Disclaimer: Pointless. This is pointless. I spent the last of my money to buy my brother's BK for lunch while my friend, who was staying on for a while, bought them DQ, and then after we were both frazzled at 8:30 from applying-to-college junk we counted change and found we had just barely enough to go see 'Pirates' again—my fourth time, her second. That means if anyone sues, I have absolutely no money for them to win!
AN: I have absolutely no money. 'Two Towers' comes out in one week. *Tears house apart looking for change* I can't buy it! Wait, this could be a good thing. If we have no money to buy it when it comes out, we have to wait until we have money and buy it when the extended version comes out, right? Good, now if only I could find my SAT scores the world would be extremely good. They were on my desk at one point in time, but so was all my biomed stuff, and it has vanished, so I'm hoping that if I find one vanished item I'll find the other, more important SAT and ACT scores. Yeah. Anyways, this story is fast approaching an end, and a new story is not yet in any shape to begin putting pen to paper with, but maybe it'll form into something soon. There's always hope . . .no, wait, Tolkien had him decide to lie down and die. I always hated that part of the appendixes—the rest of the tale was cool, just not the dying part, though it would be kind of morbidly neat to be able to decide one morning that you want to die and then have it happen in a nice, calm, no-blood-loss way. All right, rambling about the wrong fandom there . . .can you tell I'm excited about TT coming out, even though Jackson murdered the plot? Focus, EstelWolfe, focus. Finish nice 'Pirates' fic. Then start another fic, if kind muses will give you one.
Trust Me Still
Part 16
Jack stood at the bow of his ship, acutely aware for the first time in a long time of how much work it took to roll with the motion of the ship. It had become second nature to him, a ship being his natural habitat for over two decades now, but a deep ache in his knee informed him each time he shifted his weight. He resisted the urge to reach down and rub at the tighter bandage that Ana-Maria had tied around the injury as she helped him change into clothes that didn't drip blood all over the deck of his ship.
She was right about his crew, of course. He had chosen carefully this time. It might take a couple hard knocks to teach him a lesson, but once he learned it, he learned it well. He supposed Barbosa's treachery had just made him overly cautious.
It had been rather thrilling, to see the looks of concern and respect that they had sent his way when he was forced to let Will and Ana-Maria help him from the boat onto his ship. It had been even more thrilling to see that they still obeyed his orders despite the fact that he could feel his entire body trembling with the strain of rolling with the motion of his boat without falling flat on his face.
Jack raised the rum bottle to his mouth and took another gulp of the liquid, smiling slightly at the fire it raised in his throat on the way down. The crew had been searching through the catacombs that made up the brotherhood's home since dawn came, and they had found some nice things, some very nice things indeed. They had their captain and their loot and they were happy.
The pirate captain rubbed his sleeve across his face, wiping away the salt water that had sprayed up, feeling the grit of the salt that had already dried on his exposed skin and not caring too much.
The reunion between Will and Elizabeth had been largely unspoken messages passed between the two who loved each other just as deeply now as they ever had before. Will had stood silent on one side of Jack as Elizabeth stared at him, a child's hand in each of hers. Then, as if of accord, the two had moved towards each other and met in an embrace that was slightly hampered by a young boy who wished to hug his father just as much as his mother did.
It had only been the girl, young Ana, who had pulled back, still unsure if the man before her was the same man that she had called father all her life or if he was the stranger that had threatened her.
Elizabeth noticed the reticence of the child before half a minute had passed. "Ana, come say hello to your father. Come hug Papa."
The girl had looked at Will with eyes that were too bright and too old for her short life, her head tilted to one side as if deciding what to do.
Will had knelt on the deck, bending forward so that his line of sight intersected the child's and holding out his arms. "Ana . . .I'm sorry if I frightened you . . .forgive me . . .please come see me?"
The child had waited a moment more before launching herself into her father's arms. The Turner family had disappeared below deck minutes afterward as Jack's crew lowered the boats and prepared to go see what pickings were to be had. Limping badly, Jack had made his own way to his cabin, where he sat down on the bed, fighting the urge to merely lie down and sleep.
That was were Ana-Maria had found him the first time, and, after cursing him for being pig-headed, stubborn, and stupid, she had stripped him, re-bandaged his arm and leg, and helped him into clothes that weren't soaked through with his own blood.
Jack had been surprised to find that he wasn't embarrassed or upset that she had seen him that weak and helpless. Perhaps it was because the woman had shown no sign of contempt, no sign of fear, no sign of anything, really, except a deep caring for his state of body and mind.
He had been rather disappointed when she had left to see to the working of his ship, her final words a plea for him to stay in his cabin and rest without doing anything stupid . . .
A plea that he had almost immediately ignored, the desire to sleep having fled as quickly as it had come. Instead he had grabbed a bottle of rum and made his slow way up to the bow, his leg better able to hold his weight with the tighter binding and the small amount of rest. From his vantage point he could see the ocean spreading out before him, wild, free, unbounded, his harsh and beautiful mistress . . .and he was visible to most of the crew.
Some paranoia died hard.
Moving his arm up to rub at his face again, he tilted his head so that he could see the female pirate standing behind him out of the corner of his eye. Gibbs had stopped once to watch him for a few minutes and then went back to helping the crew. A few others, mostly the older crew from five years ago, had paused to stare, quickly and quietly moving on before they could arouse his wrath.
The female pirate, though, had stood there for at least a quarter of an hour now and showed no signs of moving on. Twice she had seemed on the verge of coming to speak to him, but both times she had backed down before coming close enough to voice whatever was on her mind.
Jack continued to stare at the ocean, refusing to feel guilty about being on deck on his own ship. He was the captain; he would go where and when he wanted.
The pirate captain grabbed at the railing when his leg buckled, cursing softly as the bottle of rum fell overboard, attempting not to draw too much attention to himself. The sight seemed to finally decide Ana-Maria, as she moved forward and placed a hand on his shoulder.
"What are ye doing, Jack Sparrow?"
"Captain, love, and what does it appear that I'm doin'?"
"Standing and gazing at an ocean when ye've got friend's who are worried and lookin' for ye."
Jack looked up at her sharply.
"Will went to find you in your cabin."
"It doesn't take that long to get from my cabin to here . . ." Jack restrained himself from adding 'for most people'. "He could have asked one of the crew."
Ana-Maria turned her own gaze out to sea, leaning her arms against the railing just as Jack was. "He thought maybe you were avoiding him, Jack, and considering how small a ship is, he didn't want to push the point." She paused for a moment. "Are you avoiding him?"
Jack looked up in true surprise. "Why would I do that?"
"He did kill you."
"He brought me back, he carried me out of there . . .it would have been easy for him to just walk away once he was free, run and see if he could catch the Pearl, forget about a dead pirate, but he didn't. He's a good man. I trust him. I knew that he wouldn't kill me . . .not on purpose."
Ana-Maria glanced at him out of the corner of her eye. "That's a tall compliment, coming from you. I'm not the one who needs to here it, though."
Jack grinned. "I thought that he and Elizabeth would have been . . .getting reacquainted by now."
"That's rather hard to do with two five-year-olds in the cabin, Jack. I think that's part of why Will was looking for you."
The grin faded. "Ah, a child-watcher that can't move as quickly as the children."
The female pirate turned so that she was fully facing her captain. "Jack, is that what's bothering you? You'll heal, Jack. I've seen deeper injuries that don't cause any permanent problems."
"And I've seen scratches that can cripple a man if the fever gets into them. Even if it does heal, how long until I start feeling it every time a storm starts blowing? How long before I can't move in the morning because it stiffens up?"
"Jack . . ." Ana-Maria grabbed him by both shoulders, forcing him to face her. "What the hell are you talking about? You sound like Jacob did, not like Captain Jack Sparrow. You'll heal and you'll be fine, Jack. Have faith in yourself."
Jack laughed, not his usual charming, humor-filled laugh, but a hollow, mirthless sound that frightened the female pirate. "Jacob was right, love. We were much younger . . .so, so much younger."
"Gibbs is older than you, and he still pulls his share of the weight."
"Aye, love, he tries, but you know as well as I that he'll either be takin' on
a permanent shore address soon or die in a raid. He's not all that much older than me, either, love. Over two decades I've been in this business
. . .it takes a toll."
"Jack, you listen to me. I could have kept the Pearl. I could have kept her, but I didn't. I brought her back to you, and I handed her over, and I never regretted it. She's taken some heavy battering through the years, but you always put her back together, and I think she's stronger now than she's ever been before. Maybe it's time you took the time to put her captain back together." Jack stared at Ana-Maria, his eyes dark and empty between the kohl that permanently surrounded them. "Jack . . .trust me."
Jack dropped his gaze, his eyes narrowing. "He killed me. I was dead . . .not undead, dead, gone, not there, not here, not me. I try to remember, but all I see are flashes, glimpses, and I feel the cold and the emptiness and I hear . . .things . . .again . . ." The pirate closed his eyes, his body trembling again as the volume of his voice dropped with each word. "And I can't change anything or do anything . . .and it frightens me."
Jack opened his eyes in surprise as the female pirate wrapped her arms around his neck and pulled him into an embrace.
"Oh God, Jack, I'm so sorry. I didn't think about where you might have been . . .what you might have seen . . .I'm so sorry."
"It's all right, love. I'm not the one you should worry about here. Will's the one that was possessed, remember?"
"Will's got his own counselor, Jack. Now, if you're up to it, let's go see if we can take Jack and Ana off their hands so that she can have a private session with him?"
Jack nodded, a grin back on his face, and pulled himself free of the embrace, glancing out of the corner of his eye to see if any crewmen might have noticed, but none seemed to be remotely interested in him at the moment. Walking by his side, Ana-Maria began listing off things that had been taken from the raider's ship and home and brought aboard as she matched her stride to Jack's limping ones. The pirate captain listened with half his mind, filing the data away for later use, the other half intent on how, exactly, he was going to cope with two demons in the rigging when he could barely walk, let alone climb.
End Notes:
This might be a few chapters longer than I meant it to be, considering this one was not in the original plans. Oh well. Never kick a muse for working. Either way, this fic is still nearing an end. Before it does, however, I will try to make it slightly clearer why, exactly, Jack is alive, as that has been a very common review question.
By the curse/blessing, family was off limits to other members of the brotherhood. By that rule, only Will had the right to kill Jack. When Daniel shoved Jack forward, he violated that rule. However, Daniel didn't think he had, because Daniel, as a pirate, knew that Jack Sparrow had no blood family. Not all family is blood, though, so Will was able to break free of the brotherhood using Jack's death as a loophole. The gods then undid the blessing on the brotherhood, but they healed Will, as he was an innocent that had broken free. Jack was also an innocent whose life was unfairly cut short because he was family to Will and not Daniel, so Daniel had no right to cause his death, so they healed him as well, it just took a bit longer because he wasn't directly connected to them through one of the blades like Will was but rather through his friendship/family tie to Will. Then Will and Jack are both alive and everyone's happy, right? Right?
I don't think that really cleared anything up, but I tried.