Waki 61
Holy buggery fuck. I'm actually finished this story.
Well, not really. I still have to publish it all on here. But I'm done writing it.
This.... This is absolutely epic. It's just... It's never happened before. Just... Wow.
And I like the ending, too. It makes me happy. It was originally set to make me very, very sad, but it didn't, which surprises me. I'm usually the queen of angst, after all.
Just so you know? There may very well be more. I really want to write the kids now.
And without any further explanation, here you are. I'll post a chapter a day until it's done for real. Expect it to end on Monday, unless I screw something up.
Will had everything he'd ever wanted.
Jack was back to the way he'd always been. He had his old swagger back, his old slur, the mischievous glint in his eye. He was Captain Jack Sparrow again. And he seemed to want nothing more than one more bottle of rum, a clear blue horizon, and Will. In his bed. Every single night.
Not that Will was complaining. He enjoyed being with Jack as much as Jack enjoyed being with him, and as much as the crew hated them both. He didn't think that waking up in his Captain's arms would ever get old.
But something was wrong.
Jack had an almost neurotic obsession with freedom. In all the time he had known him, almost everything the man did had the ultimate aim of getting him free of whatever was holding him back and keeping him that way. He wasn't exactly a poster boy for commitment. It was just part of his nature, drifting from one thing to another, wherever his heart took him.
Now he was suddenly clinging to everything with an iron grip.
And it wasn't just to Will, although that was certainly the most obvious example, considering the amount of time he'd spent away from the captain in the past couple of days could be counted in minutes. He seemed to be bound and determined to make everything stay the same, to freeze the Pearl in a single instant of pirate frivolity. He drank outrageous amounts, sang bawdy pirate ballads and Elizabeth's quaint little ditty all day long, dragged Will into the cabin whenever at all possible. It was almost as if he were trying to fit as much fun as he possibly could in the shortest space of time possible. It got old very quickly, especially when he began passing over easy merchant ships in favour of another round of Bones.
Most of the crew assumed he was just trying to make up for lost time, perhaps reassure them somehow that he was indeed the same care-free, fun-loving Captain they'd signed on under. And maybe that was part of it.
But there was more to it, and it absolutely infuriated Will that Jack wouldn't let him in.
In the end, there was nothing to do but give it time. Let things get back to normal. Let the real Jack, the Jack whose smiles were real, the Jack who wasn't afraid to be afraid, to come back to him. Nothing to do but wait.
He seemed to be doing a lot of that lately.
A week passed. And then two. And then a whole month, and another, and another.
And then, before he even knew they were living on a deadline, their time was up.