II.
A sudden cacophony of cannon fire returned their thoughts to greater concerns. The Jolly Mon was around the other side of the Festal Brand, very probably half-waterlogged by now, and though Vega and his crew were distracted, their captives' escape would not go unnoticed - and the muskets aboard would not go unused.
Jack shook his head, remembering in a burst of panic the item he had been going to retrieve before being bucked over the bulwarks of the ship.
"Not without my effects," he stated, reaching up with his free hand as if to scale back up the Brand's barnacle-encrusted hull.
Anamaria yanked him down just as quickly. "Jack, no - we have to get out of here!"
"Ana, love," Jack ground out through a clenched jaw and strained smile, "you don't understand---"
"I do," she interrupted, fervent. "I understand that my life is worth more t'me than your pistol is, and if we don't get out of here now it stands t'chance ye'll be recovering that one shot o' yours from between your eyes!"
"But---"
But she had already sunk beneath the waves, out of sight and out of earshot. With a quick breath and a last longing glance towards the deck of the Brand, Jack had little choice but to follow her.
A feat of coordination, few inhalations and a rare stroke of good fortune delivered them unscathed to relative safety some twenty yards away. For all his time spent at sea, above or within it, Jack had never heard a cannonade from underwater before. The muffled blasts sounded without origin, as if the ocean were attempting to mimic the sky's ability to thunder - or mock it. She could be a taunting mistress, after all; he knew that fact better than most.
He turned around and watched the conflict waging behind them with despairing interest. The Dauntless seemed to be living up to its epithet, its massive girth ploughing a slow and powerful path through the water, towards the Brand. One couldn't help but appreciate its magnificence, even if that magnificence was so grand it forced aside the contingencies of less distinguished lives.
"Jack . . ."
Ana's voice barely registered. It wasn't supposed to be like this. It couldn't end this way. It couldn't end this way.
"Jack."
A hand on his shoulder, firm but surprisingly mild, steered his attention away from the battle as one of the Dauntless' shots hit its mark, punching through the Festal Brand's belly.
"Come on," Anamaria pressed, pointing at a narrow green obscurity in the distant east. Her dark eyes were forbidding. Jack's protests died behind his gnashing teeth.
The two pirates swam on, chased by six pound echoes and the scent of gunpowder on the westerly wind.
The sun was dipping a toe in the sea by the time they reached the island's shore, both only just clearing the reach of the tide before they allowed themselves to collapse onto the beach, spent, lungs and limbs searing. Ana covered her face with her unchained arm, the other all but dead at her side from the effort of swimming with its iron burden, as she caught her breath. It had quite a lead on her.
Jack shut his eyes, feeling ill from swallowed seawater and dashed hopes. Ten years, and the poetic justice he had composed in his mind had been scored out, the inks made sopping as his hair and rendered illegible within a fraction of a day.
Perhaps he could return . . . . he knew their general location, and he could pinpoint the site of the Festal Brand's demise in relation to the island, once they escaped it. If they escaped it. Of course, then there was the trouble of the dive, unless - Jack's eyebrows lifted slightly at the notion; fine word, 'unless' - the pistol had been spared by bizarre circumstance and was waiting for him atop a piece of driftwood.
Unfortunately, 'unless' was also two letters from 'useless', and Jack wasn't one to befool himself. Not intentionally, at any rate.
He had to accept it: the pistol was lost to Davy Jones' locker, and like everything else that ended up sharing the ocean's bed, it was damned to remain there.
And yet . . . what it had stood for had be---
Jack's eyes flew open and a harsh grunt escaped his lips as something heavy descended upon his already bruised middle.
"What the devil did ye think you were doing back there?!" Anamaria demanded, sitting up abruptly to glare down at him, still somewhat breathless. "Your boat? Your stowaway? Refused my advances?"
Jack curled over on his side, wheezing. "Didn't think ye'd mind . . ."
"You're a stinking liar, Jack. Always were."
He frowned, offended. "Not always."
Anamaria shot him a threatening look.
Jack sighed tiredly and pushed himself up, and drew in his knees. The dull, sick ache in his stomach was subsiding gradually into queasiness, and he had no wish to be slugged into a relapse. "Knowing of Vega isn't the same thing as knowin' 'im, love," he explained, "and you don't know 'im. He's not . . . fond . . . of women, least of all women with minds for . . . well," a shrug, "with minds. With heads t'go along with their oh so useful bodies, and what you're thinkin', that's not what he uses 'em for. The way you talked back to 'im, I'm surprised that lovely shriek-box you call your throat didn't end up slit long before I was blessed---" there was a small stress on the word, and he gestured with his manacled wrist for emphasis, "---with your continued company."
Ana was quiet for a minute as she digested his reasoning.
". . . I don't need to be mollycoddled, Sparrow. I've known men me whole life that would see me hang for breathin', wastin' air on a life unfit for a woman. I'm well aware o' the chances I take and I don't need rescuing from 'em."
Jack smiled, his gold teeth glinting meanly in the dusk light. "He'd've killed us both, Ana. I wasn't tryin' to rescue ye - I jus' didn't wanna be the only one kept alive long enough t'see what lay beyond that mizzenmast flogging."
Ana gave an unfeminine snort, tossing her head in a manner that had always reminded Jack of a haughty horse. "You're a dog, Jack," she spat, then added, balefully, "and don't ever speak o' me brother again."
"Never," he halfheartedly promised, leaning again back into the sand. "On me mother's grave."
"You had a mother?"
Jack's mouth twitched into a counterfeit smirk. "Touché."
After a silent, seething moment, Anamaria fished the bottle of spirits from her sodden knapsack and uncorked it with her teeth before downing a draught. Gin, Jack guessed from the scent of her breath as she exhaled, and he became very suddenly cognisant of his salt-parched mouth and throat.
"Give us a swig," he muttered, the handlocks' lashing chains clinking when he reached for the bottle. She swatted his hand away. Jack contained an exasperated huff. "Please?"
"Get your own."
Seconds fell below the horizon as Ana tried to ignore the feeling of Jack's unblinking glower boring into her right temple, but his focus could rival that of the noontide sun's when he willed it to, and she was too sapped to be so pettily stubborn. With a scowl, she thrust the bottle at his chest with an order that he was to ration its contents.
The drink was a warm wet salve on his tongue, not as strong as he preferred, but not worthy of complaint.
"'M sorry about your boat," he offered, and took a second gulp before corking the bottle and handing it back to her.
Anamaria shrugged. "'Tweren't nothing to me."
"No? You seemed to like it."
She shrugged again as she tugged off her boots and emptied them of sand and brine.
"Never a pleasant thing is all," he went on, "for a captain to lose 'is - or her - livelihood, even when it's the runt o' the litter."
When she didn't backhand him for his backhanded sincerity, Jack knew he'd struck a nerve.
". . . leave it, Sparrow," she said coldly, laying her hat over her boots to dry and then reclining next to him on the beach.
He did.
Several dark hours later, the familiar sensation of a foreign something soft and sweltry licking a path along his jawline drew Jack sensually into consciousness. Humming a low sound of pleasure (for he had learned long ago that whatever name he moaned in drowsy bliss was bound to be the wrong one), he craned his neck to give the owner of the tongue better access . . .
. . . and received a puff of the vilest breath in the western hemisphere in his face in return. Had the state of dentistry in Tortuga suffered so severely in the time between his visits? Not that it had been all sweetness and white before but even at their most impoverished the girls usually managed to come by a swill of some disinfecting liquor or other.
Grimacing, Jack opened his eyes to find himself face-to-face with one of the ugliest mugs he had ever had the mortification of waking up to. Blackbeard's balls, he hadn't drunk that much last night, had he?!
His bed-partner released a shrill squeal, and with a startled shout Jack rolled in the opposite direction, over something lumpy and equally at odds with rude awakenings as himself, if its reflexive cuff to his sternum were anything to go by.
"God - Jack!" Anamaria cried out, jostling Jack's elbow out of her ribs and buckling what stability kept him from foundering atop her in the process.
"Ah, yes," Jack realised, lucidity at last beginning to seep into his brain, "you're the one I'm meant to be sleeping with." He caught himself and quickly amended, "waking with. Not bedding. Can't anyway, technically; no bed."
Ana blinked. "What? Jack, get off me." She shoved him aside and sat up, just in time to catch sight of a wild pig disappear into the spiny brush that lined the shore. "Did ye see that?"
"In greater detail than I ever desired to."
She frowned down at him briefly, but decided against enquiring further. "That pig's gotta drink from somewhere. This island must have a---"
"A tavern?"
She narrowed her eyes. "---a spring."
That they wouldn't die of hunger or thirst rubbed a little of the tarnish from the silver lining of their survival. Ana really hadn't fancied the thought of having to kill and eat Jack in order to endure, accustomed to tough, stringy meat though she was. Nevertheless, she had decided to remain diplomatically open to the idea in the case of her own insanity. It wasn't murder, she rationalised, if he drove her to it; then it was suicide, and no fault of her own. But she didn't foresee that happening. Not really.
Not much.
Not soon, at any rate.
The morning, following certain necessary rituals (if there was one thing piracy had taught them, it was the value of modesty - specifically, that it had none, and luckily, considering their circumstances, they could easily do without such frivolities), had been spent exploring their place of impromptu marooning, skirting the forest border, alternately inspecting its shallower regions and gaging the size of the island. It turned out to be bigger than either had first suspected; they had yet to make a complete circling of it, and hitherto it seemed deserted.
"We'll need weapons soon," Anamaria mulled aloud as they walked towards a sloping crag that jutted out past the beach into the ocean. "Spears for fishing and hunting." She indicated her knapsack, its contents depleted by two plantains and two-thirds of the gin. "This won't last long and I ain't seen a single fruit tree."
"Spears are easy," said Jack, around a mouthful of starchy banana. "A good stick, a sharp rock, and a bit o' something to tie 'em together's all it takes. We've got wood, we've got rock, got somethin' threadbare enough to pass for string . . ." He tugged at the end of the yellow scarf she had knotted round her head and recoiled when she motioned to smack him.
"These blasted things would come in handy," she groused, shaking the arm she had raised and rattling the leash that bound them together. They reached the base of the drop-off and began to climb, Jack slightly ahead of her. "Good as any bludgeon, if only we could get them off. Knew I should've learned to pick locks."
Jack shrugged thoughtfully and tossed the plantain peel over his shoulder. "Could try hitting them with a rock. A heavy rock. Tantamount to hammers, heavy rocks. Same with flower pots. And tuna. Whole, of course; fillets are more for duelling."
Anamaria shook her head, incredulous. "I've always wondered - is it permanent sun poisoning that ye have? Or are you just daft by nature?" She glanced down to get her proper footing as they approached the jagged cliff's side edge.
"You never know, love. It might work on them."
"Tuna against shackles. Oh yes, why didn't I see it before, I feel freer already."
"Not them," Jack clarified, grabbing hold of her hand to haul her up the rest of the way. "Them."
Ana followed his gaze, which had grown very wide and very covetous.
The rough granitic walls enclosed a small laguna. Within it was docked the Festal Brand.
Footnotes: Thank you, those of you who reviewed the last chapter, specifically . . .
Savvy-Rum-Drinker: Thanks! I'm writing quickly as I'm able, which mightn't be much over the next two to three weeks due to the pesky distractions of reality, but I'll try to get another chapter finished before all that takes too strong a hold.
J.L. Dexter: Thank you much. I hope you think this chapter as amusing as the last. :)
cal: Goodness. Spaced out, your review might be the length of the story. *grin* Not that I mind. I'm flattered you took the time to point out what you enjoyed and your curiosities - I hate to leave loose ends hanging about and find it good to be questioned sometimes, so that I don't forget to explain anything down the line. As for Jack & Ana, I'm not opposed at all to their being paired romantically - just not for this fic. But someday, maybe, after a few more bruises to Jack's person. ;) Thank you.
Puff: Need I cackle more? Ta, though. Coming from someone as obsessed as you are, that I managed to do Jack even a bit of justice has me happy. And I'll make you like Anamaria yet. >;D
dime: Ee so glad it brings delight. I'll not keep you waiting long if I can help it. Thank you darling.
Pearl: Pfft. I don't have to reply to you. (Actually, I just feel vaguely stupid doing it, all broken record-y. You know. But ta. <3)