Ah, a Barbossa POV. Don't see those too often. I hope I did the guy justice – he was a great villain.
Enjoy, me 'earties.
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Now, the serpent was more subtil than any beast of the field which the Lord God had made. And he said unto the woman, "Yea, hath God said, 'Ye shall not eat of every tree of the garden?'" And the woman said unto the serpent, "We may eat of the fruit of the trees of the garden: but of the fruit of the tree which is in the midst of the garden, God hath said, 'Ye shall not eat of it, neither shall ye touch it, lest ye die.'"
And the serpent said to the woman, 'Ye shall not surely die: for God doth know that in the day ye eat thereof, then your eyes shall be opened, and ye shall be as gods, knowing good and evil.'" And when the woman saw that the tree was good for food, and that it was pleasant to the eyes, and a tree to be desired to make one wise, she took of the fruit thereof, and did eat, and gave also unto her husband with her; and he did eat.
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Lust. In the end, everything comes back to lust. The priests tell us that mankind was condemned for lust of fruit. That Adam and Eve were damned for it. I find that it's the other way around for me – I lust for fruit because I'm damned. The priests also say that the fruit that damned Adam and Eve was an apple . . . I'm inclined to agree.
It's been ten long years since I've been able to taste a thing. Unable to taste, or feel, or even grow weary I'm left with nothing but my thoughts. I don't like my thoughts – they too often lay the blame of my condition at my own feet rather than at the feet of the whelp who foolish enough to fall for the argument of equal shares.
Lust for a ship. The Black Pearl was a decent enough ship back when her sails were whole, her hull undamaged by time and the constant wear of the sea. And captained by a man with more charisma and idealism than intelligence. He readily enough gave up the bearings for the Isle de Muerta, and even more easily was discarded. I don't know how he escaped that island. Perhaps his head isn't as empty as I always believed. But for a time I was the snake, tempting the lad to do as I wished. It had taken awhile for him to give in, but one night, drunk on success and women and rum, he had and I had taken my chance. The next morning he'd found himself on an island, alone and shipless, with nothing but a round robin to indicate what had happened to him. It was good to be the serpent.
But then I'd fallen for lure of another snake. Sure, the curse was spoken of even then, but no one knew for sure what it did. Most whispered of immortality, the fruit that Adam and Eve hadn't eaten of. Well, their loss.
But immortality isn't all that one would imagine, especially when the negatives outweigh the positives. It was an apple I'd been eating the first moment I realized I could no longer taste anything, that the juice flying through the air made no impact on my tongue. I'd cursed Jack Sparrow then. True, we'd left him to die – but at least he could die. I wanted that option again.
So I led an increasingly surly crew on a ten-year jaunt around the Spanish Main, collecting the coins we'd so carelessly thrown aside. Each time we returned to the cave to replace what we'd taken and store what we'd stolen, I swore I heard hissing laughter echoing through the dark.
It wasn't long before we'd restored 881 of the coins to their proper place, but there was the matter of Bootstrap, and the coin he'd claimed. Of course, superstitious fool that he was, he'd had someone else take the coin from the chest for him. Oh, he was well and truly dead, we'd get no blood from him. But he'd always been rambling on about a child, boy or girl none of us could remember.
Eight years we'd waited for the coin to call to us. Eight long, sensationless years. And then the coin had found its way to water and we'd answered. We had the lass in our hands, hope within reach, all shattered when the girl's blood hadn't worked. I have no doubt that if I couldn't be killed, my crew would have keel-hauled me there and then. But I was undead, the same as the lot of them, so they'd turned back to searching, and had found not the girl, but Jack Sparrow. It was then that I'd known just how cursed I was.
The man was currently babbling on about something as I bided my time, rifling through the bowl of apples I kept on my table as a reminder of my ultimate goal. He chooses an apple and takes a seat, for all the world as if he is captain again. "Although, I suppose I should be thanking you. If you hadn't marooned me and left me to die, I'd have an equal share in that curse, same as you." He takes a bite. "Funny 'ole world, innit?" He offers me the apple and I sneer.
A whole bushel of apples I'd said. I can still taste the bitter ashes.
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So, what say you all? Did I do a good job with our favorite villainous pirate?