Hey! I'm sorry this is late, I had wanted to get it out sooner, but I've had so much work I had to push it back. Oh the life of a highschooler! Anyway, please please please, review, I need your words of praise. I am like a dog! I'm an Australian Shepard! WOOF!
You can't resist the Shepard!
-Han
Anna paused at the sound of a gun cocking above her, her laughter frozen in her throat, the night air drawing freezing fingers across her face, making it numb. She was suddenly aware of the darkness; no one would bother questioning the sudden, sharp sound of a gunshot bouncing off the streets of London, and the night would blanket her body until dawn. Her body would be carted among others who had died of sickness or hanging or otherwise, and most likely be burned on the outskirts of the city. The thought made her shudder, nose wrinkling and eyes shutting against the image.
Jack's hand slipped out of hers, his rough skin dragging along her upper arm as he released her grip. She would be lying if she said she wasn't relishing the lingering warmth he left, trailing fire across her skin, giving it life against the cold.
Her eyes blinked open, the stars coming into focus slowly, wet snarls of her hair falling in her eyes. She sat up slowly, bracing her hands on slimy rocks that threatened to shift, slide, slam her violently into more of them, jagged edges and unforgiving corners. She felt slow, muddling through the motions under the pendulum of death, swinging back and forth and daring her to move. She looked up; Angelica held the gun, her expression a mixture of deadly steel and boredom. Like they weren't worth her time.
"Wet powder," Jack and Anna spoke as one, eyes narrowed and filled with contempt, backs straight and refusing to back down. The space that separated them meant nothing, Angelica could see that much. They didn't even need to look at each other. Their minds were together, back before political intrigue ruled all of their lives, and a flash of green lit the horizon. They were back on the deck of the Pearl, four pirates in a standoff, arguing the fate of piracy as they knew it, the fate of William's father, and of Elizabeth's loyalties. Back when Anna had a brother and Jack was her best friend.
Angelica returned the gun to a sash at her side, disappointment tinged with embarrassment at being caught in a lie. Anna couldn't hold back a smirk; it felt natural on her lips, almost like a fall back, eager to welcome her home. Jack's strained chuckle broke the silence, rippling off the water they had dragged their bodies out of, and it sounded like it was trying to call her back, let her slip under. Choke her with the alluring call of her lover.
"Jack," Angelica snapped, watching with annoyance as Jack pressed his lips together dramatically, trying to suppress his rough and tumbled chuckle. Anna cut her eyes to him, trying to hide her mirth for the sake of the situation, dark and dull and possibly deadly. "The Fountain, what do you know about it?" Angelica asked, calling them back to the present, to the shadowy reality they resided in, where ashes took the place of clouds and cobblestone streets were their waves, people their tides. Jack and Anna hated it.
"You don't happen to be in possession of two Silver Chalices, circa Ponce de Leon?" Jack asked nonchalantly as he sat up, draining water from his boot, catching the spare coins that spilled from it deftly. He flipped on to Anna, she caught it and spun it in her fingers, watching it shine dimly with distant fascination, flicking it up in the air and catching it again.
"No," Angelica answered, watching Anna with contempt, wondering what she was thinking and considering her a child all at once. Anna flipped the coin again, catching it, and taking a closer look, trying to read the foreign inscription in the low light. She smiled.
It was a crudely crafted gold coin from South America, salvaged from an ancient Incan civilization by Conquistadors in the Spanish crusade through the Americas. When the regiment lost their way in the dense Amazon and never came out, the indigenous took anything they fancied. The shaman of the village they were taken to told them this in his broken English, and Jack had seen the enraptured look in Anna's eyes.
Sometimes it still shocked her, to learn that he cared.
"Ha, thought not," Jack said brightly, hoping the conversation was over, praying he wouldn't be caught up in this. Because his ego would choke him out, leave his mission skewed and broken, and he would fall to the allure of the Fountain. He couldn't trust himself to remember the price.
"Why?" Angelica asked, refusing to let the topic die, to let it sink back into the water where it came from.
"You are of the Ritual?" Anna asked, speaking for the first time in what felt like forever, her voice sounding unused and rough. Almost dangerous. It sent a chill down Jack's spine, and his black eyes found her form, and his heart warmed just the slightest when he realized that she hadn't looked up from the coin.
"Yes, I am," Angelica answered with a smile, one that seemed genuine to Jack, predatory but real in a way the horizon was, constant in their minds and reaching out and away all at once. He couldn't read her, the Spanish beauty was an enigma of sexuality and danger he didn't want to touch. He didn't want to lose a part of himself by falling into her, by letting himself taste skin and grip hair and kiss lips, by letting himself be taken by ecstasy. Jack wondered if it was himself or Anna he was concerned with losing, but he doubted it mattered. The definition was the same to him, and he wasn't even sorry. Content was laying it lightly; he was free and he wasn't alone. He was ecstatic.
"Oh, well, that settles things," Jack said brightly, rubbing his hands together excitedly. Anna nodded along, slipping the coin into her breast pocket with nimble fingers, and prepared to stand.
A sharp sting in her neck had her reeling, the stars blending together into a bright comet, shining above her head like a message written by the gods. Her head was going to hit the rocks, and crack, rebound against the edges, probably bleed. Instead she landed in the cushion of Jack's lap, and she tried to wonder aloud how she got there. It came out as a stuttering of syllables tripping over each other, trying to form audible words. His eyes were worried, and she struggled to understand why, her eyelids growing heavy, limbs nonresponsive.
"Love?" he asked, plucking a dart from her neck, rolling it between his fingers and the sting seemed to stay behind too long, everything moved too slowly. Darkness was creeping in, settling over her eyes. Her body went limp; Jack's following only a moment behind, the dart in his own neck untouched. Sometimes, Anna was surprised by the little things Jack did for her, but he knew he'd never change them. Even as his body slumped painfully to the rocks below him, Anna's upper body cradled in his lap, he would be okay.
Xx
The Tower of London was as imposing as it was dangerous, a constant reminder to the people on the streets that the law was watching them, could kill them. Dirt caked the cobblestones, a mixture of grime and blood and ashes, a darkness that consumed frantic screams and pleas for help and an eternal agony of lives snuffed out or caged in.
Gibbs was being dragged, not one of his more favorable pastimes, but not something he was unaccustomed to. His arms hurt with the iron grip of the guards, and he wondered if they knew he could walk. Small glowing fires cast shadows on the walls, fallen angels keeping watch over the damned, ashen wings spread wide in welcoming.
A wooden platform rose in his vision, judgment at its finest hanging above him, wishing to hang him, ready to finally end him. Ominous was an understatement, and fear was coursing through his veins faster than the tides, taking hold in his body and making him feel more of a coward than he did when he left the Navy and failed at piracy and washed up in Tortuga.
"There's been a mistake! It's a life sentence, not death. Life!" he shouted to his stoic guards, sending silent prayers to the savior he had denied. But, that God may hold no good will to him. He should pray to rum instead. Dear Lord and Savior, Amber liquid which quells my tumultuous thoughts, do deliver me from evil and from these bulky, blundering arms of the Crown. And may I come across you soon. As soon as possible. Now-now would be fantastic.
That sounded prayer-like, didn't it?
He nearly choked when a man walked from the shadows, illuminated by yellow firelight, slipping from darkness like demons and devils and monsters from his dreams. This was not the answer to his prayer. "Barbossa?" he asked, gruff voice making it sound harsh, confused, and bitter all at once. But what could he say, he was a complicated man.
"Thank you, gentlemen," Barbossa addressed the soldiers at Gibbs' side as they backed away. Rope was thrown at him, and Gibbs caught it with a sadness in his soul that crushed any element of power he might pretend he had. "I trust you can tie a noose."
"It's a hard thing. Forcing a man to twist his own hanging rope," Gibbs said darkly, throwing it back with fervor in his eyes reflected in the small fire to his right.
"You must lie in your bed the way you made it," Barbossa answered blankly, tossing it back. Gibbs wondered if all people ended up like this, back in the position they were fighting, running from, pretended didn't exist. They both had, on opposite sides.
"What's happened to you?" Gibbs asked, shock coloring his voice and confusion sinking into his limbs and he hated seeing this. It was like learning about the world was wrong. Ignorance should always be bliss and moving through the world without knowing anything was safer.
"Where be Jack Sparrow and his lovely dove?" Barbossa asked instead of answering, bringing Gibbs back.
"Anna," Gibbs corrected sharply, his voice stronger than it was a moment ago, burning with the want to do right by the girl who'd done so much for others. And she was still forgotten, fading to the background, gone, forgotten. Who would write stories about her, who would speak in hushed tones and be afraid of her. For her.
"Aye," Barbossa agreed indifferently, shrugging it off. "But where are they?"
"They escaped?" Gibbs asked, focusing for a moment and wishing that he could have seen it, sure it was grand, the kind of flourish Jack could be proud of, that Anna would go along with.
"I'm on a tight schedule, Gibbs. The HMS Providence sets sail at first light, and if you do not care hanging here dead with a mouth full of flies…speak now," Barbossa requested darkly, glittering ego still shining through caked-on powder and a uniform. Gibbs could see the sharp edge of steel, the freedom of the winds hiding just beneath the skin, below the powdered wig.
His words sunk in slowly, and Gibbs was rushing ahead, needing little imagination to feel the rope around his neck, biting into his skin like Leviathans from Purgatory, no love, no mercy. Only Death. He wasn't ready for that yet, and he could only hope that Jack and Anna understood that. Groves, a soldier that had walked in with Barbossa that Gibbs distantly recalled from Beckett's army, looped the rope over the wooden frame. The begging of his end.
"Take me with you. Any point of the compass-" he spoke rapidly, weather face crumpled in begging, something he thought no man should be above. Not when his life was on the line and there was only air between him and the possibility of death. He had nothing to work with but his words, and he sent a quick prayer to his rum that he'd picked something up from Jack.
"Take you where, Gibbs? The Fountain?" Barbossa asked, catching Gibbs in the almost imperceptible flash over his eyes. He'd come to that conclusion, sure that neither pirate would allow royalty to gain immortality. The thought would strike fear into Anna and Jack would want to eradicate it. "Aye? Is that where Jack be headed? Have you anything you can offer me, Gibbs?" The reformed pirate turned imploring, begging, and Gibbs wondered how much was riding on this, how much he'd invested. "Anything at all?"
The pirate hardened, dirty hands reaching for his breast pocket, his eyes a mask of firelight and shadows, dancing within his blue-green eyes. His fingers wrapped around the map, smeared with gunpowder and dried blood and dirt, taking a firm grip on it like it would disappear. The harsh glow of the fire illuminated the unrolled circular map as Gibbs unfolded it almost reluctantly.
"Hand it over," Barbossa said softly, a kind of primal lust in his voice that harkened back to every moment he spent consumed by his greed, skeletal in moonlight and food was ash and nothing meant anything. He was supposed to be away from that, now. He was supposed to be better.
Gibbs watched the heavy step forward, wooden leg clinking on the cobblestone and rebounding off the stone walls of the Tower of London, the prison seemed even more caging to Gibbs, his options running out. Fire caught his vision, what he imagined Hell to be like, writhing flames reaching out, trying to grab you, pull you under, play with your skin and your bones until you're screaming in agony and begging for release that would never come. He threw the map in, watched it blacken on the edges, curl delicately inward, the smell of burning paper consuming his senses.
Barbossa pushed him back roughly, pain flaring in his shoulder as Gibbs stumbled, feeling the heat from the privateer's burning gaze, but Gibbs' eyes were on the map, watching La Florida be covered in ash and licked away by flames. Mermaids disappeared and beautiful tales and mysteries and fear blackening and crumbling to nothing.
"You fool!" Barbossa hissed, glaring between the scum before him and the map burning beautifully and agonizingly and grotesquely. Every moment spent waiting was another the Spanish moved on, another the English fell behind, and another Blackbeard made his way forward, made his way towards eternal life. Barbossa would sooner die than see that day.
"I've just enough time to study those infernal circles, every route, every destination; all safe," Gibbs said roughly, pushing himself forward and drawing himself up, and conjuring up the piracy in his veins, making him dangerous. "In here." He pointed at his head, grimy finger against the skin of his temple. He could feel the pulse there, beating too fast with nerves he would never admit were collecting and boiling and threatening to break him.
Barbossa could say no, could insist on his death and this would have been the last sunset he'd ever see, the last night, the last everything, and he savored the inhalations of air filling his lungs. The way his boots felt on the uneven ground, the way his clothes stuck to his skin with sweat and dirt and maybe even blood. The way his mind raced along every route, every possible place the map lead to, where mermaids strung up white caps and lured men to death with songs and rosy lips.
Barbossa considered him as if he were a specimen, dirt under his shoes, muck in the trenches, a dead rat on the street. He nodded to himself, rolling his shoulders in an attempt to alleviate the constant pain, ache, jarring pins and needles that stemmed from his thigh. His severed leg was always on his mind, never gone, even for an instant. Even when he lie in a bed or a cot or a hammock, and tried to slip away from the consciousness of the moment, and his body would sing with a pain he couldn't even define and he would remember. He would never be whole again.
He would make the man pay, would make Blackbeard know his pain, to know every second, of every minute, of every day. Every numb moment when he tried to bend his knee and nothing happen, wiggle his toes and get no response, take a step and nearly fall. Tumble to the ground. Not be able to get up.
His eyes were steel on the pirate before him, one he considered both enemy and friend and different times in his life. Times he wanted to return to. Times he missed. He grinned, yellow teeth glinting in the night.
"Welcome back to His Majesty's Navy, Master Gibbs!" Barbossa congratulated with a cackle, walking past the man as best he could, his bad leg causing shooting pains up and down his spine like some kind of music. Gibbs exhaled, relief rolling off of his body, and his eyes found the burning map, watching White-Capped Bay disappearing in black smoke.
In the courtyard of the Tower of London, dawn was rising, pale light flooding empty cobblestone and a wooden platform. The dirt and grime and blood stains in the stone were illuminated, protection of the night slipping off of it as the truth rose with the sun. Bars were rusty and cells were sickly looking, and the warm glow of firelight could no longer disguise it. Winged guardians of Hell retreated for the day, ashen shadows slinking back into the cracks in the walls. The sky was blue, the air peaceful, and from the platform, an empty noose swung in a slight breeze.