Hey, Softbrush here!
I was watching POTC in the theatre for about the 38th time (no sarcasm
there.!) when I realized something about our dear antagonist Barbossa. He
was wearing a wedding ring-on his wedding-ring finger. Now, unless Geoffrey
Rush forgot to take his off and absolutely nobody (nobody includes the make-
up folk, the costume designers, the producer, director, stage hands, prop
people, other actors, editors, f-x people, his personal assistant and
everybody else) realized this, I think his character either had a fetish
for wearing wedding rings yet wasn't married, or he was/had indeed in/been
in a relationship. (Don't pester me with comments such as "It could have
just been a ring." I am far more superiorly creative then that!)
Then the same night I was watching O! Heavenly Dog! on the family network.
It was Benji's third movie-you know, the famous dog actor. A detective had
been murdered yet become a 'returnable' to figure out who killed him.
However, as his human self was dead, he was 'returned' as a dog. He met up
with another friend of his who had been murdered as well, and had become a
'returnable' as a cat.
It was a very amusing and entertaining video, and an idea struck me. The
curse kind of rendered our favourite blood-lusty pirates alive yet dead at
the same time. More ideas ensued. I eventually got a headache and went to
bed, but not before writing a short summary of the story I had brewing
down.
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Returnable
A
Pirates of the Caribbean
Tale
Disclaimer: I don't own POTC or any of the characters from the movie. However, any helpless town folk scurrying around, a ship or two and anything that isn't in the movie: it's mine. Back off. Liska is my own creation so please respect that.
Summary: Barbossa was shot and killed by Jack Sparrow. He should, by all means, be gone and done with, yet because of the curse, a mix-up occurred in Heaven, Hell, and Fiddler's Green. He's now a 'returnable', trying to find the answer to a question. Yet first, he has to discover what the question is in order to have it answered.
Other: The first chapters take place before the movie. The rest takes place after the movie, the Golden Age of Piracy. An OC is in the introduction, yet isn't referred to so much afterwards until the end-she has a bit of importance to the story.
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Liska
I don't believe anybody else would know of the on-goings in my life save for me. Perhaps, though, a few others would recognize a situation and think that it reminded them of me. However it goes, I'm quite sure nobody living would ever have known about her.
'Her' being Liska. She was really quite beautiful and I suppose I did miss her from time to time. Yet when one is a captain of a rather blood thirsty pirate crew, one simply can't take their ship, go waltzing up and say hi to someone, who in fact you hadn't seen in a damn long while. The crew would start thinking for once, heaven forbid.
It was an accident, really, what happened. Ol' Jack Sparrow was still captain of The Black Pearl, so you can imagine this was at least ten years ago (in reality it was about eleven and a half). My older captain had sailed us right into a crowded ocean-side town, where business must have been good, not to mention it was terribly crowded.
Normally enough, the town panicked upon realization that a pirate ship had just anchored in their bay, yet it took them the ship's flag being hoisted up and a few blasts of cannon fire to make them see. They were really quite stupid.
We rowed in and docked on a beach beside the docks. Then we did what we always did-Maim, slaughter, rape, pillage, plunder and in other words, pirate fun. The town's losses were our spoils, yet we saved the grandest for last.
It was a stone mansion, very much like Governor Weatherby Swann's mansion, I suppose, except it had more colour in its gardens. It took two others and myself to get sick of the village people, and become thirsty for a bit of aristocratic plunder.
Myself and two pirates who were rarely ever seen apart, Pintel and Ragetti, broke down the front doors and immediately started shooting the servants, maids and whomever worked there. The screams were somewhat deafening but we paid no attention. We were used to it, after all. After we removed those who provided trouble, we searched for loot-anything we could get our claws on. Jewellery, money, and clothing is what we took.
A few minutes passed by after we had finished pocketing the obvious treasures and moved onto searching for even more valuables. A cannon fire from the Pearl shook us a bit, breaking into a wall and nearly ending our lives it came so close. A few more cannon balls thudded into the grounds of the house, and Pintel made his mind up we should go. He left and Ragetti took a final blue jacket with white trimmings off the wall, nodded to me and scampered after his shipmate.
Standing in front of a wooden unit the stairs were to my back as the desk was pushed up against the wall. I had my hand wrapped around an interesting necklace, absently stringing it through my fingers as I inspected it, when the shout caught me.
"Unhand that! You filthy inbred dog! Leave this place!"
I looked up and aimed my pistol at the voice's owner, yet my fingers ceased up and I found I couldn't pull the damned trigger. There she was, Liska, standing at the top of the stairs. Her golden brown hair was done up in a sloppy bun due to her hast to get decent. Her white nightgown went to her knees, and a light blue housecoat was thrown over her shoulders. Her face was pale white, maybe from fright or anger, I never did find out. She was aiming a gun wobbly at me, not even holding it right.
"Y'eh ain't goin' t'er do anything with that pistol, lass. Even then, threatening a pirate with a firearm ain't the best idea ye'v ever had, I imagine," I said loud enough for her to hear, yet quite coolly at the same time. I flashed her a half a grin before pocketing the necklace and advancing towards the stairs.
The pistol went off and I heard a disoriented gasp come from her, being rather distracted as the bullet from her gun ripped a new hole somewhere in the brim of my plumed hat. Damn it, I did. I liked the hat, the large feather on it making it look so fancy.
With a growl I lunged up the stairs after her, rather peeved she had fired at me. She gave a frustrated growl of her own and didn't budge as I neared her. I arrived at the top of the stairs, and reached my semi-gloved hand out towards her. It was to late, however, and I failed to see the butt of the gun. Ironically, I felt it connect with the right side of my skull, just where my turquoise head-rag wound around my forehead and behind my ears, ending at a large knot just at the back of my head, the excess cloth draping down to my shoulder blades.
I also felt myself tumble back down the stairs, head over heels in a continuous backwards summersault, loosing my hat somewhere along the way, the pistol still in my hand going off and lodging a bullet-hole in a portrait that hung on the wall. I landed at the bottom and felt the air gush out of my lungs. I lay there in a twisted formation, stunned, until I regained my breath. I straightened myself out and glared up at her, my head hurting considerably where the gun had hit me.
"Serves you right!" she said to me, shaking my hat, my hat, at me. I gave a muffled sound, and then hissed through my teeth. I got up quickly and aimed my gun at her again, cocking it and then finding the strength to pull the trigger.
All the gun did was click. I embarrassedly realized I had no bullets left to shoot her with. She started laughing at me and I withdrew my cutlass from my belt. She stopped laughing and backed up few paces as I advanced, slightly slowly as the blade had given me a scratch right on the back of the knee, causing me grief when I walked.
I ran up the stairs as quickly as I could: yet she gave flight and I had to plough after her. She rushed into a room and slammed the door right in my face, and I heard a click that betrayed she had locked the door.
"Open the door up, lassie. I'm goin' t'er get y'eh sooner or later, and I prefer sooner."
She threw a nasty insult at me and I wondered weather she actually knew any pirates, as her words were most definitely not words a well brought up lady would use. I found myself trying to gather information about her. She was only a whelp, perhaps twenty. She also couldn't hold a gun yet used very foul language. She was slightly bold.
"Parley!" she suddenly screamed from the other side of the door. I felt my body tense and if I had been moving I would have frozen, I'm sure.
"What did you say?" I demanded quietly, only to be answered with the same word she had said before. Typical a girl who lived in a port would know pirate defences.
I thought fast. Jack Sparrow would most have definitely let her go, the damn brat. He had a sense of chivalry, oddly enough. I, however, wanted her to suffer for shooting at me, causing me to fall down the stairs, and she still had my hat. I believe I at least wanted that back.
"Y'er talking to the captain, lassie," I lied, and heard her give a quiet cry from the room.
"Go away." she answered me, and I heard her voice wobble drastically. I thought to myself, Gents, she has a soft spot! Just like any other lass. Crying seemed to get them through a lot.
"I'm afraid I'm powerless to concur to y'er insistence, lass," I answered back, my face curving to accommodate a vicious grin.
"Stop calling me 'lass', (she decided to use her colourful insulting skills here), and call me by my real name!"
"And what, pray tell, might that be, lass?" I teased her, wriggling the doorknob a few times. No avail.
"Miss Liska Epiphany Catharsis!" she screamed at me, and I pulled my head back. She had been standing right on the other side of the door, and her voice had indeed been loud. "Now introduce yourself so I know who'll be hung tomorrow!"
I bit my bottom lip, furrowing my brow (which felt horribly awkward without my hat), thinking. What harm would it do to tell her my name and ship? After all, I would certainly have a ship of my own one-day and truly be a captain. Soon enough, indeed.
"Captain Barbossa of The Robber misses Catharsis."
Silence ensued my introduction, yet I heard her breathing in the room. My own breath had stopped, and I held it, waiting for a reaction. When I got one, it wasn't what I had expected.
"No, you're not the captain of the ship attacking my home. I've heard stories of it. A man named Samuel Carp captains it."
I felt anger swell up in my chest. How could that idiot be heard of when he simply showed up one day in Tortuga with a mind to get a crew and start his pirating career? He hadn't done anything spectacular after that! Well, he had, but I wasn't prepared to admit they were spectacular. In fact, I was entertaining myself highly by imagining the finest way to slaughter the fool.
A clicking sound echoed beneath the doorknob and the door creaked open a few inches. I shoved it open and didn't come face to face with Liska. Instead, she had crossed over the room and was sitting on a window bench. She still had the pistol in her arms. I absently placed mine back into my belt and raised my sword, yet she aimed the pistol at me again.
"You have no shots left, and this bullet would reach you long before your sword fell," she spat out quietly. I realized she was right.
"So why are you allowing me in, pray tell?" I asked her, looking around. The walls were a dark maroon colour and there was a wooden desk on a corner near her. A closet sat across the room from a bed with a fireplace on the wall beside it and a dressing screen with black pictures of animals drawn on it was near the door and I. It was a bedroom.
"Because, you can't hurt me, and I want to know what happened to Samuel Carp if you're the captain of his ship," she answered calmly, and put my hat in her lap. I had a sudden urge to leap at her and snatch my hat back. Stupid lass I thought she was.
"Samuel's been dead f'er over a month. He.was shot and killed instantly," I once again lied, my voice wavering slightly as I did so. She seemed to see the waver as sadness that my captain was dead.
"Oh.I'm sorry," she muttered quietly. She looked down onto the mahogany wooden floor and was silent for a brief moment. Her bun fell out of place and her wavy hair spilled down over her shoulders, the ends just making it to her top most rib. I felt my jaw slacken a bit and a tight gnawing sensation run through my chest. She really was beautiful, I thought.
"Drink?" she inquired and suddenly got up, setting my hat and her gun down on the window seat. She made her way to the desk, pulled out a compartment and proceeded to take out a false bottom. She brought out a crystal bottle of what looked to be like whiskey.
"What's a well brought up girl like yerself doin' with whiskey?" I asked, and she flashed me a small smile.
"I never drink it, but it helps the fire roar." She pointed to the fireplace a little to the side of the wooden headboard of her four-pillar bed. I smirked and absently flung my gaze across to the fireplace and back to her. She had approached me cautiously and was holding the bottle out. I stared at it hard for a moment.
"Ye've never tasted whiskey." I absently said as my disbelieving gaze flew at her eyes. She tilted her head slightly to the side and shook her head. I took the bottle carefully from her and unscrewed the round cap that closed the air out. I took a swig and was about to cap it back up when a few cannon blasts from the Pearl landed near or hit the house, shaking its very foundations.
We both stumbled and she ended up falling. I lunged forward with the bottle still clasped in my un-gloved hand and caught her before she sank very far. Her hands clutched fists of my coat to stay aloft and after the general rumbles stopped, she gathered herself up and stood.
She gave me a peculiar look and I merely grinned at her, knowing she had realized she was still very much in my arms. She wrinkled her nose and tore herself away, and I couldn't help but think how feisty she was. Beautiful, bold, and resistant she was.
"Mister Barbossa," she snapped, and actually grabbed the bottle back out of my hand before backing away, "Kindly keep your hands to yourself."
I gave a quiet chuckle to which she must of taken offence to, and she ripped the cap off and flung it full out at my head. She missed, but I felt the breeze on my ear and even heard the soft whistle the projectile gave out before it shattered against the slightly closed door, nudging it to close another inch.
"Can I have my hat back, now?" I raised an eyebrow at her and cocked my head slightly to the left. Not entirely sure why I had asked her instead of simply pushing her out of my way, I awaited an answer. She huffed once, whirled around and strutted over to the window. She scooped my hat up and flung it at me. Luckily, hats didn't fling as well as heavy crystal, and I caught in my outstretched hand.
"Thank you, miss Catharsis," I teased her some more. "Yet now you have nothing to cap your bottle with, such a shame." I sneered at her and she glared at me. The gnawing feeling in my chest gave a flutter and I thought about what her smile would actually look like. Her true smile.
"Then I shall have to drink it." She gave me a silky smirk and put the bottle to her lips, tilting it back. She gave a harsh cough after swallowing the booze and I laughed some more, yet louder this time. She growled and drank some more yet before long had to slam the bottle down on the windowsill.
"You are most definitely not welcome!" she spat out and I strode up to her. I grabbed the bottle off the sill and chugged back a hefty helping, setting it back down and smirking at her.
"I feel welcomed, especially by being offered whiskey-and being able to drink it," I replied. From that point on, it evolved into a contest. She consistently tried to prove she could drink an alcoholic beverage, while I'd just take a gulp here and there and return the bottle so she could work at it.
Straight whiskey, right from the bottle, being swallowed by a girl who'd never drank it before, and being drank by a pirate who enjoyed the competition. Naturally, we got drunk. As you can imagine, chaos ensued. We made our way over to her bed to support ourselves on the beams instead of simply stopping ourselves from consuming any more drink. A decision I rather regretted some years later.
Another cannon ball blasted through a wall in the house what seemed like only ten minutes later to a drunken mind, and as the shock and surprise set in on her and myself, she tripped over her own feet and ended up falling into my arms for the second time that night. I over-balanced and fell back, laughing rather giddily. I felt my back sink into the soft covers and mattress of the bed, yet a weight on top of me suddenly rendered me confused. And I suddenly couldn't see.
The blindness struck me as odd and it took me at least two minutes in the pursuing silence to realize that my hat had slipped down and was now resting on my forehead. The brim had set over my eyes, which explained the darkness. My smile slowly dissipated as I realized what was on top of me.
She was going to demand I leave if she though what I thought she was thinking. I'd have to, as she was still under the protection of parley-we had not come to any agreement and she had not called the parley off. And there was another part of the Pirate's Code I remembered then (something about not being allowed to harm or trauma a woman if she offered you a drink or something. To this day I can't recall it.). I don't know why that was my only thought at that moment but it wouldn't leave my head, and I didn't want to go.
My sight came back slowly as my hat was pushed back and set carefully on the surface above my immobile head. Our eyes met, my blue ones starring into her hazel optics. I got lost in her stare for a moment, yet she brought me back-she tasted my lips.
Returnable
A
Pirates of the Caribbean
Tale
Disclaimer: I don't own POTC or any of the characters from the movie. However, any helpless town folk scurrying around, a ship or two and anything that isn't in the movie: it's mine. Back off. Liska is my own creation so please respect that.
Summary: Barbossa was shot and killed by Jack Sparrow. He should, by all means, be gone and done with, yet because of the curse, a mix-up occurred in Heaven, Hell, and Fiddler's Green. He's now a 'returnable', trying to find the answer to a question. Yet first, he has to discover what the question is in order to have it answered.
Other: The first chapters take place before the movie. The rest takes place after the movie, the Golden Age of Piracy. An OC is in the introduction, yet isn't referred to so much afterwards until the end-she has a bit of importance to the story.
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Liska
I don't believe anybody else would know of the on-goings in my life save for me. Perhaps, though, a few others would recognize a situation and think that it reminded them of me. However it goes, I'm quite sure nobody living would ever have known about her.
'Her' being Liska. She was really quite beautiful and I suppose I did miss her from time to time. Yet when one is a captain of a rather blood thirsty pirate crew, one simply can't take their ship, go waltzing up and say hi to someone, who in fact you hadn't seen in a damn long while. The crew would start thinking for once, heaven forbid.
It was an accident, really, what happened. Ol' Jack Sparrow was still captain of The Black Pearl, so you can imagine this was at least ten years ago (in reality it was about eleven and a half). My older captain had sailed us right into a crowded ocean-side town, where business must have been good, not to mention it was terribly crowded.
Normally enough, the town panicked upon realization that a pirate ship had just anchored in their bay, yet it took them the ship's flag being hoisted up and a few blasts of cannon fire to make them see. They were really quite stupid.
We rowed in and docked on a beach beside the docks. Then we did what we always did-Maim, slaughter, rape, pillage, plunder and in other words, pirate fun. The town's losses were our spoils, yet we saved the grandest for last.
It was a stone mansion, very much like Governor Weatherby Swann's mansion, I suppose, except it had more colour in its gardens. It took two others and myself to get sick of the village people, and become thirsty for a bit of aristocratic plunder.
Myself and two pirates who were rarely ever seen apart, Pintel and Ragetti, broke down the front doors and immediately started shooting the servants, maids and whomever worked there. The screams were somewhat deafening but we paid no attention. We were used to it, after all. After we removed those who provided trouble, we searched for loot-anything we could get our claws on. Jewellery, money, and clothing is what we took.
A few minutes passed by after we had finished pocketing the obvious treasures and moved onto searching for even more valuables. A cannon fire from the Pearl shook us a bit, breaking into a wall and nearly ending our lives it came so close. A few more cannon balls thudded into the grounds of the house, and Pintel made his mind up we should go. He left and Ragetti took a final blue jacket with white trimmings off the wall, nodded to me and scampered after his shipmate.
Standing in front of a wooden unit the stairs were to my back as the desk was pushed up against the wall. I had my hand wrapped around an interesting necklace, absently stringing it through my fingers as I inspected it, when the shout caught me.
"Unhand that! You filthy inbred dog! Leave this place!"
I looked up and aimed my pistol at the voice's owner, yet my fingers ceased up and I found I couldn't pull the damned trigger. There she was, Liska, standing at the top of the stairs. Her golden brown hair was done up in a sloppy bun due to her hast to get decent. Her white nightgown went to her knees, and a light blue housecoat was thrown over her shoulders. Her face was pale white, maybe from fright or anger, I never did find out. She was aiming a gun wobbly at me, not even holding it right.
"Y'eh ain't goin' t'er do anything with that pistol, lass. Even then, threatening a pirate with a firearm ain't the best idea ye'v ever had, I imagine," I said loud enough for her to hear, yet quite coolly at the same time. I flashed her a half a grin before pocketing the necklace and advancing towards the stairs.
The pistol went off and I heard a disoriented gasp come from her, being rather distracted as the bullet from her gun ripped a new hole somewhere in the brim of my plumed hat. Damn it, I did. I liked the hat, the large feather on it making it look so fancy.
With a growl I lunged up the stairs after her, rather peeved she had fired at me. She gave a frustrated growl of her own and didn't budge as I neared her. I arrived at the top of the stairs, and reached my semi-gloved hand out towards her. It was to late, however, and I failed to see the butt of the gun. Ironically, I felt it connect with the right side of my skull, just where my turquoise head-rag wound around my forehead and behind my ears, ending at a large knot just at the back of my head, the excess cloth draping down to my shoulder blades.
I also felt myself tumble back down the stairs, head over heels in a continuous backwards summersault, loosing my hat somewhere along the way, the pistol still in my hand going off and lodging a bullet-hole in a portrait that hung on the wall. I landed at the bottom and felt the air gush out of my lungs. I lay there in a twisted formation, stunned, until I regained my breath. I straightened myself out and glared up at her, my head hurting considerably where the gun had hit me.
"Serves you right!" she said to me, shaking my hat, my hat, at me. I gave a muffled sound, and then hissed through my teeth. I got up quickly and aimed my gun at her again, cocking it and then finding the strength to pull the trigger.
All the gun did was click. I embarrassedly realized I had no bullets left to shoot her with. She started laughing at me and I withdrew my cutlass from my belt. She stopped laughing and backed up few paces as I advanced, slightly slowly as the blade had given me a scratch right on the back of the knee, causing me grief when I walked.
I ran up the stairs as quickly as I could: yet she gave flight and I had to plough after her. She rushed into a room and slammed the door right in my face, and I heard a click that betrayed she had locked the door.
"Open the door up, lassie. I'm goin' t'er get y'eh sooner or later, and I prefer sooner."
She threw a nasty insult at me and I wondered weather she actually knew any pirates, as her words were most definitely not words a well brought up lady would use. I found myself trying to gather information about her. She was only a whelp, perhaps twenty. She also couldn't hold a gun yet used very foul language. She was slightly bold.
"Parley!" she suddenly screamed from the other side of the door. I felt my body tense and if I had been moving I would have frozen, I'm sure.
"What did you say?" I demanded quietly, only to be answered with the same word she had said before. Typical a girl who lived in a port would know pirate defences.
I thought fast. Jack Sparrow would most have definitely let her go, the damn brat. He had a sense of chivalry, oddly enough. I, however, wanted her to suffer for shooting at me, causing me to fall down the stairs, and she still had my hat. I believe I at least wanted that back.
"Y'er talking to the captain, lassie," I lied, and heard her give a quiet cry from the room.
"Go away." she answered me, and I heard her voice wobble drastically. I thought to myself, Gents, she has a soft spot! Just like any other lass. Crying seemed to get them through a lot.
"I'm afraid I'm powerless to concur to y'er insistence, lass," I answered back, my face curving to accommodate a vicious grin.
"Stop calling me 'lass', (she decided to use her colourful insulting skills here), and call me by my real name!"
"And what, pray tell, might that be, lass?" I teased her, wriggling the doorknob a few times. No avail.
"Miss Liska Epiphany Catharsis!" she screamed at me, and I pulled my head back. She had been standing right on the other side of the door, and her voice had indeed been loud. "Now introduce yourself so I know who'll be hung tomorrow!"
I bit my bottom lip, furrowing my brow (which felt horribly awkward without my hat), thinking. What harm would it do to tell her my name and ship? After all, I would certainly have a ship of my own one-day and truly be a captain. Soon enough, indeed.
"Captain Barbossa of The Robber misses Catharsis."
Silence ensued my introduction, yet I heard her breathing in the room. My own breath had stopped, and I held it, waiting for a reaction. When I got one, it wasn't what I had expected.
"No, you're not the captain of the ship attacking my home. I've heard stories of it. A man named Samuel Carp captains it."
I felt anger swell up in my chest. How could that idiot be heard of when he simply showed up one day in Tortuga with a mind to get a crew and start his pirating career? He hadn't done anything spectacular after that! Well, he had, but I wasn't prepared to admit they were spectacular. In fact, I was entertaining myself highly by imagining the finest way to slaughter the fool.
A clicking sound echoed beneath the doorknob and the door creaked open a few inches. I shoved it open and didn't come face to face with Liska. Instead, she had crossed over the room and was sitting on a window bench. She still had the pistol in her arms. I absently placed mine back into my belt and raised my sword, yet she aimed the pistol at me again.
"You have no shots left, and this bullet would reach you long before your sword fell," she spat out quietly. I realized she was right.
"So why are you allowing me in, pray tell?" I asked her, looking around. The walls were a dark maroon colour and there was a wooden desk on a corner near her. A closet sat across the room from a bed with a fireplace on the wall beside it and a dressing screen with black pictures of animals drawn on it was near the door and I. It was a bedroom.
"Because, you can't hurt me, and I want to know what happened to Samuel Carp if you're the captain of his ship," she answered calmly, and put my hat in her lap. I had a sudden urge to leap at her and snatch my hat back. Stupid lass I thought she was.
"Samuel's been dead f'er over a month. He.was shot and killed instantly," I once again lied, my voice wavering slightly as I did so. She seemed to see the waver as sadness that my captain was dead.
"Oh.I'm sorry," she muttered quietly. She looked down onto the mahogany wooden floor and was silent for a brief moment. Her bun fell out of place and her wavy hair spilled down over her shoulders, the ends just making it to her top most rib. I felt my jaw slacken a bit and a tight gnawing sensation run through my chest. She really was beautiful, I thought.
"Drink?" she inquired and suddenly got up, setting my hat and her gun down on the window seat. She made her way to the desk, pulled out a compartment and proceeded to take out a false bottom. She brought out a crystal bottle of what looked to be like whiskey.
"What's a well brought up girl like yerself doin' with whiskey?" I asked, and she flashed me a small smile.
"I never drink it, but it helps the fire roar." She pointed to the fireplace a little to the side of the wooden headboard of her four-pillar bed. I smirked and absently flung my gaze across to the fireplace and back to her. She had approached me cautiously and was holding the bottle out. I stared at it hard for a moment.
"Ye've never tasted whiskey." I absently said as my disbelieving gaze flew at her eyes. She tilted her head slightly to the side and shook her head. I took the bottle carefully from her and unscrewed the round cap that closed the air out. I took a swig and was about to cap it back up when a few cannon blasts from the Pearl landed near or hit the house, shaking its very foundations.
We both stumbled and she ended up falling. I lunged forward with the bottle still clasped in my un-gloved hand and caught her before she sank very far. Her hands clutched fists of my coat to stay aloft and after the general rumbles stopped, she gathered herself up and stood.
She gave me a peculiar look and I merely grinned at her, knowing she had realized she was still very much in my arms. She wrinkled her nose and tore herself away, and I couldn't help but think how feisty she was. Beautiful, bold, and resistant she was.
"Mister Barbossa," she snapped, and actually grabbed the bottle back out of my hand before backing away, "Kindly keep your hands to yourself."
I gave a quiet chuckle to which she must of taken offence to, and she ripped the cap off and flung it full out at my head. She missed, but I felt the breeze on my ear and even heard the soft whistle the projectile gave out before it shattered against the slightly closed door, nudging it to close another inch.
"Can I have my hat back, now?" I raised an eyebrow at her and cocked my head slightly to the left. Not entirely sure why I had asked her instead of simply pushing her out of my way, I awaited an answer. She huffed once, whirled around and strutted over to the window. She scooped my hat up and flung it at me. Luckily, hats didn't fling as well as heavy crystal, and I caught in my outstretched hand.
"Thank you, miss Catharsis," I teased her some more. "Yet now you have nothing to cap your bottle with, such a shame." I sneered at her and she glared at me. The gnawing feeling in my chest gave a flutter and I thought about what her smile would actually look like. Her true smile.
"Then I shall have to drink it." She gave me a silky smirk and put the bottle to her lips, tilting it back. She gave a harsh cough after swallowing the booze and I laughed some more, yet louder this time. She growled and drank some more yet before long had to slam the bottle down on the windowsill.
"You are most definitely not welcome!" she spat out and I strode up to her. I grabbed the bottle off the sill and chugged back a hefty helping, setting it back down and smirking at her.
"I feel welcomed, especially by being offered whiskey-and being able to drink it," I replied. From that point on, it evolved into a contest. She consistently tried to prove she could drink an alcoholic beverage, while I'd just take a gulp here and there and return the bottle so she could work at it.
Straight whiskey, right from the bottle, being swallowed by a girl who'd never drank it before, and being drank by a pirate who enjoyed the competition. Naturally, we got drunk. As you can imagine, chaos ensued. We made our way over to her bed to support ourselves on the beams instead of simply stopping ourselves from consuming any more drink. A decision I rather regretted some years later.
Another cannon ball blasted through a wall in the house what seemed like only ten minutes later to a drunken mind, and as the shock and surprise set in on her and myself, she tripped over her own feet and ended up falling into my arms for the second time that night. I over-balanced and fell back, laughing rather giddily. I felt my back sink into the soft covers and mattress of the bed, yet a weight on top of me suddenly rendered me confused. And I suddenly couldn't see.
The blindness struck me as odd and it took me at least two minutes in the pursuing silence to realize that my hat had slipped down and was now resting on my forehead. The brim had set over my eyes, which explained the darkness. My smile slowly dissipated as I realized what was on top of me.
She was going to demand I leave if she though what I thought she was thinking. I'd have to, as she was still under the protection of parley-we had not come to any agreement and she had not called the parley off. And there was another part of the Pirate's Code I remembered then (something about not being allowed to harm or trauma a woman if she offered you a drink or something. To this day I can't recall it.). I don't know why that was my only thought at that moment but it wouldn't leave my head, and I didn't want to go.
My sight came back slowly as my hat was pushed back and set carefully on the surface above my immobile head. Our eyes met, my blue ones starring into her hazel optics. I got lost in her stare for a moment, yet she brought me back-she tasted my lips.