate lord said to you when he gave you it?"
"Afraid so, love. Told you it didn't really apply." He reconsidered this as a thought hit him. "Unless, that is, you happen to have rum on or about your person, in which case, I expect it to be passed to me immediately." He wasn't sure what effect rum would have on his newly widened consciousness, but he was not averse to finding out.
"Does it look like I have rum on me?" she demanded. Jack's lips curled upwards slightly.
"You're a married woman now, Lizzie. It would be improper of me to conduct a search." Elizabeth rolled her eyes at that and let her husband pull her possessively into his arms.
"If any searches need to be conducted, they will be done by me," Will said quite firmly.
"Not out here, they won't. You can take that sort of thing belowdecks, savvy?" Jack told them, raising an eyebrow.
"If you insist," Will agreed. "Elizabeth, I'm to search you for rum belowdecks. Captain's orders." He began to pull her with him toward the hatch.
"Will! I was just given the Flying Dutchman as a wedding present, of all things! Don't you want to at least go on board and see it?" Elizabeth cried, trying to tug her arm back, eyes still lit up with excitement.
"Algae, barnacles, sadistic fish people," Will summarized. "Seen it. Not interesting. Come on."
"Will!" She started laughing as her husband dragged her belowdecks. "Jack, don't you dare let my ship go anywh-!" Will clapped his hand over her mouth and pulled her through the hatch with him. A few of the crew members whistled and applauded.
Jack reflected idly that he deserved to get laid himself, sometime very soon, and made a mental note to see to it as soon as his new servant of the ocean duties permitted.
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