Chapter 4: Death
The Aztec gold had to be retrieved. That was all Barbossa knew. He had to lift this curse.
When he had taken the gold he had dreamt of riches beyond what he had dreamt of and he had got no such thing.
For a while he had dined with pleasant and pleasing 'ladies' and he used the term loosely, but the more he spent, the more he disliked them and there manners. Nothing satisfied him and he searched the world for some thing else, some thong better, to be any thing than what he had become since he had left that damned women all those years ago.
He had only got to become this half thing, neither living nor dead. He had no riches. He was not the glorious captain her had wanted to be when he had taken the Pearl. The crew blamed him for there misfortune behind his back and he knew it.
Maybe he was meant to be cursed he thought to himself. Maybe he was just one of those people who deserved no happiness.
He thought of what he had done to Jack, and to Bill Turner, and to Helen and the singular piece of him which still was intact with his conscience felt sick at himself. For all the pain he had caused.
He had not just killed men. It had been women and children too. He and the guns of the Pearl had made sure together they had brought down complete communities. How many husbands had lost their wife's because of him. And how many of them deserved death really he wondered.
What would Helen say if she could see him now? He knew. She was scorn him, call him and coward and turn him away. Never again call him her love. The words part of him craved. Had been craving for so long.
But every time he thought of going back instead he planned the next attack, on the next fort. He had said he never wanted to see her again. And that had been true at the time. But no longer was it, he didn't think any thing could be as fair as she had been that day when she had been crying, begging him not to go.
He was looking for the medallions though; there was sense in it, what he was doing. He had to get back to how he had been so he could move on with some one new, some one better than the love before. Some one to fool himself with that he was in love with her and not Helen.
He wanted to taste apples. He wanted to enjoy rum. He wanted to feel the warmth of a woman's skin.
It had been ten years to the day pretty much since he had marooned Jack on that island.
That was the night he was going to attack Port Royal.
-
Part of her was glad she had nothing to do with the Pearl of its master any more thought Helen as she sat at the tavern.
To her it sounded as it Jack had really lost it.
He was going around blowing up ports, destroying lives. It was so very cruel. How could he do it? Was ruining his best friend's relationship and what could have been family not enough?
She only hoped Hector had got off the ship in time and had nothing else to do with Sparrow.
Maybe he had left the Pearl year's ago. She just didn't know.
What was the world coming too? She wondered to herself. Pirating was one thing. What the crew of the Pearl was doing was just cruel.
"Helen?" she heard a voice asked.
"Yes Giselle?" she asked.
"Do you think all those tales we are hearing of the Pearl are true. Yer used to have a lot ter do with it didn't you?" she asked.
"More the crew than the ship but yes, that was near enough ten years ago now. I have not seen the Pearl in years and I would not want to. If these tales are true Sparrow has turned in to a hateful creature indeed." She said thoughtfully to the blonde.
"What do you mean about Jack?" she asked her.
"Well he is the captain of the Pearl…" she said to her.
"No he isn't." Giselle laughed. "He hasn't been that for a long time though mind when I met him he was still calling himself captain 'Jack Sparrow' so maybe he is, I don't know." Said the blonde.
"Well of course he is." she said to her. "I mean he has been captain for the Pearl for years."
"Yeah but…" said Scarlett who had been listening to the conversation from where she had been standing. "He has this first mate see and 'bout ten years ago he committed mutiny against Jack, left him on an island, named himself the captain."
"You two have got it so wrong." Helen shook her head. "I knew his first mate. He'd never do some thing like that."
"Well that was what Jack said to me."
"Oh and Jack Sparrow has never told lie has he?" said Helen firing up. Hector wouldn't have… not unless he was really mad…furious. Like the day when he called her a whore.
And this supposed mutiny would have happened just after that event.
He wouldn't have, would he?
"I have to go." She said to them and run out of the tavern with out finishing her shift. She knew she should. She and the kids needed the money, but she had to think, to get out of there.
Hector, well that just sounded exactly like something he could do if he wanted too, but he wouldn't, she didn't think. When he put his mind to some thing he had always seen it through. But she hadn't seen him in so long. What did she know about him now? It felt like yesterday when he had been there in her bed… but it hadn't been.
Running down the dock she didn't know where she was going. She just had to get out. Out of her head, off this island, some where new. Some where she could be with the old Hector she had known so well. And then she looked down, she saw the sea and her fathers face.
She ran back
"Oh god, oh god, oh god." She said to her self as she stepped on to the beach.
If it was true, that Hector had taken the Pearl for himself, which she prayed he had not then it was he who was doing all these awful things to so many people. Innocent ones.
"Please say it isn't so." She said to the wind just as she had all those years back when she had said she had been having her loves children.
"I am afraid it is so." She heard a voice she had not heard in years from behind her.
"Jack…" she said as she spun round to see his face.
"Ello luv," he said to her.
"How do you know what I am on about?" she said to him.
"I know you love, and yer always saw him through yer rose tints." He said. Beside him she noticed a young man, younger than her certainly. He could be no more than twenty years, and was rather clean looking compared with the utter scoundrel by his side.
"And he is now going round the Caribbean doing all these awful things?" she asked nervously.
"Aye, I am sorry Helen," he said to her.
"This is all your fault. Why did you come that night?" she asked him, at long last. She had been desperate to ask that for years.
"Curiosity." He explained loosely. "It wasn't all my fault the way I remember it Helen."
"He was a good man when I knew him." She said to him. "It was only after every thing gone on between me and you that things went wrong for me and Hector." She said.
"Maybe… but that is in the past now. We have to look to the future, so we'll be on our way." He said to her turning.
"Well can I help you?" she asked him.
"Maybe," he nodded, wondering if she just wanted information about Barbossa now or if she really wanted to know what he was up too. "I'll come down to the house tonight." He said to her.
"Right," she said to him. Maybe he had some news he had to give her from Hector she thought to herself, before stopping herself from thinking that way. Why did she still care for what he had to say to her? He was a murderer. He had been doing appalling things. Because of him mothers were cradling the corpses of there sons. She couldn't imagine how that felt and she never wanted to find out.
But there was part of her that still loved him, for all his and her sins. She thought part of her always would.
In fact all of her would for eternity. She had been living in the past for so long, she wasn't sure she knew how to look to the future any more.
Going down to the house she put dinner on, enough for her Jack, the other man (who she rightly assumed would be attending) and the kids. She told them they could stay out late as she had guessed going over. They didn't argue.
Now that they were ten the kids seemed to have really developed in to there own people.
Jane was a strange young soon to be woman. Stronger than she had ever been. She only hoped her daughter never gave her heart, in these waters if you gave it, you never got it back.
Hector had grown in to a young man gracefully, mentored by Andrew, thought Helen bitterly. She was grateful for his help but he had spent so much time with him that he had seemed to lose all the passion she thought he had got from his father when he had been a young boy. He wanted to be a good sailor when he was older now, no pirate. That should never be, she thought to herself.
But after what she had learnt did she want the children to be like their father? Not at all, not any more.
The kids had stopped asking about him as they had got older. The obsession with getting him back had ended for them. And now part of it had for their mother too. It was tainted with bitterness now, as were all the good memories he had made with her.
Jack and the other man who she learnt was call Will got to hers for eight.
"Be back before sun down." She called to the twin's who she had ensured had already eaten before they had gone out to play.
"Will be mama." called Jane back to her.
Going back in to the house, she felt was if shed was betraying Hector all over again by letting Jack and Will in but she had to speak to them to find out what he had been doing all these past years.
"Has he ever mentioned me to you," she said to jack.
"Love, I have not come face to face with him in almost as long as you haven't." he told her.
"But you are going after him?" she asked.
"Yes," he said to her.
"To do what?" she asked.
"To free Elizabeth" said Will.
-
Hector walked in to the captains apartments. Miss Elizabeth Turner was there waiting for him.
She was a fine, pretty little thing he thought to himself. Pleasurable? Maybe he would fin out after dinner he thought to himself.
That dress though… it had never been meant for her. It had been in its gift box for over a decade. It had been intended for the passionate young women he had loved. It would have suited Helen down to the ground he thought to himself, even as he saw another on it.
It had been for her to say sorry. He hadn't meant to stay away so long. He hadn't meant to make her cry. He hadn't meant to fall in love with her. But it turned out she was the one who had needed to be sorry in the end.
With as deep sigh, he sat down at the table. He poured Miss Turner some wine and begun to tell her what he needed her for.
-
"He really has become a twisted fool hasn't he?" asked Helen sadly.
"He is not the man neither I nor you used to know." Jack explained to Helen gently.
"Did you ever tell him that he was a father, for I never got the chance?" she said.
"I tried to tell him but he didn't listen to me." He said to her.
"Well that's sounds like Hector. He was always so pig headed." She said with weak smile, which still displayed the fondness she had had for her lover.
Helen's eyes went to the table cloth, any thing to stop them from looking in to those of Jack Sparrow. That day had changed so much for her. She felt so numb.
"He is going to try and lift the curse he placed upon his self." Jack told her.
"And kill this young girl Elizabeth in the process," she asked and he nodded.
"He might, we do not know." He told her.
Then maybe he wouldn't. God, she hoped so. This girl was only eighteen. Only eight years older then Jane.
Please let Hector come to his sense…she thought.
"Well then she has my prayers and my sympathy's but that is all I can offer you!" She told him gently.
"If you came with us Helen maybe you can talk him round. Make him see what a mistake he is making, killing the girl. And you can get him to give me the Pearl back maybe. He always listened to you Helen." He tried to flatter her. She smirked. She should have known there'd be something in it for him.
"No I am sorry Jack but you know that is a lie. It was the other way round." She said the volume and strength in her voice dropping as she remembered her past. "I was so young and naïve. I hung off his every word. I wonder some days if he ever cared sixpence for me. Then I think of the reaction he had when he found out about us and I know yes he did care for me. Other wise he would never had taken the news so badly. But no, I have work, children here to raise. I can not leave," She said to him.
"In other words you are too afraid of the sea to follow your heart," he asked.
Slowly, she nodded.
Will looked at the aging women wondered how any one could love this Barbossa, as she clearly did. He was an evil man and he had done evil deeds. And yet she was so cool when she spook about him. There was some thing in her eye though, he thought as he saw the upset gather in them. There were no tears but there was a shadow in them. Of what might have been.
"You can not live in fear of what happened to your father for all of your days." Said Jack to her and she knew he was talking sense. "You let those whom you love go to sea."
"That is their choice; it was his choice to go. It had and will always be mine to stay." She said to him. "No I can not go to sea. Never have been able too."
She no longer thought it was fear of death that kept her from it though. It was fear of actually going and achieving her goal of finding him. He would ask her questions she did not wish to answer about her and Jack and if she could keep that from happening then she was.
She had always been so selfish here where it had come to Hector she thought to herself. All the children's lives she had had the chance to look for him. And yet she hadn't just for fear of her own heart getting hurt.
Helen's emotions were so conflicting all the time, she thought, she would happily return to him, other times she was so scared too.
So instead she just stayed on Tortuga, going to work. She lived a half life compared to what it had been. And she would always miss Hector, that much she did know. She'd miss his kisses, his firm embraced and the endless nights of love on the beach.
"When you find him what will you say to him? What will you do?" she asked him.
He had been dreading that question. He had been suspecting it would come. He wondered if it would be better for her if he were to lie to her. But he decided not. She had to be ready when the news came. She deserved that much.
"When he left me on the island, he left me a single pistol and a single shot as the code demands." He said and she understood with a nod of her head. "I vowed when he gave it to me the only person it would be used to kill would be him. I am sorry Helen."
"Then you mean to go to find hector to kill him?" she said breathlessly, not quite understanding. What ever she had been expecting it was evident to Jack that that had not been it.
"I have too." He stated and she bit back a heart broken sob. Just as Hector was a man of his word so was Jack, he actually meant to do this, she realised quickly.
"Please don't… please Jack…" she instantly begun sobbing.
"I have to for my honour, savvy? Surely you can understand that," he said feeling uncomfortable with her sobbing so. "Do you have message for him, I can pass on when it happens," he asked.
And she turned to him with tears filled eyes. "Just tell-l him t-t-that I l-l-love him." she wept trying hard to get out her words.
Jack nodded respectfully. "Come on." He said to Will who had been silent through out there meeting with her.
"Jack," she called to him as he left. "Is there no other way?" she asked.
"If there was I'd have taken it years ago. I am so sorry Helen." She said to her, knowing this hurt her heart more than any pistol could ever hurt Barbossa.
–
Will made his way to the chest. This was it. He was going to lift the chest and get Elizabeth back. Jack was going to kill Barbossa. He was so bitter. He deserved his fate. His mind cast back to the visit to Helen and he pitied her, and wondered how she take the news but it didn't stop his actions. Her love for Barbossa was in the past it seemed. His and Elizabeth's was the future.
The knife sliced in to his hand and he heard a pistol go off.
Elizabeth gasped.
"Ten years yer carry that pistol and now yer waste yer shot." Hector laughed at Jack.
"It wasn't wasted." Said Will, as he threw the last medallion to the chest.
Hector looked down at his own chest. He was bleeding. He was dying…it was over, but he had his senses back. He could feel the wind, and it was beautiful, a beautiful gift.
It was then Jack spoke again. "She gave you a son named Hector, and a daughter named Jane, and she asked I tell you she loves you still." Jack told him, surprisingly softly. He had given Helen his word that he would know at the end how she had felt for him. That was the least she could so for him.
Hector eyes lit up. He knew who she was. The governor's daughter and the black smith watched as he seemed to change. From the cruel pirate who had put them through so much to some else. How to describe him they didn't know. But he wasn't the Barbossa they knew.
Jack looked at him and knew who he was in that moment. Helen's hector.
"I feel…" he said as he tried to picture her face in his head, and for the first time could not. "Cold….Helen." he whispered, crying out for her almost, dreaming she was by his side. Then… nothing.
Back at Tortuga, Helen awoke. The tears begun. She knew he was gone.