"Jack, our crew is crap."
Jack turned to look at Ari as they stood out on the deck under the stars, eyebrows raised.
"How do ye conclude that, darlin'?" he asked thoughtfully.
"Look at them! They seem hopelessly incompetent!"
"Seem," Jack mused, pointing at Ari triumphantly, as though she had just proved his point, "Seeming, luv, is a funny ol' thing at times. I've found that what something seems can be the farthest from what it is,"
"Philosophical, Jack. Really inspired. But you must see that such misconceptions are not always the case," Ari said with a roll of her eyes. She was not short on philosophy herself, but was overwhelmed by the demand for a solid, reliable sense that she possessed none of. As though there was something usually constant and sensible that she had left in Port Royal.
"Ah, but it's enough! Take ye for instance. Ye did seem like a scrawny, reckless little lady when ye offered to help us on this grand adventure. Then ye seemed like some especially crazy but undeniably talented sailor just later that day. Then I had a most peculiar dream about ye, and saw ye 'gills and all' so to speak, at which point ye seemed like a tragic little mermaid with unlikely connections that I may or may or may not have wanted to protect. All of those seemings were, in fact, to a degree, WRONG. Or perhaps I ought to say they were all correct at the same time, but none the entire truth, the entire Ari. Who happens to be a prideful little imp, quite bossy, not very good at making friends, determinedly independent, and rather mad. But she also twists my brain into knots with her intelligence, has the capacity to love harder than anyone I've ever met, and has the rare gift of keeping Captain Jack Sparrow on his toes."
There was an undiluted silence that allowed for Ari to stare at him incredulously and he to bask in this bewilderment, grinning mischievously.
"This isn't about me. This is about the crew. And how screwed we are against Barbossa and his invulnerable pirate beasts!" Ari finally managed.
"Trifles," Jack said, throwing an arm playfully around her shoulders, "and it isn't as though it even matters. A bloody brilliant crew'd still be a bloody brilliant crew against immortal pirates. We play it by ear and take it as it comes,"
"Not very reassuring, but I suppose you're right in saying there's nothing to do about it. And take the arm away before I slice it off with a rusty dinner fork and imbed it in your colon," Ari said conversationally. Such colorful empty threats were just a part of their friendship.
"Is there something wrong between us, sweetheart? You've never revoked my affections before...on second thought, yes ye have. But not with such vivid imagination," Jack pretended to look wounded, hand over his heart and lip pouted.
Ari averted her eyes and flushed a little, grateful for the darkness of evening to hide it. "Maybe I've just been feeling especially creative lately,"
"Liar!"
"Am not!"
"Ye are too! Come on, luv, let's have the lucky fellow's name. Found ye like Tortuga for something, after all?" Jack's eyes glinted mockingly.
"IF any of these accusations were actually founded, it sure wouldn't be a drunk slob from that God-forsaken rock," Ari snapped.
"It's that officer, isn't it? Ah, I love weddings! Rum all around!" Jack practically sung.
"We're not getting married!" Ari whispered furiously, her cheeks redder than the drink Jack was magically producing from his coat.
"Why ever not?"
"Because attachment isn't something that happens for me, okay? I loved once, it worked out poorly!"
A silence hung in the air like a musty old cobweb, suffocating and ancient.
"Ye didn't tell me the whole story, did ye?" Jack asked quietly.
"No," Ari turned away, "but you deserve to know."
"Tell me,"
"Find out yourself,"
Ari was gone when Jack reached out to her, slipped over the rail of the ship and into the calmly sinister sea. Jack shook his head, muttering about bloody, self-important sea folk, and strutted back to his cabin.
He was about to sink down into his lumpy old chair and welcome sleep when something sparkled in his peripheral vision. A little glass box sat on his desk, almost too smudged and dirty to make out a deep black gas swirling in it. As Jack crossed the room to pick it up, a little piece of paper fluttered on the lid.
Jack,
I knew you would eventually find this, so I saved your honor and stole it from myself for you. Not that you would ever ask my permission, but I have nothing to hide from you.
-Ari
"Because this is so much simpler than ye just telling me anything outright," Jack muttered. He handled the ice-cold glass box as though it was a partially-eaten dead fish. He tried to put it down, and came to a dulling realization that he couldn't. His hands, numb and uncontrolled, reached out to pry open the opaque lid.
The black gas rushed out, darkening everything and whipping through the air like a savage animal escaped from its cage. It slowly formed shapes in front of Jack, human shapes. One tall, straight, and feminine, the other muscled and confident. The dark beings suddenly had faces, too gliding and unblemished to be real. One, he realized with a jolt was Ari. Her now solid-looking hand was entwined with the other figure-a figure that looked quite a bit like him. Spence. He was young and handsome, with brownish hair cut short and intoxicatingly dark eyes.
They strode on air around the room while gazing at each other lovingly, oblivious to Jack, who was too stunned to move or speak.
"Spence..." Ari's spector said, her voice sounding like it was calling and echoing from very far away, "Pray answer me something?"
"Anything, sweet child." Spence whispered back. He tilted his heat into hers until the ghostly couple's noses brushed.
"Do you love me?" It sounded a little childish; Jack could practically hear her heart pounding with the need to be relieved of any doubt. If these visions had hearts.
"Ariadne, I have told you on countless occasion of my adoration. Why must you ask?"
"It's just...I love you, too. But there cannot be anything resembling love without truth. They say the truth shall set one free. I'm ready for this freedom." Ari's huge eyes gleamed with the purest belief that everything was about to be okay. In one swift fragment, she did her best to explain herself, finishing by saying, "Spence, I had to share with you the piece of my identity I had yet withheld. I have...talents. Talents some consider unnatural or evil. I'm not evil, Spence. You know that. And now we can spent our lives together for eternity!" Ari's voice pleaded joy, her face misted over as though with visions of such a future. She trusted the man before her with her deepest fragility, confident that he would love her to a whole new level in this knowledge. Her ignorance was cruelly short-lived.
"You...you're a...a witch," Spence breathed flatly. He scrambled back from his lover, turning away. Ari looked as though a rock had just smashed through the window she dared to open the steel shutters of.
"I'm not a witch. I-I'm not, it isn't-" her voice shook as she stammered.
"Devil! Get away from me!" Spence roared unexpectedly.
"Spence...?" Ari's voice cracked. She took several stumbling steps towards Spence, hands reached out for the arms she was so obviously familiar with.
"Don't dare touch me, perversion of nature!" Spence yelped. He struck Ari away with such brutality that Jack tried helplessly to stop him, but his hands went right through as thought the figures were nothing more than fog. Ari's small frame smashed against a tree trunk that had materialized, crumpling to the ground. She wobbled as she slid back to her feet, a gash visible on her left cheekbone and one shoulder bent at a slightly wrong angle.
"I thought...together..."
"You thought I could love such a creature as yourself? I wish I could banish the memories of this siren who manipulated me!" Spence yelled. The sound reverberated off the walls of Jack's cabin, but no crew came to investigate.
Ari looked her once-lover in the eye, and she seemed to resign herself to something. "If that is truly what you wish," she whispered. Before Jack had a chance to ponder the meaning of this, Ari was pressing her lips into Spence's, one last time. As she kissed him, she inhaled deeply, causing his struggles against this affection to cease. She breathed in air tainted with something invisible, seemingly the sharpness in Spence's eyes as they became clouded and disconcerted, like he forgot where he was. It was as though all of the moisture in his body was being sucked out, and now pooled in Ari's eyes. She pulled back finally, laying a single finger on his cheek.
"I wish you joys as numerous as sand grains on the shore," she murmured. She ran away, dissolving back into black gas. Spence disappeared much the same way, but not before giving an absent, confused look and one last bewildered question,
"Do...do I know her?"