"Black Waters," Chapter Thirteen
Title: "Black Waters"
Author:
sheila_snow
Rating: NC-17
Pairing: Jack Sparrow/Will Turner
Warnings: A/U, Angst, Non-Con, Gratuitous Will Turner Abuse
Disclaimer: The Mouse owns 'em -- he just doesn't know how to treat 'em right. I'm not treating them very nice either, but I'm most certainly not making any money from this!
Summary: Will and Jack are finally back aboard the Pearl, but Anamaria can't understand why things haven't returned to normal.
Chapter Thirteen
Anamaria sighed loudly as she stepped out into the brightness of the maindeck. Granted, she wasn’t the best cook to ply the seven seas, but she'd thought she'd be able to tempt young Will into eating at least a little of the creole soup she had so laboriously put together.
The Pearl had briefly anchored at a quiet little island known only to a few mariners - most of them smugglers - and she had managed to barter for most of what she had needed to make her grandmother's old recipe. She had, of course, stolen the rest.
Well, she was a pirate, after all, and she dared not let herself get too soft . . . or lose her larcenous touch.
She stood just beyond the cabin door, out of sight of the quarterdeck and the solitary figure she knew would be standing at the wheel.
Ana eyed the savory-smelling concoction in the bowl she carried and pondered what the blazes to do with it. Jack would not be pleased, to say the least, to know that William hadn't eaten. The young man simply refused to eat much of anything, although she had found that if she left his tray in the cabin, she would sometimes find a portion of it gone when she returned.
She was worried, and she knew Jack was worried. The captain had high hopes that their brief foray for fresh foodstuffs would tempt Will's appetite, and she was loathe to leave the bowl for Jack to find that it had gone uneaten . . . again. Ana looked down at it and grimaced. She felt too unsettled by recent events to eat it herself, and if she simply threw it overboard, she knew the Pearl's obsessively attentive captain would probably spot it.
The solution to her dilemma (as had happened so often in the past) presented itself directly to her before she even began to look for it.
"Mornin', ma'am," Tom Smythers said as he walked by, tugging his forelock in nervous greeting.
She grabbed a burly arm with her free hand, pulling him abruptly to a stumbling stop. She thrust the bowl and spoon into his startled hands. "Here, eat this!" she hissed, looking around to make sure Jack hadn't come down onto the maindeck.
When she saw no sign of her captain, she turned back to the open-mouthed sailor and narrowed her eyes. "And didn't I tell ye to stop callin' me 'ma'am'?"
"Aye, ma' . . . ah . . . yes, you did . . . ah . . . Ana . . . Anamaria."
She sighed again. She knew she made the poor man nervous. He was Navy through and through, and still couldn't get his mind around those silly superstitions about women and ships. Well, he'd better get used to it, because until she got her promised ship, she wasn't goin' nowhere.
"Well?" she asked impatiently.
"Ah, well what, ma' . . . uhm, Anamaria?"
She gestured impatiently to the bowl still clutched in the oblivious old sailor's hands. "Are ye goin' to eat it?"
"Oh, aye . . . I'll just take it down. . . ." He started across the open deck toward the main hatch amidships, and Ana grabbed his arm.
"No, no!" she hissed again, glancing up again toward the quarterdeck. "Eat it here. Now," she added emphatically, pushing him down onto a convenient coil of cable.
Eyes wide, and no doubt with all his previous misgivings confirmed about the wisdom of allowing women on a fighting ship, he began to eat the contents of the bowl. He kept one suspicious eye on Ana as he was doing it, however.
She ignored the wary gaze, staring imperiously at the old sailor, her arms crossed and one small foot tapping impatiently.
Unfortunately, Smythers had only made it halfway through the contents when Ana heard the telltale creak of someone descending the quarterdeck ladder.
"Damn!" she whispered. Risking a quick look back to confirm her fears, she reached down and grabbed the bowl from the wide-eyed Smythers. Waiting for the moment when Jack would be the most distracted, she desperately flung the bowl over the side of the ship just as he alighted from the last rung of the ladder.
And, of course, Jack's observant eyes caught the motion just before the bowl entered the waves with a dull splash.
Leaning over the railing, puzzled, the Pearl's captain turned around and asked, "Did you see that?"
"See what?" Anamaria asked innocently.
"I dunno. It looked. . . ." Jack cupped his expressive hands into the approximate shape and continued, ". . . .it looked like a bowl." He returned his doubtful gaze to the water, assuming no doubt the placid ocean wouldn't dare to keep something from Jack Sparrow that Jack Sparrow wanted to know.
Ana glanced down at Smythers and winced. The utterly perplexed sailor still had one hand locked in the position of holding said bowl while his other hand still retained the spoon. Ana again took advantage of Jack's momentary lack of attention and kicked Smythers soundly at the tender juncture of hip and rump.
Jack swung around at the sound of the strangled yelp, but he thankfully missed spotting the spoon as it skittered across the conveniently canting deck and out of sight.
Ana ignored Jack's raised eyebrow, stating sweetly to Smythers, "Thankee, Tom, ye've been most helpful."
Smythers eyed her uneasily as he passed her at a cautious distance, absentmindedly rubbing his hip. "You're welcome, ma'am," he said warily, moving off very quickly toward the bow . . . and perceived safety.
Jack sauntered up to her, looking after the old sailor with a puzzled frown. "Haven't you told him before not to call you 'ma'am'?" he asked.
"Aye," she said tersely. She glared up at her captain, daring him to say anything else, and added, "But don't worry, I let 'im live anyways."
He smiled wanly, giving her a mock bow. "Thank you, my lady, for your kindness and generosity."
She slapped him hard across the face, purely out of reflex.
Jack chuckled softly, his hand rubbing his cheek. "I think I actually needed that," he said in a tone of wonder, his tired dark eyes glinting briefly in amusement.
In spite of herself, Ana grinned back, glad to have been the cause of seeing a little of the old Jack return. She had missed his impish pranks and infectious charm these last endless, harrowing weeks.
When Jack glanced back at the closed cabin door, however, his face fell back into its recent habitually worried frown - a look, Ana thought, that didn’t suit Captain Jack Sparrow at all. Not one bit.
"How is he?" Jack asked softly, his dark eyes almost begging for a positive response.
She frowned, more at the knowledge that Jack wouldn’t go see for himself how his young charge was doing than at his asking her. But that was how the course had been laid of late. After he had risked life, limb and even his precious Pearl to rescue Will, Jack seemed - "reluctant" was the mildest term she could come up with - to even visit with the young blacksmith.
Oh, she knew that in the darkest part of the midwatch, when he knew the lad to be asleep, he would creep silently into the darkened captain's cabin - almost like a child who knew he was venturing where he was expressly forbidden to go. He would sit there, for hours, watching, waiting . . . for she knew not what.
She also knew that he never spoke a single word to young William.
She knew this because William had asked her one day - almost as an afterthought and as if the answer meant nothing more to him than idle conversation - if Jack was still aboard the ship.
That question had shocked her speechless, which, according to anyone who knew her well, was not an easy feat to accomplish. She knew she must have been staring at him liked a landed fish, mouth agape, but she had finally recovered enough to say, "Ye're on the Black Pearl, lad. Cap'n Jack'll not be far away."
Will had looked at her askance, then said softly, "I thought he wasn't aboard since he hasn't. . . ." He cut himself off, his shoulders hunching miserably, and he had then returned his weary gaze to the aft bulkhead.
And the truth was, William did not look good . . . not good at all. He seemed reluctant to leave the relative safety of his cot in the captain's cabin, and she rarely saw him stir enough to even walk about the cabin anymore. If he was thin when Jack had found him a week ago, he was near emaciated now, and she thought it was a good thing the cabin was too dark at night for Jack to see how bad the young man actually did look.
She knew something was very wrong with Will, more so than the injuries inflicted upon him during his captivity would seem to account for, but she had no medical knowledge, other than the potions and poultices her mother had passed onto her.
Ana looked away nervously, trying to come up with some method of saying what she knew Jack wouldn't want to hear. She felt more than heard Jack's slow, sibilant inhalation.
"That bad, eh?" The voice was low, almost . . . broken.
Snapping her head back around and hating the sadness she saw in the deep brown eyes, she said bluntly, "He be needin' a doctor, Cap'n. We should bring 'im back to Port Roy. . . ."
"No!"
The shout rang loud and clear over the unnaturally silent ship's maindeck, and a few of the hands glanced up quickly to make sure their captain's displeasure was not aimed at them.
When Ana looked back, Jack had his arms crossed, his chin up, and his kohl-lined eyes were flashing angrily. He leaned forward into her personal space and added again, more quietly but just as forcibly, "No."
She leaned forward herself now, her concern for Will fueling her own easily roused, stubborn anger. "Then why don't ye go and take a look at 'im, Cap'n, take a good long look and tell me that boy don't need more attention than we can give 'im." She stabbed a delicate finger into Jack's chest. "An' especially more than ye seem to be willin' to give 'im."
Jack's face lost all traces of its former belligerence and his eyes widened impossibly large. He straightened defensively.
Ana had the true heart of a pirate, and she knew it was utterly foolish not to take advantage of an opponent's momentary weakness.
Give no quarter.
She leaned further toward him, her lips compressing into a thin line. "Ye give the ship's ballast more personal attention than ye've given that boy." The imperious finger stabbed again. "In fact, one would almost think that ye were the one who kidnaped and tortured that lad!"
Anyone watching their exchange would have thought Ana's finger to be a sword, given the way Jack Sparrow abruptly fell away from its impact and into the cabin door. He slumped against it - almost as if his knees wouldn't hold him up - and he shuddered visibly in the warm tropical air, his palms clenching into the rough wood.
Jack looked up briefly and Ana gasped, taking an involuntary step back at the pain and misery projected from those impassioned eyes.
He looked almost as if he were seeking something from her - relief, comfort, absolution? But then one of his clenching palms found the handle to the cabin door. He froze, then turned slowly around, staring at the wooden portal as if he were seeing it for the first time - as if it had suddenly, magically, appeared before him.
Ana watched breathlessly as Jack started to turn the handle, then stopped again, his breath visibly hitching, his shoulders tensing. He abruptly released the handle as if he had been burned and placed both hands on the cabin door instead, his forehead coming to rest slowly against its rough planks in defeat.
After a few endless moments, Captain Jack Sparrow straightened, turned deliberately around and walked off toward the quarterdeck, giving her only a bare nod in passing.
Ana continued to stare in disbelief at the cabin door, dumbfounded. This was so unlike the Jack she knew that he almost seemed a stranger to her. Jack Sparrow was impulsive, fearless, even reckless, and this inability to do something as simple as walk through his own cabin door was a complete and absolute astonishment to her.
She didn't know what was going on, what had happened on that blighted ship, what was going on between the pirate captain and the blacksmith . . . but she sure as hell was going to find out.
---------------------------------
Author:
sheila_snow
Rating: NC-17
Pairing: Jack Sparrow/Will Turner
Warnings: A/U, Angst, Non-Con, Gratuitous Will Turner Abuse
Disclaimer: The Mouse owns 'em -- he just doesn't know how to treat 'em right. I'm not treating them very nice either, but I'm most certainly not making any money from this!
Summary: Will and Jack are finally back aboard the Pearl, but Anamaria can't understand why things haven't returned to normal.
Chapter Thirteen
Anamaria sighed loudly as she stepped out into the brightness of the maindeck. Granted, she wasn’t the best cook to ply the seven seas, but she'd thought she'd be able to tempt young Will into eating at least a little of the creole soup she had so laboriously put together.
The Pearl had briefly anchored at a quiet little island known only to a few mariners - most of them smugglers - and she had managed to barter for most of what she had needed to make her grandmother's old recipe. She had, of course, stolen the rest.
Well, she was a pirate, after all, and she dared not let herself get too soft . . . or lose her larcenous touch.
She stood just beyond the cabin door, out of sight of the quarterdeck and the solitary figure she knew would be standing at the wheel.
Ana eyed the savory-smelling concoction in the bowl she carried and pondered what the blazes to do with it. Jack would not be pleased, to say the least, to know that William hadn't eaten. The young man simply refused to eat much of anything, although she had found that if she left his tray in the cabin, she would sometimes find a portion of it gone when she returned.
She was worried, and she knew Jack was worried. The captain had high hopes that their brief foray for fresh foodstuffs would tempt Will's appetite, and she was loathe to leave the bowl for Jack to find that it had gone uneaten . . . again. Ana looked down at it and grimaced. She felt too unsettled by recent events to eat it herself, and if she simply threw it overboard, she knew the Pearl's obsessively attentive captain would probably spot it.
The solution to her dilemma (as had happened so often in the past) presented itself directly to her before she even began to look for it.
"Mornin', ma'am," Tom Smythers said as he walked by, tugging his forelock in nervous greeting.
She grabbed a burly arm with her free hand, pulling him abruptly to a stumbling stop. She thrust the bowl and spoon into his startled hands. "Here, eat this!" she hissed, looking around to make sure Jack hadn't come down onto the maindeck.
When she saw no sign of her captain, she turned back to the open-mouthed sailor and narrowed her eyes. "And didn't I tell ye to stop callin' me 'ma'am'?"
"Aye, ma' . . . ah . . . yes, you did . . . ah . . . Ana . . . Anamaria."
She sighed again. She knew she made the poor man nervous. He was Navy through and through, and still couldn't get his mind around those silly superstitions about women and ships. Well, he'd better get used to it, because until she got her promised ship, she wasn't goin' nowhere.
"Well?" she asked impatiently.
"Ah, well what, ma' . . . uhm, Anamaria?"
She gestured impatiently to the bowl still clutched in the oblivious old sailor's hands. "Are ye goin' to eat it?"
"Oh, aye . . . I'll just take it down. . . ." He started across the open deck toward the main hatch amidships, and Ana grabbed his arm.
"No, no!" she hissed again, glancing up again toward the quarterdeck. "Eat it here. Now," she added emphatically, pushing him down onto a convenient coil of cable.
Eyes wide, and no doubt with all his previous misgivings confirmed about the wisdom of allowing women on a fighting ship, he began to eat the contents of the bowl. He kept one suspicious eye on Ana as he was doing it, however.
She ignored the wary gaze, staring imperiously at the old sailor, her arms crossed and one small foot tapping impatiently.
Unfortunately, Smythers had only made it halfway through the contents when Ana heard the telltale creak of someone descending the quarterdeck ladder.
"Damn!" she whispered. Risking a quick look back to confirm her fears, she reached down and grabbed the bowl from the wide-eyed Smythers. Waiting for the moment when Jack would be the most distracted, she desperately flung the bowl over the side of the ship just as he alighted from the last rung of the ladder.
And, of course, Jack's observant eyes caught the motion just before the bowl entered the waves with a dull splash.
Leaning over the railing, puzzled, the Pearl's captain turned around and asked, "Did you see that?"
"See what?" Anamaria asked innocently.
"I dunno. It looked. . . ." Jack cupped his expressive hands into the approximate shape and continued, ". . . .it looked like a bowl." He returned his doubtful gaze to the water, assuming no doubt the placid ocean wouldn't dare to keep something from Jack Sparrow that Jack Sparrow wanted to know.
Ana glanced down at Smythers and winced. The utterly perplexed sailor still had one hand locked in the position of holding said bowl while his other hand still retained the spoon. Ana again took advantage of Jack's momentary lack of attention and kicked Smythers soundly at the tender juncture of hip and rump.
Jack swung around at the sound of the strangled yelp, but he thankfully missed spotting the spoon as it skittered across the conveniently canting deck and out of sight.
Ana ignored Jack's raised eyebrow, stating sweetly to Smythers, "Thankee, Tom, ye've been most helpful."
Smythers eyed her uneasily as he passed her at a cautious distance, absentmindedly rubbing his hip. "You're welcome, ma'am," he said warily, moving off very quickly toward the bow . . . and perceived safety.
Jack sauntered up to her, looking after the old sailor with a puzzled frown. "Haven't you told him before not to call you 'ma'am'?" he asked.
"Aye," she said tersely. She glared up at her captain, daring him to say anything else, and added, "But don't worry, I let 'im live anyways."
He smiled wanly, giving her a mock bow. "Thank you, my lady, for your kindness and generosity."
She slapped him hard across the face, purely out of reflex.
Jack chuckled softly, his hand rubbing his cheek. "I think I actually needed that," he said in a tone of wonder, his tired dark eyes glinting briefly in amusement.
In spite of herself, Ana grinned back, glad to have been the cause of seeing a little of the old Jack return. She had missed his impish pranks and infectious charm these last endless, harrowing weeks.
When Jack glanced back at the closed cabin door, however, his face fell back into its recent habitually worried frown - a look, Ana thought, that didn’t suit Captain Jack Sparrow at all. Not one bit.
"How is he?" Jack asked softly, his dark eyes almost begging for a positive response.
She frowned, more at the knowledge that Jack wouldn’t go see for himself how his young charge was doing than at his asking her. But that was how the course had been laid of late. After he had risked life, limb and even his precious Pearl to rescue Will, Jack seemed - "reluctant" was the mildest term she could come up with - to even visit with the young blacksmith.
Oh, she knew that in the darkest part of the midwatch, when he knew the lad to be asleep, he would creep silently into the darkened captain's cabin - almost like a child who knew he was venturing where he was expressly forbidden to go. He would sit there, for hours, watching, waiting . . . for she knew not what.
She also knew that he never spoke a single word to young William.
She knew this because William had asked her one day - almost as an afterthought and as if the answer meant nothing more to him than idle conversation - if Jack was still aboard the ship.
That question had shocked her speechless, which, according to anyone who knew her well, was not an easy feat to accomplish. She knew she must have been staring at him liked a landed fish, mouth agape, but she had finally recovered enough to say, "Ye're on the Black Pearl, lad. Cap'n Jack'll not be far away."
Will had looked at her askance, then said softly, "I thought he wasn't aboard since he hasn't. . . ." He cut himself off, his shoulders hunching miserably, and he had then returned his weary gaze to the aft bulkhead.
And the truth was, William did not look good . . . not good at all. He seemed reluctant to leave the relative safety of his cot in the captain's cabin, and she rarely saw him stir enough to even walk about the cabin anymore. If he was thin when Jack had found him a week ago, he was near emaciated now, and she thought it was a good thing the cabin was too dark at night for Jack to see how bad the young man actually did look.
She knew something was very wrong with Will, more so than the injuries inflicted upon him during his captivity would seem to account for, but she had no medical knowledge, other than the potions and poultices her mother had passed onto her.
Ana looked away nervously, trying to come up with some method of saying what she knew Jack wouldn't want to hear. She felt more than heard Jack's slow, sibilant inhalation.
"That bad, eh?" The voice was low, almost . . . broken.
Snapping her head back around and hating the sadness she saw in the deep brown eyes, she said bluntly, "He be needin' a doctor, Cap'n. We should bring 'im back to Port Roy. . . ."
"No!"
The shout rang loud and clear over the unnaturally silent ship's maindeck, and a few of the hands glanced up quickly to make sure their captain's displeasure was not aimed at them.
When Ana looked back, Jack had his arms crossed, his chin up, and his kohl-lined eyes were flashing angrily. He leaned forward into her personal space and added again, more quietly but just as forcibly, "No."
She leaned forward herself now, her concern for Will fueling her own easily roused, stubborn anger. "Then why don't ye go and take a look at 'im, Cap'n, take a good long look and tell me that boy don't need more attention than we can give 'im." She stabbed a delicate finger into Jack's chest. "An' especially more than ye seem to be willin' to give 'im."
Jack's face lost all traces of its former belligerence and his eyes widened impossibly large. He straightened defensively.
Ana had the true heart of a pirate, and she knew it was utterly foolish not to take advantage of an opponent's momentary weakness.
Give no quarter.
She leaned further toward him, her lips compressing into a thin line. "Ye give the ship's ballast more personal attention than ye've given that boy." The imperious finger stabbed again. "In fact, one would almost think that ye were the one who kidnaped and tortured that lad!"
Anyone watching their exchange would have thought Ana's finger to be a sword, given the way Jack Sparrow abruptly fell away from its impact and into the cabin door. He slumped against it - almost as if his knees wouldn't hold him up - and he shuddered visibly in the warm tropical air, his palms clenching into the rough wood.
Jack looked up briefly and Ana gasped, taking an involuntary step back at the pain and misery projected from those impassioned eyes.
He looked almost as if he were seeking something from her - relief, comfort, absolution? But then one of his clenching palms found the handle to the cabin door. He froze, then turned slowly around, staring at the wooden portal as if he were seeing it for the first time - as if it had suddenly, magically, appeared before him.
Ana watched breathlessly as Jack started to turn the handle, then stopped again, his breath visibly hitching, his shoulders tensing. He abruptly released the handle as if he had been burned and placed both hands on the cabin door instead, his forehead coming to rest slowly against its rough planks in defeat.
After a few endless moments, Captain Jack Sparrow straightened, turned deliberately around and walked off toward the quarterdeck, giving her only a bare nod in passing.
Ana continued to stare in disbelief at the cabin door, dumbfounded. This was so unlike the Jack she knew that he almost seemed a stranger to her. Jack Sparrow was impulsive, fearless, even reckless, and this inability to do something as simple as walk through his own cabin door was a complete and absolute astonishment to her.
She didn't know what was going on, what had happened on that blighted ship, what was going on between the pirate captain and the blacksmith . . . but she sure as hell was going to find out.
---------------------------------