Notes: Begins roughly a week and a half, two weeks before Jack's entrance in the film. Ta to Pearl for venereal humour, and to Fifi for alliterative aid.
Chained to You
I.
It was an awful little boat, really, only three swift paces stem to stern and stern to stem. It could never in good conscience be called a ship, and even she had to concede to that. No, not a ship; more akin to a wealthy child's scaled plaything, the son of a commodore's toy built to encourage emulation of his elders. Jack suspected it might have come with a wooden cannon that she had thrown overboard to stave off any further embarrassment. Strangely, she didn't appear to be embarrassed of the thing in the least, and that was something he couldn't quite wrap his mind around.
It was called the Jolly Mon, and despite the title fitting its original purpose, Jack still considered the name to be a sardonic and personally-aimed jab. He was the only mon aboard and the boat contributed nothing to his jollity. It was falsity in advertising, and there should have been a law against it. Granted, he tended to break most laws, but even piracy wasn't without its principles. There was honour amongst thieves to consider: the boat, breaking no law, was therefore law-abiding and on the opposite side of said law than Jack himself; thus, it was his enemy.
. . . all right, perhaps he had ridden that current of thought a bit too far out to sea. But there was no room, no wheel, and nothing else to do.
Grudgingly, he did have a small (ever so miniscule) amount of respect for it, the sort borne not of choice but of a general lack of options. The thing did get them from Point A to Point B without fail, and beggars couldn't be choosers.
Then again, pirates generally weren't meant to ever be beggars.
Jack's face fell a bit at the humbling truth of the thought.
"Will you stop that infernal pacing!" Anamaria snapped at him from her perch atop the tiny crow's nest. "You'll wear a hole in 'er hull!"
Jack bristled, debating for the hundredth time which was worse: the vessel or its captain. Of course, her foulness towards him was, as it so often tended to be in his associations with the fairer sex, his own cursed fault. But that had been weeks ago and how long could she really expect to blame him for that fire? Not that he was one to talk in regard to holding grudges . . . but there was a difference somewhere, he was sure of it, and he couldn't very well apologise forever for that one incident.
He'd never get around to apologising for all the others if he did.
"Wouldn't be a problem, love," he riposted, shielding his eyes from the bright midday sky as he smirked up at the female pirate, "if this aggrandised dinghy had a deck t'go along with that hull. ---Ouch!"
"You deserved that," Ana declared, legs swinging, looking for all the world like a cheeky monkey up a tree mocking an incensed boar below.
Rubbing the bridge of his nose, Jack bent to retrieve the grapefruit she'd pelted him with. Woman was weird about fruit. Ate more of it on her own than a whole crew of miscreants.
"You know," he glowered up at her, "if you're gonna feed me like I'm in the stocks you could at least toss down somethin' I like."
A strip of salt beef and a hunk of hardtack rebounded off his forehead.
"Ta."
Ana sniggered and took a deep swig from a bottle of . . . whatever it was she was hoarding up there. Rum. Ale. Wine. He wagered she was already making her merry way into tipsy, which was all well and good - as long as he was skipping right alongside her. Which he wasn't. Which made him grouse inwardly that she was having far too fine a time captaining this . . . this wooden indignity. Her display was almost shameful - she'd been in command of much, much, much much much more impressive ships than this one, he knew that for a fact. That she would step down to this - willingly step down to it! - only made him shake his head in dismay. And people said he was mad. At least he had standards.
Port Royal, Jack assured himself. Think of Port Royal, with their lovely little navy full of lovely little ships . . .
None could hold a candle to his long misplaced Black Pearl, naturally (although he did have high hopes for one in particular), but he was fairly certain any of them could hold the Great Fire of London compared to this. How Anamaria had come across the hodgepodge thing, let alone why she'd claimed it for her own, was a mystery to him, and his suggestion of commandeering a more suitable means of transportation had been staunchly refused.
"If all you're needin's a ferrying, there's no use wastin' the time," she'd insisted, for he'd met up with her by utter chance on the beach of God-knew-which minor Bahama island, hours from the nearest port worth browsing. Perhaps he should have put up more of a fight, but he'd been drenched and ran through of energy following an unplanned swim to shore after a butting of heads with the captain of the merchant ship he'd bartered passage on from Florida to Jamaica, and in no condition to argue with her.
She was right, anyway. Captain Jack Sparrow wasn't the sort to risk his neck any more than was necessary - despite his neck's predilection for gambling with its own safety, which it would be doing quite enough of stepping foot one on the docks of England's chief policing colony in the Caribbean. One didn't need to commandeer a grand ship in order to go and commandeer another. He'd been a very patient man for ten years; now, he was so close, and there really was no critical reason for any further delay. He had the taste of oysters in his mouth, and what a delicate aphrodisiac that was after a decade of feasting on sand, mirage after mirage of lost opportunity . . .
No longer, he silently asserted, chewing grimly on a bite of meat as he contemplated the horizon. Judging from witnesses' testimonials and word-of-mouth, the H.M.S. Interceptor's reputation was more than a lot of guff. The fastest ship in the Caribbean? No, Jack knew better than that, but the Interceptor had acquired enough respect to make him hopeful that she was fast enough, and there was only one way for him to prove her rightly named.
He was scant weeks away, he was certain, from his greatest victory, from the only victory that truly mattered. Soon they would reach Port à Nonet (Anamaria would take him into the lion's den, but she'd be damned if she was going to rest her head in its mouth as he planned to); from there, Jack would make his own way to Port Royal - a brief and likely easy journey - and after that . . . . he had been disappointed many times, too many to be blindly optimistic, yet his skin itched with anticipation. This time, something felt different. This time, he knew, just knew in the pit of his gut---
A low and unmistakable boom tore the wool from his gathering eyes.
Anamaria shouted something colourful from above, and Jack's jaw slacked. He knew fate's insatiable sense of irony had taken a fancy to him some years back, but normally it allowed his plans at least a head start - just enough of one for moderate confidence to be built, so that when it cut his legs out from under him, the fall was more amusing than pitiable or pointless.
The cannonball struck ten feet from the Jolly Mon, sending a tall spray of seawater into the air.
"Bloody pirates!" Ana growled, answering Jack's question before he could ask it. His eyes scanned the sea until he spotted a large, dark form teetering along the waves with, as expected, the Jolly Roger hoisted atop its mainmast and whipping furiously, as if to spur on the wind in the ship's white sails. At least Jack could tell which ship it wasn't. Beyond that, at this distance, she could have been anybody's.
Well, not anybody's . . . but who would be fool enough to waste cannon fire on something as insignificant as the Jolly Mon?
Another thunderous crack resonated from the fast approaching galleon as Anamaria leapt down from the crow's nest and took hold of the rudderstock, what food and drink she'd thought to bring along tucked in a canvas sack slung over her shoulder. They had already been travelling three sheets to the wind (or, in the Jolly Mon's case, one sheet), and neither were deluded enough to believe any amount of vigorous rowing would accomplish more than their own exhaustion.
Their only defences were Ana's cutlass and Jack's pistol. The latter, with its solitary ball and Jack's reluctance to part with it, was practically useless, and unless they were boarded in an orderly fashion no more than two or three enemies at a time, a single blade would be about as effective as a mildly pointy stick. If the cannon fire got lucky before the ship overhauled them, there would be nothing left for them to do but keep a sharp eye and, if it came down to it, swim like hell.
The second round shot nicked the prow in a burst of splinters. Ana swore under her breath, steering the boat hard to starboard, as Jack inspected the damage - which was, in her mind, indirectly but still very much his fault. Jack Sparrow could have been named Jack Ketch for all misfortune nipped at his heels like a starving pup. The Pirates' Code and greed be damned - the next time she found herself in Jack's pocket (Never again, she inwardly avowed) she would repay him the favour in silver and leave him to his own devices.
"She's taking on water," Jack called from the fore.
"Bastards," Ana hissed, her grip on the wheel growing pale. She glanced over her shoulder; the galleon, she noticed, was small for its make, albeit still plenty large, and was now close enough to identify. A flourish of black and bronze paint marked her as the Festal Brand - captained by Diego Vega, Ana knew, assuming his crew hadn't mutinied within the past two years. "Bloody rat bastards!"
"For once, Ana darling, I couldn't agree more," Jack muttered, yanking the rigging's knots tighter - a futile gesture, but instinct and habit demanded he do something cosmetically (if not helpfully) defensive whilst they awaited imminent capture and probable prolonged torturous death.
Later, Anamaria would debate whether it was a fluke or a knock against them that the Brand didn't manage to get off a third shot before catching them up. The Jolly Mon was far too small to engage in broadside battle (or in any battle involving deadlier artillery than, say, puffs of cotton); even Vega, if he were indeed still captain of the Brand, wasn't that extravagant. A former Spanish privateer, he had fallen out of favour with his monarchy and amassed notoriety for being one of the Caribbean's most prodigal pirates. His penchant for rapacious indulgence was evident not only in what he took but the manner in which he took it, which was always, at the very least, a show - and more often than not, a grisly one. Diego Vega was the sort of superfluous man one might laugh at, until one realised his ridiculousness to be extremely well balanced with his capacity for brutality.
In short, he was the last captain, barring those belonging to various navies, that either Jack or Anamaria had any care to come across.
Thirty of his men crowded the Festal Brand's starboard side, each with a weapon drawn and pointed at the two swarthy scallywags presently without a prayer between them.
Jack had the distinct intuition that there was a great deal of tapered metal levelled very near his throat. He would have confirmed this suspicion visually, had he the ability to see anything beyond the searing blue of the sky and the dark rim of his ocular periphery. His head was being held forcibly back for no reason that he could discern, save his own discomfort, and his arms had been wrenched behind his back by what felt like a couple of overzealous pythons. Vega's crew had learned most thoroughly the art of excess.
"Oh, how the mighty have fallen," drawled the smug, heavily accented voice of their captor, whose plumed hat Jack could scarcely see over the juts of his cheekbones. It bobbed slightly as Vega appraised his prisoners. "The notorious Captain Jack Sparrow, master of a dory crewed by a woman. ---Well, almost a woman."
"It's my boat, you mangy cur!" Anamaria snarled, presumably contorted the same as Jack, from the tightness of her tone.
Vega didn't respond, and for a moment Jack's throat grew thick with a rush of trepidation.
"You lying little wench!" he blurted out, his tongue twisting into improvisation. "She's mad - a bloody stowaway. Couldn't resist me. Can't blame 'er."
"Jack . . ." Ana started warningly.
Jack ignored her. "Look at her, would you? Left her brother starkers on the beach an' tried to pass herself off as a cabin boy. The lengths women'll go to, it's enough to turn a man's stomach."
"Jack, I swear to God if they don't kill you I will . . ."
"Shut up, Ana," he singsonged sotto voce, then smiled for Vega's benefit. "Refused her advances," he explained.
"Enough," Vega commanded. Jack winced as the deckhands' grip on his arms constricted, and his neck was craned further backwards.
"Need I say aloud that I don't believe you," the Spaniard continued, sounding world-weary and somewhat disappointed, "or may we all acknowledge your stupidity with quiet grace? Honestly, Sparrow. First you prove as difficult to catch as a sea cow, and now this? I don't even think you deserve the death I had planned for you."
"Say it ain't so, mate," Jack implored, putting on a pained face. As he happened to be in pain, it was one of his better ones. "I'm gutted, truly."
"No, you're not, not yet. But all in good time."
"You're too kind."
"So it has been said," Vega admitted with a sigh.
Anamaria bit back a disgusted scoff and rolled her eyes, straining her gaze towards the member of Vega's crew who had confiscated her cutlass and Jack's pistol. He was a man of some bulk, but he held himself lazily and was within kicking distance. Ana debated her margin for error, and the odds of receiving an accidentally broken neck for her trouble - which in itself wasn't the worst way to go, providing it killed her properly and didn't merely leave her a cripple. That possibility was far more frightening than any sort of death.
She decided against risking it.
Oh, God damn Jack Sparrow (Captain, God damn Captain Jack Sparrow, she could hear his voice correcting her inside her head) and the ill luck that plagued him, that followed him and infected anyone else who did the same. He was like syphilis, in a way.
"Put them in irons," ordered Vega, "around the mizzenmast."
At once, Anamaria felt the sweet ache of relief surge through the muscles of her back and neck as she was released from her awkward position, and blood again found its way into her arms. The heat of it was countered almost immediately by the cold bite of a heavy manacle being locked around her right wrist.
"Give them a taste of the Captain's Daught---"
Vega was interrupted by very familiar sound. Anamaria's eyes widened. She and Jack exchanged startled glances.
"That's int'resting . . ." Jack murmured.
Shouts rose up around them, "Cannon fire!" "It's the Dauntless!" "Sodding Norrington!"
"All hands---" bellowed Captain Vega, "---return fire!"
In the resultant bustle of activity and confusion, it took both captives less than a second to seize their advantage. Anamaria's elbow shot up to shatter the nearest roustabout's nose; Jack sent a man sprawling to the deck with a single punch.
"Time to go," he announced, and for the second time that day (a disconcertingly high number) they were in complete accord.
Wordlessly, Ana departed the ship the quickest way she knew there to be when one was at sea, and leapt over the larboard side of it.
Jack let out a yelp as he was jerked by his left arm straight after her.
The extremely uncomfortable collision of his stomach with the railing combined with the shock of hitting the water rendered him momentarily without bearings or sense. The soggy sting of ocean up his nose reminded him of his need to breathe, and the persistent tugging of something clamped around his left wrist urged him in the right direction to facilitate that need. He emerged, spluttering and stupefied, and staring into the horrified-looking face of Anamaria.
He lifted his weightier wrist, upon which an iron handlock remained attached.
Drawing it further out of the water, at the end of the chain, the handlock's mate revealed itself with Anamaria's slim brown wrist still encased in its accomodatingly slender loop.
Jack gulped down dread. "That's very int'resting . . ."