Disclaimer: This is a disclaimer. Now there's a sweet disclaimer, you might say. Round. Anyway. So, to keep lawsuits from becoming crashed into the Delphein, Delphein would like to point out that she doesn't claim to own anything that isn't hers and also doesn't make a single sterling ounce of profit from it.

This cookie is set post-HaDM, pre-Signif.

Monkeys

Gwen kept her eyes on Jack as they strolled through the marketplace. She knew very well indeed that Jack had a natural tendency to get into mischief. All it would take is a single second of inattention on her part for him to do something. He might nick something from a vendor's stall or someone's pocket. Or he might steal something very large and incriminating and slip it into some poor fool's shopping basket. Or he might make faces at young children to make them run for cover behind their mothers' skirts. Or he might decide to commandeer one of the vegetable carts. Or he might try to con passing gentlemen into investing in his imaginary company, Rumworth and Shiply. Or he might wink at an elderly woman. Or he might set something ablaze. There was really no telling.

Not that Gwen cared about stopping him from doing any of those things or anything else he might think up, for that matter. The only problems she had with Jack's trouble-making weren't moral problems; they were problems of association. If he got caught at some petty crime, which did happen from time to time, there was always a good chance that she would be accused as well, on account of her association with the criminal. She'd spent a night in jail solely on his account more than once. Jack found it funny when that happened; she wasn't always so amused.

So Gwen watched him with more attentiveness than Barbossa would have ever paid to a whole shipload of apples. If she saw him so much as put a dreadlock out of line, she'd disappear and leave him in a trice to sort out his own fate with his captors. In fact, she was spending so much of her time keeping Jack's quick hands in her sight and trying to fathom what was in his mind that she almost missed them. But she saw them out of the corner of her eye. A quick glance to make sure of what she was seeing was all it took before the plan began hatching in her mind.

Monkeys.

There was a merchant just up the street hawking some very exotic wares. And in one corner of his stall, between three or four long, carved elephant tusks and an assortment of variously colored vials of strange liquids, there was a medium-sized cage of at least a dozen smallish, chattering monkeys.

Jack disliked monkeys. In fact, he hated them, almost as much as Gwen hated crabs-- those skittering freakish claw-wielders. Gwen shook her head slightly to clear that thought away. Back to the matter at hand… Jack disliked monkeys. Jack was also currently in the lead. He was at least one or two over her. After the bilge-water incident and the underclothes fiasco, she'd gotten him back in her kohl caper, but he'd surged ahead again with his extravagant crew-swapping escapade. So, in short… it was time to strike back.

"Jack," Gwen began. She put a hand to her head. "Jack, I don't think I care to go to the tavern tonight. I'm getting a headache."

"I know jus' the cure for it," Jack answered distractedly as he paused to inspect an attractive etched hip flask hanging at a metal-worker's booth.

"Not rum," Gwen replied. "I think part of the headache is left over from what I had last night."

"Duckling," Jack said accusingly. Whether this was meant to be a derogatory name for her at not being able to hold her liquor as well as he, or whether he had actually just spotted a duckling, Gwen wasn't sure. But she didn't bother asking for clarification.

"I'm going back to the Pearl. I'll see you tonight?"

"Aye," Jack affirmed. The tone he said it in, though, meant "If I'm not back by this time tomorrow, wait longer." The sun would begin setting in another hour or so; Jack would probably be finding his way into a tavern soon.

"Keep your clothes on and don't lose your hat again," Gwen said then, and slapped him playfully on the behind as she left him. She set off in the general direction of the sea, and even turned off onto the street that led to the docks. But then she doubled back. Gwen kept herself hidden behind carts and in shadows as she eyed the crowds farther down. Ah, there he was. Jack was a very noticeable character, even at this distance. He'd stopped to admire a particularly large feathered hat.

Gwen waited until he finally disappeared down a side street. After watching patiently for several minutes to see that he didn't come back from around that corner, she began walking purposefully towards the monkey-stall.

The structure of the stall itself was barely distinguishable, covered as it was with unusual striped and spotted pelts; great plumes of feathers in strange colors; carved and polished wooden idols; bone and stone jewelry and charms; pungent herbs and large flowers strung up to dry; buckets and baskets full of tree-nuts and lengths of braided cord, rope, and twine; rolled-up scrolls of rough paper; earthen pots with foreign characters and scenes brushed onto them in fading ink; covered bowls of magical powders and holistic remedies; and many stranger things besides. The merchant responsible for such peculiar wares was a barrel-chested man with golden-brown skin-- whether from his race or the sun was impossible to determine-- as well as gleaming, alert eyes, and a scraggly dark beard. He wore a turban of coarse cotton wrapped round his head, but it little suited him and seemed to be a poor attempt to blend in with the exotic flavor of his merchandise. He turned away to appear disinterested as Gwen approached and busied himself with straightening a display of painted ceramic figurines, though he watched her most attentively over his shoulder.

Gwen played along, fingering this and studying that before finally wandering toward the corner with the monkeys. As she picked up some of the small glass bottles to examine their contents, the merchant deigned to notice her at last. "Ah," he said with oily courtesy, "the lady chooses an aphrodisiac. I got that particular potion from the Empress of India herself. It is very powerful."

Gwen made no reply, but set the vial down decisively.

"I might interest you, perhaps, in a charm for luck?" The man reached blindly into a basket and presented her with a small shell dangling from a bit of twisted twine. "This was worn for years by the very King of Spain before he gave it to me personally."

"Where did these come from?" Gwen said suddenly, ignoring his offer and stooping to peer into the cage of monkeys.

"From the very heart of Africa," he assured her immediately.

"My mistress," Gwen observed boredly, "was given several monkeys by an Italian count who had just returned from a trip abroad. They died. I was sent by my master to replace them before the mistress discovered it."

"You'll find these creatures are superior to any others!"

"How much?"

The man gave his price.

Gwen looked at them very studiously. Aware that the man was watching her very closely, she was careful to keep her left hand shielded on her side of the cage. She'd palmed one of his vials earlier and now opened it under the monkeys' noses. "They look much the same as the others did right before they died. Look at their eyes. They also had a fit of wildness just before they died." She shook her head disapprovingly and began to move away from the stall.

The merchant frowned and reflexively turned back to inspect the monkeys himself. He gave a small cry of alarm when he saw them rolling their eyes and scrambling over each other to get the side of the cage where he stood. Convinced not only that they were indeed sick, but that they were trying to come after him, he called out to Gwen with a significantly discounted price before she had gone more than a few steps.

"I'll have three of them," she agreed.

Jack got back rather earlier than expected, only a few hours after Gwen herself had returned, though he had intentions of leaving again. The first thing he saw was a cage of three monkeys sitting on the main deck. The monkeys were wearing kerchiefs tied round their little necks. Each kerchief had a number painted on it: 1, 2, and 4. He found Gwen below decks in the gymnasium, occupying herself by practicing alone with her blade.

"Your headache?" Jack asked her.

Gwen didn't pause in her sparring with her imaginary partner, but replied, "Miraculously cured."

"And that cage of monkeys?"

"I don't think they ever had headaches."

"Yours might come back," he threatened.

Gwen stopped and sheathed her sword. Then she stretched and breathed deeply and approached the spot where Jack stood in the doorway.

"Somebody," she explained, "apparently thought it would be funny to turn them loose on board the ship. I spent an hour and a half hunting them down after I saw the first one."

"There's one still missing," Jack said, sounding antsy.

"Oh, yes, the number 3 one. I couldn't find it, and I got tired of looking."

"Well, look again," he insisted.

"Jack..."

"Now." He grabbed her arm and dragged her out into the corridor.

Jack couldn't keep barely keep the grin off his face. In actuality, Gwen wasn't as sneaky as she thought she was, but he was definitely sneakier than she thought he was. He had suspected her trickery and had spied on her through the whole business: he'd watched her buy her monkeys, make the kerchiefs and number them, tie them onto the chittery little demons, and leave the cage on deck where he'd be sure to see them. Then he'd set off to make his own preparations. In a small storage room on the gun deck, skittering about across the floor, there were now three crabs, with paper numbers pasted onto the backs of their shells: 1, 2, and 4. Not only would she flee from the crustaceans, Gwen would certainly recognize his mockery of her own scheme.

Gwen and Jack both played along with the charade, searching every room on two decks before they arrived on the gun deck. Jack snickered softly to himself as he anticipated her reaction when they discovered the crab-room. His pleasure in his joke was interrupted, though, when he heard a monkey's screech, muted by distance and walls, answered by another. Frowning, he made a note to have Gwen get rid of that cage above decks. Never mind that for the moment, though; Gwen had just gone around a corner into the section where his trick awaited her. He waited... three, two, one...

"Jack!"

Gleefully, he abandoned all pretenses and dashed to where she stood in an open doorway.

"I found them," she informed him.

Surprised by her placid expression, Jack looked inside the room himself. He let out a yell of surprise and jumped back. Inside were ten or twelve monkeys, all wearing kerchiefs identical to the original trio's, all numbered "3." What Jack had failed to realize is that Gwen had expected him to spy on her; he had also ruled out the fact that she would be spying on him. After Jack had sneaked back off the Pearl, she'd asked Ben to clear out the crabs for her as a favor he owed her and then gone to get more monkeys.

After a very long interval of Gwen's laughing and Jack glaring, the joke was over.

"Damn," Jack said finally and went off to sulk for an appropriate interval.

An hour later, he found Gwen preparing to go back into town.

"Going for a drink?" he asked as nonchalantly as though nothing had happened all day.

"If you're buying," Gwen answered.

Jack draped his arm around her. He grinned to distract her from his hand while he picked her pocket. "I'll buy the whole bar," he answered agreeably, slipping silver from her pocket into the pocket of his coat.

Gwen only smiled in response, and the two of them set off. When Jack looked away, Gwen held out the hand farthest from him. A small monkey silently leaped up from where it had been trailing along behind them. Clutching her skirts, the monkey pressed her money, which it had just stolen out of Jack's coat pocket, into her hand. Then it jumped off and disappeared from view again.

"I like monkeys," Gwen observed aloud.

Jack merely grunted in reply.

Every time you review, an angel gets a pet monkey.