Title: Hard-Earned Treasure
Author: mao
Disclaimer: It all belongs to the Mouse, man, much as I wish it didn't. Just the same, I own nothing, am making no cash off it, and suing me will accomplish nothing but much mudslinging. So there.
Author's Notes: So...yeah. First Pirates of the Caribbean fic...it's serious, and no, there's none of that Mary Sue crap in here. It's just a brief drabbling look in Sparrow's confused brain.
Warnings: Sexual innuendo.
***
As he counts the coins out onto the bedtable, he can't help but turn to look at the girl asleep in the bed. In the night, with the garish rouge and heavily lined eyes, she'd seemed older. But now, with the makeup smudged onto a dirty pillow, a slant of hot sunshine across her cheek, he can see that she can't be more than fourteen, with her high cheekbones and then frame.
Fourteen, clearly undernourished on cheap beer and dry bread.
He's far from getting his ship back; God only knows where Barbossa's taken it. Surely they've gotten the gold already, but he'll get it back (he's the Captain, for God's sake, Captain Jack Sparrow). He'll get the Pearl back if it kills him, which, as he's been thinking lately, it may well do.
He's no closer to coming up with a plan now than he was a month ago, or a year ago. Fortunately, the last of his money is running out, which means he can't laze around, wenching and dining on rum.
It's time to really get down to business.
As he counts out the coins, he thinks about how he'd found her - how he always found them. A delicate blonde, a robust brunette, a sly redhead, all with a tankard balanced on one jaded knee, eyeing him as they'd been taught (by hundreds of punters) to arouse interest. Dark kohl about their eyes, cheeks rouged as though they'd been burnt.
And every time he comes to Tortuga, they get younger. He's nearing forty - hardly old, but no longer young, precisely - and yet the girls just keep getting younger. They all have names like Rose, or Lisel, or Lynetta. Last night was a blonde, with a floral name.
Rose?
Hyacinth?
Lily?
That must be it, though he knows when he's down the stairs from her flat, out in the street, he will have forgotten it entirely, just as she will have forgotten him. He glances at her again, at the delicate, (nearly) womanly curve of her back, and counts out a few more coins than promised. It's his hard-earned treasure, and the men might not appreciate him spending it on wenching but, he thinks as he watches the rise and fall of her back, it's her hard-earned treasure too.