Glancing down as he settled into his perch in the lap of the stained glass Virgin Mary, Jack noted the top of the good Commodore Norrington’s head and grinned. Well. Perhaps he’d been better coming in where he did, after all.
The church, huge and overdone as it was, had been packed to spilling the pious out into the street. Candle smoke, incense and sweat hung heavy over everything, like Tortuga on its worst day. Regrettably, the wenches had neglected to attend.
In a way, Jack was rather glad he’d had to compromise on a dramatic entrance. In another way, Jack wasn’t sure what he was doing here in the first place. He had his Pearl back, he had his freedom, and here he sat in the one place sure to compromise it. Port Royal and its memories should be behind him and gone.
It was too quiet here. Latin rolled over him in waves, never stopping long enough to make any sense to him whatsoever. He ignored it and watched instead, looking to the couple at the head of the aisle.
Bootstrap, that sentimental bastard, might have been proud to see his son standing at the head of a proper church, in a proper suit, nodding in time with the proper sheep. Boy had that “oh, Miss Swann” look on his face again, rather like a cow that had been struck in the head, smiling so broadly Jack could see it from here. He kept reaching for her hand, catching a glare from the priest, and drawing back with a sheepish look.
And Elizabeth… hard to say about Elizabeth. Every inch of that lovely body had been swathed in a dress that wasn’t so much a fashion statement as a pastry, her face lost behind a veil. Everything about her, lost. Would’ve made a damned good pirate, that one, but here she stood being… respectable.
Damned shame about the both of them. They’d been a good crew. Will had the blood for it, and Elizabeth the mind.
But that didn’t quite explain the hole in Jack’s gut, did it?
He took a generous swig of rum from the flask at his hip, and the burn of it covered the lack.
There was no telling children anything, really. Waste of time better spent pillaging or what have you. They thought this was what they wanted, all they could every want. Trading chaste kisses in a stone cage with the entire town staring and whispering behind their hands.
And they called Jack mad.
The organ rang out, loud enough to make the window behind Jack rattle. He grabbed at a handhold, blinked, and tipped his hat to the Virgin for the help. Had she been anything other than pressed glass, that grab might have significantly changed her status in the church.
Recovering, Jack looked back in time to see Will fight the veil back and bend. They kissed as if nothing else mattered and no one was watching. It was something true and lovely, and it was wrong to see it here.
Then they broke apart, breathless, their hands shaking where they were linked at their side.
So that was it, then. Jack stood, taking his flask, and reached for a handhold to take him out of this place.
Perhaps the light caught the edge of his blade. Perhaps the boy had known all along. Regardless, Will’s face tipped up to the sun, and as he saw Jack there in the window he lit up with a smile. A nudge to his now-wife’s ribs, and she was looking up as well. Together, the both of them, and blinded by the sun when they’d both be better off in shadow. Shadow didn’t burn you.
They were free, these children. It was their choice to put the shackles back on.
All the rum in Tortuga couldn’t fill the hollow in his ribs. Jack grinned at them, the mad Sparrow grin, swept into a bow, and turned away. In a moment, he was gone from them, and they from him.
Another obligation fulfilled. Another cord to the past cut. Well enough; he had his ship, and that was all a man needed. All he could ever need.
The wind sighed, as if in impatience. Jack ignored it, a luxury of not being at sea, instead straightening his hat and staggering past the church steps. The redcoats there shifted uneasily, exchanging glances, but made no move to follow.
Jack tipped his hat and went on. Decent fellows, redcoats, when they weren’t trying to hang you.
The dock creaked under his weight as he stepped on to it. The away boat was rocking in the wind, arching like a dog eager for his master’s hand. Jack ignored the harbormaster as steadily as the man was ignoring him, opting instead to hum a truly bawdy sea chanty he’d learned in the East Indies. Something about men in corsets and ale. Dreadful, really. Shame he’d only learned the first verse.
“Easy, love,” he crooned to the boat as he climbed inside, folding himself on to the seat. It was a much abused boat, a casualty of Barbossa’s idiocy that Jack’d patched together. He rubbed the side lovingly, then reached to untie the ropes that bound them to the dock. “We pillage, we plunder, we rifle, we loot,” he sang absently as his fingers fumbled the rope, his free hand tracing patterns in the air. “Drink up, me hearties, yo ho…”
Footsteps sounded on the dock, going much too fast for a casual sailor coming to enjoy the weather. Jack tensed, but didn’t let his voice register the change. Better that Norrington think him unprepared. His weaving hand settled, carefully, on the handle of one oar. The other kept untying, faster now. “We kidnap, we ravage and don’t give a hoot. Drink up, me hearties, yo-“
As he was about to push off, a hand latched on to his wrist. Jack reacted, swinging the oar hard enough to twist the boat around, and someone yelped. Jack pushed away from the dock with both arms, rocking the boat, only to find a booted foot hooked in the rim. It didn’t appear to be a uniform boot.
Jack blinked at the foot, then raised his head and regarded the man standing on the edge of the dock. When he was glaring and holding his ribs, Will did look a great deal like his father. Even with the ridiculously fancy clothes.
“Ah,” Jack said, in lieu of anything else to say. Other words might come, yes, but nothing he wanted said. Taking the oar, he tapped Will’s shin. “Right. Congratulations on the happy event. May you have plenty of children to annoy decent pirates, which if they’re anything like their parents they certainly will. Get your foot out of my boat, unless you care to make standing between me and Norrington a common habit.”
Without warning, Will smiled. It was the sort of thing that ought to come with a warning, really. Boy had a blinding smile. “You came back.”
“Yes, well, considering that we are in fact sitting in Port Royal having this discussion, I would call that rather obvious.” Reaching out, Jack grabbed Will’s ankle and tugged without much result. It was a common situation between them, Jack tugging fruitlessly to get away while Will did something incredibly stupid.
He glared at the boy, then around him at the woman. Where Will went, of course, that one led. Apparently today she followed, pulling off clothes as she went. “Miss Swann,” Jack said, slightly pained, “much as I appreciate the view- watch the muttering, lad, I’m not deaf- I believe you’re supposed to take care of that indoors in your husband’s company.”
Elizabeth glanced up from jerking away the heavy skirt, revealing trousers beneath. “Mrs. Turner,” she corrected with that vaguely haughty air of hers. It passed as quickly as it usually did, replaced by a smile. “We would have been earlier, but I had to say goodbye to my father.”
“Goodbye to your…” Jack’s hand twitched on Will’s ankle. It took a moment to recover, but in the interim Jack was fairly sure he stared like a fool. Then he drew his hand back and sat up straight, weighing them with a look. “So where do you think you’re going, then?”
“We’re going with you,” Will said, easy as you please.
“Of course,” Elizabeth added from behind her husband, then sighed out in relief as she sliced the corset down one side. “That is the last time I ever wear one of those… things. Will, may I have your jacket? Thank you.”
And they stood there, looking at him, waiting.
Jack sighed. “This isn’t a daytrip, children.”
Elizabeth perched one hand on each hip. “We know.”
“Do you, then? That…” That was likely true. The boy had said he was a cabin boy, and Elizabeth had managed to survive a week in Barbossa’s care. Neither were strangers to starving, storms, the smell or the likelihood of ugly death. Jack sighed and laid his cards on the table. He rather preferred to keep them tucked inside his sleeve. “These people, they won’t take you back again. ’m surprised they did it once. A pirate’s woman is a used woman to them, and a pirate is something to let dangle from the cliffs. Savvy?”
“Savvy,” Will agreed, which was unusual enough considering that Will had spent a great deal of his time on the Pearl fighting everything Jack said. Then, as if Jack hadn’t said anything at all, he stepped into the boat and turned to help Elizabeth in after him. She tried to wave his hand off, but after a moment seemed to accept that Will wasn’t going to give in first and gracefully accepted. As she was standing in a leaky boat, wearing little but a shift over trousers, any grace was impressive.
The boat rocked a little under new weight and sharp wind. An echo of a familiar voice, methodical and steady as his son’s hammer at the forge: “Thought you were upset they weren’t in your crew.”
Jack waved at the voice, weaving his hands through it. “Wasn’t upset. I’m being careful. Better crew this time. No mutineers. No Barbossa.”
No Barbossa. The wind stilled again, with a last sigh and a ruffle to Will’s hair.
Jack was insane, and he knew it. Too much sun, too much rum, too much seawater and too many dreams. He also knew what he heard, and what he saw, and he knew Bootstrap. A man died for you, you came to trust him a bit.
He had based many a decision on worse. Such as that whore in the Mediterranean, who had looked rather like a woman until he took the wig off…
“Jack?”
He blinked, coming back, and found the children staring. Waiting, while their new captain muttered to himself. At least some members of his crew wouldn’t be trying to interrupt him all the bloody time.
Jack let the smile take him. Taking a hold of the other oar, he shoved it at Will. “Here. You’ll be needing that.”
Credit to the lad, he recovered fast. Muttering something untoward, Will put oars to water and began to row. “I don’t see why you can’t help row,” he groused, but his eyes smiled as he said it.
“Because I’m-“
“Captain Jack Sparrow?” Will asked, rolling his eyes.
“No, lad. Because I have the rum. **And** because I’m Captain Jack Sparrow.”
Will made a rather rude noise. Shameful, really.
Jack sat back, leaning back against the bow, and reached into his jacket. The rum was there, its kiss still burning when he took a sip and passed it to Elizabeth.
Elizabeth, being Elizabeth, took it and drank. For all her protests that rum addled a man’s soul, or whatever she had been on about after burning their supplies, she took to drink well. Lowering it, she gave him a defiant look, then wiped her mouth on her sleeve.
Yes. She would be fine.
Turning, Elizabeth touched Will’s shoulder. Will brought his face up, unfazed by the hard rowing that had already taken them past the morbid warning to pirates, and gave Elizabeth that taken smile again. He drank, too, choking a little (his wife had him soundly thrashed in the drinking aspect of pirating, obviously), but it made it down.
The boy as well, then. Good. Jack hadn’t been concerned, of course, but better the boy not fling himself from the crow’s nest.
A laugh on the wind, distant as the horizon but still distinctive enough to be annoying. Jack glared off the side of the boat at nothing in particular, then took his rum back and poured a bit over the side. There. Let that shut the smug bastard up.
That accomplished, Jack put the rum away and settled in. Elizabeth was humming to herself, so he added voice. “We’re beggars and blighters and ne’er-do-well cads…”
Elizabeth laughed, a lovely sound that rang out over the water. “Drink up, me hearties, yo ho.”
Will eyed his wife as if she had gone slightly mad, which she had, but softened into a smile. He took up what she had been humming, slightly off-key but with a decent sense of rhythm.
Jack tipped his head back to rest against the bow and regarded the sky, letting Elizabeth go on without him. It had been months since the island, and though his memory was honed his access to the memories wasn’t so keen. The words washed over mostly like new. The wind and the sea sang with them until her voice died out.
“To freedom,” she said suddenly, her voice strong enough to ring across the water.
“To freedom.” Will’s voice was softer, low, like the steady lap of ocean water that could wear a man to bone.
There was silence. Ah. His turn, presumably. Jack lifted his head and blinked at them, considering. Them in their tattered society clothes and their new taste of freedom, drunk on it, drunk on each other, drunk on the sea.
He smiled. “To love.”
To their love. The way they touched each other was purity itself, tenderness of the kind that poems were written about, ferocity under it to be turned on whoever threatened them. Will had meant it when he said he’d die for the girl. Apparently Will hadn’t taken into account that Elizabeth would die or kill for him, in return. It was a dangerous thing, that love, and its dangers were written on their faces each time they looked at each other and smiled, as they were now.
Let them have it. Jack preferred more pleasant occupations.
“To love,” he murmured under his breath, leaning back against the bow. “And to not falling into it.”
The wind laughed across the water.
***
End.