Before him lay the open sea, a deep opaque blue unmarred by any sign of land. Behind, no more than a faint and fading blur on the horizon, lay the parched desert of Davy Jones' Locker. Beneath his feet creaked the black timbers of his darling Pearl, and above him canvas cracked and billowed. Aye, this was the life all right. Or at least a step t'wards it, back towards the world.

Jack's skin still itched from the Locker's dry air. The back of his neck prickled, now, with the proximity of another person. 'Twasn't Will, nor Elizabeth: they stood together by the foc'sle, gazing out at the infinite blue, not—refreshingly—arguing in hushed voices about Elizabeth's perfidy or Will's father or the price of fish. 'Twasn't Gibbs, whom Jack could hear amidships, embroidering some tale about mermaids to a rapt (and thus deplorably idle) audience. 'Twasn't Tia Dalma, who was kneeling on the cabin roof, conjuring something unsavoury with a handful of crustacean anatomy. Which left ...

"Fine view, ain't it, Jack?"

Barbossa, of course. Who else? Jack suppressed a sigh.

"It'd be finer," he retorted, "if we had the slightest notion of a course. Since your vaunted charts don't seem to extend to these waters."

"Never you worry, Jack," said Barbossa, clapping Jack on the shoulder with a heartiness that, in Jack's view, was both unwarranted and entirely overfamiliar. "We've come this far, past World's End, to find ye, and I ain't a fellow to leave a tale unfinished. 'Sides, we're closer to the world than we were ashore."

"Are we now? And what makes you the resident authority on these matters?"

"Why, Jack, when a man's sailed new seas an' charted 'em—or been dead, and lived to tell the tale—then he's deemed to know whereof he speaks."

"Though mere experience," Jack pointed out, "counts for considerably less than exposition."

"What be your meanin', Jack?"

Jack raised his eyebrows. "Only that a man makes his own fame," he said. "And I'm afraid I haven't heard mention of yours, except as a kind of foot-note to my own."

Barbossa, infuriatingly, chuckled.

"There'll be fame and fortune aplenty for the two of us," he said, "once we're back in the world. Why, Jack, we're men who died and lived again!"

Jack thought of the Dutchman, the Pirate Lords, Cutler bloody Beckett. Plenty of opportunities for a more permanent sort of fate. With any luck, he could arrange for Barbossa to die and live and die again: whilst still, of course, remaining quick himself.

"Let's hope the world still has room for us both," he said brightly. sliding away from the heavy warmth of Barbossa's comradely arm. "They do say it's changing, lately."

"The world's what you make it, Jack," said Barbossa, with that avuncular smile that made Jack's fist clench. "Sometimes a man has to carve his place in it."

"I prefer to ingratiate myself," said Jack. "Though it's an acquired talent, and many a man lacks the ... knack."

"Ye'd be surprised at how ingratiating I can be," said Barbossa. His smile'd soured, like milk, into something less wholesome. "How .. amenable."

Came a whispering in Jack's right ear. 'member that night off Tortuga, eh? 'member the feel of his hand on your ...

Jack shook his head, hard enough to make himself dizzy.

"Go on then," he said. "Surprise me. I love surprises." Surprised already by the challenge, the complicity, in his own voice. Surprised all over again by the memory of that long-ago night, and by the flood of recollected sensation. Not entirely sure, yet, whether the whispering in his ears came from his better self or his worse.

Barbossa narrowed his eyes, and looked askance to his left. Will and Elizabeth were still, apparently, enthralled by the endless waves: but Jack could practically see Miss Swann's ears pricking up as she strained to hear every word of their Captain's—Captains', amended Jack grudgefully— conversation.

"Not so quick, Jack," said Barbossa. "Never mind that we've narry an eave, there's those as'll drop what they don't have."

"Aye," said Jack, nodding sagely. "You mean, not in front of the naufragous Miss Swann?"

"Take that back!" snapped Will, his attention immediately and predictably torn from the far horizon.

"Look it up," Jack countered: then, at Will's puzzlement, "in a dictionary."

"Do you mind?" said Elizabeth to Jack, stepping to Will's side as though to protect him from some schoolyard bully.

"As a matter of fact," said Jack, "I do. I'm Captain of this ship," and he shot a deadly glance at Barbossa, daring him to interrupt, "and you'll do as I say."

Will snorted, and Jack scowled at him.

"'Tis easy to see you've madefied the wench, Jack," said Barbossa, with a grin that exposed far too many yellowed teeth.

"How dare you call me mad!" said Elizabeth vehemently. Her hand, Jack was perturbed to see, was on the hilt of her sword.

"No one said any such thing, darlin'," he soothed. "Though if I were you, I wouldn't reject madness an' its manifold benefits out of hand. A thin line 'twixt madness and brilliance, you know: a line that I, Captain Jack Sparrow, have erased."

"Quite recovered from your solitary sojourn in Davy Jones' Locker, have you then?" enquired Barbossa.

"Far from solitary," said Jack grandly. He smoothed the ends of his moustache. "Never a dull moment."

"Pleasurable company, was it?"

"The very best," said Jack, trying to ignore the susurrus of reminiscence from his most definitely, definitively, worse self. "And a sight more tractable than the company you've been keeping."

Jack'd lowered his voice and turned away from where Tia Dalma sat, but he could still feel her black gaze, her sharky smile. He flinched, and tried to turn it into a flourish.

"Peccable lass, that," said Barbossa carelessly. "As I'm sure ye recall. But what o' yourself, Jack? The lady an' I did occupy ourselves most convivially: but I'll warrant you've not had the opportunity of any such refocillation."

Even in the Locker, you were cold, his right ear reminded him. And in his left, Don't forget the goat..

Jack had not in fact been thinking of the goat, 'til now. He concentrated fiercely on the counterpoint voice at his right ear, 'member the look on his face when you said yes, eh, Jack? 'member how hot and live and t'gether you were?

"What of it?" said Jack, hoping that was disdain in his voice—his out-loud voice—and not desperation.

"S'pose I'm offerin'," said Barbossa, with a wicked sidelong look.

"S'pose I'm lookin' a gift horse in the mouth," said Jack, craning forward as if to perform said examination. 'Twas a small step, after all, from goat to goatish. Elizabeth was looking at him as though he was mad. Will, bless him, just looked puzzled.

No change there.

"Have ye a preferable alternative?" enquired Barbossa. "The operose Mr Turner? The mortiferous Miss Swann? The pleniloquent Mr Gibbs?"

"You've been a mite mortiferous yourself, mate," said Jack. "Not to mention mutinous. And mendacious. And—"

Barbossa waved his hand, consigning mutiny and desertion to the endless sea. "All water under the hull, Jack. So: what say ye to a little irrumation? For old times' sake?"

Barbossa looked ... looked extraordinarily keen, Jack had to admit. And there was that irritating voice in his ear, his right ear, pointing out that, given the available alternatives, old Hector was really his best bet. Honestly.

Jack bared his teeth. "So long as you're not averse to the more dentigerous sort of company."

"Could be preceded by a spot of jugulation, if you rub me wrong," said Barbossa, with a leer that—though directed at Jack—made Elizabeth step back. Good riddance, thought Jack.

"In my book," he said, swallowing (his tongue was tingling with the remembered taste of salty musk), "jugulation succeeds irrumation."

"Aye? An' what book might that be?"

"A dictionary," said Jack. "Why don't you ask Will if you can look at his?"

Will scowled, becomingly. Barbossa beamed. "Ah, Jack!" he said. "Always so froward and fucatory!"

"I beg your pardon?" said Elizabeth angrily.

"Granted," said Barbossa, sketching a bow.

"Better fucatory than fricative," said Jack, raising his voice to be heard against the insistent whispering that reminded him of Barbossa's callused hand on him, hard and fast and thorough. "Unless your offer extends to bestowal of same?"

"I'd say as two men o' the world—bein' you an' myself, o' course—could manage a spot of metastrophe," said Barbossa.

"I b'ieve you'll find," said Jack, helpfully, "that it has four syllables. To rhyme with 'catastrophe'. Watch my ... mouth."

"Catastrophe?" demanded Elizabeth. "What d'you mean, 'catastrophe'?"

"Metastrophe, missy," snapped Barbossa quadrisyllabically, his attention split 'twixt vexatious Elizabeth and Jack's most enticing smile. "Now, be ye mindin' yer own business, or be ye lendin' a hand?"

"Have you got a dictionary?" Elizabeth demanded of Will.

"Let's go and look," said Will, taking her arm and drawing her away. "You'll get no sense out of our Captains."

Jack vowed to repay the favour once they were back in the world: pay for the whelp to be shaved, or something. For now, he had other fish to fry.

"Well," he said to Barbossa. "I certainly wouldn't say no to a helping hand."

"An' what might you be insinuatin' by that, Captain Sparrow?" said Barbossa,

Jack brightened at the title. At the complicit spark in Barbossa's eye. At the prospect of feeling properly alive again. At the secondary, and yet eminently desirable, prospect of silencing the babble of his own whispered voice (No good can come of it! Look what happened last time! in one ear, Fine figure of a pirate, is Hector Barbossa: an' you'll remember the weight an' heft of him, eh? in the other) which bid fair to deafen him.

"What say we go below," he said, "an' I'll remind you."

-end-