Chapter: Floodgates

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Desire came upon that one in the beginning; that was the first seed of mind.

-- "Creation Hymn" from the Rig Veda

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London

"Get up," said the man who was holding a gun to Jack's temple.

Jack glanced at him, a sideways flicker of the eyes that betrayed his interest. It was only after a sharp kick to the ribs that he struggled to his feet, knees shaking with weakness.

The guard led him down the slimy corridor of the prison to another cell and shoved him inside. Jack landed hard on his shoulder with a grunt, before rolling onto his back to grin at the silhouetted man.

"What, not goin' t' kill me yet? Jus' get on with it, will you?" he joked, a valiant effort that seemed more like a desperate plea than a jest. His voice was a raspy whisper. The guard only shut the door behind him with an echoing clang, leaving Jack alone to hallucinate.

In times like these, when he was alone with only the steady drip of stagnant water to track the time, Sophia came to him in fevered dreams. She would touch his forehead with the cool palm of her hand as she had so many times before when he was ill with infection so many years ago, her face a blurry paleness that swam across his eyes. He hated when she appeared because if he tried to touch her she would only disappear.

-

Port Royal

Will returned to his house, his mood low. Exhausted, he sank into an armchair, only to be roused once again as a knock sounded at the door. It was Sophia, her face pale and her eyes bright with fervor. "We have to go to London. We have to save him. I can't bear to be here while he might be dying," she said, the sound that rose from her throat croaky from tears that remained unshed.

Will wanted to say that there was a very little chance that Jack was still alive, that they would get there in time. But, as he watched Sophia tremble with fear, he had not the will to finally break her. "Alright. We'll go," he whispered, taking her hand and drawing her towards a chair, for he could see, even through the thick folds of her skirt, that her legs were quivering.

The minute she sat the floodgates broke down. Tears flowed as she imaged Jack's pain, his desperation as he was finally contained. His precious freedom was gone.

Will watched her mutely, watched the horror that passed over her face. "You loved him, didn't you? Sophia?"

This only brought her to further tears. Cradling her face in her hands, she nodded. Will sighed, for he assumed that her love had not been returned. Jack was not the sort of person to fall in love.

-

"Where are you going?" Elizabeth asked, concerned, as Sophia packed clothes and toiletries carefully into her trunk. "Does it have something to do with Captain Sparrow?" Sophia only nodded, sorting through the various luxuriously patterned dresses to find a solitary pair of breeches and a plain white shirt.

"Well, don't expect me to sit here and wait like a simpering housewife," Elizabeth snapped smartly, frowning. "How on earth are you going to get him out of prison? Break through the wall?"

Sophia reached her entire arm into the armoire, fingers scrabbling at the back for a dress that she had only worn once before in her life. With a grunt, she pulled it out. Elizabeth gasped.

The dress was exquisite. It was a dark, forest green with an ornate black lining and embroidering. The neck was cut extremely low and would bear most of the wearer's shoulders, the skirt was full, and it was tailored to have a waist that would require a tremendously tight corset. "Where did you get that?" Elizabeth wondered, aghast that her simple cousin would own such a beautiful garment. "I've never seen you wear it."

"I wore it for my wedding reception. It had dastardly consequences," Sophia admitted, her voice strangely expressionless. "I was dead on my feet from dancing with so many men afterwards."

Elizabeth grinned. "Why would you need to take it?"

Sophia cast Elizabeth a sly smirk over her shoulder, although her eyes were troubled with thoughts of her imprisoned lover; she would not be content until they found him. "We are assuming that the guard is of the male gender. This may help if I need to convince him to allow me to visit a certain someone."

-

They were sailing out of the port three days later, the bow of their newly leased ship, The Enchantments, cutting through the ocean as smoothly as any Sophia had yet seen. She hadn't asked Will where or from whom he acquired the vessel; she only provided the money. She had been fortunate when it came to finances in the past years. To add to the large sum that James had left her in his will she had managed what little money she had smartly and multiplied it ten-fold.

Sophia had missed being on a ship more than she realized. To feel the salt-wind, the ship moving beneath her again, was bliss. She could close her eyes and actually breathe freely for the first time in years. She could imagine that she was back on The Black Pearl with Jack.

Her cabin was small, but then again everything was small on a ship. She had forgotten how comfortingly cramped everything was at sea. She would lie on the bed and feel the ocean rocking beneath her and smile, but then thoughts of Jack would plague her again and ruin her happiness. How could she be content while he was in so much pain? She hated herself for it.

The picture of him that she held in her mind had not diminished in its clarity, despite the time that had passed. She remembered him. She remembered everything.

-

Sophia was more than slightly amused at the shocked expressions of the hired crew when she emerged from her cabin the next day in her sailing clothes. Sophia only eyed them disapprovingly. After all, if they've never seen a woman in men's clothes they were certainly not going to be able to handle Jack's outlandish manner if they found him.

When they found him.

Once she swung up into the riggings as if she had been raised on a ship, though, they quickly remembered that they too had work to do and ignored her. It took Will, on the other had, far more time to become accustomed to the "new" Sophia.

"Mother of God, Sophia! What are you doing up there?" He shouted, a hint of panic laced into his words.

Sophia grinned down at him as she sat daintily on a twisted rope twenty feet above his head. "Fixing the riggings. They're in rather terrible shape, I'm afraid."

Will only shook his head and sighed. "Please don't tell me that Jack made you work as an actual sailor."

Sophia quickly scampered up to the crow's nest and leaned over the edge, finding the horrified look on Will's face quite hilarious. "Of course he didn't make me! What is one supposed to do on a ship for a year? I couldn't very well sit around and do nothing, could I?"

-

Thankfully, the remainder of the trip passed without incident. Sophia and Will further perfected their plan to free Jack. However, the dawning fact that Jack may not be alive spread a darkness over Sophia that rendered her unaware of all else. Being on a ship no longer gave her happiness. It had been a month at sea; each day caused Jack more pain and brought him closer to death, she was sure.

But now, as the entrance to the Thames River loomed heavily on the shores of Britain, Sophia's stomach tightened with nerves. It was for Jack, she reminded herself. Nothing else mattered.

Will stood beside her, watching as The Enchantments traveled from salt water to fresh, from open sea to the land of Sophia's birth. Sophia had come to Port Royal when she was merely five and did not remember the busy streets of London, save for cloudy memory of dirt and smoke and the lazy traverse of the Thames as it collected sewage and waste from the city.

They docked easily considering the sheer number of other ships, both privately owned and otherwise. Sophia could not help being amazed at the amount of people; she had spent a long time at Port Royal, a town miniscule in comparison to the breathing mass that was London.

Before they departed from the ship, Sophia needed to change from her sailing clothes. She would have been perfectly comfortable stalking about London in breeches and a plain white shirt, but how she looked was a necessary part of their plan to free Jack.

She enlisted the assistance of Elizabeth in order to don her elaborate dress. The young girl seemed to enjoy torturing her cousin with the painful but necessary tightening of the corset a little to thoroughly, however, for Sophia's liking.

Elizabeth grinned as she pulled the laces of the corset with a sharp jerk. "Hold onto the bedpost and breathe in," she instructed, twisting her fingers around the laces and preparing to dig her heels in and heave again.

"But I can't breathe at all as it is!" Nonetheless, Sophia did as she was told and let out a groan as her ribs came even closer to collapse. Eventually they succeeded and the dazzling green dress slipped over Sophia's body with ease. Elizabeth shoved a pair of black, heeled shoes onto her feet and, after her hair was trussed and twisted into a complex bunch of shiny dark curls, the look was completed.

Elizabeth let out a sigh. "You look perfect, Sophia. Gorgeous," she stated proudly.

"I should certainly hope so, after all of that trouble. Please do remind me to never dress up like this again," Sophia snapped, hiking her skirts up to her knees and stalking out of the door. She had to stop after ten feet to catch her breath. After that she walked more slowly.

-

After nearly shocking Will off of his feet, for he had never before seen Sophia dressed as she was, they were on their way, sans Elizabeth. Sophia had firmly refused her requests to accompany them.

The streets of London were as busy as any Sophia had seen. It seemed thousands of people stalked by them within the minute, each worrying about some inconsequential problem in his or her life. And it was freezing. Sophia literally could not feel her fingers, despite the gloves that circled them.

"Let's hurry up and leave this place as soon as possible, Will. It's dreadful," she hissed through chattering teeth, her breath hanging like an icy veil over her face as she watched several bare-footed children scamper across their path, feet black with cold, no doubt looking for enough food to last them the day. Will nodded his affirmation.

Will had discovered through lengthy questioning in Port Royal that Jack was being held in a prison on Silver Street, and the walk there seemed like an entire epoch to Sophia. Despite the short distance from the Thames, each step felt as if it was being laden down by lead on the sole of each boot, and her legs were aching by the time they arrived. In later thoughts she would reason that it was merely the cold, but at the time the nervousness that shot through her blood was the cause, she knew.

-

"Excuse us, sir. Is there a Jack Sparrow imprisoned here?" Will asked the guard, a large chap with a bushy head of blond hair, his voice sure and businesslike. Sophia stood behind him, quietly dabbing tears that spilled easily over here eyelashes. She only had to think of the death of her lover to induce them, and fortunately that could assist them in their plan.

"Aye," the guard clipped. "No visitors."

He's alive. They haven't hung him. Oh thank God.

Sophia's legs nearly failed her and she had to grab hold of Will's shirt to keep herself from falling. The tears that flowed from her eyes now were not artificial, and relief that flooded through her was instantaneous. "He's not dead?"

The guard shook his head. "Not yet."

"We are family. Will you still not allow us to see him?" Will pressed on. Sophia could hear relief, the same emotion that sent her reeling, in his voice.

"'Fraid not, sir," the guard said. This was Sophia's cue. It took her a moment to remember what she was supposed to be doing. Jack was alive.

With a whimper of sadness, she rushed to the guard's side, clutching herself against his arm. "Oh please, sir, he's my brother! He's not a bad man; he's simply been led astray. I assure you that we will not be more than a moment. We only want to make sure that he is well enough and learn of his future."

Sophia saw the guard's eyes flicker downward to glance at the crease of her bosom that she had innocently positioned in clear view. In order to appeal to his guilt, she briefly considered rambling on as the "proper" ladies seemed to do these days: how dare you, sir! Why, I never! My dear, I shall swoon!and soforth.It took her less than a second to think better of it.

She could see now that her simpering advances were breaking through the hard exterior of this nameless guard. "Well. . . I suppose. . ." he ventured.

Sophia beamed. "Oh, thank you so much, good sir! You shan't go without reward! The lord remembers deeds such as this," she prattled, doing her best to resemble the picture of virtue.

The guard unlocked the door that led into the cells and gave it a firm shove. They were in, they were close. Sophia felt a tingle over her body as the excitement mounted and her senses became acute with the thrill of their task.

The heavy oaken contraption creaked open and Sophia and Will hurried into the gloom. To their surprise, the guard followed them. "Surely," Will began, "we don't require your aid? The prisoners are locked away, correct?"

"You're not even supposed to be in 'ere," he replied, in a tone that suggested that they not push their luck. Sophia noticed how his eyes lingered on her exposed shoulders and pinched waist as she turned and decided that his distraction would be anything but hindering, seeing as they would have to find a new way to free Jack. Simply using Will's knowledge of cell latches would not help them anymore. How were they going to do it? Sophia, her breath halting in fear, glanced at Will and saw his eyes roving around their surroundings, searching for something, anything, that could help them free Jack. What was there in this barren place, this purgatory of sin that reeked of human waste and torture? Sophia saw nothing.

They continued down the narrow corridor and Sophia tried to ignore the groaning prisoners jailed on either side of her. The cells were small and the iron bars cast eerie stripes of shadow across the stone. Sophia felt a lead ball sinking into the pit of her stomach as they walked, their footsteps echoing like solitary gunshots at a frozen lake.

"'Ere y'are. Jack Sparrow, the great Captain of the dreaded Black Pearl," the guard announced mockingly; to him, Jack held no real significance in history. He was just another imprisoned man who could have been a great outlaw but was not gifted enough to escape the authorities. He was nothing.

Her heart beating against her corseted ribs, Sophia peered through the dim. She saw naught but a pile of clothes and a bony, misshapen hand that protruded from them. As if from outside her body, Sophia recognized the artistic beauty that hand must have once held before it was broken and abused, recognized it as Jack's despite the absence of the rings that she had never before seen him without. They must have taken everything that was dear to him.

Sophia grasped hold of the iron bars with both hands and pressed her face against them, feeling the coldness against her forehead, and closed her eyes to inhale deeply three times, willing her heart to slow and let her think. She could not rid the vision of that bony, wasted hand from her memory.

Will was just about to touch her shoulder, to assure himself that she had not lost all consciousness against those restricting bars, when she spoke.

"That's him. That's Jack."

Her eyes were so blank and her voice so troubled that both men looked at her as if she was insane. It was not unlikely, Will thought, that her reason could finally have splintered and the raw pain that he knew she was experiencing would be expressed in the form of madness. But no, she simply stood there, and Will could almost see her mind working, using this time to her advantage.

Sophia began to murmur seven words, over and over. "What has he done to deserve this?"

-

We laugh about it on the occasions she is allowed to visit: how life provides the most bizarre of endings to one's story.

-- The Birth of Venus, Sarah Dunant

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Author's Note: Wow. That did take a long while, didn't it? I apologize for that, but I did get it done just in time (barely) for Christmas. Nevertheless, two months is shameful. I hope that never happens again. I guess the combination of school, soccer, etc. etc. etc. just finally caught up with me. There's not really any excuse.

Anyway, I'm not satisfied with this chapter at all, but I needed to get something out there. I'll probably replace this with a better example of writing when I have the time. I didn't want to draw out Will and Sophia's journey too much because that is not truly the focus of this fic, but I think I rushed it. I hope that Sophia's new strength and daring that she's acquired in the five or so years since TFOE is apparent.

Talk to you all soon again, I hope. Now, I'm afraid, I am going to bed.