Sky to Sea
Firefly/POTC, Mal/Jack, "what a ship really is...is freedom"
It's a lesson Mal can never forget, what Captain Jack Sparrow taught him. Mal had grown up on a world of eccentrics, and beside him had stood Jack. They were orphans on a world that wanted none. A world that pretended to be Earth, back when Earth was brand new and men were arrogant. Jack had stayed behind on that world that called itself Earth.
Mal had gone ahead, gotten off the world, had gotten in a war he didn't start and didn't want to see finished – not if it meant going back. Mal needn't have worried, because it was hard enough getting off the battlefield let alone getting beaten soldiers back to their home worlds. Mal still had no where to go, and he didn't know if Zoe followed him – or he followed her, yet they found the firefly-class ship, Serenity, together. Mal remembered the lesson whispered to him under the stars, with his bare skin on the sand and rum in his hands. Dark fingers had traced the patterns of stars onto his skin, and dark eyes had burned for him, and lips had whispered in his ear.
"I will be Captain Jack Sparrow, Mal, just you wait and see – because, what a ship really is….is freedom." Longing and desire had tugged low in his belly, and they called it spacers wonder and sea lust, that wanting and need for exploring and seeing and touching with your own hands what you had only heard of before. Rough lips had made him crave what he could not name, and whiskered cheeks had soothed what those words had stirred up in him, for a time.
Mal had space and Serenity, and Jack had the sea and his Black Pearl, and a pirate ship was the only sort that might run into Mal again, they both knew, and so when they met on that mocking mirror of Earth once more, neither were really very surprised.