Chapter 8

James seemed to explode once they were far from the docks.

"If you do that again, Sparrow, I might hang you with or without a warrant. Are we clear?" he mentioned furious "And never call me 'Jamey' again."

"Well, what did ye want me to do?" Jack complained "And really, we have to make ye stop callin' me Sparrow. At least, if ye can't call me by my title, you could call me by my name."

James huffed at that, but said nothing. Jack took a deep breath before searching in his coat and pulled out the letter from it. James frowned.

"What's that?"

"Read it." Jack pointed out.

James hesitated for a few seconds, but in the end he grabbed the paper and read it quickly. The more he read, the more he opened his eyes. The letter, he detected, was from Port Royal and the person writing the letter was obviously someone with enough power for a pirate ship to enter imperceptibly, without problems. It was a crime against the Crown, an abuse of power and a betrayal to the Governor of Jamaica. It was… Well, bad for the citizens and the Crown, but it was an opportunity to clear his name, a way in.

"Not bad, right?" Jack smiled, proudly "Ye see, I thought that… Even if ye convinced the governor that ye weren't a traitor, it's still Beckett's puppet word against yers… But with that," he pointed to the letter in his hands "ye might have a chance to prove it to him."

James stared at the letter for a few moments, raised his head to look at Jack, looked down again, breathed, and folded the paper carefully, nodding.

"This… This could help, yes. I…" he sighed, already hating himself and the other one a little "Thank you."

"Don't mention it." the other said, happily "Besides, I need ye with a good position to obtain my price."

James shook his head, almost swearing that the man was only, even if just a little, justifying himself to still look like a pirate. It almost made him snort.

"You're a very unusual pirate, Jack Sparrow." he only commented.

"... I'm not sure if I should be offended or not at that." Jack frowned.

Despite the number of ships, the docks were almost empty at those hours and the moon was setting when they reached the Ranger. The crew Jack had gotten were close, but still far enough away from the ship to not be considered a threat.

Jack glanced at the ship, his eyes twinkling with desire. The night seemed to glow with the moonlight, covering the scene between shadows and silver lights.

Some of Vane's crew were obviously having fun on the Ranger, playing Liar's dice and drinking some rum while laughing. Jack turned to Gibbs, told him with his eyes to get ready, and decided to make his appearance of him, walking towards them, with enough confidence and arrogance.

"Good night, gentlemen," he smirked a bit even when these ones turned with sharp swords, in a threatening way. Jack didn't falter, though he kept his eyes on them "if ye'll allow us, we've come to borrow yer precious ship."

One of the men sneered at him "You must be desperate to come here and try, Sparrow."

The other four laughed at that. Jack only wandered around them a few times; his sword in hand ready to strike, his eyes taking in the men and the surrounding area. They seemed to assess him and rose from their seats, their weapons loaded and ready to be fired as the crew Jack had hired seemed to appear out of nowhere, James with them, and got behind Jack, threatening the others with their weapons. There was a moment Vane's crew understood and they shared a few glances.

"It would be better for everyone if ye left. We're more and I won't take responsibility if ye fall in the water… or to another destiny." Jack sent them a smirk.

It had the opposite effect, as the man who had spoken before took out his sword, with an angry look "Shut up, you buffoon! I'll kill you with my own sword!"

This one advanced, throwing himself towards Jack, who stopped the attack with his own sword and the rest of the crew of the Ranger went against Jack's crew, who attacked them so that they did not reach Jack. Thus, the fighting began to envelop the place with screeching sounds of iron and steel.

On the one hand, James was fighting with his sword and he kicked one of his enemies, knocking him. He raised his arm, trying to finish him off, but this one dodged at the last minute and pushed James with his own body to have some space again, and hit him with his blade. James managed to defend himself with a strong movement and shifted his feet to the other side to distract him in a different way.

On the other, Jack's crew fought the rest of the other crew to throw them into the sea if they could, something Jack had mentioned that he preferred them to do. This was not an easy task in the middle of a battle, when their lives were at risk, since they weren't able to stop and find weapons everywhere.

One of the enemies of the other crew fell into the water after one of them had pushed him, an a splash of the water from starboard could be heard.

Meanwhile, in the bow, Jack was putting his enemy in difficult places where he had to maintain some balance. Jack slammed his sword against his enemy's one, turning his feet to the side. While they were fighting with their swords, dodging blows, the other pirate tried to take advantage of the fact that he was at a better height and tried to hit him towards the ground, so that Jack fell, but this one jumped, hitting the other's sword, which made him fell to the ground. His enemy tried to act fast, but Jack put a foot on his sword and struck him quickly with his leg, his body hitting the mast, also falling into the water.

Jack got down from where he was and, back on the ground, Vane's firstmate decided to take his chance and charge him from behind. Jack, who had not seen the enemy come towards him, ducked when he saw a coin on the ground, causing the other to miss him. Hearing him, since the sword he had tried to hit had made a noise, Jack turned to parry an attack with a his sword. This one, enraged, tried to continue attacking him when suddenly, from behind, James appeared and attacked him, throwing him a bottle of rum that left him lying on the ground.

"Have you finished already?" James asked, sarcastically.

"But Jamey, I almost thought ye wanted another round." Jack smirked and glanced to the other man "Sometimes, ye act a bit like a pirate, mate."

James looked furious, though no one could tell if it was from the nickname or the comment, and he seemed about to speak when Gibbs called them, saying they had already secured the ship for the time being.

Jack decided not to waste any more time and started giving orders to clean up the mess, weigh the anchor, prepare the sails and take out the ropes that kept the ship in place.

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Vane's crew, who were either in the water or had been left on the docks (as they had done with Vane's first mate), had been yelling at them first and looking around as if trying to decide whether to follow them with a ship or if they had to inform Vane. Apparently, they made a decision because they disappeared from their sight towards the taverns.

However, it would be too late when they would appear. The Ranger would be far and out of reach once they had the Katherine ready and Jack was the only one who knew where to go: Gibbs and the crew would believe their destination was the Fountain of Youth, and Jack was actually more interested in searching for his ship... Nevertheless, neither of those were the destinations or, at least, not yet. Of course, that was giving him trouble getting his compass to work properly and he snorted, closing it. The bright side was that, at least, he knew where he wanted to be and he knew how to get there, as it was a real place. The most troublesome part would be hiding the ship.

He considered, looking over at the crew at work, as he played with his compass in one of his hands, and clicked his tongue. There was only one solution, as there was only one person who wanted to go there, so he knew that when the time came, he would have to ask for his help.

'Well, we both will enjoy that.' he sighed.

As the wind blew against the sails, he drummed his fingers on the wheel and he stared at the starry sky, lost in his thoughts. He wasn't yet worried of a possible mutiny, since the crew would calm down with the money that he had obtained… In any case, he shouldn't worry so much anyway; he had specifically asked Gibbs to search in the crew for people that wouldn't mind doing both legal and illegal business. Gibbs had wanted to ask about that, but Jack hadn't wanted to admit nothing without being sure in his own inversion.

As for James, despite Jack's own reluctance and mistrust, he had proven that he wanted his own position enough to work with him and was making more exceptions than would be considered normal for someone who was (or had been) of the Navy.

He spent at least the whole night and part of the morning when Gibbs seemed to realize that their destination wasn't the Fountain and he almost seemed about to pee himself when he put himself in front of Jack.

"What are ye doin', captain?! Jack?" Gibbs called him, anxious, and Jack only glanced at him, as if he didn't understand his questions. This only made the other more nervous "Ye're goin' in the wrong direction, captain."

Jack shook his head, his eyes still fixed on the sea "We're goin' on the right direction, mister Gibbs." And then he smiled a bit, indulgently "To do our business on the precious fountain, we need to do another task before."

"Do we need somethin' before goin' to the fountain, captain?" the other asked, frowning.

Jack also frowned, since he hadn't thought that either and nodded at that "Aye, well, that too, but I also need to obtain a price from our dear former commodore, since we made a little deal…"

"God's sake, Jack, nothing good will come out of tha'…" Gibbs shook his head "What if he betrays ye again?"

Jack bit his lip and grimaced, but sighed "... I don't have much of a choice, Gibbs. Besides, this time, I know what I'm doin' and I'm the one that is controllin' the reins, savvy?"

Gibbs didn't look convinced, but he nodded anyway "... Aye, captain."

Jack relaxed at that, unintentionally, and gazed again towards the horizon, pointing at Gibbs to take the helm, telling him that he needed to rest.

"Ye know the way, Gibbs. When ye want to rest, come find me."

Jack would have liked to have three persons (himself, Gibbs and James) working on the helm, but he didn't think that Gibbs trusted in James much and Jack didn't know if he did so yet, which meant two turns for the moment.

Jack sighed, weary, throwing himself to the bed, opening a bottle of rum on the way and drank as he sang in a low voice, somewhat bitter and wishing he would really get his prize for what he was doing.

"Yo ho, yo ho, a pirate's life for me."

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&&& A.N.: Hello again! The fighting scene took some part of my life, because I'm not used to write action: I asked a friend of mine for help and that I kind of made it mine with what he suggested ^^" I hope it didn't come too bad, because it's the first time I really try it hahahaa

Anyway, a bit shorter than other chapters, but necessary because you need to see other POVs to understand more the plot of the story so :)

I'm also happy to announce that I'm close to have my English version at par with the Spanish one and will soon probably be back to my usual schedule I followed before ^^

Anyway, random recomendation: Sometimes I lurk around Twitter and a month ago or so (maybe more, I'm quite forgetul ^^") I found a magnificent artist called Natalie de Corsair (I'm sure you'll be able to found her/them (? not sure there) ) that has some fanarts of these great movies, so I recommend you to have a look around if you enjoy art :) I personally love them!

Tiraqq: Glad you found it anyway ^^ And I hope you keep enjoying it!

As always, thank you so much for being there and for all the support I receive :) You don't know how happy it makes me! Until next time :D &&&