Liberty, Equality. Fraternity -by Cunien

Right - I am going to be in New Zealand for 2 and half months at the beginning of April, so I fear there may be only one more chapter to come until mid to end of June. I won't be able to write more as I will be backpacking and most likely won't have time.

I'm so sorry about this. I wanted to try and finish the fic before then but I am so busy right now with work and organising and band and various other commitments.

I hope that you won't forsake this fic, because I have a lot more to come - in which we find out more about Nathan and Megan, Bootstrap and Barbossa make appearances, and Jack becomes a true revolutionary. For once I have a pretty good idea of how this is going to turn out, and there are one or two significant developments that will impact on the characters and events of the film. Please, please, hang around!

So, like I said, I will do my best to knock out another chapter, and more if I have the time. If you want to check out my exploits in New Zealand, where I shall be hobbit hunting, check out my livejournal because I am planning to update there quite often with wild tales of my hilarious exploits in the land of the Kiwi. I'm hoping to post there and email whenever I can, I just won't have time to sit down and type on a computer, though I'll probably still be writing in notebooks and the like.

Anyway, on with the fic

Warning: Maybe some mild cockney swearing. Also some hallucinations and not very nice mental stuff, with most definite violence too - Jack thinks nothing of it, so don't trouble yourself over it. He's like a cartoon character - he just bounces right back!

Chapter 7 - Solitary confinement.

Now being on me onesy has never really bothered me, seeming as that's where I've been practically from the moment I left my dear old mum's womb. I find that there's no one you can depend upon more than yourself - you'll never be betrayed or let down on that account. Or mutinied for that matter. I say put all your eggs in one basket and go it alone.

So the thought of solitary confinement didn't really have me quaking in my boots.

But there's solitary confinement, and there's being alone in a room not even big enough to stand up in.
In the pitch dark.
With no living creature around but rats.

For over a week.

The room was really just a stone walled box. There was a bucket in the corner, which they emptied through a slat in the door, and pushed the odd scrap of bread and water, when they remembered.

After a while of sitting in the dark, I was overcome with the feeling that someone was in there with me, which was ridiculous really as there was hardly enough room for one man, let alone two.

But the feeling didn't go away, not even when I flailed out and felt nothing but the cold stone of the walls.

Then quiet as a mouse, I hear a noise. It sounded like crying. Just little sniffles and sobs.

Who's there? I shouted. My voice echoed painfully loud in the tiny space.

There was no answer, but through the gloom I began to see a face, a person, as though he'd been there all along and my eyes were only just becoming accustomed to the dark.

I asked, but I really, really didn't want to know the answer.

When I tried to touch him my fingers went right through flesh and bone. Well why shouldn't they? He was dead after all.

I know it wasn't my fault. It can't have been. Well, now I know that anyway.

I'd acted rashly and a man died, but I hadn't killed him. I'd tried to save him.

But try telling that to me in that bloody box of a room, when I could hear him crying. And try telling that to me in the months after, when I'd drunk enough rum to drown the sorrows of an entire nation, and his eyes stared back at me from every face I came across.

I tried to ignore him but it didn't work. I recited the names and purposes of all the sails on the Pearl out loud, and let me tell you, that's a lot of sails. But he was still there. I told him to go away but he wouldn't.

So I started counting the stones in the walls. Don't ask me why, but it was something to set my mind to at least, and it seemed to work, because after a while he went away.

But then, I was suddenly sure that I hadn't counted them properly. Somehow I thought I might have jumped from 55 to 60, without the in betweens, and before I knew it I couldn't settle down for thinking about it.

Well, I couldn't settle down at all really, due to the fact I'd been crammed into a very small, pitch dark room. Jack Sparrow can sleep almost anywhere, but there are some things even he can't endure. And I knew if I left it too long then Dawit would be back, and I didn't think I could stand that.

So I sat there, and I counted the stones again, just by touch alone, which is really something I can tell you. I may not look it, but I'm an educated fellow. I know my letters and my numbers - a man doesn't get to being a captain without that sort of knowledge. But there's a difference between counting over a hundred things with light, and counting them with no.

196. Walls, ceiling and floor. 196.

Or was it 195? Perhaps I'd counted one twice?

So I counted again.

May seem crazy to you, eh? Well you'd be right, because it seems so to me. It did even then. But I was overcome with the feeling that Dawit would be back, and he'd kill me, if I didn't get the exact number right.

I couldn't rest until I knew.

I'd got to 129 on my 6th or 7th go, when I heard something outside.

Now, bear in mind those walls were pretty thick, so I could only just make out the barest whisper of a voice.

It was singing. A beautiful voice, singing a song. For me.

At first I thought that maybe it was Dawit, or another ghost. Then I thought perhaps I was dreaming of my Mother. But then I remembered, old Mother Sparrow never sang to me. She wouldn't be caught dead singing to her child.

Besides, she had a God-awful singing voice.

This voice was so beautiful - soft and soothing and meant for me.

Then I thought it might be angels. But when have I ever done anything that merited a call from the host of Seraphim? Ghosts maybe, but angels, singing to me? No.

Dear thoughts are in my mind, and my soul it soars enchanted, as I hear the sweet lark sing in the clear air of the day, sang the voice, while I searched my mind for anyone who might wish to sing for me, of all people.

I will tell him all my love, all my soul's pure adoration, and I know he will hear my voice and he will not answer me nay.

I didn't care who it was. I didn't care why they were singing, or if they knew they were singing to me - a pirate, a brigand, and generally not a very good man.

I didn't care. The voice kept singing, and I found sleep, if for a little while.

When I woke the singing had stopped, which made me wish I had never heard it in the first place.

If not for that singing I believe I would have gone truly mad. Now, this may not sound like a thing to rejoice at, but believe me, if you were in that room, alone, starved and thirsty and sick as a dog, then you'd be begging for it.

Because there's a blessed release in losing your mind, after a while. After the blind fear, the not knowing where or who or when you are has passed, there's no more here and now. And that can be a wonderful thing, let me tell you.

Only God and Gabriel Jones knew exactly how long I was in that hell hole.

When they finally let me out I couldn't open my eyes for a day, the light was so blinding.

I was taken to the same building they put me in when first I reached Nassau. This time they mercifully didn't bother with the stocks, and I thanked the stars above for my good luck.

I slept like a bloody log that night, and all through the next day and night too. Not particularly nice conditions, even without the stocks, but by God it was heaven compared to the box of a room I'd had the pleasure of occupying for the past few days. Or week. Or however long it was.

It was a completely different world out there. In solitary confinement, in that tiny room, it seemed perfectly realistic that I'd be visited by ghosts and singing angels, and overcome with an obsession to count.

But out here, the air was fresh. I could feel a breeze brushing soothingly across my face. I could hear people at work in the day, and at night I could almost feel the stars above me, shining through the iron grid roof. I felt like part of the world again.

The morning after that, I was rudely awoken by the rather startling experience of having a bucket or water emptied over my head. I made a big fuss of course, but in truth it was a welcome chance to have a drink - I'd been sleeping face up with my mouth wide open, see.

The sun shone down far too bright for me. If I squinted a little I could make out shady blurs of the men who came to get me, but to be honest it was too tiring to keep up for long. Far better to keep my eyes shut and wince at the red light that shone through my eyelids. Even that was blinding.

I felt like I'd have permanent squint-lines about my eyes, if I ever got out of this in good enough a shape to care.

They took me, sopping wet, to see Gabriel. I took some comfort in the feel of the expensive carpets beneath my feet. Or beneath my knees, as the case may be, and due to the fact they were dragging me along rather roughly. But, on the up side of the coin, they hadn't beaten me up yet. My point is, dear listeners, that my good self, still dripping with water, was sullying Gabriel Jones' exquisite persian carpets, and at that moment nothing could have given me more pleasure.

Bar punching him in the face, of course. But that goes without saying, don't it?

I cracked an eye open when they dumped me to the ground. I could make out a rather blurry Gabriel between my eyelashes, and a woman sitting next to me. My heart leapt like fury in my chest when I realised it was my angel.

Gabriel ignored me for a few minutes and carried on eating his breakfast and making polite small talk to my angel. She didn't seem particularly interested. Whenever I ventured to open my eyes a crack I could see her watching me. I couldn't tell whether it was with pity, disgust or something else, but at that moment it didn't really matter. She was looking, that was the most important thing.

Getting their attention is the first and most important step. Impressions can be worked on, but only once you've got them looking.

Admittedly, being dumped soaking wet and clearly not in a fit state to stand up isn't the method I normally use to get a ladies attention, but in this case it'd do the job. And it was better than the last time we'd met, and I'd brought up the entire contents of my stomach all over myself.

But anyway, I hear this clink, right, and I know Gabriel's put down his empty tea cup. There's some shuffling around that's him settling back in his chair to survey me - I've done this enough times to know how it goes. I didn't need to open my eyes to know he was looking at me with a look of disgust, amusement and ever so slight disinterest.

says I, smiling at him because I know that's not what he expects.

he says coldly, Take a good look, Megan - you'll find no better example of the depths to which a human being can lower himself. Looks like you've been sleeping in your own filth for days, Jack. Like an animal.

I could hear the cold smile in his voice.

Don't look. Don't open your eyes, I tell myself. Don't look.

But I did.
I squinted though my lashes, as he turned and smiled at my angel. She blushed and bowed her head, and for a second I could have sworn she looked angry and a little ashamed.

I had to fight from going beet red with anger at that moment too. I hated that Gabriel could make her feel that way. I didn't want her to be ashamed.

I shifted around until my knees were beneath me, and I lifted one, slowly, until my foot was solid on the ground. I pushed out with my hands, and up goes another, and there I am, ever so slowly but surely creeping up.

My knee gave way, taking all that weight alone, and for a moment my hands flailed out blindly for something that I could grab to pull myself up. I felt the surface of a small table nearby that would've done the job, but my pride took over and I decided to go it alone.

Funny that, ain't it? Thinking about pride when you're kneeling on the carpet at a man's feet.

But after much huffing and puffing I was standing, and from this vantage point, wobbly as it was, I was able to look down - okay, squint down at Gabriel, sitting opposite me in his chair.

Of course, he wasn't one to let himself be beaten, so he silently stood up too. Now, I won't be called short, but compared to Gabriel I'm a slight thing. He's one of those men that's taller than should be allowed, with more muscles than there's call for. So now he was looking down at me again.

I considered trying to clamber up on to the table for a moment, but thought better. I wasn't too steady on my feet as it was - the dizzying heights of the table may well be the end of me.

But it didn't matter really. I'd pissed him off, which was good. My angel, Megan, was looking at me with wide eyes, her already fair skin drained of colour.

Well, it seemed I had made an impression after all.

Gabriel Jones motioned with his hand, and two ruffians appeared, seemingly from thin air, and took hold of my arms. I let them of course, but instead of flopping down and letting them take my weight, as my trembling legs were begging me, I kept standing.

Take him back to the slave village. You'll go back to work tomorrow. Don't let it be said that Gabriel Jones is an unmerciful man.

I laughed out loud at this. And suddenly I couldn't stop, and the giggles took over with a vengeance.

Try telling that to Dawit! I gasped through my laughter.

One of the men holding me cuffed me round the head, which shut me up.

Who the hell's Dawit? muttered Gabriel as they marched me out of the room, which made me smile. I know it may seem callous to you, but at that moment it seemed so ridiculous to me I could barely control myself.

I held on until we'd left the room, till we'd stepped out of the house and even until we were out of view around the bend. Then I let my legs go and collapse, as they'd been threatening to for a while now. The men swore at me but took my weight and carried me along, up the hill to the village. Besides, like Gabriel, these two men had more muscles than they would ever need, whereas I was on the more modest side. It was only right that they put them to good use.

We passed the fields without stopping, though I noticed through my squinting eyes that the slaves turned to watch as I passed, until the Overseers and guards cracked their whips and swore at them to get back to work. When we reached the first fields the slaves were singing, but as the word was passed back up the hill, the songs stopped, and the silence was painful as all eyes were on me.

I tried not to look, because I was afraid I'd see the accusatory look in the eyes of the people who had been so kind and welcoming only days ago.

Up at the village the men dropped me and trudged back down the hill. I lay in the dirt, having used most of my energy for Gabriel with my great standing feat, and just enjoyed the feeling of air and space around me.

TBC...

No thanks section today fraid, as I am so eager to get this little chappy up while I have the time! But, thanks to all of you who have reviewed or emailed me - you know who you are - and I am immensely grateful and thankful for your encouragement and feedback. I can't tell you what it means to me. Also, this story isn't even finished yet, and it has, at the time of writing this, one less review than the total of those for A boat with my name on it'! Note to self: angst is a crowd pleaser!! lol.
Next chapter will have a very long review thanks section, I promise!
Thanks again me lovelies!x.x.x.