The groaning carried clearly across the deck, the crew exchanging grins at
the sound of their captain's discomfort. Jack had refused to go below,
saying the moonlight calmed him, and as such, every sound he made was heard
clearly by the men settling down for the night across the deck.
'Oh, stop complaining. I pulled the punch,' Marin told him, placing a wet cloth over his bruised nose.
Jack sighed in pleasure as the cool moisture eased the pain in his face. Marin watched him for a moment, as amused by his complaints as his crew.
'You know, I could have hit you harder,' she told him.
His answer was somewhat muffled.
'Why didn't you then?'
Marin grinned.
'I wanted to teach you a lesson about making a move on a girl, not knock whatever sense you have left from your brain,' she said impishly, drawing a smile from her wounded companion.
He nodded gently, holding out a hand for her to shake.
'Point taken,' he admitted, tentatively touching his nose through the cloth. 'We're square then, yes?'
She smiled, removing the cloth carefully.
'Yes, I'd say so.'
He regarded her solemnly as she wiped the blood from his nose. Her blow had split the skin on the bridge of his nose and dazed him, but nothing more. However, he was making as much of a fuss of it as he could.
She wasn't at all unpleasant to look at, he decided as she ministered to his injury. Her pale skin made for a marked contrast between her and the other women of the Caribbean, and he would not find any to match her copper curls in all the ports he had visited. But what really drew him in were her eyes, how you could tell what mood she was in by the hue of the grey. So far he had only seen them darkened in anger at him, but just now, they had settled into a lighter shade, with a hint of blue to shadow them, as she tended to his wound.
Marin reached across him for another cloth, and hissed in sudden pain. Jolted from his contemplation of her face by the unexpected sound, Jack noticed the back of her hand was red raw, almost shiny under the moonlight, and remembered how Hester had held her hand against the lamp glass. He hadn't realised she had actually been hurt.
His fingers brushed lightly over the burnt skin, and she drew in a sharp breath, suppressing the tears of pain that sprang to her eyes.
'Have you tended to this yet, love?' he asked softly, taking the cloth from her hands and dipping it in the basin of water that lay beside them.
Marin shook her head.
'No, there's no need,' she began, biting her lip as Jack gently placed the now sodden cloth over her injured hand.
'I would rather think there is,' he corrected her. 'Imagine what your captain would do to me if I returned to him damaged goods.'
This unexpected comment drew a laugh from her, and the smile remained on her face for long moments after the laugh had died away. Jack lowered his eyes to her hand, where he was carefully cleaning the dirt from her burn, trying very hard not to hurt her any further. Marin watched him from under lowered eyelashes, surprised and more than a little confused by this side of the man who'd taken her hostage.
She never would have thought him capable of putting someone else before himself and his ship, yet he was sailing off to rescue a man she had never heard of because of some connection between them. His hands were gentle on hers, and she could feel the calluses from years of living at sea. The lamp set between them illuminated the concentration on his face as he returned the favour she had done him by binding her hand with care she would never have expected from a man such as him.
When he was done, he sat back, his gaze meeting hers with a mixture of amusement and concern. She could not tear her eyes from his, a fact that confused and worried her, yet at the same time was a comfort to her lonely heart. She desperately missed Elias and his crew, the men she had grown up among and loved as a family, and found herself glad that the evening's activities had put an end to the hostility between them.
A tuneful melody floated on the breeze towards them, the sound of men singing softly to amuse themselves.
'Come over the hills, my bonny Irish lass,
Come over the hills to your darling
You choose the road, love, and I'll make the vow
And I'll be your true love forever . . .'
Jack smiled, his gaze switching from Marin's to regard his men where they sat together under the stars.
'They're singing for you, love,' he murmured quietly, amused by her frown.
'Whatever for?' Marin asked him, flattered but unsure of why she deserved such a compliment.
Jack sighed, leaning back with a noncommittal shrug.
'Probably to apologise for ignoring you,' he told her. 'You'll be expected to muck in tomorrow, you know. You don't mind that, do you?'
Marin gave him an exasperated look.
'That's what I've been trying to do for the last three days,' she said indignantly, letting herself laugh at the warped logic that seemed to reign supreme on this ship. 'Of course I don't mind, Mr Sparrow.'
Jack closed his eyes in resigned patience, heaving a heavy sigh before opening them once again to hold Marin's gaze with a calm expression.
'I've asked you to call me Jack, love,' he said, his tone weary.
Marin smiled, knowing her insistence on being proper was driving him up the wall.
'As I said, Mr Sparrow, we haven't been properly introduced,' she said sweetly.
Jack gave her a Look.
'Love, I kissed you in a back alleyway of Port Royale,' he said in an exasperated voice. 'Do we really need to be formally introduced?'
She held his gaze for a long moment, long enough for him to realise his mistake in mentioning the kiss again. With a sigh, he called down the deck to Gibbs, who ambled up to join them.
'Aye, cap'n?' he said, winking down at Marin where she sat on a coil of rope.
Jack glanced at the girl by his side and stood, hauling her to her feet beside him.
'This young lady will not use my name until we've been properly introduced, so if you would do the honours . . .'
It appeared for a moment as though Gibbs was going to laugh in his captain's face, so tight did his expression become, but he quickly overcame it.
'I've always told you it were bad luck to have a woman on board,' he told him, ignoring the world weary sigh that accompanied his well known warning.
He reached out to take Marin's hand, presenting her to Jack with a flourish.
'Cap'n Jack Sparrow, may I present Miss Marin,' he said, loud enough for the rest of the crew to hear. 'Miss Marin, Cap'n Jack Sparrow.'
Over the chuckles that filtered up through the night air, Jack bowed gracefully to Marin.
'A pleasure to meet you, Miss Marin.'
Holding back an overwhelming urge to giggle, Marin curtseyed to him.
'And you, Mr Sparrow.'
Jack's lips twitched in amusement as he gazed down at her.
'Please, do call me by my given name,' he asked her, fully aware that the crew were watching this with great amusement.
'Only if you will call me by mine,' she told him, biting down hard into her lip to prevent the laughter that was threatening to burst out.
Jack inclined his head in agreement.
'By all means, Marin.'
She kept him waiting for a moment, before replying in kind. Jack grinned down at her, and turned back to Gibbs.
'Thank you, Mr Gibbs, that will be all.'
Gibbs glanced between them, feigning propriety.
'Are you sure, cap'n?' he asked. ''Taint right to leave a lady and gentleman alone without a chaperone.'
At this, Marin could no longer keep her laughter locked away, and peal upon peal of irrepressible giggles burst forth. The two men glanced at her in surprise, and exchanged a bemused look. Gibbs saluted Jack with a roguish grin, and marched back to the rest of the crew, no doubt to regale them with the reason for the theatrics on the forecastle.
The two left alone sat once again, sharing a smile for the pointless display of impeccable manners they had just put themselves through. From across the water came the sound of many other voices joining the singing that sounded from the Pearl's crew. Glancing over the water, they could see the Dryad, rolling gently, and her crew lined along the deck, sharing in the music.
'I take it Ana Maria agreed to your proposal,' Marin said softly, her eyes sparkling still with undisguised humour.
Jack nodded.
'Who wouldn't want to put one over on Christian Danielson?' he asked. 'He's done us all out of something at some point.'
As she threw back her head to laugh at his logic, Jack's eyes caught a flash of silver from the open neck of Marin's shirt.
'That's a rare trinket you wear, love,' he said admiringly.
Marin's fingers moved to touch the locket, drawing it from the folds of her shirt to show him the craftsmanship.
'It was my father's,' she said softly, tracing the fine engraving on the front with a slender fingertip. 'He used to live out here and send things home to us before . . . well, I don't really know anything about it. I was very young when everything changed. This was the last thing he sent me.'
Reaching out to take the finely wrought piece in his roughened fingers, Jack ran a gentle thumb over the engraving, admiring the work that had gone into making it.
'What happened?' he asked gently, sensing that she had no trouble speaking of her past.
Marin smiled faintly.
'I remember my mother was so insistent that I wear this,' she said, not ready to begin her tale just yet. 'She used to ask me every day if I was wearing my father's locket. It was only a few months before he sent for us.'
She paused, searching through her memories for the time she was describing.
'We took a ship to come out and join him, that I do know,' she said confidently, 'but I don't remember much about the journey, just that we were attacked and sunk, and I never saw my mother again.'
Jack nodded slowly, a slight frown on his face as he examined the markings on the beautiful locket. The front face was embossed with four interlocking rings, the lower left one of which had a faint chain engraved around it. The whole piece was large, especially for a woman's necklace, fitting neatly in the palm of his hand.
'The next thing I remember is being pulled out of the water, and someone telling me that I was safe now and there was no need to be afraid,' Marin continued. 'I've lived with Elias ever since.'
'Have you heard from your father in all these years?'
It was at this point that Marin found the words would not come easily. She had not spoken of her past to anyone but those of the Red Dragon's crew, and was achingly aware of how alone she really was.
'Elias tried to find him, but he was already dead,' she said thickly, as if trying to hold back a tidal wave of emotion. 'Murdered. They took me back to Ireland to see if they could find anyone of my family there, but no one admitted it, if there were.'
Jack sighed, unhappy now that he had asked her to tell him, since it obviously hurt her to remember such a dark passage of time. His hand closed over hers, and she flinched at his rough skin on her burn.
'Ah, my apologies,' he said quickly, his face a grimace of anxiety as she rubbed the offending limb.
Marin smiled, not one to let a little sorrow dampen her spirits.
'Not to worry, it'll heal eventually,' she said cheerfully.
Jack felt himself relax, suppressing the sigh of relief that rose in his chest. A thought occurred to him.
'D'you know, I have no idea what it is Elias wants me to collect?' he said incredulously. 'How am I supposed to know which trinket on the Stella Maris belongs to him?'
Marin laughed quietly, shaking her curls out of her face.
'You're not,' she told him. 'That's why you'll be taking me with you.'
Jack held up his hands to ward off that suggestion.
'Now look here,' he started, regretting his choice of words as her gaze flattened. 'I'm not allowed to put you in a situation where you could get hurt. The code, see? So you're not boarding the Maris. I'm going by me onesies, savvy?'
She regarded him calmly.
'Then how will you know what you're looking for?' she asked pointedly.
'Well . . . you'll tell me, I'd imagine,' Jack said hopefully.
Marin laughed derisively and stood, stretching her tired muscles.
'Think again, Mr Sparrow.'
He stared after her as she slipped below decks, feeling as though, for the first time in his life, he had met his match.
*~*~*
Heh heh . . . I have a surprise for you guys. Just read the Author's Notes.
'Oh, stop complaining. I pulled the punch,' Marin told him, placing a wet cloth over his bruised nose.
Jack sighed in pleasure as the cool moisture eased the pain in his face. Marin watched him for a moment, as amused by his complaints as his crew.
'You know, I could have hit you harder,' she told him.
His answer was somewhat muffled.
'Why didn't you then?'
Marin grinned.
'I wanted to teach you a lesson about making a move on a girl, not knock whatever sense you have left from your brain,' she said impishly, drawing a smile from her wounded companion.
He nodded gently, holding out a hand for her to shake.
'Point taken,' he admitted, tentatively touching his nose through the cloth. 'We're square then, yes?'
She smiled, removing the cloth carefully.
'Yes, I'd say so.'
He regarded her solemnly as she wiped the blood from his nose. Her blow had split the skin on the bridge of his nose and dazed him, but nothing more. However, he was making as much of a fuss of it as he could.
She wasn't at all unpleasant to look at, he decided as she ministered to his injury. Her pale skin made for a marked contrast between her and the other women of the Caribbean, and he would not find any to match her copper curls in all the ports he had visited. But what really drew him in were her eyes, how you could tell what mood she was in by the hue of the grey. So far he had only seen them darkened in anger at him, but just now, they had settled into a lighter shade, with a hint of blue to shadow them, as she tended to his wound.
Marin reached across him for another cloth, and hissed in sudden pain. Jolted from his contemplation of her face by the unexpected sound, Jack noticed the back of her hand was red raw, almost shiny under the moonlight, and remembered how Hester had held her hand against the lamp glass. He hadn't realised she had actually been hurt.
His fingers brushed lightly over the burnt skin, and she drew in a sharp breath, suppressing the tears of pain that sprang to her eyes.
'Have you tended to this yet, love?' he asked softly, taking the cloth from her hands and dipping it in the basin of water that lay beside them.
Marin shook her head.
'No, there's no need,' she began, biting her lip as Jack gently placed the now sodden cloth over her injured hand.
'I would rather think there is,' he corrected her. 'Imagine what your captain would do to me if I returned to him damaged goods.'
This unexpected comment drew a laugh from her, and the smile remained on her face for long moments after the laugh had died away. Jack lowered his eyes to her hand, where he was carefully cleaning the dirt from her burn, trying very hard not to hurt her any further. Marin watched him from under lowered eyelashes, surprised and more than a little confused by this side of the man who'd taken her hostage.
She never would have thought him capable of putting someone else before himself and his ship, yet he was sailing off to rescue a man she had never heard of because of some connection between them. His hands were gentle on hers, and she could feel the calluses from years of living at sea. The lamp set between them illuminated the concentration on his face as he returned the favour she had done him by binding her hand with care she would never have expected from a man such as him.
When he was done, he sat back, his gaze meeting hers with a mixture of amusement and concern. She could not tear her eyes from his, a fact that confused and worried her, yet at the same time was a comfort to her lonely heart. She desperately missed Elias and his crew, the men she had grown up among and loved as a family, and found herself glad that the evening's activities had put an end to the hostility between them.
A tuneful melody floated on the breeze towards them, the sound of men singing softly to amuse themselves.
'Come over the hills, my bonny Irish lass,
Come over the hills to your darling
You choose the road, love, and I'll make the vow
And I'll be your true love forever . . .'
Jack smiled, his gaze switching from Marin's to regard his men where they sat together under the stars.
'They're singing for you, love,' he murmured quietly, amused by her frown.
'Whatever for?' Marin asked him, flattered but unsure of why she deserved such a compliment.
Jack sighed, leaning back with a noncommittal shrug.
'Probably to apologise for ignoring you,' he told her. 'You'll be expected to muck in tomorrow, you know. You don't mind that, do you?'
Marin gave him an exasperated look.
'That's what I've been trying to do for the last three days,' she said indignantly, letting herself laugh at the warped logic that seemed to reign supreme on this ship. 'Of course I don't mind, Mr Sparrow.'
Jack closed his eyes in resigned patience, heaving a heavy sigh before opening them once again to hold Marin's gaze with a calm expression.
'I've asked you to call me Jack, love,' he said, his tone weary.
Marin smiled, knowing her insistence on being proper was driving him up the wall.
'As I said, Mr Sparrow, we haven't been properly introduced,' she said sweetly.
Jack gave her a Look.
'Love, I kissed you in a back alleyway of Port Royale,' he said in an exasperated voice. 'Do we really need to be formally introduced?'
She held his gaze for a long moment, long enough for him to realise his mistake in mentioning the kiss again. With a sigh, he called down the deck to Gibbs, who ambled up to join them.
'Aye, cap'n?' he said, winking down at Marin where she sat on a coil of rope.
Jack glanced at the girl by his side and stood, hauling her to her feet beside him.
'This young lady will not use my name until we've been properly introduced, so if you would do the honours . . .'
It appeared for a moment as though Gibbs was going to laugh in his captain's face, so tight did his expression become, but he quickly overcame it.
'I've always told you it were bad luck to have a woman on board,' he told him, ignoring the world weary sigh that accompanied his well known warning.
He reached out to take Marin's hand, presenting her to Jack with a flourish.
'Cap'n Jack Sparrow, may I present Miss Marin,' he said, loud enough for the rest of the crew to hear. 'Miss Marin, Cap'n Jack Sparrow.'
Over the chuckles that filtered up through the night air, Jack bowed gracefully to Marin.
'A pleasure to meet you, Miss Marin.'
Holding back an overwhelming urge to giggle, Marin curtseyed to him.
'And you, Mr Sparrow.'
Jack's lips twitched in amusement as he gazed down at her.
'Please, do call me by my given name,' he asked her, fully aware that the crew were watching this with great amusement.
'Only if you will call me by mine,' she told him, biting down hard into her lip to prevent the laughter that was threatening to burst out.
Jack inclined his head in agreement.
'By all means, Marin.'
She kept him waiting for a moment, before replying in kind. Jack grinned down at her, and turned back to Gibbs.
'Thank you, Mr Gibbs, that will be all.'
Gibbs glanced between them, feigning propriety.
'Are you sure, cap'n?' he asked. ''Taint right to leave a lady and gentleman alone without a chaperone.'
At this, Marin could no longer keep her laughter locked away, and peal upon peal of irrepressible giggles burst forth. The two men glanced at her in surprise, and exchanged a bemused look. Gibbs saluted Jack with a roguish grin, and marched back to the rest of the crew, no doubt to regale them with the reason for the theatrics on the forecastle.
The two left alone sat once again, sharing a smile for the pointless display of impeccable manners they had just put themselves through. From across the water came the sound of many other voices joining the singing that sounded from the Pearl's crew. Glancing over the water, they could see the Dryad, rolling gently, and her crew lined along the deck, sharing in the music.
'I take it Ana Maria agreed to your proposal,' Marin said softly, her eyes sparkling still with undisguised humour.
Jack nodded.
'Who wouldn't want to put one over on Christian Danielson?' he asked. 'He's done us all out of something at some point.'
As she threw back her head to laugh at his logic, Jack's eyes caught a flash of silver from the open neck of Marin's shirt.
'That's a rare trinket you wear, love,' he said admiringly.
Marin's fingers moved to touch the locket, drawing it from the folds of her shirt to show him the craftsmanship.
'It was my father's,' she said softly, tracing the fine engraving on the front with a slender fingertip. 'He used to live out here and send things home to us before . . . well, I don't really know anything about it. I was very young when everything changed. This was the last thing he sent me.'
Reaching out to take the finely wrought piece in his roughened fingers, Jack ran a gentle thumb over the engraving, admiring the work that had gone into making it.
'What happened?' he asked gently, sensing that she had no trouble speaking of her past.
Marin smiled faintly.
'I remember my mother was so insistent that I wear this,' she said, not ready to begin her tale just yet. 'She used to ask me every day if I was wearing my father's locket. It was only a few months before he sent for us.'
She paused, searching through her memories for the time she was describing.
'We took a ship to come out and join him, that I do know,' she said confidently, 'but I don't remember much about the journey, just that we were attacked and sunk, and I never saw my mother again.'
Jack nodded slowly, a slight frown on his face as he examined the markings on the beautiful locket. The front face was embossed with four interlocking rings, the lower left one of which had a faint chain engraved around it. The whole piece was large, especially for a woman's necklace, fitting neatly in the palm of his hand.
'The next thing I remember is being pulled out of the water, and someone telling me that I was safe now and there was no need to be afraid,' Marin continued. 'I've lived with Elias ever since.'
'Have you heard from your father in all these years?'
It was at this point that Marin found the words would not come easily. She had not spoken of her past to anyone but those of the Red Dragon's crew, and was achingly aware of how alone she really was.
'Elias tried to find him, but he was already dead,' she said thickly, as if trying to hold back a tidal wave of emotion. 'Murdered. They took me back to Ireland to see if they could find anyone of my family there, but no one admitted it, if there were.'
Jack sighed, unhappy now that he had asked her to tell him, since it obviously hurt her to remember such a dark passage of time. His hand closed over hers, and she flinched at his rough skin on her burn.
'Ah, my apologies,' he said quickly, his face a grimace of anxiety as she rubbed the offending limb.
Marin smiled, not one to let a little sorrow dampen her spirits.
'Not to worry, it'll heal eventually,' she said cheerfully.
Jack felt himself relax, suppressing the sigh of relief that rose in his chest. A thought occurred to him.
'D'you know, I have no idea what it is Elias wants me to collect?' he said incredulously. 'How am I supposed to know which trinket on the Stella Maris belongs to him?'
Marin laughed quietly, shaking her curls out of her face.
'You're not,' she told him. 'That's why you'll be taking me with you.'
Jack held up his hands to ward off that suggestion.
'Now look here,' he started, regretting his choice of words as her gaze flattened. 'I'm not allowed to put you in a situation where you could get hurt. The code, see? So you're not boarding the Maris. I'm going by me onesies, savvy?'
She regarded him calmly.
'Then how will you know what you're looking for?' she asked pointedly.
'Well . . . you'll tell me, I'd imagine,' Jack said hopefully.
Marin laughed derisively and stood, stretching her tired muscles.
'Think again, Mr Sparrow.'
He stared after her as she slipped below decks, feeling as though, for the first time in his life, he had met his match.
*~*~*
Heh heh . . . I have a surprise for you guys. Just read the Author's Notes.