Summary: When Jack visits Elizabeth and Captain Teague in Shipwreck Cove, they're attacked. When an old wound of Jack's is reopened, Elizabeth ends up learning more about him than she ever imagined she'd learn. Post AWE. Hints of Sparrabeth. One-shot.
A/N: I've had this one stuck in mind for at least a few months now. About time I got around to writing it down, don't you think? Also, this story follows a headcanon of mine that Jack split his head when he was sixteen. It's also referred to in another one-shot of mine called The Captain's Log and hinted at in Old Wounds.
Just Bad Luck
"I'm goin' to bloody kill Barbossa." Jack Sparrow muttered for the hundredth time.
"We know, Jack." Elizabeth Swann, Pirate King of the Brethren Court, retorted. "Tell us something knew."
There was a loud knocking on the door to the living quarters.
"People still knock these days?" Jack wondered aloud, surprised.
"Who's that?" The Pirate King asked, glancing across the table to Captain Edward Teague, Keeper of the Pirate Code.
"Your guess is as good as mine, lass." The older pirate climbed to his feet. "I'll get it."
Teague headed towards the entry hall to greet whoever was there.
"It's probably no one important." Jack, who happened to be Pirate Lord of the Caribbean, propped his feet up on the table. "Jus' some drunk with the wrong room. Not uncommon."
Elizabeth sighed, clearly annoyed by the suggestion.
Not even a moment later, a grunt of pain sounded from the front door as it was loudly kicked in. Jack cursed loudly, leapt to his feet, and vaulted over the table as he drew his sword. His companion hurried after him, taking less drastic movements than he had.
Jack nearly stopped in confusion at the sight of some of the Black Pearl's crewmen- the more harsh crewmen. "Uh, what? ...Miss me?"
"Only the charts ye stole." One growled, trying to push past Captain Teague to get to his former captain.
"What charts?" The Pearl's former and true captain questioned, playing dumb.
"Ye know what charts." Another man snarled, turning back to the other men. "Get 'em!"
The Pearl's crew drew their weapons and tried to get through the doorway; not too many did.
"So, who'd Barbossa make first mate?" Jack asked conversationally, dodging and parrying swords.
"Force 'em back out into the hall." Captain Teague ordered over the noise.
As Jack swung at one man, he used the distraction to kick him square in the chest, knocking him back into the others. They cursed at the man, angry at him for letting himself be tricked. With Barbossa's men pushed back into the doorway, Teague shut the door and locked it, beginning to barricade it. Elizabeth helped him. Angry shouts came from the other side.
"That's not gonna hold 'em off." The Pirate Lord of the Caribbean knew. "Barbossa sent the most hard headed of the crew. They won't leave without the charts."
"Then give them the charts." Elizabeth told him.
"No!" Jack snapped. "They're my only shot at gettin' the Pearl back at the moment. Got nothin' else to bargain with."
The door shuddered as someone slammed into it.
"Ye better have a plan, boy." Teague growled.
"Well, I was thinkin'..." The Pearl's former captain suggested. "I don't actually have the charts on me. They think I do. So, I could go out an' draw 'em off, lose 'em somewhere, then come back 'ere for the maps an' get lost."
"That's a suicide mission." The Pirate King pointed out.
"Aye, like everythin' else I do. Ye forget, love, that I'm Captain Jack Sparrow."
"And what if you get captured?"
"I'll make it work out in me own favor, o' course." Jack confidently said. "I'm good at that."
"Jus' don't die." Teague muttered.
"Never again." The Pirate Lord promised. "Once was quite enough."
"What will we do?" Elizabeth asked him.
"Either hold the fort 'ere or attack 'em while I distract them." He shrugged. "Either or."
*X*
Jack snuck through the maze that was Shipwreck Cove. He'd left Captain Teague's living quarters through a window and had crept along a ledge until he'd found a safe entrypoint. Now, he knew he was coming up on his former crew. Just a couple more turns, and…
"Ye really think I'm still in there, gentlemen?" He called down a hallway, an eyebrow raised.
The crewmen fell silent, glancing awkwardly at one another.
"Why, I could've left an' none of ye woulda noticed." The Pirate Lord continued. "What would dear ol' Captain Barbossa say if that happened?"
"He'da killed us." One man muttered with a shiver.
Another man let out a snarl of anger.
Then they all surged forward, racing towards Jack. He, in turn, ran the opposite direction. He let his feet carry him through the maze of towered shipwrecks. He wove through crowds of people, through several different shortcuts. But still, his former crew managed to keep up. He hoped Elizabeth and Teague decided to attack them from behind, as he was beginning to realize he'd need the assistance.
Jack eventually found himself standing on the edge of the deck of one of the ships, far above the harbor, with nowhere else to go. He glanced around, looking for anything of use. He spotted several places he could jump, but then he'd be in a precarious, much worse situation than where he was now. The nearest safe platform was about fifty feet below, a fall that didn't even guarantee survival. I am so dead, aren't I?
"Oh, no…" He drew his sword, knowing that it was only a matter of time before the Pearl's crew caught up with him. Might as well put up a fight before I go down, eh?
"There he is!" The first of the crew had arrived.
"Nowhere left to run now." Another man sneered, the crew pouring onto the main deck of the stacked shipwreck.
"I can take ye all on." Jack bluffed, moving away from the edge.
A scream sounded from down the stairs the crew had been coming up. Backup!
"Looks like ye won't 'ave to." A crewman snarled.
The Pearl's crew split up, some men heading down the stairs to deal with the new threat, the rest turning on Jack. The sounds of battle rose up from down inside the shipwreck.
"Now's your last chance, Sparrow." Someone growled. "Give us the charts an' we'll spare your life till the Captain decides what to do with ye or we'll kill ye ourselves."
"Oh please." He scoffed. "Ye really think ye lot can beat me? I'd like to see ye try."
With a battle cry, one of the men shot forward to attack. Jack was delighted to find that he overestimated the skill of his former crew, as he managed to outmaneuver the man into falling to a likely death at the bottom of Shipwreck Cove. His scream lasted for a long moment before falling silent.
The other men stared at the Pirate Lord in horror, realizing what lengths he was willing to go to to protect the charts. But it seemed they had greater fear of what Barbossa would do if they didn't retrieve said charts, as they attacked anyway.
"Can't say I didn't warn ye." Jack told them as he fought.
At one point during the battle, he thought he heard Elizabeth cry out in pain. He imagined she'd be fine, with Teague fighting alongside her. The older man was one of the best swordsmen Jack had ever seen. He had faith he'd keep her safe.
The Pirate Lord himself ended up sending several more men to their deaths down below. But he was still outnumbered by quite a few men. He took a few cuts across his limbs, but nothing too serious came up. He found himself getting pushed towards the edge himself, as time went on, and realized that he'd have to climb up to one of the precarious spots he so dearly wanted to avoid ending up in.
After stabbing a man through the stomach, he risked a glance up at one of those spots, but didn't see any he had the time to get to. He dodged to the side of an enemy sword, swiping at the legs of his attackers. He glimpsed his two allies emerge onto the main deck, finally having cut down enough men to get past the stairs.
As the fighting began to overwhelm him, he found himself backing out onto a single plank- the one a crew would force their captives to plunge into the water from. It wasn't looking good for him; not at all. The board bended under his weight, inwardly terrifying him. He willed it not to snap- he didn't wish to die. It was only a few months ago he'd returned from the Locker.
"Walk the plank!" Someone sneered mockingly at him.
Just as Jack opened his mouth to retort, the hilt of a weapon violently slammed into his left temple. A clang sounded- not the sound of a sword hitting a skull. He cried out in agony, stumbling farther along the plank. His sword fell into the abyss below, his hand going to his head desperately. He had not seen this coming.
"JACK!" Elizabeth screamed, horrified, as a boot met his stomach and sent him plummeting after his weapon.
The air whipped his dreadlocks up into his face as he fell. The few moments he was in the air felt like an eternity. A feeling of doom grew in his aching stomach as he realized he was probably going to die. His head hurt more than he could ever describe- a pain it had only ever experienced one other time in his life.
And then everything went black as his back slammed into a wooden surface.
*X*
Almost immediately after Jack fell, Barbossa's men peeled off to look for a way down to where he'd landed, about fifty feet below. When Elizabeth took a moment to glimpse at him, she saw that the legs of his body were hanging over the edge of the platform he'd landed on. She also noticed that his bandana had been knocked off, revealing a bloodied forehead and a wound so serious that there was a gaping hole in his head.
She was both sickened and worried by the sight. He wasn't moving, his eyes shut. He didn't look like he was alive. But he had to be. He'd promised that he would be fine.
"Come on, lass! We oughta get to him before they do." Captain Teague told her, hurrying past with speed that she didn't realize he possessed.
Elizabeth raced after him, doing her best to keep up. She vaguely noticed that they were taking a different path than the Pearl's crew, but she knew enough of the man in front of her to know that she could trust his choices. After all, it was he who had welcomed her to Shipwreck Cove after Will had departed aboard the Flying Dutchman a few months ago.
"Do you think he's still alive?" She asked him as they slipped through a tavern.
"He's tougher than he makes himself out to be, but he isn't immortal. Hard to say, lass." Teague replied. "But he won't be if they reach him first. If he is, he's gonna have a hell of a concussion."
It was a few minutes later when they finally reached the Pirate Lord's position. He hadn't moved from where he'd landed and the amount of blood had grown. Captain Teague told her that they had about three minutes at most to get out of there before the enemy crew arrived.
Elizabeth knelt down beside Jack, pressing a hand to his chest as she felt for a heartbeat. She was relieved to feel one, her eyes watering at the state he was in. She could see well inside of his head, a chunk of his skull missing. She spotted a large golden coin resting against what she figured was his brain.
"How's he lookin'?" Teague asked tersely from his lookout spot.
"He's alive. But it's bad." Her voice shook slightly. "Why's there a coin?"
"This isn't the first time he's split his head, lass."
The Keeper of the Code ordered her to switch positions with him. She took up his spot as a lookout, watching briefly as he scooped up Jack's limp form, moving his head to rest on his shoulder so that his wound didn't hang down.
*X*
The trip back to Captain Teague's living quarters had been uneventful. The Pearl's crew had clearly assumed that Jack had slipped from the platform and fallen to the bottom of the Cove, as their angry voices never came after them. But the Keeper still ordered her to put the barricade back up upon their return.
As soon as she had done so, Elizabeth joined him in a side room she had never entered before. It was a room clearly designed to treat wounds, as the old bed in the corner was stained with years old blood. The rest of the room was cabinets, shelves, and tables covered in medical equipment. She was in awe.
Captain Teague has laid Jack on the bed and was searching for some certain tools. As soon as he'd found them, he shoved the cluttered items off of a bedside table and replaced them with the tools he'd just grabbed.
"Is there anything I can do?" Elizabeth asked him, feeling helpless.
A long moan of anguish came from where Jack lay.
"Check on him." The older man ordered.
She knelt down beside the bed, one hand reaching out to clutch the Pirate Lord's, another to turn his face towards her. He gasped quietly, his mouth twitching, his hand squeezing hers so tightly that she wondered if it'd pop off. But his eyes remained closed and he didn't say anything.
"Jack." She murmured, stroking his cheek gently.
He didn't react, clearly just conscious enough to only be aware of the pain of his injuries.
"I'd rather 'im be unconscious for this…" Teague sighed.
He gestured towards Elizabeth, a silent order for her to move aside. She did, watching as he took her place beside Jack. The man reached two long tools through the cavity in the Pirate Lord's head. After a few long moments, the tools returned to view, the golden coin clutched between them.
The Keeper held the coin thoughtfully to where the missing chunk of bone was, frowning as he realized it was now too small to fill the gap. "He won't survive a third time."
"You said this is the second time he's split his head." Elizabeth mused. "What happened the first time?"
"He was a lad of sixteen then an' got very unlucky in a storm." Teague replied, focusing on what he was doing. "He was lucky he wasn't far from the Cove when it happened."
"How long have you known Jack?" She asked.
"For a lass as observant as ye, I'm surprised ye haven't noticed." The man muttered crypticly.
The Pirate King had no idea what he meant by that. What did I fail to notice?
Captain Teague continued to work on patching up Jack's head, cleaning blood away every now and then. Elizabeth swore that she spotted cracked bone at one point. Eventually, the older man found a piece of steel that looked to be of a size similar to the gaping hole in the injured pirate's skull. He held it close, nodded to himself, then trimmed it a bit with his knife. He laid glue on the edges, lining the steel up with the damaged bone of Jack's skull.
The Pirate Lord let out another agonizing moan, the steel against his broken head clearly rather painful. His head jerked away from the other man.
"Be still, boy!" Teague snapped, his voice louder in volume than Elizabeth had ever heard it.
That's when it finally clicked in the Pirate King's head. She suddenly knew what the man had meant when he said he was surprised that she hadn't noticed something.
Jack was the Keeper's son.
She knew it in the way he called the younger pirate a boy, in the way Jack interacted back with him. She'd never seen the Pirate Lord act that way before and had wondered about it, but neither man had offered an explanation- Jack had probably not wanted her to know, his father probably assumed she had already known.
Elizabeth also realized how closely the two men resembled one another. They had the same black dreadlocks, the same brown eyes, the same long, ringed fingers, even the same smirk. The same calm demeanor, though Jack usually mixed mischief into his. She couldn't believe she'd been so blind as to the resemblance.
She felt a new respect for Captain Teague, as the man showed little stress under the pressure of his son bearing a split skull. Any other parent would've been left in a panic, unsure of what to do. But not him. He'd gotten straight into doing what he needed to do, showing no sign of worry or fear that the younger pirate wouldn't survive.
That's why Jack had so quickly vaulted over the table earlier when he'd heard his father grunt when the door had slammed in.
It all made sense now.
"Why, Jack's your son." Elizabeth finally voice aloud.
Teague was holding Jack's head still with one hand, the other holding the steel in place. "'Bout time, lass. Though I reckon he won't be pleased to hear ye know."
"Jack doesn't like it when anyone knows anything about him." She agreed.
"Aye, well, the less people know, the less can be used against ye." The older man pointed out. "Damned boy took it to heart."
"And you didn't?"
"I jus' decided there were people out there I could trust enough, however few."
"You trust me?"
"Wouldn't have let ye stay if I didn't, lass."
Teague released his hold on his son's head, clearly deciding the steel would stay in place now. He stitched up the skin that he could, the bleeding coming to a stop. Very little of the steel showed after that had been done. He grabbed a bottle of rum from a nearby table, pouring some down the younger pirate's throat. The barely conscious Jack swallowed instinctively.
"He'll fall asleep shortly." The Keeper explained to Elizabeth. "Give him a week, maybe a week an' a half before he'll stay awake long enough to remember much. All we can do now is wait."
*X*
When Jack came to, the first thing he was aware of was pain. Lots of it. It tore at his head and back. Instinctively, he rolled to his right to escape it. He was vaguely aware of falling for a brief moment before he landed on his arms on the planks of the floor with a loud thud. He opened his eyes, nauseated, and retched a foamy liquid out onto the floor.
His head spinning, the Pirate Lord took a moment to recall how he ended up there. Ah, yes, a blunt item- the hilt of a sword- had smacked him in the weakest spot on his whole body. Then he'd fallen into oblivion. Good Lord, how am I alive?
"Next time I take a hit like that, I am goin' to bloody shoot myself." He decided, shifting into a sitting position against the side of the bed. His back didn't appreciate the movement any more than his head did. He grasped a bottle of rum from a table beside him, nearly dropping it, and took a deep swig.
"That's not a good idea, boy." He glanced up to the door of the room as his father entered, Elizabeth behind him.
"I hope ye don't mean the rum." Jack held the bottle against his chest possessively. "I could really do with a lot o' it right 'bout now."
The Pirate King rolled her eyes, but failed to suppress a smile. "I think he meant shooting yourself, Jack. Don't worry about the rum."
"Oh. Good." He relaxed and took another swig, closing his eyes. "What happened to Barbossa's crew?"
"They assumed ye fell to the bottom of the Cove." Teague told him. "Mighty good thing too, or ye'd definitely be dead."
"They left a few days ago." Elizabeth added helpfully. "They gave up after they couldn't find your body."
"Patience was never a friend of Barbossa's." Jack murmured with a small smirk.
"Ye better watch yourself, Jackie." The Keeper warned. "Your head won't survive another hit like that."
He winced slightly at the use of that nickname in front of Elizabeth, but gave a slight nod anyway. "Aye, I know. It's not like I try to get hit. Jus' bad luck."
"Not to mention ye stood on the edge of one of the highest ships in the Cove."
"Alright, that was a mistake on my part. But it's not like I meant to get hit off."
"Not any more than you meant to get eaten by the Kraken." Elizabeth blurted out.
"That was...Norrington's fault. I had a bloody plan, but he stole Jones's heart an' ran off to Beckett with it." Jack pointed out, his head aching more as he tried to turn the conversation in his favor. He took another swig of rum. "Give me a break, will ye? I'm only half alive at the moment."
"You need to rest." The Pirate King agreed.
"Speakin' o' which, how long do I have to hang 'round 'ere this time?"
"Three months." Teague told him.
The Pirate Lord frowned. "Back's broken, innit?"
"Mhm." The older man grunted.
"Ah, well, could be worse I suppose."
"Get some rest, boy."
The Keeper left the room, seemingly satisfied that Jack was alright. Elizabeth remained, watching him, from where she stood near the door. She looked distant, as if she were thinking.
"Ye there, love?" Jack asked, waving a hand to catch her attention.
"Oh- yes. Sorry." She shook herself from whatever she'd been thinking of. "How are you feeling, Jack?"
"Painfully alive." He wanted to shrug, but assumed it'd be a horrible idea. "Been better, been worse a couple o' times."
"Captain Teague told me you split your head once before." Elizabeth admitted.
"True fact. Bloody lucky it took so long till this second time."
"Your father's a brave man, Jack."
His mouth hung open for a moment in confusion. Clearly he'd missed something while he was out. Having no retaliation, he blinked. "How so?"
"The whole time you were unconscious, he didn't even seem worried." She told him.
Jack snorted. "He hardly bats an eye at anythin', love. Not surprised he wasn't worried. Reckon he oughta be the next time my head gets smashed in though."
"There won't be a next time."
"That's what I said last time. Don't get your hopes up."