Sea Change | By : Nemain Category: Pirates of the Caribbean (All) > General Views: 4238 -:- Recommendations : 0 -:- Currently Reading : 0 |
Disclaimer: I do not own the Pirates of the Caribbean movie series, nor any of the characters from it. I do not make any money from the writing of this story. |
Sea Change Chapter Sixteen
Disclaimers Apply
A/N Goddess Foxfeather, Queen of Mad Plotbunnies, BUSIEST
WOMAN ALIVE ™, Prophetic Muse, Hamster Witch and Uberbeta… *glomp* Because I
can. J Readers/Reviewers: Thanks so much for your
patience with my updating! I appreciate
it no end! Thanks as well for all the good feedback!
“Not sure
how to break it to ya, mate, but your ship’s seen fairer days…” Jack sat up
slowly, his head feeling as if it were stuffed with cotton wool and his mouth
dry as sand. “Got holes all in the sails
an’ the wood’s rotten through.” The air
felt thick and damp, cold against his skin.
The world seemed leeched of color, shades of gray being the only thing
he could see. The ship itself was nearly
black and the sails were as cobwebs, hanging in tatters from the masts. The rigging itself looked, even from Jack’s
position on the deck, to be rotten. “Not
very seaworthy, are you old girl?” he sighed, patting the wood beneath him
before springing to his feet. A quick checked
proved his accoutrements to be in their proper place, not even his sheathed
boot knife missing. “So ye’ve got me
‘board this heap… What’s yer purpose then?” he called to seemingly empty air. “Usually, pirates take a good ship to replace
a bad… Seems like ye’re workin’ backwards.”
“Jack,
Jack, Jack,” a low voice rumbled like thunder, “you’re not as simple as that,
are you, lad?” The lanky man, still
wearing red but this time with a black head wrap similar to the one Jack
himself wore, came traipsing down the short flight of steps leading from the
bow of the ship. His face was unfamiliar
and familiar all at once to Jack, all lines and angles, dark as night in aspect
but with deep eyes that seemed to be holes in his skull and little else.
“Apparently,”
he smiled without feeling, giving a half bow, “I am.” He did not move from his spot on the deck as
the skeletal man approached. Instead, he
took up a posture of extreme ease, his hands loosely resting on his wide belt,
feet slightly apart, and head tilted consideringly. Jack had practiced this posture for years,
the devil-may-care stance that put his foe into a false sense of superiority
and lent credence to the legends that had sprung up in his name.
“You can
look on me and say you don’t know me?” the red dressed man chided, stopping
just out of Jack’s arm reach. “Tell me,
Jack, where do you think you are?”
Jack sighed
theatrically, rocking back on his heels and narrowing his kohl-rimmed eyes in
an approximation of tired boredom. “On
yet ship, such as it is… An’ the ship is
in the sea. And the sea on the planet… Shall I be more specific for ye or will that
do?”
The man
reached out and pressed his fingers against Jack’s chest, just above his heart. His arms, Jack noticed seemed preternaturally
long, much longer than any normal man’s should be. A sharp pain blossomed under the thin fingers
pressing against his chest , cold and burning all at once. Jack gasped involuntarily and staggered
back. Wet warmth spread across his skin,
soaking his lawn shirt and dripping down his belly. “Jack,” the man smiled, “seems you’ve run out
of luck.”
Jack
clutched at the wound reflexively, staring down at it in grimacing
fascination. “A gunshot wound? That weren’t there before,” he assayed a
pained smile at his captor. “I’d say I’m
growin’ forgetful in me old age, not to have remembered have one of these when
I boarded this fine vessel.” He felt the
blood spurting beneath his fingers and the pain throbbing dully in his chest,
but he did not feel cold as he had heard so many men claim as they lay
dying. He did not feel dizzy in the
slightest, either. He felt, aside from
the nagging soreness, quite fine. “Tell
me, kind captain,” he continued with a smirk in his voice, “are all yer guests
treated to such fascinating displays of parlor magic?”
Snapping his
fingers, the man did not take his eyes off of Jack. “Such wounds make it more…interesting…for
those who find your corpse bobbing in the sea, Jack. No one would believe you would drown. Everyone,” he said with a sly smile, “would
believe you got murdered though. I
believe you know my first mate,” he paused, holding out his hand, palm up, as
if waiting for a lady to take it. “She came
to me hard, put up a fight, she did.”
Jack’s eyes
widened as Anna Maria stepped out of the thick fog shrouding the ship. Her eyes were blank and staring off into the
distance, her posture rigid. Swallowing
a sudden surge of nausea, Jack returned his gaze to his captor. “We’ve met.”
“You, Jack,
are quite the prize where I come from.”
The man’s voice had grown lower, almost growling. “I’ve grown tired of waiting for you to come
to me on your own. There’s some argument
as to whether I deserve you, really but…” he smiled. “Who will argue with Duffy Jones?”[1]
All
pretense fled Jack’s stance. He drew
himself up straight and leaned into the other man’s personal space. “Duffy Jones is a myth, lad. Something tired sailors dreamt up while in
the doldrums. You,” he added, pressing a
finger into the man’s breastbone, “are addlepated.”
“Please,”
the man smiled, revealing a graveyard row of crooked teeth, “call me Captain
Jones. Don’t you remember, Jack? Don’t you know how you came here?”
Anna Maria
swayed slightly and her lips parted. A great gout of water spewed forth, dark and stagnant, and
her words bubbled up like they were fighting through mud. “I fell overboard, Jack. I fell down and down and it was so cold but
in the end, I was fine. We don’t die, Jack. Captain Jones won’t let us.”
“Ask your
witch,” Captain Jones said, his smile growing positively ravenous. “She’ll be here soon enough.”
[1] http://www.yacht-volant.org/SailorTalk/seaterms08.html
(explains why I’m using Duffy Jones
instead of Davy Jones)
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