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Ten Years Gone 2
by Gloria Mundi
Pairing: Jack/Barbossa
Rating: NC-17
Disclaimer: Property of Disney. Have taken what I can: giving nothing back. See no profit in this for me.
(Full headers in Part 1)
Continues from Part 1
There were gashes in the hull where their prey had fought back. Barbossa preferred to leave them unrepaired, like scars of battle. Every man who saw her at sea would dread her, from her black rags of sails to the solemn-faced gilded beauty, a century out of fashion, at her prow. Jack Sparrow lowered his head, but not before Barbossa saw the anguish on his face. He waited for Jack to speak, but he said nothing, staring at the bottom of the boat, hiding behind the fall of his hair and the tilt of his hat as the Black Pearl loomed above them.
The man on watch tossed them a rope, eyes widening when he saw it caught by his former captain. Barbossa seized the rope from Jack, scowling, and hauled himself aboard, the monkey clinging to his shoulder. Jack followed him, as supple and capable as ever, and his hands lingered like a lover's on the splintery wood of the rail as he swung himself on board.
The Black Pearl pitched smoothly under their feet, and Jack smiled. He looked about him, and now he was every inch the captain, practical and sharp-eyed. Barbossa saw him note the filthy deck, the fouled stays, the ugly hatchet-work where the gun-ports had been enlarged.
"No lick-spittle Navy ways here, I'm afraid, Jack."
"Glad to hear it," said Jack amiably. "Shall we go below? Or do you conduct your business on deck these days?"
"Of course not," said Barbossa, turning towards the steps that led down to the stateroom and the captain's cabin.
"You never know," Jack went on, following him. "A lot can change in ten years. Why, I'd hardly have recognised you, except for the hat."
Barbossa growled, but he did not look back.
The ghosts in the corners of the stern-cabin gibbered and fled when Jack sauntered in, glancing around as if to make sure that it was still his own. Barbossa set his teeth. Jack might be full of himself now, but he'd sing a different tune later, when Barbossa turned the tables on him once more. Just for a moment, he let himself imagine how it would be. Jack on his knees, forced to give fulfilment and finding none at all. Jack letting Barbossa master him once more: or, mayhap, Jack unwilling, and Barbossa master anyway.
"I've heard tell of the Black Pearl," said Jack Sparrow, taking a seat without waiting for Barbossa's invitation. "You've quite the reputation, these days."
"There's none can take the Black Pearl," said Barbossa.
"Or her new ... captain," said Jack Sparrow, with just enough of a pause to be insulting. "A man so evil, I hear, that hell itself spat him back out. I'd have thought you'd have been ready to give it all up by now, mate. You've got enough loot in that cave for you all to live like kings."
"'Tis never enough," said Barbossa, "and you know it."
Jack leant back, shrugging, eyebrows raised.
"'Twas you who cursed us!" cried Barbossa, swinging round to point an accusing finger at Jack.
"Cursed you?" Jack frowned and tilted his head, the epitome of polite enquiry. "I never did. If you're cursed, it has naught to do with me."
"You know of the curse," Barbossa growled.
"Of course I know of the curse," said Jack cheerfully. "I told you of the curse, remember? All about the Aztec gods, with their mouths like sharks' and their terrible lust for blood. All about Cortez an' how he pissed them off. Course, you don’t have so good a memory for things you'd prefer to forget, do you, Barbossa? Oaths of loyalty and the like."
"You cursed us. You cursed me!"
Jack regarded him lazily, from half-closed eyes. "You've been out in the sun too long, mate."
Barbossa sat back, and beckoned to the monkey. It scampered across the table and leapt onto his shoulder. Jack sneered.
"Glad to see you've found yourself a loyal follower," he observed. "A bit mangy, but he seems to like you. Trustworthy, is he? "
"I remember everything, Jack Sparrow," said Barbossa. "I remember when I could feel the wind in my face, taste the wine, feel skin ... against skin."
He watched Jack carefully. Nothing about him had changed, nothing important, though there were new scars and tattoos on his skin and new beads in his hair. His eyes were the same, black as night and seductive as sin, but now Barbossa could not read them at all.
"I remember that too," Jack said quietly, and he was not smiling now.
"Everything tastes of ashes," said Barbossa. "Every touch is like a touch on your hand when you've been in the cold too long."
"You're cold?"
"I feel no cold! I feel—" Barbossa's fist clenched. "—no heat. Can you imagine that, Jack Sparrow? No heat. No fire. No wanting."
"Ah," said Jack, and that might almost have been pity in his voice, "but want can be a dreadful thing." He uncoiled himself from the chair, running one hand along the back of the seat as he stood. "Me, now, I want the Black Pearl."
"But you couldn't keep her," said Barbossa softly. "You lost her."
"I lost her to a friend I trusted too far," said Jack idly, examining the scrollwork on the back of the chair. "But I'll not be making that mistake again." He met Barbossa's gaze again, and now there was nothing seductive or charming about his expression at all. "I'll trade you for her," he said.
Barbossa laughed. "Trade me what? I'd say you're not doing so well, Jack, for all the tales they tell of ye."
Jack looked absurdly pleased. "You've heard them, then," he said. "You'll have heard them say how I always get what I want, in the end."
"I haven't heard the one about you in a dress, yet," Barbossa said mockingly. "Fine crimson silk, it was, and you on your knees."
"Have you not?" said Jack, raising an eyebrow. "I hear there's a book made of it now. Collector's edition, I believe. I doubt you'd find it very interesting, these days."
The words were light, but the voice was not.
"I believe we were bargaining," said Jack. "For my ship. I'll give you Bill Turner's child, and you may be quit of the curse laid on that gold by the shark-mouthed gods of the Aztecs."
"There's no such curse," Barbossa growled.
Jack brought a hand up, gesturing at himself. "I'd love to claim it for my own, but I'm no heathen priest to accomplish such a thing." He opened his mouth wide, displaying his teeth: there was more gold there than before. "See?" he said, indistinctly. "No' shar'."
Barbossa looked at Jack's mouth and thought about how it had felt on him, how it might feel now, with more gold, with the beard and the moustache and ten years' more practice of kissing and licking, sucking and—
Sharks' teeth.
"Tell me your terms, Jack," he said, leaning back. The monkey on his shoulder made an enquiring noise, and he patted its head.
"I'll give you the Turner child," said Jack in that patient, practical tone that had fooled customs officers and lawyers, "and you'll give me the Black Pearl, and enough men—my choice of 'em, mind—to crew her to Tortuga, where I'll let them ashore and you may collect them."
"And while you're sailing off in my ship, where will I and the Turner girl—"
"Or boy," Jack interrupted, raising a hand. "It may be that Bootstrap's child was a son, after all."
Barbossa sighed. "Where will I and the Turner child—and the rest of my crew—be, while you're off to Tortuga on my ship?"
"My ship," corrected Jack. "You'll be ... hmm." He put a finger to his lip, pretending to consider the matter. Barbossa watched him hungrily.
"You give the order to sail for Tortuga," said Jack, "and once we're drawing near, I'll take the wheel and head for one of those coves on the north coast of Hispaniola. Shouldn't have any problems finding food and water there." His gaze sharpened. "Wouldn't want you to find yourself without fresh water, as I did."
"And the Turner child?" demanded Barbossa.
"Ah, well, of course I can't be producing him—or her, or her—out of thin air," said Jack brightly. "And once you've seen her, or him as the case may be—unless it's both, which is something you might want to consider. Both, or neither—"
"Jack!"
"—could be a eunuch—"
"Jack!"
"Once you have the child," said Jack, his face implacable, "there'd be nothing to stop you knocking me on the head and playing the same old trick on me. And I'm hoping we can come to an arrangement where there's no knocking on the head, no mutiny, no impolite behaviour of any kind."
"And your point?" said Barbossa wearily.
"Once I'm at the helm of my Pearl," said Jack, stroking a beam lovingly, "I'll call the name to you. Can be found in Port Royal, I'll tell you that for nothing."
"So you expect to leave me standing on some beach with nothing but a name and your word it's the one I need, and watch you sail away with my ship?"
Jack smiled, and if Barbossa had known him less well (too well, still) then that smile might have seemed warm.
"No," he said mildly. "I expect to leave you standing on some beach with absolutely no name at all, watching me sail away on my ship."
Did the hull creak?
"Then I'll shout the name back to you. Savvy?"
Barbossa could feel the pull of him like gold. He wanted to believe, accept, be drawn in. Be caught. Jack Sparrow strutting back in, claiming his ship and his attention and every nerve in his nerveless, lifeless body...
"But that still leaves us with the problem of me standing on some beach with naught but a name and your word it's the one I need."
Jack Sparrow was examining the apples in the fruit-bowl they had left for Miss Turner. "Of the two of us," he said, still mild, "I'm the only one who hasn't committed mutiny, therefore my word is the one we'll be trusting. Although, I suppose I should be thanking you because in fact, if you hadn't betrayed me and left me to die, I would have an equal share of that curse, same as you." He took a bite from the apple in his hand. Barbossa could see the sap spurt.
"Funny ol' world, innit?" said Jack, proffering the bowl of fruit: then he pulled back, as though he'd just recalled the curse—the curse which, he maintained, was not his.
There was a noise on the steps, and the Bo'sun came in. He didn't knock, and Barbossa saw Jack register that discourtesy and hide it away for later.
"Captain, we're coming up on the Interceptor."
The monkey shrieked in excitement and darted for the door, bounding ahead of the Bo'sun as though it understood what was happening.
Barbossa swore, and followed them up to the deck. It was a fine brisk afternoon, a fine day for sailing. There was a good strong wind behind them: behind the Interceptor too, of course, but she hadn't the sleekness and cunning of the Black Pearl, and so they'd catch her in the end.
He set the spyglass to his eye and sought out familiar faces on the deck of their prey. ... A flash of colour, there at the bow. Was that the girl, still in the crimson silk he'd let her wear?
Then someone slid between glass and distance, and Jack Sparrow was there, blocking his view, too near and too alive to be comfortable.
"I'm having a thought here, Barbossa," he called, over the rush of wind and wave. "What say we run up a flag of truce? I scurry over to the Interceptor and I negotiate the return of your medallion, eh? What say you to that?"
Barbossa could feel the charm, the old magic, radiating off him like heat. He was cursed, he reminded himself: he felt nothing: he would be, must be, could make himself immune.
"Now ye see, Jack," he said amicably, "that's exactly the attitude that lost ye the Black Pearl."
The sudden hurt on Jack's face almost felt good.
"People are easier to search when they're dead," said Barbossa, smiling broader; and over his shoulder to the Bo'sun, "Lock him in the brig."
He confiscated Jack's apple as the Bo'sun manoeuvred him towards the stairs, and for a moment he thought of biting into it. Maybe the lingering savour of Jack's mouth would work some magic, and let him taste again. Maybe he'd taste Jack's mouth, at one remove.
He hurled the apple overboard.
* * *
Half a mile ahead, and the Interceptor was almost within range of the bow-chasers. Her crew—Jack Sparrow's latest recruits, no doubt retrieved from some Tortugan stew—were jettisoning everything on board now, hurling barrels and crates overboard to lighten the vessel. Wasting their time, thought Barbossa with grim satisfaction. They'd never outrun the Black Pearl.
But they might yet reach the relative safety of the shallower water that lay on the port bow. Barbossa, glass to his eye, could see waves breaking white on a sandbar. He'd not take the Black Pearl in too close, though the Interceptor was already altering her course to make for that scant safety.
"Haul on the mainbrace!" he called. "Make ready the guns!" To the Bo'sun, he added, "And run out the sweeps!"
Most of the crew had been up on deck, watching the progress of their latest prize, but now the gun crews and the oarsmen headed for the lower decks, and within a minute Barbossa was almost alone. He raised the glass to his eye again and watched as the crew of the Interceptor worked frantically to escape. The girl—Elizabeth—was there by the helm, next to a young man who Barbossa was sure he'd seen before. Elizabeth was still wearing the crimson silk dress, and his hands twitched with the urge to rip it off her and reclaim it, ready for ...
Even above the noise of the guns being run out, he fancied he could hear the groan of the Interceptor's timbers as the starboard anchor caught and she was swung around, wrenched around, broadside on.
They were making a stand, damn them to hell. Barbossa acknowledged a little more respect for whoever was in command on board the other ship. It was a madman's strategy, but there was a certain glory to it.
"Retract the starboard oars!" he cried, and the Black Pearl began to come about, her momentum still carrying her towards the Interceptor. Barbossa could hear the gun crews cheering at the sight of their prey, calling out obscenities and suggestions to the scanty crew of the other ship.
Closer, closer ...
Barbossa drew his sword. "Fire!" he commanded, and heard the same command, like an echo, from the Interceptor.
The Black Pearl shuddered like an animal as the guns roared, but Barbossa did not bother to duck. The hull was holed already and still she sailed. And the Interceptor's shot was light and ineffectual, while the heavy chain-shot from the Black Pearl's guns wrought havoc on her deck.
They had no chance. The Black Pearl outgunned and outmanned them, and besides was protected by whatever strange deities watched over her. (Barbossa thought of Jack Sparrow in the brig, seeing nothing and hearing everything, and smiled to himself.)
"Grapnels at the ready! Prepare to board!"
After the first broadside, the Black Pearl's crew hurled grappling-irons into the rigging of the Interceptor, as much to hold her fast as to let them swing over to her deck. Fearsomely armed and invulnerable, they outnumbered the other vessel's crew. Barbossa stayed where he was, on board the Black Pearl, and bellowed orders to the crew: some of them to the powder magazine, others to search for the medallion. If that lying girl was on board, then Bill Turner's lost piece of Aztec gold would be there too.
The monkey jumped up and down on Barbossa's shoulder, squawking with excitement. Barbossa petted him. "Find the gold," he murmured to the little animal. "Bring me the gold." He pointed to the Interceptor and watched as the monkey climbed nimbly through the tangled rigging towards the hatch that led below deck.
Out of the corner of his eye he saw a familiar figure emerge from the companionway. Jack Sparrow! He had escaped the brig somehow, and now he was at liberty on a ship he knew as well as the back of his hand. Barbossa muttered an oath under his breath, and vowed to find the idiot who'd left Jack unguarded. Better to have locked him in the captain's cabin: better to have kept him here where Barbossa could see him. And yet that would be too much like the old days, back when Barbossa had been First Mate of the Black Pearl and Jack Sparrow had been her captain.
Barbossa squinted, and narrowed his eyes. He'd seen Jack swing across to the deck of the doomed Interceptor, he was sure of it, but what had drawn him there, and why? And where was he now? Barbossa put the glass to his eye again, but Jack Sparrow had disappeared. Oh, but there was the monkey, scrambling up through the holed deck and running towards the Interceptor's fallen mainmast. Barbossa strode across the deck to meet his pet.
Monkey-Jack scampered back along the felled mast, and those tedious months of training had been no waste: the creature bore the medallion in its tiny paw. Barbossa smiled to see Jack Sparrow follow his namesake, almost as nimble as the monkey. He remembered Jack springing aloft like a common sailor to reef the topsails in bad weather. He remembered feeling the stretch and flex of those muscles: and his smile thinned cruelly.
"Why, thankee, Jack," he said, sweet as pie, as the monkey leapt to his shoulder once more.
Jack Sparrow smiled, swift and insincere. "You're welcome."
"Not you," said Barbossa, enjoying this small victory. "We named the monkey Jack." Oh, that look of hatred: had he been mortal again, it would have warmed him and frozen him at once. It was the most honest thing to have passed between them these ten years and more.
But he'd given up honesty when he'd won the Black Pearl.
"Gents!" he cried to his bloodstained, disfigured crew. "Gents! Our hope is restored!"
Already the Interceptor was listing, and her paltry crew were tied and led aboard the Black Pearl. Pintel had gathered them all along the larboard side of the deck, where they'd see what became of the Interceptor, and see too that there was no hope. He and Ragetti were threatening them, empty threats for now. Barbossa stood apart from them, stroking the regained gold. The prisoners were watching him, but he paid them no attention.
Elizabeth, or whatever her name was, was watching the crippled ship as avidly as Barbossa himself: as though she had left all her hope on board. She still wore the crimson silk, though it was scorched and stained with gunpowder and blood. He saw Jack Sparrow notice that, and grow still for a moment as they bound his hands and hauled him off to stand with his old messmates.
And then the powder magazine blew, and the Interceptor broke and slipped, swiftly and almost silently, beneath the waves.
"Will!" screamed the girl, and the next moment she was shrieking incoherently and attacking Barbossa again, though without the benefit of a dinner-knife this time.
Barbossa held her off one-handed, enjoying the picture she made. The shrew had thought to fool him: well, she'd be paying for that for a while.
"Welcome back, Miss," he said, smiling. "You took advantage of our hospitality last time. Only fair now that you return the favour." And with a twist of his arm and a brutal shove in the small of her back, he consigned her to the crew.
They were all over her in a moment, fingers in her hair and on her skin, tracing the curve of her waist as though it still meant something. Perhaps it did. Perhaps it reminded them of gentler times. Or perhaps, like him, they could smell the scent of that night still fresh on the silk, and like himself they were driven mad by it.
Barbossa watched Jack Sparrow. It must surely remind him of that other mob-madness, the morning after the mutiny, when the crew that he'd hired had turned against him. Without Bootstrap Bill to stop them, their horseplay might have become murderous that day, and left nothing to maroon, nothing to sit and wait and set that curse. They wouldn't murder the girl: no profit in that for any of them, when they might sell her to the highest bidder. But profit had been far from their minds that night ten years ago, when Barbossa had called them to him and they'd come.
And then a voice from behind him called his name, and he turned to see another ghost.
This one walked in daylight like a man: and swam in the ocean like any sailor, too, for his hair and shirt were soaking wet. He stood on deck, pistol in hand, water streaming from him: and the crew shrank back as Elizabeth cried, "Will!"
"She goes free," the young man said to Barbossa, raising the pistol.
"What's in your head, boy?" Barbossa growled. He knew at once who this was: whose son he was. It was plain as moonlight. More mettle than his father, for sure. He had no shot-pouch at his waist, and no powder-horn: there'd be a single ball in the weapon, and then adieu sweet prince.
And yet he meant to go down fighting.
Barbossa saw the young man—Will, she'd cried out—glance at Jack Sparrow. Like father, like son: the boy was entrapped, sure enough, enchanted and delighted and half in love. So vulnerable. So human.
But it was the girl's liberty he'd asked for, not Jack's.
"She goes free!" he repeated, brandishing the pistol as though it were a sword.
"You've only got one shot," drawled Barbossa, "and we can't die."
There amongst the crew, Jack Sparrow grimaced at the lad, and mouthed something.
"You can't," said Will. Will Turner, his name would be. Barbossa was sure of it. "I can." And in a flash he'd leapt to the rail and turned the pistol on himself.
Jack Sparrow made a face.
"Who are you?" said Barbossa, for the sake of the slower ones. No matter who the boy's mother was: he'd taken after Bootstrap, and been named for him too. A mystery, now, how he'd ever taken the girl Elizabeth for Bootstrap's get—
And here was bloody Jack Sparrow, pleading the boy's case. "No one," he babbled. "He's no one. A distant cousin of my aunt's nephew, twice removed. Lovely singing voice, though. Eunuch."
He gestured.
Barbossa smiled tolerantly. Maybe the boy was Jack's catamite. Perhaps in those ten years Jack had acquired a taste for mastery all of his own, and he'd played out that same game with his old friend's son. The thought of the boy pleading with Jack to touch him (as Jack had pleaded with Barbossa himself, that night), of Jack relenting at last and taking him hard, made Barbossa restless and thirsty.
"My name is Will Turner," said the young man, with dignity. "My father was Bootstrap Bill Turner. His blood runs in my veins."
Jack Sparrow scowled and edged away.
"e's the spittin' image of Bootstrap Bill," murmured Ragetti, "come back to 'aunt us."
It was what Barbossa had thought, that first moment after Will Turner had called his name, and so he did not waste time on punishment.
"On my word," said Will, "do as I say, or I'll pull this trigger and be lost forever to Davy Jones' locker!"
From that angle he probably wouldn't miss, though even before the curse Barbossa had seen men survive worse. And nothing in the tales, forbye, to say the blood must be warm and living. But maybe 'twas better to have it so.
"Name your terms, Mr Turner," said Barbossa amiably.
"Elizabeth goes free," said Will hotly.
"Yes, we know that one," said Barbossa, becoming exasperated. "Anything else?"
Jack Sparrow was gesturing again, waving his arms around like some demented puppeteer.
"And the crew," said Will, obviously prompted. "The crew are not to be harmed."
"Agreed," said Barbossa, eyeing them. An unchancy lot, scarce worth the cost of feeding. And one of them a woman! He'd put them ashore in some quiet port. Let them tell stories of Barbossa the Merciful, for once.
* * *
There was a loud creaking noise as two of the men swung the plank into place. Barbossa smiled, watching the reactions of his prisoners. Some of them knew that sound, right enough: Jack Sparrow was frowning as though Barbossa had done something unexpected. Something wrong. Will Turner and the girl Elizabeth were blithely ignorant, like children who'd never been afloat before.
"Bring Miss ... well, missy," said Barbossa. "I'd guess that Turner's not your name after all. Unless you're crying out to your brother here through simple sisterly affection?"
That made her blush, but she lifted her chin defiantly.
"Bring the young lady," said Barbossa genially, "and let her inspect her new home as we approach." Sheer serendipitous fortune, to have been so near to this latitude when they'd caught the Interceptor: sheer fortune, or the Black Pearl's unnatural good luck. Jack Sparrow knew where they were, for sure, and he'd been looking askance at Barbossa ever since the shape of the island came clear.
Two or three of the men, with jovial bluster, led Elizabeth aft. Barbossa kept an eye on her, and was pleased to see her dismay when she set eyes on the small, remote island. Dismay that sharpened to horror when her captors guided her to the plank.
"Barbossa!" cried Will Turner. "You lying bastard! You swore she'd go free!"
Barbossa's temper was fraying, and he did not sugar his words. "Don't ye dare impugn me honour, boy," he said, low and nasty. "I agreed she'd go free. It was you who failed to specify when or where." He waved a hand at the crew. Someone produced a filthy rag from about his person and gagged Will, quick and efficient. Enough of that.
He took another long look at Elizabeth. Surely just the Turner lad's doxy, though with that fine talk and the disdain in her whole body ... Ah well. She'd stay where they left her, at least for a while. Chances were she'd be much friendlier by the time the Black Pearl returned.
"Though it does seem a shame to lose something so fine," he mused aloud. "Don't it, lads?"
They cheered him, though he doubted one in ten of them knew what he meant.
"So I'll be having that dress back afore ye go," he drawled, holding out his hand. Oh, let her refuse: let her make him fetch it. The simple power of the situation made him forget, for a moment, the shadow-feelings that the dress evoked.
Across the deck he met Jack Sparrow's eyes, and they were blacker than Hell.
And then the moment passed, and the crew were cheering and whistling appreciatively. Elizabeth fought her way free of the crimson silk as though it were a trap. Jack Sparrow had been more gentle with it, but he had taken his time, though Barbossa had been standing over him in the grey-lit cabin with a knife in each hand, newly declared Captain and ready to shed blood for it. Now he set his teeth at the sound of tearing silk. Her smell on it, and the smell of gunpowder ...
He'd be coming back this way before long. He'd have debts to collect once this curse was lifted and the Turner boy settled.
Elizabeth hurled the dress at him as though it were a filthy rag, but he caught it and cradled it and breathed deep while she stood there, poised above the ocean in her flimsy white petticoats.
All he could smell, despite the gunpowder and the sea air, was that night. Nothing would erase that night. Nothing was strong enough.
"Oooh, it's still warm," he crooned, remembering, and was rewarded by the disgust on Will's face above the gag.
Jack Sparrow looked back at him with a disdain that matched Elizabeth's.
The crew were becoming impatient. They needed their spectacle, their games.
"Off you go! Come on!" cried Twigg, and Elizabeth teetered and swung her arms wildly for balance.
"Too long!" roared the Bo'sun, and kicked the plank hard. Elizabeth overbalanced and fell, and Barbossa heard her hit the water shouting and spluttering. He did not care to watch: it was a game they'd played often enough before. Sink or swim, pretty maid, sink or swim.
He nodded again, and a couple of the men dragged Jack Sparrow up to the end of the plank.
"I'd really rather hoped that we were past all this," said Jack directly to him, as though they were discussing some mild misdemeanour alone, over dinner.
Barbossa looked at his old adversary. His old lover. He couldn't read Jack at all: had never been able to read him well, but sometimes Jack Sparrow was easy. Easy to read, easy to fool. Easy—Barbossa's mouth twitched—in other ways.
Ten years gone. Ten years of life for Jack Sparrow to learn from, hide behind, flaunt in Barbossa's face. Oh, he'd be keen enough, when Barbossa came back this way. Curse lifted or not, there were some things he would have from Jack Sparrow before the end.
He slung his arm over Jack's shoulders, and felt him flinch deliciously.
"Jack, Jack," he said, gently reproving. "Did you not notice? That bit of island is the same bit that we made you Governor of on our last little trip."
"I did notice," said Jack.
"Perhaps you'll be able to conjure up another miraculous escape," said Barbossa, smile widening. Were there sharks? The girl was still splashing and kicking: he could hear her. "But I doubt it," he added, drawing his sword.
Jack eyed the blade, and looked back at Barbossa. "Last time," he said, and Barbossa recognised the beginning of another tangle of words, "last time you left me a pistol with one shot."
"By the powers, you're right," said Barbossa genially. "Where be Jack's pistol?" he demanded. "Bring it forth!"
"Seeing as there's two of us," Jack went on, "a gentleman would give us a pair of pistols."
Barbossa chuckled at the sheer effrontery of the man. He let his eyes narrow. Maybe it was time to remind Jack of just how ungentlemanly he could be.
But if Jack had forgotten ... Well. His eyes said he had not. And there'd be time enough.
"It'll be one pistol as before," said Barbossa. "And ye can be the gentleman and shoot the lady and starve to death yourself."
And without more ado he hurled the pistol over the rail and into the sea.
For one brief moment there was that flash of hatred in Jack's eyes, and Barbossa wondered if he would feel it, after all, when the curse was lifted. Then Jack Sparrow had turned and dived, neatly, into the centre of the spreading ring of water where his pistol had sunk.
Barbossa did not wait to watch him surface. He turned, chuckling, and laughed aloud at the outrage on the Turner boy's face.
"To the brig with him!" he ordered. "And set course for the Isla de Muerta!"
Continue to Part 3
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