Hello! I'm so sorry it's been late, but I had a lot going on, really. I barely had a moment to breathe. Anyway, I wanted to give you this, because honestly, I've been working through some horrible writer's block and this is what came out of it. I hope you like it, and a new chapter should follow relatively soon. Thanks, guys, and please review!
-Han
The jungle was Anna's new backdrop, every step she took was one consumed with patterns of greens and browns that were never the same, but blended together until the ferns and vines were just repeats of earlier stretches. She'd seen it all before, but every second was new.
The cover of darkness made each stride slow and halting, unwilling to admit the fear that coursed through veins, afraid of what lay out of sight and in shadow. The sounds of life, the breath of animals and of the earth itself, echoed in their ears, whispers between the leaves, urging them onward and warding them off.
The soft fires of San Miguel fort glowed like the heart of the jungle, beating and breathing in time with the soft whisper of the wind, casting Anna's face in a half-shadow that made her look like part of the jungle. Jack was next to her, his shoulder pressing against hers in an obvious attempt to be closer, always closer, to keep her back from Barbossa and Bonny, both huddled near the edge of the camp with predatory eyes. He didn't want her to be closer to Anne, the older woman was dangerous and ethereal and his Anna would be captivated in that way she was by him and him alone. He wanted her eyes on him, that spark, that quick fire that never went out trained on him.
Selfishly, his hand rose and pressed into the small of her back, his fingers drawing a startled gasp from her, deep inside her chest. He grinned, all gold caps and ego, sated for the moment when her eyes met his, blue like moonlight and lightning on black like the night and the bottom of the ocean.
"Do you not care for the infamous Bonny?" she asked quietly, smirking in that way that was only a pull of dusky lips on the right side of her mouth. He frowned, pulling her closer until his arm slipped around her waist, trying to dispel her want to know her old idol, the need to learn everything about the woman who walked in mist.
"I care for you," he whispered, nuzzling against the hollow of her throat until she shuddered, her entire body reacting to him. He wondered if she knew how much it took, how many stuttered breaths it took for him to control himself around her, how hard he had to pull back from that carnal instinct to take and to hold onto the treasure. Because he was a pirate, selfish and needy and wanting to keep his treasure immaculate and safe and his. And every time her skin bruised, his soul throbbed, and he couldn't honestly tell if it was because she was hurt or because a part of him had hurt. He wondered when she had wormed her way so close to him that he couldn't tell the difference. He wanted to know when he started to wanted her all to himself, no one else allowed to see her.
"I thank ye, Jack, I'd thought you'd forgotten about me." Gibbs' voice was thick with disdain as it weaved towards them. Jack turned, his smile wide and arms spread out as if to embrace the older man, but his forearm was still pressed against Anna's back, always there, a little reminder.
"Mister Gibbs, I was just on my way to break you out of jail!" he said jovially, a chuckle rising from the depth of him, pulling through the mouth easily. It felt good. Too long since he'd really laughed. Because Gibbs was back and Anna was looking at him and not Bonny, whose eyes were too familiar to him and they seemed to hinge on Anna far too long.
"Ye did a fine job of it, too," Gibbs muttered, dripping with sarcasm as he gave Anna a good natured bow at the waist. She grinned, faking a curtsey for the sake of it all and turning back to face the camp with Jack and Gibbs in tow.
"You stole my map," Jack said suddenly, as if just remembering, his eyes narrowing on his old friend. Gibbs shrugged meekly, nothing to say and nowhere to go.
"Actually, I gave it to him," Anna admitted in a hushed whisper, trying to keep the smile off her lips. She could feel Bonny's gaze trained on them, and the grin spread across her face like the sun coming out and Jack seemed to lose space and time and sense as it all narrowed down to her. "Better that than the crown getting to it."
"Was this before or after I was hit with a rifle?" Jack asked, head tilting to the side and forgetting, for a moment, the job ahead and all the work and sweat and pain that would go into it. Here, in the endless seconds, it was Annie next to him and the humming vibration of an adventure finally picking up, finally taking off.
"After."
"Oh."
Bonny watched the exchange with hollow eyes, wondering if she could make that sweet grin rise to her daughter's face, if she could influence the way she smiled and breathed like she was some place safe, easy and calm, like nothing could touch her. But she'd given that up, she'd made her choice, and Anne couldn't go back, no matter how much she wanted to, under the cover of stars and the thick, sweet scent of the jungle.
"Best be onward," Barbossa whispered, cutting across Jack and Anna's nearly wordless conversation, the volumes they'd communicated through the light in eyes and the quirk of lips. Jack was back against her, his side pressed to her, molded, like he couldn't get close enough. Anna knew things like this were hard to come by, they filtered in through cracks in the ship, flew in on moonlight and the shimmer of stars on the water, where the sky and the earth embraced. So these touches meant more to her, meant everything to her, and she took them, stored them away inside her soul and told herself that jealous Jack was like a gift. That Jack wanting her was all she needed because it was, even if her eyes slid to Bonny occasionally and her mind was full of questions. Jack would always be more than enough.
He grinned at her again, leaning in close enough to make Gibbs roll his eyes and start towards the camp, enough to make her breath catch and her eyes go wide. Bonny was already gone, enveloped in the shadows and the embrace of the jungle. This was just her, just Jack. Just the soft way he looked at her and the shivers he made roll down her spine. This was just them, and she let it wash over her and promised herself she wouldn't forget it. When he whispered playfully, drawing his fingers across her cheek bone, she would smile and they would move on the grand adventure and blood crashing through their veins and quick heart beats. When he spoke, she would tell herself that this, this, was so much better than knowing someone from stories, than losing herself in the past when the present was so good.
"Olé."
Xx
The mangled, deformed skeletons were what Phillip saw first, around the long tendrils of Syrena's hair and the darkness of the night around them, the twisted bones and tied wrists were in the forefront of his thoughts.
They looked to be screaming, ever-smiling mouths pried open by some invisible force that makes Phillip want to wretch, want to scream with them. His grip on Syrena tightened until he was sure he was bruising her delicate cream skin. She made a noise, half-way between understanding and discomfort, when his hands went nearly lax, trying to make up for the pain.
She was taken from him a second later, and his aching muscles hailed their God in answer, breaking for a moment to find a chance to breathe. Gunner held her securely, watching the corpses of past mermaids in various stages of decay like they were bugs, worms to be crushed beneath him.
Blackbeard watched them with a clinical interest, wondering how many had been successful, how many had pried tears from the mere-creatures eyes and gotten their reward; the years that stretched on infinitely.
"Careful, these pools run deep. If she escapes, all is lost," he said softly, almost sweetly, as they lowered her into the water, her cream legs crushing together as scales spread across them, sparkling like diamonds. He crouched low, watching Syrena hiss and thrash, her body rejecting the bonds the Quartermaster placed on her hands, keeping her half out of the water. She jerked, her tail splashing the faces of her dead sisters, muddy water sticking to their skeletons, sliding off their bones.
She wished Phillip would come closer, breathing hard by the edge of the pool his arms hanging uselessly at his sides. When the put the bag over his head, a heavy burlap from aboard the ship, her chest tightened, her skin feeling too drawn, too tight, like she would have to rip it off to feel like she could breathe again. He was in danger.
Phillip was in danger and she didn't know what to do and she couldn't get close enough to help him. She bucked again, fighting against the thick cords of rope around her wrists until they were rubbed raw, blood curling down her arms in patterns she couldn't hope to understand.
"Look. Look," Blackbeard insisted, gripping her chin with bruising fingers and jerking her to face the dead faces of those past. "Staked out to die, to dry in the sun. Only half in the water, not enough to live, but just enough to make the dying slow. Think on it, your people, murdered, harvested for their tears. Syrena. Won't you cry?" His voice dripped with a poisonous honey, slipping sweetly from his chapped lips and cold eyes that made her skin squirm of its own volition.
"All die," Syrena responded sternly, her chin up and lips pressed into a thin line. "Even you. Soon I hear," she taunted, her blue eyes like pieces of steel, resolute and unyielding.
"Can you not hear your sisters scream? Do you not hear them? We need but one tear," Blackbeard hissed, gripping her by the scruff of the neck and yanking up, her body rising from the water slowly, the grip of death sliding off of her for a moment. She refused to cry.
The slap to her cheek had her seeing the stars in different patterns, swimming like they would in their reflection on the water, trying to meet the edge of the horizon, shifting. Her face stung, pain shooting along her nerves and she bit the inside of her mouth, refusing to let the tears flow, refusing to break.
She had to be stronger than that.
Syrena could hear the threats, pushing through her head and making torture sounding too real and too close and somehow, she'd never really considered that they would cut out her tears, from behind her eyes. She could hear Phillip struggle, the bag over his head suffocating his shouts, but they were there, and the unnatural jerking of his limbs was visible, as he tried to pull himself from the Mast of Arms' grasp.
He pulled his body unrelentingly, shaking his head free of the heavy sack until their eyes met. He lurched, fighting back. Once. Twice. Free.
"Where is your voice in this?" he asked, pleading to the only other woman there, Angelica, as she watched her father bend over the mermaid with almost sad eyes, resignation burning in her veins. Her thoughts were not there, busy going over Jack and his mannerisms and wondering how far he would go for the girl on his arm. Why she was so special. Why it wasn't her.
"Maybe she will have a change of heart, when the sun rises," Angelica told her father, nearly whispering, the softness of her voice jarring the mermaid. It wasn't right, like the woman was trying to make Syrena feel safe while hissing through bars, a sword at her throat.
"Aye. She will burn, but I cannot wait for the sun. Perhaps we should build a fire." Blackbeard said it like he was commenting on the weather, his silky voice pushing its way into her head and weaving through the sweet-smelling air around them. He was the snake in the water, twisting and arching elegantly as it lay in wait, charming with its animalistic beauty and suddenly biting down, draining skin of color until lips were blue and hands were slack.
"No," Phillip nearly screamed, pushing himself from the crowd of sailors until he was in front of the Captain, his sea colored eyes heated, alive like lightning. Syrena couldn't look away, couldn't bring herself to speak.
"Do not contest me, cleric," Blackbeard growled as he pushed the younger man back, Phillip's body caving in around the Captain's elbow. He stumbled, eyes wide and pleading and maybe he was begging.
"You will not torture her," he said vehemently, the words flying from his lips like a sermon, like a prayer, filled with a reverence and a passion that Syrena had never heard. Hands held Phillip back, made it harder for him to push his way forward, to free Syrena and let her swim away, gone again beneath the waves where he would never see her. Where she would be consumed by water he couldn't stay in, couldn't be a part of.
"We need but one tear," Angelica said, trying to keep Phillip calm, trying to stop her father, trying, trying, trying and no one was listening. Her father was going to dwell in flames for eternity and she couldn't stop it.
Jack was gone, the man from her past only a figment of her imagination attached to a pretty brunette with open blue eyes and a soft voice, and her father would soon follow in his steps and become nothing more than a memory. She was losing this battle, losing this war.
"I will tear every scale from her body one by one if I see fit, if that displeases you, go pray," Blackbeard muttered, waving a hand distractedly as he bent again towards the silent mermaid. Her chin was resolutely up, her jaw tightening and he wondered if she was biting down on the inside of her mouth, distracting herself from the world around her as she staved off tears.
"I was wrong," Phillip whispered, head hung and arms weak, his soul aching to be closer to the mermaid, to save Syrena from a pain no one as fair as her should have to know. "Not every soul can be saved. Yours cannot." He spoke with more conviction than he'd ever had about God, ever had about scripture or the reality of miracles, not even about the young Princess who he'd thought had died because of him, because she saved him.
"Behold, gentlemen!" Blackbeard boasted with a broad sweep of his arms, grinning maliciously at the men before him. "A man formerly of faith."
"That 'creature' is worth a hundred of you," Phillip sneered, fighting against the hands that bound him, fighting against everything, trying to get to her. Syrena's eyes were hollow, empty chasms that he needed to heal, to brush the pads of his fingers beneath her eyes and wipe away tears that were not there, sadness she couldn't express, until she smiled.
"So you care for her," Blackbeard murmured, mind jumping ahead and racing along tracks of forbidden love and twisted romances, desires unheard of. "You fancy her. Do not deny what is clear to my eyes." He was smiling again, watching the broken desperation in the missionary's eyes, the shattered soul and needy heart. The one that wanted a mermaid, a creature of the seas, a weapon beneath the waves. "Question is, does she fancy you?"
He leaned close, his empty eyes narrowing on her stubbornly set jaw and caught the way her eyes flicked away, resting on the young man. There was worry there, a complicated yearning the young thing didn't understand, a want she couldn't control and Blackbeard finally had his way out of his curse. His time was drawing to a close and he wouldn't back down now, wouldn't meet Death unless it was on his terms, wouldn't allow himself to fall to one of the many pitiful enemies he'd made for himself.
The ones that had been following them for days, a man disguised as British, and a red-haired pirate long forgotten in the mist of his memory. He knew, he heard every stumbled step through the webbed jungle and felt every sharp breath, drawn-in gasp from Anne Bonny and the One-Legged-Man as they hunted him.
But he would not be prey.
"By God! She does!" he intoned with the air of a proud father, sending his newly wed daughter off to a better life, a happy life. His grin was lethal. "We are in luck. Bring forth a tear, or witness the death of this poor soul," he commanded as the Quartermaster dragged Phillip forward, skinning his knees on the rough ground and holding a blade to his smooth, unmarked neck.
"Syrena!" The desperation in Phillip's voice made her cringe, back away, with her eyes rapt on him, unable to look away. "If you could manage a tear, I would be grateful," he shouted, writhing against the Quartermaster, trying to find a way to alleviate the pressure. The knife pressed further into his skin and his breathing sped up, erratic and burning in his chest. He couldn't breathe.
He couldn't breathe, couldn't find air in the world around him, thick with gun smoke and the scent of blood. The cobblestone seemed red, seemed to be soaking up the currents of blood from the veins of his fallen friends, people that had given him freedom on the seas and had kept him safe after his parents had died.
The arms restraining him were unyielding, emotionless as they dragged him forward, his bare feet cracked open against the stone. Their red uniforms seemed to consume his vision, his small arms trapped between the two red coats, Phillip imagined they used to be white, and had been stained by the blood of their victims, so many pirates trying to find freedom.
"Bring the boy!"
The man ahead of him was tall, dressed in luxurious fabrics Phillip didn't even know existed, and his eyes were cold, black pieces of coal shoved back into his skull. A little girl was next to him, only a few years older than him, with her soft green dress stained with soot and dirt and all the things he knew by heart. She was shaking, her hands wrapped around a musket, the bayonet pointing in his direction, her eyes confused and pained and endless.
"Do it." The man's voice was like ice, slipping over his skin and freezing it, giving him no room to move and stealing his air as he shoved the girl forward until the tip of the blade pressed into his neck. He swallowed around it, felt the steel threaten to tear through his soft skin. "Do it or die in his place!"
"Prince George, you cannot do this!" One of the officers had shouted, horror streaking across his face before he could stop it, his mouth open and Phillip wondered how England's leader could be so cruel, so terrifyingly calculated. The officer fell, dark red blooming on his chest like a dying rose, a small pistol lowering in the Prince's hand in time with the man's collision with the ground.
"Kill the pirate boy, or die in his place," George said again, his handsome face twisted into disgust and fury, his black eyes boring into Phillip's blue-green. The girl was frozen, brown curls falling into her blue eyes as her hands trembled. Phillip could feel the vibration through the bayonet against his neck, thrumming with fear.
"Don't hurt me! Please!"
He was begging and he knew it, bent at the waist and trying to alleviate the pressure of the bayonet, he had nowhere to go. He was going to die.
He was going to die.
He knew it with such certainty that he managed to block out the rest of the conversation, Angelica trying to keep her father's hands clean, though the red that stained them could never be washed away, could never be cleansed. Syrena's look of broken-hearted sadness reached him a second later, his chest heaving in the attempt to stay out of his memories, to stay in the present, and for a moment he dared to hope.
Her face smoothed over a moment later, expressionless, emotionless as stone and he felt himself breaking, his heart shattering in his chest. He thought of praying. But he didn't.
"Time and tide waits for none!" Blackbeard shouted, reaching for the Quartermaster's knife, the flash of steel drawing close to his neck, dangerously close.
He would learn if his God was real.
When the girl moved, throwing down the gun with a decisive look in her eyes, Phillip thought he'd already died, was watching this as a wisp of left over soul, a ghost in the middle of London. But she grabbed his hand a moment later, yanking free of the startled officers and running faster than Phillip had ever seen a girl run, tearing through the streets as the George screamed after them, his elegant clothing ruffled and a vein bulging on the side of his neck.
"I'm sorry," the girl huffed out between huge, strained breaths. "If I hadn't run away, he wouldn't have done that. I'm sorry."
She repeated that all the way to the church, 'I'm sorry's tumbling from her lips until she reached the steps, where she looked at him so desperately, he had to listen, he had to believe her, do what she asked. Her eyes were earnest and her hands still shaking as they brushed over his forehead, pushing back the fine blonde hair on his twelve-year-old head like she was his mother. She looked like she was pleading with him, like she was begging.
"I want you to turn around and run up those steps and into that church. Run for your life. And you don't look back."
So he did. He still felt the burn where the bayonet had pressed into his skin, the heaviness of his limbs from streets and streets of running, but he didn't look back, not even when he heard the officers catch up. Not when he heard her scream.
The church doors were slammed shut, and he clung to the leg of a soft-eyed preacher and shouted for sanctuary and he cried.
But he didn't look back.
He felt the burn of the knife, the caving of his body, the impact in the dirt. The pain. Then. Nothing.
Syrena watched them throw Phillip down the edge of a ravine, a hill caked with dirt and mud that stuck to his white shirt, his hair, his open wound as he tumbled down into the brush where she could no longer see him. She choked, managing to keep the urge to scream inside, the hot burn of salty water firmly behind her eyes.
His eyes had stayed rooted on her, as if the connection between them could keep him safe, skin unmarked and chest still moving up and down and up and down. He didn't look away, not until they slit his throat and he plummeted towards the ground.
She heard Blackbeard order her to be left there, left to wait in total darkness for the sun to rise, wait for her death. And she thought she would go willingly, happily, if it meant she would see the missionary's bright, caring eyes. Eyes that refused to look away from her, maybe so he would never be forced to look back from afar, maybe so she would stay safe.
He wouldn't look at her like that again, like she was beautiful and terrible and ethereal and immortal and perfect. He wouldn't scoop her off the ground with leaves and mud clinging to her skin and carry her through the jungle, he wouldn't tell her that things of such beauty shouldn't be so vicious, and he wouldn't give her his unspoken trust anyway.
Syrena hated that. That she had grown so quickly accustomed to his warmth, his soft eyes and softer touch and the way he spoke with more conviction than she thought possible. She hated that she had fallen into his arms and he had brought her from the depths of her own mind, that she had given her the trust no man had touched within hours. She hated that he was so caring, so taken with all of God's creatures that even she could be seen as something precious.
She hated that she loved him for it, for all of it, hated that she loved something so easily crushed, so easily damaged, so easily touched by Death.
