Love, Love All Around – and Not a Drop to Drink
by Oneiriad
Disclaimer: Captain Jack Sparrow, Pirates of the Caribbean and all the rights to either are not mine, alas.
A/N: This little ficlet was written for Raphe1, who was also kind enough to give it a title.
Jack used to love three things: the sun, the sea and his ship. There was nothing he wanted more than for them to be the whole of his world: his breath, his meat, his drink - especially hís drink, for Jack was a thirsty man, and piracy is thirsty work.
But you cannot drink the sea - it is too vast to ever be emptied, even by old gods caught up in drinking contests, and it is too salty, far, far too salty to quench any man´s thirst. And if you try it any way you´ll most likely drown.
Nor can you drink the sun - not as liquid to pour down your throat, at least. Your skin can drink it, and Jack would walk naked as often as he could, partaking of Helios´ generous libations. But when all was said and done drinking the sun only left you even thirstier.
And the Black Pearl was by far too hard, too physical to be drinkable. Even the tar that would drip from her planks on a hot day (and in the Caribbean most days are hot) could not be drunk - nor could the freedom she embodied, for freedom flies on the wind and can never be caught, never put in a cup...
And so Jack turned to rum, a liquid as strong as the sea herself, golden as only the sun could otherwise be (at least when the rum was good) and as full of the promise of freedom (albeit of a different kind) as the Pearl herself.
Thus did Jack acquire his fourth love, and now he is sitting in an old and decrepit inn, looking over a mug of it at the man across from him (not in his uniform at the moment, though you can still tell that he wears one most days) looking suspiciously at the mug in front of him, and Jack cannot help but wonder if he might have found the fifth...?