Disclaimer: Unfortunately, they are not owned by a member of the genus canis, so I cannot claim them . . .except for Brian, Jenkin, the kids, and the bad guys. Not that the mouse would want them . . .
My Brother's Keeper
Part 2
"Jack?"
"I'm all right, love." Jack lifted his head off his hands long enough to smile at Ana-Maria and accept the drink she offered him. He really was feeling better, the swaying of a ship beneath him helping to clear his head and settle his stomach.
"What happened, Jack? Will's not . . .he's still . . ." Ana-Maria sat down at the table next to him, her own drink in hand, eyes hooded and wary. Jack knew she had never liked the idea of the link to begin with; something like this was just bound to make her even more leery.
"He's not dead, no. He's hurt, though. I'm not sure how badly. He was scared, too . . .maybe one of the children . . .I don't know. I wasn't ready. All I was able to make out were a few blurred impressions."
That was the most frustrating part of what had happened. He had been caught completely off guard, and his first instinct had been to block out the sensations invading his mind. Would he know more if he had opened the doors of his mind to Will instead of slamming the barriers shut?
Would it change anything?
"What're you going to do?" Ana-Maria was watching him carefully, almost too carefully, as though she were suddenly uncertain of the ground she was trodding.
"We're going to wait until tomorrow, get our crew to sign ship's articles again, and in the meantime we're goin' to think of a bloody good reason for them to want to go to Johnson."
"If they won't go?"
Jack shrugged, slouching back in the chair as usual as he took another swig of his rum. "Then you'd better be ready to take command, and either have a spare boat t' give me, a lot of rope t' tie me up with, or a willingness to put a sword through my gut or a ball through my brain. I can't—I won't— ignore him forever, love."
Ana-Maria simply stared at him, seeming to be completely frozen, at a loss for a way to respond to the nonchalant declaration.
Jack grinned at his lover, leaning closer and running gentle fingers down her cheek and along her jaw. "That's not going to happen, though, now is it? Two smart people like us, with a decent and relatively loyal crew . . .we'll figure out a way."
"Jack . . ." Ana-Maria pulled back from him, the hooded and glazed look finally falling away to be replaced by fear, anger, and the faint glimmer of possible tears.
"No, love, none of that." He met with little resistance as he pulled the female pirate onto his lap, lightly kissing her eyelids before moving in to capture her mouth. "Everything will work out fine."
Ana-Maria smiled slightly, returning his affection with a passion of her own. "It better, you bloody fool."
"It will. Have some faith."
The female pirate toyed with the single gray braid amidst the raven tangle of her lover's hair. The gray hairs had slowly begun appearing after the sinking of the Pearl. Ana-Maria had expected some sort of worry, maybe even a moment of panic at the proof of his mortality, but instead the pirate captain had shrugged, collected the thin gray strands into one section, and woven another braid, a pale ghost that stood out vividly. The limp that made itself known more and more often was the one other sign that Time had not decided to pass Jack Sparrow by.
"Come on, love." Jack was on his feet and out of the cabin before Ana-Maria could say anything.
"Come where? What are you doing now, you daft—" The female pirate cut herself off mid-sentence as Jack moved to the rail, facing open sea, and quickly deposited both his sword and his pistol on the deck, ignoring the night watch and being ignored in turn by an obviously intelligent crew-member.
"Are you coming?" Jack's shirt was quickly thrown over his weapons, displaying a well-muscled and oft-scarred upper body.
"What if Will wakes up again?"
"I'll deal with it. I could swim in my sleep. You know that. Do you want to come?"
Ana-Maria moved closer to her lover, running a gentle hand down his face. "Are you really sure you want me to come?"
Jack hesitated, staring over her shoulder at the water, and Ana-Maria had her answer.
"Go on. I'll watch the ship, and you."
The pirate captain gave her a small smile and nodded, quickly removing his boots, stepping up to the railing, and diving off.
Ana-Maria watched the dive, and lingered a moment at the rail to watch him surface before moving back. She had done what she could for him.
It was time for his only other remaining lover to heal what she could.
* * *
Men waking to the watch bell, throwing on uniforms and grabbing weapons before Will could even determine what was happening . . .
Cannon fire in the dead of night, blinding light on dark on light . . .
Sails black as pitch, dark against the heavens, a bitter reminder of another ship, another captain . . .
"Brian?"
For a moment the mask of forced calm slipped as friends shared a glance, and disbelief, confusion, uncertainty, anger, all vied for possession of the blue eyes. "I don't know, Will. Try to keep out of danger. They've got the wind at their back and they're obviously prepared . . . "
"Turner, are you conscious yet?"
The crack of pistols, the clang of swords, the screams and curses of men occasionally managed to drown out the groans of the hardware of war.
"Remember, take Turner, Lanebridges, and the boy, and take them alive!" The voice was unfamiliar, obviously someone of importance to the boarders, but the utter chaos of battle under a near-moonless sky made it impossible to determine who was yelling.
It was several precious seconds later that the meaning of the words sank in.
The boy?
Jack!
Where was he? Had something already happened?
Jack . . .
"Will, now would be that opportune moment that Jack taught you about. You'll be waking up any second now, right? Will . . . "
One he could have handled easily. Two would take a bit more work, but still wasn't much of a problem. Three, when he was fighting to find his son, was still just a hindrance. Four was problematic.
Five, though . . . five was just downright cruel, when he didn't even have any maneuvering space to work with . . .and before he'd even managed to find his son . . .
"Papa, you need to wake up now. Please, papa, we need your help. You've got to be all right. Father . . ."
Something brushed against his arm again, a gentle touch that seemed not so much hesitant as awkward and hindered. The darkness of dreams was slowly replaced with darkness of a different texture.
"Where . . ." His voice was thinner, more strained and hoarse than he wished it to be, and Will cleared his throat before trying again. "Where are we?"
"On a ship. Beyond that, heaven only knows. There's not a crack or chink anywhere around the cells for us to see outside and get any sense of time, let alone of directions."
Will jerked abruptly upright, wincing as the movement brought sensation back to stiff muscles and caused a steady pounding to take up residence in his skull. An unpleasant tingling sensation engulfed his fingers as he flexed his wrists, which were chained firmly behind his back. A similar process occurred in his ankles as he shifted to a more upright position against the bars at his back. "Commodore Jenkin?"
"Aye. How are you feeling, Turner?" The darkness was a solid wall that prevented Will from doing much more than staring off in the relative direction from which he thought the voice emanated.
"You're all right, aren't you, papa?"
Will twisted around abruptly, grinning, bringing his own still-tingling fingers to touch his son's through the bars as the boy again brushed his sleeve. "Jack. You're all right?"
"I'm all right. They didn't do much to me, once they got my sword away. I tried, Papa, really I did, but he had a longer reach, and he was stronger, and—"
The boy's babbling died away as the blacksmith tightened his hold on his son's hands as much as he could. "It's all right, Jack. What's important is that you're still alive and that you're not hurt. Did they just take the three of us?"
"Not quite."
"Brian?"
"Accounted for."
Will strongly disliked the rasping quality lurking behind the ironic lilt in the young man's voice. "Are you all right?"
"I'm fine." The finality with which the words were spoken gave evidence to the contrary.
"Liar." If the boy meant the word to be an unheard whisper, he had underestimated either the volume of his own voice or the auditory acuity that total darkness brought.
"Jack, that's not a proper tone to use when speaking to your Captain, now is it?" There was no real reprimand in Brian's voice, only exasperation and exhaustion.
The young man was apparently aware of that, as he lowered his voice so only Will could hear clearly. "He was trying to defend me. He slipped, and he ended up on the deck. They kicked him, hard, in the stomach and in the back. I couldn't tell if he was cut, too, but when he tried to maneuver earlier and grab the picklocks out of my shirt he passed out."
"I did not pass out. I just decided further movement was too much work."
"You did too! You scared me, godpapa." Any argument Brian might have made was stymied by that simple statement.
"Picklocks?" There was nothing that Will could do to help the Navy man at the moment, but if there was a possibility of gaining their freedom . . .
"Uncle Jack gave them to me. It's a leather strap with a set of picklocks in it. I was supposed to tie it where I could grab the picks with my teeth if the need ever arose, but the leather band slipped and twisted around, and now I can't reach it."
"Jack Sparrow gave you a set of picklocks?"
"Was he not supposed to?"
Not really, no. "Did he show you how to use them?"
"Aye."
"Did you practice?"
"Maybe."
"On what?"
"Anything and everything I could find with a lock on it."
"Do you think you can undo these?" Will shook his hands, causing the short chain to rattle furiously.
"I hope so."
"I do, too. Where are they?"
"They're on my right arm."
"Where's that?" Will smiled as his son laughed, the sound a bit too forced and bright but still incredibly welcome.
"Wait a minute and let me turn over." Slight scuffing and scraping accompanied the words as Jack moved away from the bars and then back towards them in a new position. "There. Can you feel my shirt?"
"Aye." Will could feel the edge of his son's shirt, and twisted his hands even more despite the pressure it put on his wrists where they were manacled and on his forearms where they pressed against the bars of his cell. He slowly felt his way along the boy's shoulder and down his arm, pulling the shirt back as much as it would go.
His questing fingers found the leather strap a second before he thought one or both of his wrists was going to break. It was difficult to feel the picklocks through the tingling that was again taking up residence in his fingers, and even more difficult to grasp one between two fingers of his right hand and pull it free. How someone was supposed to do this with their teeth . . .
The light that flooded the cells was blinding after the complete darkness that had come before. Will just barely bit back a cry of pain as he ripped his hands back through the bars and into his own cell as quickly as he could, clenching the picklock in a fist that was closed just as tightly as his eyelids.
"Well, well, well, what have we here. How're our guests doing? Everyone conscious?"
Will opened his eyes to slits and stared towards the light, able to make out blurred impressions that slowly resolved themselves into the figures of three men. The tallest one, who had apparently spoken before, stepped towards little Jack's cell.
"The child who didn't know enough to stay home where he was safe. You should never meddle in the affairs of those older and wiser than you, boy. It leads to situations like this." There seemed to be genuine regret in the man's voice as he knelt down to stare at Jack, who had made himself as small and unobtrusive as possible, attempting to shrug his shirt back into a semi-proper position.
The blacksmith swept a glance around the brig, assessing their condition. Each of them was in a small cell, deep enough to lie down in but hardly wide enough to sit in. Brian was in the farthest corner, on the opposite side of Jack, and seemed quite composed, leaning against the back bars of his cell, apparently completely unperturbed by the blood on his uniform. If he was in pain, it didn't show. Jack was in the next cell, struggling to maneuver away from where the man was kneeling. Then came Will's own cage, followed by Jenkin's, and finally an empty cell.
"So young to be involved in these affairs . . ." The tall man reached through the bars, his hand hesitating over Jack's head. The boy threw his head back and bared his teeth, apparently quite willing to bite the man if he tried to touch him. "A boy with some spirit . . ."
"Who are you? What do you want with my son?" It was a rather obvious ploy to divert attention from young Jack, but it worked. The man withdrew his hand and moved to stand in front of Will's cell, scowling at the blacksmith.
"I don't want anything to do with you or your son or the rest of these people. As for my name . . .my name is Jonas. That's all you need to know for now." Jonas knelt down and motioned the man with the lantern closer.
Will again squinted against the glare, the ache in his head seeming to increase exponentially, something he hadn't thought possible. "If you don't want anything to do with us, then why'd you attack us? Why take us prisoner?"
"Because I know someone who does want you . . .or most of you." The smile that Jonas sent towards Jenkin was anything but kind. "Others will just do for ransom."
"Who wants to see us? Why isn't he here himself?"
Something flickered briefly across Jonas' face, and Will couldn't quite tell if it was anger or something else. "He's otherwise occupied. You'll see him soon enough. You don't look so well, Turner." Jonas turned to the men who were with him. "You were told to bring them alive and relatively unharmed."
"We tried, sir, 'onest we did, but the crazy man just wouldn' go down an' stay down." The lantern swung as the lantern-bearer shrugged expressively.
"See to his injuries. What about our dear Captain? Is any of that his blood?" Jonas moved now to stand in front of Brian's cell.
"No. None of it's mine." Brian met cold stare for cold stare until Jonas nodded and turned away.
"Care for Turner's injuries, and any that you find on the others. Feed them. Give them drink. Under no circumstances are you to unchain their hands, though, is that clear? And under no circumstances are they to be injured further. None."
"None, sir?"
"None. Understood?" Jonas stared steadily at the two men who were with him.
"Aye, sir." The quiet chorus could hardly be described as ecstatic, but at least it seemed as though the men would follow orders.
"Now, Turner, just try to behave yourself, all right? I'd hate to have to do anything to that innocent boy of yours." With that Jonas turned and left through the door by which he had entered, fading into the blackness.
Will studied the two men who were left, his breath constricting suddenly, acutely aware of the press of metal into his hand that could, quite possibly, be their passage to freedom . . .if he could only keep it safe.