The Captain's cabin on the Black Pearl is very dark. It is also smaller than Jack remembers, and noisier, both of which he decides to blame on Barbossa, who is snoring like a walrus—an exceptionally hairy, old, greedy, treacherous, ship-stealing walrus—in the Captain's bunk.

Jack, being still technically dead, is incapable of sleep, so he's refrained from laying claim to the bunk; but the cabin—the Captain's cabin—is a sore point. Frankly, it's decidedly dull here in the dark of a night-time watch, but it's a Captain's prerogative to go below when he's not needed on deck, and Jack isn't about to be seen hanging around the ship looking for something to do while Hector bloody Barbossa takes his captainly ease.

At least he managed to shut the wretched monkey in a cask, and lose said cask deep in the hold. It'll escape of course—nothing holds an undead monkey for long—but he's damned if he'll share the cabin with Barbossa and his eldritch pet.

He is damned, in fact. Probably. Dead, almost certainly, which he feels has to be much the same thing, for all intents and purposes, although a theologian would no doubt quibble. But nevertheless and notwithstanding: this is Captain Jack Sparrow's cabin, and he isn't sharing it with a disrespectful simian. Not on top of everything—everyone—else.

Where'd the damn monkey come from anyway? Hector never showed signs of monkey-hankering in the old days.

Too busy hankering after us, love, mutters a voice Jack is quite definitely not listening to.

He must've picked up the scrawny, smelly thing pretty damn sharpish after waving goodbye to that godforsaken dot in the ocean. It'd obviously made itself part of the crew by the time they found the treasure and the curse.

Unless he acquired it later and let it curse itself stealing a shiny coin from the chest. Hadn't thought of that, had you?

"It doesn't matter," Jack tells himselves firmly, "when he took up with the bloody monkey. What matters is getting him to stop stealing my ship."

Aye! chorus the voices he isn't hearing, which at least is better than when they argue. Not that he hears them either way.

He hears, luv. Problem is, he don't listen.

Not much. Not really. Well, sometimes.

The big stern window swings round towards... towards whatever it is that bathes the blasted Locker in that discouraging, bleached glare. This far out to sea, it looks nearly harmless, like the light of a full moon just over the horizon. Might be bright enough to read the chart by if he sits near the window.

He tops up his leather cup, and takes the bottle along for refills. Death has stolen its lovely comforting warmth, but it still tastes right—more or less—and he suspects enough of it will make him pass out. Some of him, anyway, which would be a welcome relief, however you look at it.

He's always loved the window seat tucked into the corner under that great sweep of glass and wood. He tells himself he's happy there sipping rum, munching on the peanuts Hector has thoughtfully provided, and contemplating the altogether satisfactory sight of the Locker dwindling into the distance.

But distance ain't enough, is it? If you're still in the same world the Locker's in, then you're still dead, savvy?

Unusually perceptive that one (albeit disheartening), which makes him harder to ignore than the others, but Jack does his best.

Soundlessly, he lifts the cylindrical box from its place beside the bowl of nuts and places it on his lap. He holds his breath and, ever so carefully, squeezes the catch. With only the tiniest of clicks—much quieter than creak of timbers or jingle of hair ornaments—it gives.

Barbossa's eyes fly open in a splash of watery blue. "Wonderin' where we're headed, were ye, Jack?"

Bugger.

"Just looking for something to pass the time." He tries to sound as bored as he felt a few minutes ago.

"Be that so?"

Death hasn't done anything to make Barbossa's smugness less irritating.

My death or his?

Jack hears another voice (not his for once): Ten years, ye carry that pistol, an' now ye waste yer shot; and he remembers the moment mockery turned to realisation.

He wanted Hector dead a long time. No regrets there. But life regained at the very moment it was snatched away: even at his own moment of triumph, the cruelty of it bothered him. Given his current position, the irony is more than he can contemplate. He covers a shudder by reaching for something to put in his mouth.

"And ye can stop eatin' Jack's nuts!"

Jack glares at the suddenly suspect snacks.

And just how is sharing a bowl of nibbles with an admittedly scuzzy and insalubrious little primate going to hurt a dead man, eh?

He shrugs, chews, swallows. Smiles.

"I wondered who'd been licking the salt off 'em," he says, as casually as he can. Then, more indignantly than intended, "And I was Jack before it was!"

"'Course ye were," says Hector gently.

Gently? That's odd.

Probably reckons it's more unsettling than simple cruelty.

Barbossa rises from the bunk wearing only his britches and that pendant, pulling a blanket round his shoulders like a cloak.

So it's cold here, then.

'Least we're missing that.

Speak for yourself: I'm freezing me balls off...

"Will you shut it!"

"Beg pardon?" Barbossa makes the words more accusation than apology.

"Oh. Er... Nothing at all. Aye... 'Course I was, indeed. An' don't you forget it!"

"Too late to be changin' the name now—'twould upset the poor creature somethin' terrible. I ne'er thought to have the both of ye on the one ship, ye see. Seein' as I thought ye dead when I named him."

"You thought you'd killed me."

"Aye." Hector takes the rum bottle from Jack's hand, swigs, and passes it back, never looking at Jack. "And, after that, ye did kill me; and the handsome, fierce lass killed you: now ye be dead, and I ain't, and I'm a-tryin' to fetch ye back." He meets Jack's gaze at last. "Square?"

Jack looks out of the window at the flat, dark sea and the distant light. He shrugs. "Can't be square or unsquare if I'm dead, savvy?"

"Aha! So that's what be troubling ye! 'Twill pass when we get ye back to the other side."

Ask him!

He's been here.

Ask him how he got back! Ask him!

Does it ever go away?

"I have it on good authority any fool can get to the Locker," Jack says. "Going back the other way's the tricky part. Seems to me, you could use my navigational skills there, mate."

He lets it hang in the air, for while they both know Barbossa's the better Captain...

No he ain't!

He is, and you know it!

Well, he don't know I know. So there's no call to be pointing it out to him, eh?

... there's nobody in the world that can navigate to match Jack Sparrow.

Captain Jack Sparrow.

Obviously. But I don't need to use a title when I'm talking to meself now, do I?

I don't talk to meself!

"Aye, lad. That we could."

That odd gentleness again. Most disconcerting.

I 'xpect he's after something.

Isn't everyone?

"What be ye waitin' for? I said ye could open it."

"What?"

Could you please try not to sound as though the squiddy beastie sucked your brains out through your lug holes?

"Oh, yes. Open the chart."

And could you kindly stow the chattering before you make me miss anything else?

Lad! He called us lad! Don't tell me you're just going to sit there and let him!

I need him!

Will you stop thinking with my balls... your balls... er... just... stop, alright?

"I'll take a look at it then, shall I?"

I need him. To help me. Sail. Back. To. The. Land. Of. The. Living. Savvy?

Oh, that! I though we might have let ourselves get distracted again by...

SHUT IT!

Jack unrolls the chart, and hopes those matchless navigational skills are indeed his. Because if they have to rely on one of these useless tosspots to get them on the right course, then they are comprehensively screwed.

How hard can it be, if a giant squid could bring us here?

Ah, but could a giant squid take us back, eh?

Not much use to Old Fish-face if it's limited to one-way travel, is it?

Listen, hair-for-brains! Just because it killed you, doesn't mean it had to deliver you to the Locker in person, as it were. It probably just goes on frolicking its tentacly little frolics over in the land... er... the ocean of the living with never a thought for the desolate destination that awaits its late lunch.

I really wish he wouldn't talk like that all the time.

There's no call to be abusive...

Oh, I get it! "Late lunch." Quite clever, really.

For a dead man.

The chart is beautiful, confusing, and like nothing he's ever seen. How in Hell can something that was rolled into a tube be made of concentric, individually rotating circles?

Oooo, pretty!

And they spin—look!

He slides them around for a while, trying to resolve the writing into a single message, or a single language...

No, silly, the mermaid! She's got three titties! And dreadlocks.

I like dreadlocks.

"You can read it more than one way." He just saves it from sounding like a question, but he can't keep from glancing to Barbossa for confirmation.

"More ways than I can count. To be honest with ye, I generally stares at it for a while, then sails on gut feelin' an' plain, old-fashioned desperation." Exhaustion shows through for a moment, then he winks at Jack with a sudden, achingly familiar twinkle in those pale eyes. "Seems to work as well as aught else."

Bastard marooned me!

Pirate, in't he?

Don't you dare smile at him, Jack Sparrow!

Jack scowls resolutely and studies the chart. "Shut up and let me think," he snarls. "And see if you can find me some nuts that still taste salty."

Oh fuck.

You never stop, do you?

Of all the monolithically inappropriate things to say.

P'raps he didn't notice?

Aye. I can see him not noticing, right now.

Which is sadly true. Barbossa's eyebrows have levitated to his receding hair. But he has the grace to keep quiet, so Jack can feign innocence. Or ignorance. Or possibly insanity. Whichever is least implausible.

Luckily, he is saved further embarrassment because, at this point, he has a breakthrough with the chart.

So it was him doing the navigating. I could've sworn it were me.

"This ring shows our world! The one we need to get back to."

How're you going to read a chart? You can't hardly write your own name.

"Aye, 'twere what I thought at first, but nothin' be in its proper place. Ye've Madagascar over here, Malabar and Serendib yonder; this looks to be the coast of Virginia, but all turned around; an' if this be Finisterre, where be North?"

Don't need letters to read a chart—'s all pictures, innit? You just needs to look at 'em right.

"You just need to look at it right."

"I've looked every way I can, Jack, an' I tell ye, it makes no sense! How's a man to plot a course when North be everywhere and nowhere?"

Hector's close to panic now. Jack can see desperation at the edges of his eyes—the same desperation he himself has been feeling since... Well, for a long time, anyway. But not any more. Because now he understands the map.

Of course!

Obvious really, once you know what you're looking for.

"Forget North. North's up here." He gestures to the timbers over their heads. "Or down there." He waves at the floor, hesitates. It's not easy to put this into words, or even hand-waving. "It's all rolled up around itself and spread out again, only different, because it was bent before it was flat. See?"

Simple! Don't know what all the fuss was about.

Well, I still don't see it...

Neither does Barbossa, evidently. He chews the side of his finger as he looks across the chart at Jack, shaking his head. "Nay, lad. But ye do, don't ye?"

Oh, it's good to see hope spark in Hector's eyes, and to know he's the cause of it. But there's no time to gloat because he's caught up in reading the chart. "Jamaica's here, eh? Isla da Muerta'd be somewhere hereabouts; that's Havana—looks a long way from Jamaica, but it ain't—and England ain't shown, but it'd be approximately... there." He marks England's hypothetical location on Barbossa's thigh with a peanut and rather more precision than his understanding of the map actually warrants, because he can't resist adding a bit of drama; and the point is that he does understand it.

"So where be we now?"

Aye. That's the question, innit? Say what you like about Hector Barbossa, but there's no flies him.

Although there probably were when he was a corpse in that cave.

After I shot him...

I never!

Jack leans over the map, wishes for deafness. "This is the Locker, here..."

Oooo, I see it! Horrible, dry-looking place. Even the ink's gone all crusty...

"We must've sailed this way... no, that way—see the shoals there? Doesn't matter anyhow: point is, we need to get from this ring onto that one."

"And how do ye propose we do that?"

There! Don't know, do you, clever clogs?

"I've absolutely no idea!" Jack feels almost as cheerful as he sounds, which is a surprise, even to him. "P'raps we sail right on over, or p'raps there's some special procedure. I 'xpect all will become apparent when we get nearer to it."

An' if it don't?

"So we be on the right heading, then?" Hector's altogether given up bluffing, and Jack realises with a shock just how lost his former First Mate is.

"'Course we are!" He beams, and looks out of the window again, assessing course and speed as best he can in this flat, lifeless ocean. "Reckon we'll be there before noon."

Who's bluffing now?

Merely deriving a plausible inference from the evidence available.

And ain't it worth a little derivation for the look on Hector's face! Jack's willing to bet his life (if only because he still lacks one) that he's seeing genuine admiration. And right now, admiration is something Jack needs very badly indeed. So badly, in fact, that he'd probably settle for fake admiration if it appeared to be the best offer on the table.

Hector returns the chart to its case, runs a tired hand over his eyes, and slumps back into the window seat. "Thank ye, Jack," he sighs, absently lifting the peanut that used to be England to his lips. Then he stops, and feeds it to Jack instead.

Ugh! He let him do that!

I like peanuts. And he was saying thank you...

Spit it out! Spit it out!

Maybe he spits, or maybe he swallows; Jack doesn't know, because the peanut is irrelevant. What matters is that he grabs Hector's wrist in both his hands and presses his cheek against Hector's palm, which curves to cup his face as the thumb strokes softly over his cheekbone.

Jack slams his eyes shut and tries to bring his breathing under control. How in Hell did this happen?

"Easy, lad!" murmurs Hector, his other hand coming to rest on Jack's hair. "We'll soon have ye back. Believe me, I know how bad ye be wantin' that. Really I do."

Jack doesn't trust himself to speak, so he nods his head in those cradling hands, acknowledging the truth of it.

"If this works, we'll be back to tryin' to kill each other tomorrow," breathes Hector.

Jack can't decide if it's a threat or a regret, but he agrees anyway. "No point killing me while I'm dead." It sounds quite good: his voice doesn't wobble at all.

Hector chuckles. "And ye'll not risk killin' me again until ye be safe back. Could be our last chance to trust one another..."

Jack's not sure who starts it—could have been Hector or any of a number of other people—but they're kissing, and it's good. He climbs onto Hector's lap, clutches tight, wraps arms and legs round to cling closer, trying to get their bodies as close as their tongues that dive and twine together...

At some point, he remembers, from a largely unsatisfactory episode of experimentation in the Locker, that his breath smells rather stronger and less pleasant than might be hoped. He doesn't think Hector's the sort to mind about that, but just in case, he tries to breathe through his nose. On the few occasions he can breathe at all.

He also remembers that sliding a hand down his sinuous back and onto surprisingly sensual buttocks was more enjoyable than he'd ever guessed. He guides one of Hector's hands that way and is rewarded with a low moan and an oath.

Hector's blanket slipped off long ago, and now urgent hands are pulling at Jack's britches. He wriggles out of them happily, tugs his shirt over his head, and sets to work on Hector's laces, which are strained tight over a very promising bulge. Quite outstandingly promising, in fact, as becomes clear when the last knot slides undone and the fabric panels fall open.

Just as Jack is starting to enjoy being dead, two things happen.

First, the cabin door thumps open and Ragetti's head appears. "Cap'n Bar... um... Cap'n Sp... ... Cap'ns! Come quick! The wind's dropped jus' like that, an' everyfink's gone all eerie!"

Then a smouldering, skeletal monkey comes crashing through the bulkhead in a burst of gun smoke, snatches Jack's britches, and hurls itself and them through the stern window in a tinkling cascade of shattered glass.

Several of Jack scream at the monkey. Others wail in frustration and punch the floor, which is as painful as it is stupid. But the Jack Barbossa and Ragetti can see wraps himself in Barbossa's blanket, sweeps the shards off the window seat, and puts his feet up.

"Well, go on then!" he bosses. "Get up there and sort things out! I'll be along later to see how you're doing."

Hector snarls, but pulls on a shirt and stomps out, rolling his eyes and sighing all the way.

Ragetti lingers in the doorway, mismatched eyes swerving from the smouldering hole in the wall to Jack's discarded clothes, to the unmade bunk.

Jack waits until they settle on him, now comfortably sprawled with rum and chart. Then he smiles graciously and proffers a bowl.

"Peanut?" he inquires.

______________________________________________
Nuts Out series:
First Nut out of the Locker
Second Nut Out of the Locker: Like Nuts for Bananas
Third Nut Out of the Locker: Intense, with a hint of Kraken
Fourth Nut Out of the Locker: Two's Company
Fifth Nut Out of the Locker: Small Island Paradise
Sixth Nut Out of the Locker: Madness and Brilliance
Seventh Nut Out of the Locker: Goats and Monkeys
(Almost) Eighth Nut Out of the Locker:Sibling Rivalry
Ninth Nut out of the Locker: Last Men Standing