Title: Lessons
Author: sidhe
Email: sidhe_elf AT hotmail DOT com
Pairing: Jack/Will
Rating: PG
Notes: Written for the pirates500 character backstory
challenge - 500 words exactly
Disclaimer: Characters and concepts belong to Disney. I'm just borrowing
them; no profit is made; they'll be returned at the end, a bit bruised,
battered and otherwise mistreated – but they will be in one piece. Hopefully.
Jack loves the Pearl because she is freedom, and he loves freedom with the jealous intensity of a man who has known too well the heavy burden of shackles.
His first cage had no solid walls, but the locks were solid enough. His father was a 'God-fearing' man, and taught young Jack as much with the strap as with the slate. Jack learnt his letters, and how to figure in long division. But he learnt far keener that a spilt cup of water, or laughing on Sundays, or a quiet day at the markets, or a sudden change of temper would soon be followed by a beating. He also learnt that God helped those who helped themselves, and stowed away aboard a merchant vessel the day he turned eleven. He began to know foreign docks as well as he knew his lessons: the vistas of Rome, the markets of Macau, the jail cells of Spain.
He had been caught at pick-pocketting, a wiry fifteen-year-old whose fingers were usually fast enough. The ship he had been cabin-boy to sailed on schedule, and Jack was left to learn another lesson: that prison was a world of darkness and pain and loneliness, and that an inmate's rough 'attentions' could almost (but not quite) be enough to break the spirit.
He left a year later, having lost what last vestiges of innocence he still possessed, but having gained a new name. The men of the prison called him 'Sparrow' for his size and his quickness, but he answered to it because he vowed that he would always be free, like his namesake. He learnt to line his eyes with kohl, to counter the sun's harsh glare, and he learnt to braid a girl's hair in the Polynesian sun.
For six months he sailed on the 'Wolverine', and re-learnt the lesson that prisons could be people as well as places. After rowing fourteen hour shifts on half-rations, Jack hated the merchant captain. After thirty lashes for talking back, Jack was beyond feeling or consciousness. He learnt kindness for the first time when a quick-grinned boy gave him his own rations as he lay feverish in the hull. At the end of the voyage, the two of them – he and William Turner – turned pirate, vowing that they would captain a ship of their own, one day. When their pirate 'Angelis' sank the 'Wolverine', they wept unashamed tears of joy.
Jack never remains long in one place. He feels the wind and the tide pulling at him, drawing him to new places and new faces. It's not often that he'll miss one or the other, but some nights he'll find his thoughts lingering on a young blacksmith's dark eyes and lightning grin, and wonder what could have been.
Jack can sail anywhere he likes, as long as he doesn't stay. Freedom is just a commodity, after all, and it must be bought with a price. It's high, but Jack knows that he'll always be willing to pay.