Disclaimer: I don't own it. Everything you recognise belongs to Disney.
No infringement
is intended and I'm certainly not making any money from these drabbles.
Summary: A collection of PotC drabbles, about love, sea-longing, blood
and gold and
other important matters....
Author's note: All the drabbles have been written for The Black Pearl
Sails FanFiction
group's drabble challenges (the rules are: write exactly 100 words about a certain
theme).
And the Valentine's Day Drabble, is J/E.
A Blacksmith's Hands
His hands were not a blacksmith's hands, made rough by honest work. Fire had
not blistered
them, the hammer had not marked them and they could not shape metal into a thing
of beauty
and of grace.
She had dreamed of fingers smudged with soot, of skin hardened by steel. A
blacksmith's hands,
so strong and sure, that would hold fast and always keep her safe.
His hands were not a blacksmith's hands. Yet she lay awake, at night, renembering
the weight
and feel of them upon her. And if she held her breath, she could almost hear
the sea.
Blood and Gold
Hell had not spat him out, but there was blood on his hands that he could not
wash away. Not
with salt water, not with fresh water. Not with gold. Blood was funny like that.
He never saw it, but he felt it, sometimes, when the nights were long and the
rum and the Pearl
could not keep him afloat.
A weakness, Barbossa had said. Not fit to be Captain. Not fit to be a pirate,
at all. The gold is
the gold and dead men are easy to plunder.
Easy to plunder, perhaps, but not so easy to forget.
First Time
He kept his back straight, by sheer strength of will, but his face burned,
hot as if with fever and
his smile faded, the moment he stepped out of sight.
He returned home at nightfall. Took off his hat and his wig and sat down. The
light fell, just so,
and a shimmer of blue caught his eye. His mother's necklace. Elizabeth would
never wear it, now.
"Put that away!"
"Yes, Commodore."
The servant closed the lid, then lifted the box and rushed from the room. Sensible man.
He had been jilted before. This was the first time it hurt.
Anticipation
For a moment, she thought he would kiss her.
She was young, but not so young that she had never seen that look in a man's
eyes before.
None would dare touch the Governor's daughter, but what they could not touch,
they watched.
Even Will.
Jack the pirate, followed no such rules of conduct. His hand was on her shoulder,
his gaze upon
her mouth and his voice, when he spoke, was much like the rum. It burned.
For a moment, she thought he would kiss her.
And for just one moment, she wanted to know how it would feel.
Discovery
Safely tucked in and curled up in bed, hot coals warming her feet. No pirate
in sight. No sparrows
at hand.
She had heard of him, of course. Heard and read and dreamed, of Captain Jack.
Not a single life
lost, at Nassau Port and yet, they said the holds of his ship were bursting
with plunder. She had
tried to run away, fool that she had been, in the hope of joining his crew.
He was not the man the stories had described. Despicable, in truth, she would
not take that back.
No dreams, after this, would be innocent.
Beginning
A week on the ship and she got her sea legs. Like she was born to it, one of
the sailors said, but
Mr. Gibbs shook his head, muttering about bad luck or no luck at all. She had
learned not to mind
him, though he had frightened her at first.
Whenever her father's attention wavered, she stood at the bow, watching the
men climb up and
down the rigging, watching the sea shift and change as the weather changed.
Azure blue and grey
as burnished steel.
A new life, beyond the edge of that horizon. She could hardly wait.
Sea-Longing
He had dreamed of the sea, for the whole of his life. She had come to him,
like a woman, draped
in emerald green, clothed in soft, sapphire blue and, sometimes, bearing the
grey of death.
In calm and storm, he had ridden the waves, the king of the world, in that
very moment and never
again. Not ever again.
Age had not dimmed the longing; the curse had not altered it. And when his
chest shattered, he
thought he could see her, there, in the corner of his eye. The sea, the darling
sea, who opened wide
her arms.
Red Horizon
Red was the evening that followed, that day. A horizon of blood, and the colour
itself would have
brought them delight, at any other time. But Jack was the Governor of a far,
distant isle and Bootstrap
was fish-bait at the bottom of the sea and, for the first time, fear took hold
of their hearts.
"The curse!" Ragetti cried and covered his eyes.
And the gold glimmered and shone, in their hands, the skull that adorned every
coin the only thing
perfectly visible, as the sun slowly set.
The clouds parted and fled. The moon would be full, tonight.
Jack the Monkey
The monkey kept her company, that endless, moonlit night. It stared at her,
with small, dark eyes
that held so little knowledge and yet, more than she could ever have. She caught
glimpses of Hell,
if she looked closely enough, if she dared to meet its gaze.
Sometimes, it would come within arm's length of her and start jumping up and
down, arms flailing.
The mouth opened, the face contorted, and it screamed, as if it was angry. She
huddled closer to
the wall, cold to the marrow of her bones. And the monkey stilled, lips settling
into a smile.
Colour - Brown
Mary Elizabeth Swann had died, long ago, in faraway England, and never lived
to see her daughter
make her home on this sun-scorched island, in the midst of the ocean.
Elizabeth, now, was much like her mother had been. She had her mother's hair
and her mother's
eyes, both the brown of the soil that has been newly tilled and plowed in the
fields. She was an
autumn girl, a child of the land and the earth.
But she was Elizabeth, not Mary, and she was different, in one way, at least.
For her heart was all
of the sea.
Valentine's Day Drabble
He burned fire bright. Eyes open or closed; she saw nothing else. All the world
fell away like so
much rubble and shards. Ashes and dust. Her skin could not hold her, her heart
did not fit in this
cage, wrought of flesh and of bone.
This was the whole of him, the sum of the parts. Old wounds and new ones, scars
and brand and
braided hair. The golden smile and the silver tongue, that no metal could match.
A sparrow, but
not a nondescript bird. A pirate, and a good man.
And here, was the greatest of treasures.