Title: Of the Sea
Rating: PG-13
Chapter Title: 5: Mostly True
Summary: Matthew's rough biography.
Timeline: Wednesday, May 4, 1675
Author: Cicatrix (Marin K.)

"I was born twenty-eight years ago--"

"I thought you were younger."

"--in London. I get that a lot. My parents were neither particularly rich nor particularly poor, though we were perhaps more towards the former than the latter. My father a merchant sailor... Stop smirking Jack, I know what you're thinking. I'll get to that eventually. My father was never home much, but my parents seemed happy enough. Their only real dispute was about my education; my mother wanted me to learn business, and my father wanted me to learn about sailing. I went to some of the nicer schools in London, learning math and writing, literature... but I dreamed of the sea. When my father would come home, even if it were just for a day, he taught me about those things which he explained were most important in life; the ocean, ships, sailing, swordplay... pirates."

"Did he mention me?"

"No, he didn't mention you. I used to always ask him, in a disappointed tone, why he was just a normal sailor and not a pirate. I wanted him to go on grand adventures and bring me back stolen treasures, to be the greatest pirate on the entire ocean. I would talk for hours about the voyages he would make, and about how he would take me with him. He would just smile at me, and laugh. I was very naïve."

"No kidding."

"It's my story, stop interrupting."

"Alright, alright." Jack raised his hands apologetically, still holding the bottle of rum. Matthew took it from him, helped himself to a liberal amount.

"When I was fourteen, my mother was pregnant again. She died in childbirth. My father came, and I assumed he would stay, get a new job where he would stay in London. Instead, he came with a trunk and told me to gather what things I most wanted to keep. The next morning I was ready, with the clothes on my back and a trunk-full of my mother's belongings. We left that day for the Caribbean.

"Two months and three weeks later we arrived in Tortuga. As we stood on the docks, my father turned to me and asked if I still liked pirates. I announced that I wanted to be one. He gave me another of those smiles and said, 'Good. We're in the right place, then.' He'd bought a small house in one of the better quarters of town, and we sat down on yet unfurnished floor. He looked at me a moment and asked me to remember the days when I'd wanted him to be a pirate, and when I told him I did, he said that he'd been dishonest with me then, when he'd claimed to be a merchant sailor. I learned then the reason for the enigmatic smiles he'd graced me with for years: my father was a pirate. I was thrilled, at first.

"For the next two years, my father would at turns sail off and return. He was back more often though, because Tortuga was often en-route to wherever he was going. I realized then that piracy was not as grand as I had thought; he would often come home drunk out of his skull, cursing and shouting in the middle of the night, a prostitute or two hanging on his arm. I was happy when I knew he would be coming home, and after he'd been home for a little while, and had sobered up, but those first few hours were always the most difficult.

"From the time when the effects of the alcohol wore off, usually the afternoon after he came home, until the time he left again, he was a great father. We still sailed together, and swam in the ocean waters. During his absences, I wandered the island. I worked odd jobs simply to keep myself occupied, and sailed in a dinghy I saved my shillings to buy. I didn't see a lot of the money my father made as a pirate. When I asked him, he explained that he put most of it away, because he wanted me to have something to fall back on if he didn't come back.

"He stopped coming home when I was sixteen. I waited for a month after his expected return, until I received news that his ship had been sunk off the coast of Jamaica. There were no known survivors. I was bitter after his death. We'd parted for the last time on bad terms. I'd finally realized that the child my mother died carrying was not my father's; he'd been gone a full year that time, and the child could not have been his. I blamed him for being absent, figuring my mother would not have been driven into the arms of another man if he'd actually been there with us. After he died, I forgave him, a little too late.

"I was able to live off my father's money for four years. More than half still remained when I finally decided to leave, but at twenty, I knew it was time. I'd spent the previous three years frequenting the pubs of Tortuga, trying to get a feel for the life my father had led, the life I knew would one day be mine. I got to the point where I could no longer sit in a house in Tortuga, where listening to pirates' tales in taverns was not enough. The sea was calling to me, and not just the shallow waters I patrolled in the afternoons; the entire ocean was throbbing in my veins. I can tell by the way you're smiling that you know what I mean.

"I boarded up the windows and the doors of our house, tucked my mother's belongings away where no one would ever find them, and set out to find a crew. I soon found a place onboard the Vicious Melissa, and I got along well with the crew. We had some good times. Eventually, I felt I needed to move on. I guess I didn't want to get attached to one ship or her crew, so I said my goodbyes and found a new ship. I've spent the last seven years going from ship to ship, leaving when the surroundings became too familiar."

"Question!" Jack, who had been silent for some time (although he occasionally stole the rum from Matthew, or whined when it was stolen from him), piped up again.

"What?"

"If I let you stay, are you just going to stay for a few months and then run off?"

"I don't know yet. How about, when we get to Tortuga, you tell me if I can stay, and I'll tell you how long I plan on staying for. Agreed?"

"Agreed!"

"Anyway, a couple months ago, I finished a 'treasure hunt' with Satan's Hangman. I was in Tortuga. I guess I decided to keep going with the biblical theme, and when the Cain came into port, they had a place open, and I offered to fill it. To be kind, I hated them. To be honest, I spent every waking moment, and many sleeping ones, wishing death upon each one of them, and anyone even remotely related to them.

"As I'm sure you know, there are pirates who will only kill when necessary. Others make an art of cruelty. The crew of the Cain did neither. They were slow, stupid, and delighted in inflicting pain. I won't begrudge a man his sadism. I don't go for that, and I usually avoid ships when I sense their tendency to cause... unnecessary... pain. If I have no other option, I can live with it. But those on board the Cain enjoyed not only causing their intended victims to suffer, but members of their own crew as well.

"They once cut off the helmsman's hand and threw him to the sharks for their own amusement. I don't pity him; he would have just as eagerly done the same thing to anyone else, but it still disgusts me. It's not right with the Code."

"That's disgusting." His eyes were dark and electric, narrowed dangerously.

"You're telling me."

"Did they..."

"Do something equally horrific to me? I have no idea. I don't appear to be missing any appendages, but I don't know what they did. Did something happen? Probably, but I don't know what it was. I suppose they left me to die, but you found me. And what happened after, you already know."

Jack looked at him curiously, his head tilted to one side, "That's all the truth, isn't it?" He sounded surprised.

Matt smiled, winked. "For the most part."

By this time, the sun was rising, and the bottle of rum was empty. Jack laughed, nodding toward the brightening horizon. "Time flies when you're having fun, doesn't it? How's your head?"

"It does. And it's better, thanks."

"Good." Jack stood, bracing himself against the rail behind him. He offered a hand to Matthew, who accepted the help. Once on his feet, he swooned slightly. "What say we go down to the mess, and wake a pair of those dogs, and have 'em take over our watch so we can sleep?"

"Aye, sounds good."

Author's note: Wow! Two chapters in one day! I'm very tired, it's 11:30 PM. I need some sleep. So I'm going to go do that (sleep, that is). May be a little bit before I update again, I should have been working on my tons of homework, but I was doing this instead. So maybe this weekend?

Review Responses:

pingpong5: Thank you! I was very proud of myself, even though I had extremely important homework projects that I should have been working on. Oh well. They did get done, eventually. I'm just writing these quick responses, and then I am moving on, to Chapter 6!

Jacklyne Thank you very much. I'm glad you like it! More is on the way.

Reese Sparrow: All in a day's work! As for Jack and Matt.... ehehe, we'll see, won't we?