Fic: Marooned Ch. 8: Not Like the Stories
By Honorat Selonnet
Rating: K+ with brief gusts of T violence.
Disclaimer: If Disney wants to become fabulously wealthy on POTC it'll have to do it alone, mate. I see no profit in it for me.
Summary: Just when Elizabeth and Jack are starting to get along I've decided to mess things up again. Tension increases. Words don't convey the truth. Philosophy happens. I'm beginning to sense a theme here: The real Jack Sparrow vs. the Legend. Elizabeth has figured out that he is a human being rather than a hero and that he hasn't forgotten how to play. In this chapter she is reminded that in spite of all his admirable qualities, the man is still a pirate, which is rarely a noble occupation. Not a romance pirate in sight here. Sorry Miss Swann. Jack tells some stories most of which deserve their own fics. Eighth in my Island Fic plus deleted scenes. The deleted scenes are done. Here be dragons. One more dragon scene and we'll be back to the movie.
Thanks and a chest of uncursed Aztec gold go to Geek Mama for beta work on this. Any errors and inconsistencies remain mine.
I've received some major inspiration from Dee's magnificent story "Beads". Consider my version an allusion to hers.
I'm also using Johnny Depp's statement that all of the stuff in Jack's hair represents important memories. I've called these mementos souvenirs using the French meaning of the word rather than the English.
Not Like the Stories
By Honorat Selonnet
As their shadows began to lengthen and the white-hot glare of the sun shifted to gold, Jack developed an obsession with building a bonfire. He conscripted Elizabeth to hunt for driftwood along the shore—she was suspicious he had conch shells in mind when he divided up the labour—while he rifled the cache for old barrels and bits of planking.
"Does it get cold at night?" Elizabeth asked. She was eager for some relief from the heat.
Jack glanced around as though for some hidden enemy. "Not the cold, love," he said conspiratorially. "The dark."
Elizabeth was puzzled.
Patiently, Jack explained. "Been here before. Too bloody dark the first night you're marooned. Can see the future in the dark."
She stared at him curiously, wondering what he meant.
By the time the sun had swollen to a huge red disk resting on the curve of the horizon, edging the purple wisps of clouds with crimson and gold, they had amassed a significant pile of burnable objects. Jack then selected enough of them to make what Elizabeth thought would be an exorbitantly oversized fire.
Her question of how Jack planned to light that fire was answered swiftly when he removed the flint from his pistol and set alight the dried palm fronds he was using for tinder with several sparks struck on the blade of his sword. Elizabeth felt a little foolish that she hadn't thought of that. The pirate grinned at her as the flames licked up the dry wood. Settling down by the fire, he carefully set about reassembling the flintlock.
This seemed to Elizabeth like a good time to escape the pirate and take care of matters of a highly personal nature for which she needed to get far out of sight—not an easy accomplishment on their tiny island. But the over-consumption or rum was making it an urgent necessity. "I'm going for a walk," she informed Jack. "By myself," she added, before he could offer to join her. "You stay right here, and don't you dare follow me."
Jack raised an enlightened eyebrow. "Of course, love. Enjoy your—walk." As she set out for a distant and private location, she heard his voice drift after her. "Don't get lost."
Elizabeth snorted in a highly un-ladylike manner.
Returning to their camp, she paused in the gathering twilight and watched Captain Sparrow curiously. The last long rays of sunset gilded a path across the restless sea, brushing his dark face with light and incongruously haloing his disheveled head. The pirate sat by the fire, elbows on knees, one hand clutching his third bottle of rum, the other absently toying with a strand of beads glinting in his hair. Or perhaps it wasn't so absently. His actions almost seemed deliberate, agile fingers caressing a single trinket with the intensity of a priest saying his rosary, then moving on to the next one. Occasionally he would raise his bottle in a toast then take a swallow of rum.
She picked her way cautiously down to the beach, wondering why he put all those odd things in his hair. Somehow they seemed more than just a terrible sense of fashion. Jack did not look up as she joined him sitting in the sand.
Dangerously pot-valiant, Elizabeth lifted her bottle along with Jack and took a small sip. "What are they for?" she asked, reaching out to touch the elaborate silver ornament resting on his shoulder.
He seemed to come back from a distance. Turning to her, he raised an eyebrow. "Getting a mite personal aren't we, love?"
Elizabeth considered this carefully. "I think I've had too much rum."
His grin flashed gold in the dying light. "Have you now?"
She felt the brush of fingertips on her hair. Uneasily, she moved away. "I think you've had too much rum."
His kohl-smudged eyes were darker than a midnight sea, watching her. "'T ain't possible, love." But he withdrew his hand.
Relieved, Elizabeth returned to the object of her quest. "But why do you tie things in your hair?"
Sparrow remained silent for a moment, gazing out to sea. Finally he spoke. "Memories, love. The French call them souvenirs."
Elizabeth was fascinated in spite of herself. This dirty, drunken, intriguing pirate had stories in his hair! "Tell me," she begged, like a small child.
Frowning, he warned, "You don't want to be hearing these stories, missy."
"But I do," she insisted recklessly.
"They're not like the stories in the books."
No. The objects woven into his hair were relics of truth.
Elizabeth remembered the terrible scars. "I didn't imagine they would be."
He did not answer her at first. When he spoke, his voice was husky, velvet over steel.
"What profit is there for me in telling you anything, Miss Swann?"
Having received a fair impression of the coin by which the Captain would like to be paid, Elizabeth resigned herself to continuing mystery. She had nothing else to offer him and she was not offering him that. Then she remembered. He had already asked her something she had refused.
"The song," she said.
"Hmm?" He raised a curious eyebrow at her.
"The song about pirates. If you tell me the stories, I'll teach you the song."
Jack Sparrow laughed. "My compliments, Miss Swann. I never would have thought of that." He eyed her speculatively. "Fair enough. The stories for the song. We have an accord."
He held out his hand. It took Elizabeth a moment to realize what he wanted, then, gingerly, she held out her hand and shook his.
"Well, now, lass," Jack looked at her oddly. "Which stories would you be wanting to hear first?"
Elizabeth scrutinized the pirate's ratted and knotted hair. "Those ones," she pointed at his forehead where a string of beads dangled.
His eyes sparkled wickedly. The bonnie lass would be fun to shock. "These?" he laughed. "These are mementos from the lovely ladies, and some not so lovely, I've . . ."
"Stop!" Elizabeth interrupted frantically. "I don't want to hear about it, them, whatever!" There were far too many beads on that strand. Had he really . . .? No! She did not want to know. Did she?
Jack was silent for a moment. "They weren't prostitutes, darling. Not business transactions." He smirked at her. "Wouldn't have had enough hair." Growing pensive again, he stroked the glittering strand. "These ones meant something—if only for a night."
Elizabeth shuddered. She did not want to listen to this man's sexual escapades, whatever they had meant to him. The stories had been off-colour enough that she'd hid them from her father. It would be indecent to hear the truth about what should be private.
Besides, Jack's thoughts tended to tack off in that direction far too easily anyway. Particularly, she did not want him reminded that he'd like to add a bead to that strand for her. Or even worse, she supposed, not add one.
The mischief returned to Jack's eyes. "This one," he indicated a round metal bead, "is the shot they had to dig out of my . . . well, never mind that. Jealous husband," he explained, unabashed.
"Mr. Sparrow!" Elizabeth protested.
"'S Captain, love. Or just Jack," he reminded her. "I warned you, Miss Swann. I said you didn't want to hear these stories."
Elizabeth wondered if she should just leave well enough alone. But her curiosity overruled her prudence again. After all, the most objectionable were over, weren't they?
"What are these for?" she pointed to the colourful strand near his right temple.
Well, that was probably a better choice for a maiden's ears, Jack reflected. "Ships I've captained," he answered. The girl waited for him to continue.
He couldn't see these beads, but he knew the shape of them under his touch as well as he remembered the feel of the helms of the vessels they memorialized. He had sailed as crew on many ships, but these few had given themselves to him. Had trusted him to lead them through sledge-hammering seas into safe harbours. Had gentled their fretting under his hands and had slipped through the dolphin-dancing waves in answer to the breath of his wish. Had fought with their last strength for him.
He spoke their names now, a familiar litany, as his hand drifted over the souvenirs.
"The Segreta, the first little brig I commandeered after I got off this island. She was badly captained, and most of her crew came over to me." Now that had taken some quick talking and even quicker thinking. And two goats and twenty-five chickens. Gibbs had been of the opinion that Jack was utterly mad even to attempt it. He smiled at the memory.
"She went down in a pitched battle with a French privateer Revanche who had an eye on the swag in our hold So of course the Revanche was my next ship." He continued, moving from the small gold bead to a larger red one. "She was a bit of a slug-a-bed, but she was armed to the teeth. I handed her over to my first mate when we took the brig, the Margaret Anne. I needed speed more than firepower."
Jack lingered a moment over the black and white memento of the Margaret Anne. "She was a bonny ship, but no match for the hurricane that sank her right in harbour." He had not been with her at the time, a fact that still rankled. No storm had ever bested Captain Jack Sparrow. His absence had doomed his ship.
He stopped when he came to a chunky white bead. Elizabeth noted the way Jack's mouth twisted, as though he were remembering something that left a bad taste.
"Go on," she encouraged.
The pirate scowled at her. "This is for the Jolly Mon, Anamaria's boat," he admitted. "I'm afraid I sank it."
"You sank Anamaria's boat?" Elizabeth choked.
"Well, not entirely," Jack hedged. "The crowsnest is still above water. Was. The last time I saw it. I left it at the dock in Port Royal. Probably owe a fortune in shillings by now. Anamaria was not amused." He shrugged apologetically.
"I can imagine." Remembering that fierce dark woman, Elizabeth wondered how Jack had dared.
Jack changed the subject. "And this last is for the Interceptor." He stopped abruptly, remembering the moment he had seen her die. Elizabeth would know that story as well as he.
There was one glaring omission.
"What about the Black Pearl?" Elizabeth asked.
Jack's expression darkened. "I had one for her once. Just another thing Barbossa took when he took my ship."
She had been his first ship. Jack had vowed she would also be his last. He did not need a physical object now to remember his dark lady by. He was himself, body and soul, her remembrance.
One look at his face convinced Elizabeth that the better part of valour would be to refrain from pressing Jack on that story.
"What about the loose ones," she asked. "You know, the ones just scattered about randomly." She waved at his disordered locks.
Jack shook himself away from the memory of Barbossa's laugh as he cut the single black pearl pendent from his bound captain's hair. "Ye won't be needin' this where ye're goin' now, Jack." Get out of my head, you bloody bastard! He uncurled his hands which had somehow formed fists.
Another question. What had it been? Oh yes. The solitary souvenirs.
"Absent friends," he answered, raising the rum bottle in a salute. Had he really had enough rum to tell Elizabeth any of these stories? "Which ones catch your fancy, love?"
Elizabeth scrutinized the pirate's collection of mementos. "That one," she decided, pointing to an age-blackened shilling at the end of one lock.
The lass was a marksman with more than just a rifle, Jack noted. He picked up the item in question, feeling the worn smooth surface. This was indeed a ghost from the past.
"This one," he began, then stopped while the memories swirled in his head. Memories of cold and hunger and desperation. Of shaking a stubby paw as grubby as his own and knowing he had found a friend. Of the first faint stirring of hope as they stood in the Deptford shipyards and saw the tall masts rising from the docks beyond. "Edward St. John," he spoke the name aloud for the first time in over twenty years.
"Who was he?" Elizabeth prodded.
"A friend." Such a simple word. Another he had seldom used in twenty years. "We ran away to sea together. Signed on to a merchantman bound for Singapore and Zanzibar. I was cabin boy and Edward, being a bit older, was an able-bodied seaman."
"What happened to him?" Elizabeth prompted when Jack didn't go on.
Jack reflected that he deserved to have to tell this story. "A merchant captain is pretty much lord of his own vessel. His only constraints are his own conscience and what little pressure a man with connections might bring to bear on him—which does not happen very often. Captain Shelton was a vicious fool. Abused all his men. Drove everyone like dogs. When Edward stabbed the second mate in self defense—and you really don't want to hear that story Miss Swann—Shelton ordered him a man's flogging."
Elizabeth shuddered both at the picture her imagination conjured and at the tone in Jack's voice.
"Now Edward was a bigger lad than me, but he was sickly-like. Probably, now I think on it, consumptive. He never quite recovered from those 36 lashes of the cat o'nine." The whole crew had been mustered on deck to witness. The sound of those cords ripping flesh off his friend's back, the screams, still deafened Jack when he remembered.
"I believe I was stupid enough to attack the captain over that, and I can attest to the efficacy of that particular brand of discipline. Avoided it like the plague ever since," he added. He had scars to remember this incident by as well as the worn souvenir. He could still hear Edward's racking coughs and then his cries as the motions tore at his back in the swaying hammock at night. It had been a mercy when the lad had slipped away from them a week later. Taking another sip of rum, Jack raised a salute: Fair winds and following seas, mate.
When the avenging fury, the Black Pearl had taken their ship the very day Edward's body had been dropped into the sea, Jack had shot his captain himself, an irony which did not escape him. Hadn't killed him, but not for lack of trying. The action had caught the pirates' attention, and he'd begged to join their crew. And his first step onto his dark lady had been like the clarion call of destiny.
He noticed the lass was looking a bit green around the gills. Well, she had asked for these stories. Did he have any that didn't reek of tragedy?
"How old were you when that happened?" Elizabeth asked softly.
"Near as I can remember, about fourteen," he answered.
"What happened to your family?"
"Now, love," Jack protested. "I've not had nearly enough rum to be telling you those stories." There wasn't enough rum, as far as he was concerned. Time to distract that pesky girl before she started asking questions he started answering.
"This one, now this one is a very good story." Jack hurried on as he tugged at another coin. "This is for Father Bradford. He and I had a little competition once to see who would die first—him of old age or me of a shot to the chest." He gestured towards where she knew the scars were hidden. "He won."
Elizabeth looked on expectantly as he let the pause drag out. "You can't just leave it like that!" she coaxed
Ah ha! He had her on a new tack now. He'd make this a long one.
"It all started when the British Navy frigate Relentless, part of a task force on the prowl for the rival French, thought she'd take herself a pirate ship. We were under each other's broadsides when I got picked off by a Navy sharpshooter in her rigging. As pretty a shot as you could ever hope to see." The pirate looked reminiscent. "Could've used a man like that on the Pearl. Too bad the Navy had its claws in him. Wouldn't sign the articles at all."
"You mean you captured a Navy ship?
"Of course, love. Wouldn't let a little thing like a slug of lead in my chest stop Captain Jack Sparrow, eh? Course it was Bootstrap, Will's father y'know, had to finish the battle. I wasn't much use to anybody after that. But we took out her mast and holed her hull but good. Bit of a waste actually. Barely had time to transfer the provisions and ammunition before she was going down. We sent the crew off in their little longboats, and Ol' Bootstrap set course for the nearest inhabited island in search of medical help. Their surgeon said he'd see us in hell before he helped a pirate.
"By the time he found Father Bradford at the little mission on the island, we were both pretty much convinced I'd received my notice to quit. The priest was half as old as Methusaleh, but he was a learned man, and between him and Bootstrap and a medical manual, they managed to dig that shot out and leave me with a fighting chance."
Looking up at her, eyes bright with remembered challenge, Jack grinned. "I always take fighting chances, love."
He continued with the story. "Now Bootstrap had to get back to the Pearl and lead the inevitable Navy search in the wrong direction, so he left me with the good Padre and high-tailed it up towards Hispaniola."
Jack was enthusiastically acting out his story with his hands. "By the time he shook the Navy off the Pearl's tail and made it back, I'd begun to recuperate, Father Bradford had shuffled off this mortal coil, and I was left with his job."
"What?" Elizabeth exclaimed. "You didn't . . ."
"I most certainly did," Jack smirked, steepling his hands in a saintly fashion. "Confessions, mass, a wedding, two funerals, a christening, and last rites. One of me better gigs." His eyes glinted. "Wedding gifts, heirlooms, access to all the houses in town—even the governor's--and did I mention the poor box?"
"Jack," Elizabeth was scandalized. "You robbed all those people disguised as a priest?"
"Yep!" the pirate looked pleased with himself. "Well," he admitted, as though confessing a failure, "maybe not the poor box. And I guess the governor losing his job was mostly my fault—he was a worse pirate than me. So I wasn't an unmitigated scoundrel."
"No," Elizabeth shook her head exasperatedly, "just a thorough-going one."
"Of course, love."
Mission accomplished. Elizabeth had lost that dangerously sympathetic look and was back on her original story quest.
"What about those," she indicated the longest strand of beads ending in the elaborate silver ornament.
He ought to have known she'd sail right off the shoals and onto the rocks. He needed Gibbs around to remind him that reaching an accord with a woman was bad luck. That had better be one amazing song.
Ah! These ones."
Elizabeth watched as Jack Sparrow's face sobered.
"These are the heavy ones, lass. You'll not be liking these." He wondered why he was even considering letting the girl talk him into this, song or no song.
She waited for him to continue. He looked enquiringly at her. "Still game?"
Elizabeth nodded.
"'S your call, love." But he remained silent for a long time staring at the fire. Finally, he sighed. Waving a graceful hand at the dully gleaming strand, he explained, "These are for the dead."
Elizabeth frowned at him uneasily. "What do you mean?"
"This one," one finger brushed an age darkened wooden bead, "is for the first man I ever killed." His eyes looked back into the past, seeming no longer to see her. "It was the first boarding action my captain had sent me on. He was a young merchant sailor. More courage than skill. He got between me and my way out."
Jack was silent for a while. Elizabeth watched him, a twisted feeling in her stomach.
"That one was unnecessary. I could have disarmed him, but I was a young pirate. More skill than sense. I'd been given some bad advice."
Deliberately, Jack recalled the man's freckled face, the way his sandy hair had curled, wet with sweat on his forehead, the surprising force it had taken to drive a cutlass into a living body, the way the light had slowly faded out of blue eyes that did not leave his own dark ones, forever linking them on this threshold between life and death. So easy to take life; so impossible to give it back. The remainder of his scramble back to his ship was an indistinct blur until he found himself, arms slicked with the sailor's blood, leaning over the rail, vomiting. He raised the bottle now and drank to the memory. Sorry, mate.
"These," he ran his index finger and thumb along three shells. "My own crew, love. On my last visit to this godforsaken island, I . . . did not come peaceably . . . as it were. By the time they took me down, three of them had missed their chance to try out immortality."
In the blindness of rage and night, he had not known whom he fought. His only goal had been Barbossa's smirking face. He'd wiped that smile off, too. That filthy bastard still wore that scar below his eye. But Laroche, Carlos and Adam had been in his path. Burly, powerful Laroche. Short-tempered and even shorter-thinking. Ex-French Navy. Nigh impossible to reign in. A fey, violent streak. A hard drinker and a harder fighter. A member of his crew for more than six years. Dark, shy Carlos. A maniac with the sword and a good pirate. A good man at your back in a fight but a bad one in a mutiny. Nineteen year old Adam. Picked the wrong role model, even if it had been the winning side. Only the previous season, Jack had taken his turn sitting up all night with the lad, refusing to let him die of a gut shot. And in the end his blade had taken that life. Jack didn't remember killing any of them. He'd only seen them dumped unceremoniously over the edge of the Pearl. Barbossa had not paid any note to them; their former captain would never forget them.
His hand drifted down. "This one," he cupped the silver ornament with its dangling links, "this one is for the first woman I ever killed, Elizabeth."
He did not see her shrink away from him.
"The sack of Baracoa it was. Silversmith's shop. The mistress of the house pulled a pistol on me. In the ensuing struggle, she fell and broke her neck." Jack's voice was monotone.
Elizabeth felt sick. She buried her face in her arms, not looking at the pirate. Captain Sparrow didn't seem to remember she was there.
He called up the memory of the Cuban woman as a man might draw a knife through his own flesh. A stout plain woman, black hair escaping its tight knot in loose tendrils, her head at an unnatural angle. The child that had appeared in the inner doorway, screaming for its mother. He had fled the shop. Among the things he had taken had been this ornament. In high winds or hard fighting, it beat against his face like vengeance. That night he had known he had to become captain—to have the freedom of the sea and the right to choose his own battles. When he had sacked Nassau Port without firing a single shot, it had been in this woman's unknown name.
Jack's hand moved to a rectangular silver bead. "This one," he began. But looking up, he noticed that Elizabeth had clapped her hands over her ears. Apparently the lass had heard enough stories. One corner of his mouth quirked wryly. She'd been right. Maybe he had had too much rum. Otherwise surely he'd never have unearthed those particular stories to tell such an audience. The dratted girl seemed to draw the truth out of him like poison, in spite of his worst intentions.
Elizabeth huddled on the sand, her arms wrapped around her legs, shivering in spite of the heat of the fire. The growing darkness beyond the firelight seemed suddenly more menacing, while she was trapped in a circle of light with a man who had killed people. Who kept tokens of his murders in his hair. She had let that deceptive playful side of him fool her into almost trusting him. He was watching her now, those dark dangerous eyes knowing too much, seeing too much. He was smiling. Somehow that horrified her the most. As though he enjoyed shocking her, making her afraid.
"Why?" she hissed.
"Why what, love?" he asked.
"Don't call me love," she snapped. "Why do you keep trophies of the people you kill?"
"Not trophies, love," he explained patiently. "Souvenirs—you would say for remembrance. You ask why?" Jack paused looking out into the encroaching night as though he were seeing something she could not. "To the living, I don't owe anything. But to the dead I owe the truth." He turned back to her, still touching the souvenirs where too many stories remained unspoken. "Only an animal kills and does not remember, Elizabeth. I wear these," he lifted the strand of beads, "because I choose not to be an animal."
He glanced at her pale face not unkindly, "You need some more rum, love."
This time Elizabeth took the bottle he handed her eagerly and gulped rum with something approaching his own enthusiasm. But she still refused to look at him.
He frowned at her, "I'm a pirate, Elizabeth. It's not a pretty occupation at times. What did you imagine it was like? Swash, swash. Buckle, buckle. All the swords with dulled edges so no one gets hurt?"
"You kill people for profit," Elizabeth accused.
"Actually," Jack corrected her, smoothing his moustache thoughtfully, "I try not to kill people for profit because that makes it less likely they'll be trying to kill me."
"But you kill them anyway."
"I have killed men, and yes, even women, before now, Elizabeth." He enumerated the reasons on his fingers. "I've killed people who were trying to kill me, people who were trying to kill or harm others I chose to protect, people whom your bloody friend Norrington would have been happy to hang had he got his hands on them. I've also given orders in battle that led to the deaths of men. And I've killed a few people unintentionally. I'm not proud of all those deaths, although some of them I would do again, given the chance. Now explain to me how this makes me different from any other naval captain such as, say, Norrington?" Jack waved in the direction of Port Royal. "Now, if that man wore souvenirs, he'd need a wig like your father's."
"Commodore Norrington does not kill people for his own profit," Elizabeth insisted.
"Oh!" said Jack, acting enlightened. "So as long as dear King George profits, it does not matter how many Spanish and French sailors see Davy Jones' locker, eh?"
"That's only when we're at war," Elizabeth insisted, feeling that the argument was rapidly getting away from her.
"So when I fire across the bows of a Spanish merchantman and board when she heaves to or accept her surrender after a brief skirmish, plunder her holds, and leave her to her crew and passengers with enough supplies to make the nearest port, I am being an irredeemable pirate who should hang as high as Haman on the Fort Charles' gallows, but if I had instead accepted letters of marque from Ol' Georgie, and had blown them to smithereens, taken captives, plundered their ship and scuttled her, and paid me dues to the crown, all would be forgiven? I'm afraid the moral subtleties escape me, Miss Swann."
"But you capture British ships, too."
"So?" Jack asked, widening his eyes. "What's that got to do with anything? My home is the sea, love. The same water flows everywhere, around the whole world." His gesture covered the entire horizon. "What have I to do with the squabbles of those land-based pirates called nations? Their ships are only out here now because they are engaged in plundering the lands they've stolen from their original inhabitants." He tipped his head and looked thoughtful, then marked his idea with an index finger. "Except for the ones that are actually plundering the original inhabitants themselves. The slave ships, that is."
Elizabeth remained silent.
Jack shrugged. "Disapprove of what I do as much as you want, Miss Swann. But be consistent, please. At least I know what I steal and from whom I take it, and I risk my own life to do it."
For a long time, neither of them said anything more. Jack removed the pistol from his sash, weighing it in his palms, turning it so the silver scrollwork glittered with the flames. He noticed Elizabeth's eyes fixed on his movements.
"For all I'm such a bloody murderer, Miss Swann," he remarked. "I haven't fired this," he held up the pistol for her inspection, "in ten years."
The shot, Will had told her, Jack Sparrow was saving for Barbossa.
Elizabeth thought about what Jack had said, thought about causing the death of another human being. She herself had plunged a knife into Barbossa's chest. Had he not been immortal, she knew she would have killed him. Of course, had he been mortal, he might have taken more care not to let her do such a thing. But she knew she would have killed him if she could have—and felt no remorse at the deed.
Glancing over at the pirate, she saw that he was staring soberly into the fire. He still made her uncomfortable. His stories were still shocking, horrifying. She did not agree with his priorities. He was a pirate, a predator. When he was backed into a corner and the cunning he was famous for and the clowning she had been surprised to discover failed, he would kill without hesitation or compunction.
No. She noted the hand that still brushed the string of souvenirs, the thoughts still flickering behind his eyes. Not without compunction. Only an animal kills and does not remember.
She might question his choice to live by piracy, but she had to acknowledge that he had behaved honourably towards her. That he had saved her life without knowing who she was or expecting any reward, even at considerable risk to himself. In fact, she realized, Jack would have died for that good deed as surely as Will was about to, with far less motivation.
In a small voice she said his name, "Jack?"
He didn't move or answer her.
She reached out and laid a tentative hand on his arm, the first time she had willingly touched him in all the time they had been together.
"I'm sorry, Jack," she admitted.
Now he did turn to look at her eyes curious and mocking, and she pulled her hand away self-consciously.
"I had no right to judge you." Her eyes dropped to her hands, now clasped tightly in her lap.
"'S okay, love," Jack responded raising his eyebrows. The girl had succeeded in surprising him. Her response to his stories hadn't bothered him—pretty much predictable in fact. But her apology was unexpected. He was much more accustomed to being condemned.
TBC
Thank you to all who have reviewed these chapters.
To CaptainTish--Marooned is now complete except for beta work, so you can expect regular updates. Thank you for your enthusiastic reviews. As for the pronounciation of gaol--it is simply a variant spelling of jail and is pronounced exactly the same way. In British official use the form with G is still current; in literary and journalistic use both the G and the J forms are now admitted as correct; in the U.S. the J form is standard.