Hey, a bit disappointed with the lack of reviews (okay a lot but I'm trying not to complain) so I beg you guys to please review. They make my day every time I see one, really. Thank you to the two of you who did comment, it means a lot that you've stuck with me this long. I went ahead and decided that there WILL be another story after this, but it'll be slower coming. I may through in a one shot about the Amazon to tie you guys over. Thank you to everyone, please please please review.
-Han
Anna felt her body drifting, swinging contently under the warm glare of early-morning sun against her skin. She shifted, reaching out without opening her eyes intent on pulling herself to Jack's warmth, one of the only ways she could sleep now. She found nothing but the heavy air, rough cloth against her body most likely a hammock. She didn't want to open her eyes and find her thoughts to be true, but she couldn't stop the slow blinking-open of her blue eyes.
The Crew's quarters she was in were poorly cleaned, brown muck ingrained into the wood and the overwhelming stench of rum-soaked sailors blanketing everything. She rolled from the hammock carefully, her boots impacting the floor with a resounding thump. She winced, no one else was awake, and the sun had just begun to peak over the horizon, like it had a secret to tell the waves. Her gaze travelled the expanse of sleeping crewmen carefully, stopping suddenly when her eyes caught Jack, relief rolling from her shoulders. She had no idea where she was, but at least she wasn't alone.
She reached forward, her fingertips hovering over his tan cheek, her touch only a whisper against his face, her body close to him, about to wake him up. And then they could figure out where they were and they get out. It was simple. Sitting above the stink of alcohol drenched sailors, was the clean scent of the ocean breeze, the ocean calling her home. Her eyes were rapt on the man before her, eyes closed in sleepy content, half smile adorned on his sensually curved lips. He looked like a fallen angel.
She doubted she deserved him.
The snores of the crewmen were the only sound between them, and Anna reveled in the near silence, straining to hear the sound of waves lapping against the side of the ship. She breathed, feeling rested for the first time in days, and brushed her fingertips along his skin, like she was memorizing him.
"Show a leg, sailors!" The ear-shattering shout from the stairs had her jumping back, removing her hand like it was burned in time with Jack rolling violently from his hammock. His upper body slammed into hers, his legs tangling within the rough cloth of his swinging cot, sending them both crashing to the floor.
"Aye sir!" Jack shouted on his way down, blinking a moment later as his charcoal eyes met her blinding blue; they were blown wide with confusion and anxiety. He adopted a smirk only a moment later, shifting until his hands braced his body on either side of her head, every other contour of his body against hers. "Well hello there," he rumbled, the sound nearly a growl in his chest that left her reeling.
"Jack," she whispered, arching her back slightly in an attempt to get closer, always closer. Her thoughts were hazy, hard to reach, hard to hold onto. "Where-where are we?" she asked breathlessly, a blush coloring her cheeks at her own stumbling voice.
His brow crumpled in confusion, the flood of warmth through his body quelling for a moment long enough to think. He nodded to himself, standing gracefully and offering her an arm. "Shall we venture out into this grand vessel?" he asked brightly, as if he wasn't just lying on top of her, making sinful thoughts of fallen angels and throws of passion and Hell Fire that scorches but doesn't bring pain.
"I doubt we'll be accepted as warmly as you think we'll be," Anna answered after a beat of pause, where she regained her bearings and watched masses of half-awake half-hung over crewmen trudge up the stairs and into the open air.
"What are you talkin' about? Love, we'll be treated like kings!"
Xx
Mops were shoved at both of them, and the short man from the Captain's Daughter led them across a red and black deck with the air of a man who was finally in his element. Anna's eyes traced the deck with mild interest, wondering if the red stains were from the constant streaming blood flowing from the victims of whatever ship they were on. It didn't seem like they were anywhere merciful.
"Kings, huh?" she asked with a bitter edge to the tone of her voice as she was shoved roughly by a passing man, a harsh glare in his eyes. Jack sent her a sympathetic glance and turned back to the man leading them.
"There's been a horrible mistake," he started, hoping to talk his way out of whatever hard labor he had planned for the two of them. He didn't like the looks Anna was getting, the mad glint of women-starved men tracing across the gentle curve of her hips and easy steps. She was accustomed to the swell of the ocean, the tipping and swaying of the deck, and it was obvious. Jack was sure men would appreciate it.
"Keep movin'," the man commanded, urging them onwards with no sympathy. Anna gripped her mop tighter and resolved to an unhappy long day. At least she was back on the water, the ocean her home, welcoming her back. In her mind, that meant she was safe.
"We're not supposed to be here," Jack insisted, stumbling over a bucket beneath his feel, watching the soapy water spill over the maroon deck, and he wondered why it looked like bloodstains adorned the deck, forever etched into the wood, forever imprinted.
"Many a man's woken up at sea, no idea what, when, wherefore or why, no memory of the night afore whence he drank away all his bonus money," Scrum said with a rough laugh, leading them through the glare of the sun and the smell of the sea.
"No no no," Anna weighed in, her eyes harder than they had been since the fight the night before when Angelica was bearing down on her and the quick-fire of bloodlust had taken hold. "He is Captain Jack Sparrow, the one and only!"
"And you my short fellow, are in the presence of Annabelle Windsor!" Jack picked up instantly, staring down at the smaller man almost pompously, like he'd won something. Scrum paused in his tracks, casting his mind back to the night before and the knife to his throat and remembered the two, knew they were real. But he was under orders from a man who could kill him without lifting a finger. So he wouldn't speak.
"Scrum. And the pleasure's all mine. Now keep moving," he insisted, casting his eyes wearily about him, as if expecting his Master to be there, be ready to kill him, be ready to end his life on deck in the midmorning light.
She scrubbed the deck with more gusto than was strictly necessary, her back hurt, her fingers pruned, but she kept scrubbing. The foul looks men were sending her were enough to make her push her body further than she needed to, in a vain attempt to prove herself. Jack watched her with the crumpled eyes of a concerned man, who was afraid to speak and upset the frazzled nerves of the woman beside him.
Soapy water built up around her brush, scrubbing down into the wood and trying to erase the eternal red stains. It didn't look any cleaner to her eye, but Anna kept going. Off to the left of them, the sound of hang-over shattering hammers brought both pirates' eyes up and over, staring at men creating a glass coffin. Both men working on it had greyish skin, dead looking and water logged, empty and vacant eyes that would haunt Anna's dreams for years to come. Stitches lined their skin, recreating them like rag dolls, like they had to be put back together in scattered pieces.
Unconsciously, Jack and Anna moved together, shuffling with their brushes until they were close enough to Scrum to voice their concerns. "Why is there a glass coffin?" they whispered together, sending glances at the other as if to be sure they had both spoken at once. It was almost unnatural when they didn't.
"Do I look like the man in charge?" Scrum asked sarcastically, rolling his eyes and scrubbing harder into the deck. Anna copied his actions, breathing in the soft smell of the sea drifting in and around the ship.
"Where are we?" Jack asked a moment later, seeming to drop the subject of a crystalline coffin. Scrum frowned, as though ashamed he had forgotten his manners and bowed slightly.
"'Scuse me, Captain Sparrow, sir, and Miss Princess Anna, ma'am. I be right honored to welcome you aboard our world-renowned vessel of infamy - Queen Anne's Revenge," he said with a sweeping motion of his hand a proud glint in his eyes.
Anna swallowed, fear curling in her stomach like a maelstrom, taking hold in her veins and singing every fiber of her being. She knew the stories, had told them herself aboard her first journey on the Black Pearl, when she thought no one but Cotton was listening to her and a storm was rising with the end of the day and afterwards she would tell her own story, without anyone knowing.
"Blackbeard," she whispered, dread clear in her voice and she wasn't looking for this pirate. She'd only come to London to free Gibbs and find her mother, not be taken aboard the most notorious ship (aside from the Pearl) by one of the most vicious pirates known to man.
The red and black ship cut through the waves with ease, the eerie beauty of its majesty was not unlike the Black Pearl when it was wrapped up in an Aztec curse, gold lining their despair and blanketing the ship in fog and crumbling wood and shredded sails. The two out-of-place pirates scrubbing the deck tried to keep their rolling emotions in check, the ability to run non-existent and the fear within them growing. But pirates weren't supposed to feel fear.
The Quartermaster dumped more water in their path, his movements halting and slow like a marionette on strings, unaccustomed to movement. Anna thought the strings must be invisible, attached to Blackbeard somehow, controlling the stitched up puppet-man from the darkness of his cabin.
"He's a curious one," Jack commented calmly, as if the man's dead eyes and ashen circles around them against his pale skin didn't send shivers rolling down his spine. He wasn't afraid.
"He's been zombified," Scrum said lowly, sneaking side glances at the man in an attempt to scrutinize without the possibility of the whip cracking down on his back.
"Eh?" Jack and Anna asked together, confusion coloring the sound and their faces and Anna recalled the cursed crew of the Black Pearl, the way their bones glinted in the blue light of the moon. She wondered if they were like that. The dead blue rolling eyes were worse than any skeletal man she'd ever seen. They were filmed over, white where they shouldn't be, like it'd been dead for far too long.
"Zombiefied. Blackbeard's doing. All the officers are the same. Makes 'em more compliant," Scrum explained flatly, wishing to add expression to his words but knowing he couldn't. Gunner, one of the meanest officers was stalking between the men, his whip poised and ready. Before he could speak again, it cracked down on an unsuspecting man, the reverberating cry striking fear into every other crewmember.
"And perpetually ill-tempered," Jack commented dryly as Anna nodded along. Her shoulder bumped against his, and he fixed her with a long look, one wrapped with every word he couldn't say, every 'it'll be okay' and 'I'm here' and 'don't worry' that could never leave his lips. She understood, and her answering smile was enough for him to know she was saying it all back.
Thirty minutes later they were hauling on a rope with Scrum and her hands burned, but she could rest happy that she'd already built up calluses within the smithy. All those years with Will at her side through burns and blisters and healing through the scars came rushing back and she missed her brother more than air sometimes. The memories came randomly, but it seemed like Jack always knew on instinct.
His rough hand glided over hers, pulling her back from the past and into the present where her body was straining and the wind was whipping at her hair and the stench of the crew was almost overpowering the scent of the ocean she loved.
"Five days underway, at least," Jack commented dryly, taking a long breath in. The very idea that they had slept that long was ludicrous, and enjoyable. No wonder Anna felt so rested.
"You can tell that by the smell of the sea?" Scrum asked with interest.
"The smell of the crew," Anna answered for him as Jack tied off the rope and let his eyes travel up the mast and settle on a strong looking young man tied there like he was spread out on the cross. Like he was the savior Jack didn't really believe in.
"Oi. What did that poor sod do? How can I make sure to not?" Jack asked, interest masking his concern for the man who stared resolutely into the horizon as if it held the absolute answer for him, deliverance.
"Him? Churchly fellow. Always going on about the Lord Almighty," Scrum commented with little care, tossing the words as if they were meaningless. Anna's eyes followed Jack's and her head tipped in concentration, trying to make out his face from his height.
"Bible-thumper on this ship?" Anna asked in confusion, taking a quick sip of broth from the cook as he passed by, her stomach rumbling at just the thought of a full meal she would enjoy later that day.
"A missionary's the story. What I heard, was he got captured in a raid. 'For that he was in London, told the Captain he knew of the life o' piracy, but he'd been saved. Found the light, as it were. Rest of the ship got killed - but not him. First Mate wouldn't let it happen, on account of his premier standing with the Lord an' ability to retreat from the life o' ungodly killin' an' thievery," Scrum said with a stern nod, as if the words were divine law. Anna leaned forward with interest wondering why any person would want to leave piracy. But in the back of her mind she remembered the raid in London, the stench of fear swimming in the streets, people screaming for second chances. Maybe she could understand. "First Mate sticking her neck out for some prisoner? That you don't see," he intoned, pointing a finger at the two of them.
"Her? Our First Mate is a her?" Jack asked, picking up on the smallest slip while Anna was still stuck in the past of blood on cobblestones and a musket in her hands.
"Back to work!" the Quartermaster shouted, causing a new flurry of movement on deck, leaving time for Scrum to scurry away like the rat he was. Anan stiffened beside Jack, her eyes rapt on the helm as a woman stepped out behind the flapping black flag of Blackbeard. Angelica raised her eyes to the sea beyond them, watching the deck below her with contempt and assured confidence.
"Steady as she goes," the Spanish woman shouted, her rough voice carrying over the men. Anna nearly growled, anger and betrayal pulsing through her body and Jack could practically taste the tension between them.
"That distasteful, arrogant, harlot!" she swore, reaching down for the sword in her belt on instinct. Jack grabbed her wrist quickly, a warning glance in his dark eyes that communicated everything he couldn't say. But she still needed to hear it.
"We'll be okay. It'll be fine," Jack said softly, so softly no one else could hear him. "No Spanish strumpet is going to cause our demise. You wait, love, we'll be out of this pinch in no time." For some reason, Anna didn't quite believe him, but she relished the sound of his voice and the assurance in his words anyway.
The wind blew her hair around her shoulders, a brown cascading tangle of brown locks around her eyes that Jack traced over and over again, ever changing like the waves. Her eyes were wide with trust and suppressed violence. She was quick fire, wild, something insanely dangerous in the way she moved and caught and burst into flames. And he was addicted.
He couldn't stop himself from was saying words that pirates shouldn't say, from letting his softer side show every time she fixed him with that concerned glance of perfect blue eyes. Perfect was not a word he used to describe many things, aside from the ocean and the Pearl, nothing was perfect. Except for her eyes, and her voice, and her beautiful soft skin and her ability to make him crumble.
He would say he was changing, would say he was twisting and becoming something different from what he was. But he wasn't, not really. He was finding home. And even though the seas that surrounded him where not being slice open by his own ship, and he didn't stand at the helm with a straight back and proud eyes, and the greatest expression of his less-than-perfect past was hovering over him with hawk-like eyes, he would be okay. As long as she was.
He slapped a hand on her back, because she could take it, and watched the hesitant look in her eyes melt into a grin. This was just another adventure, and they were so good at those.
