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Ten Years Gone 3
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 2
The Black Pearl seemed to groan as she approached the island once more. Barbossa sprawled on the bed in the captain's cabin, listening to the noises of the ship that he'd won from Jack Sparrow at the price of his soul. Were the curse lifted, would the Black Pearl remain what she was—a vessel of darkness, feared everywhere, faster and luckier than any other ship?
Would she remain his?
The ghosts were quiet tonight, and the monkey sat still on its perch and would not eat. Barbossa could not stop thinking of Jack Sparrow, and those instants of furious hatred that he'd let show. Jack had been a fool to trust his first mate, and a fool twice over and more to put himself in Barbossa's power, never mind how pleasant or how heated their hours together had been: but he seldom let his feelings show without reason.
And maybe his reasoning had been nothing more than the desire—desire, aye, thought Barbossa longingly—to show that he was still alive, uncursed, with heart and soul intact.
Oh, to see Jack Sparrow on his knees begging to be alive once more. To hold this power over him that he held over Barbossa and the crew who'd left him—twice, now—to die.
It would be easy, if the tales were true. If the gold were cursed for Cortez' crimes, and none of this death-in-life was punishment for what Barbossa had done to Jack Sparrow, after all. ... If the gold was cursed, and the Turner boy's blood would mend what was broken and restore what was taken ...why, then Barbossa might have his own curse lifted, and let Jack be fresh accursed. Then Barbossa would take the coin from him (for the curse would still be Jack's) and so hold, safe and powerful, his soul.
And Jack would do as he bade him.
It was ten years since he'd been inside another body, ten years since he'd felt warm flesh close around him, since he'd pushed inside someone, and fucked them, and come. That would have to be first, once Jack was in his power. He'd lie here on this bed and bid him strip. Jack being Jack, he'd refuse or resist, and Barbossa would have to remind him—gently, oh, gently at the start—of who was master now. He remembered the sight of Jack naked, the morning of the mutiny, stripping off the sweat-damp crimson silk. It had been tight across the shoulders, and he'd had to writhe and contort himself to get free of it. Barbossa had not offered to help. He had stood there, watching, feeling himself getting hard (he remembered the inconvenience it had been, with the men in an ugly mood and the act of mutiny still incomplete) all over again despite the hours he'd spent, spending himself in Jack, making Jack come even as he insisted, breathless and half-laughing, that he couldn't come any more.
Eventually Jack had stood there naked, face as impassive as a statue's, taking his shirt and breeches from the cupboard where he'd put them. Barbossa had told him to hurry, and Jack had glared at him and dressed without haste, covering up his scarred, tanned skin limb by limb, covering the bruises and the bites and the scratches that Barbossa had left on him. Sometimes he'd meant to mark Jack: at other moments during that long night, he'd seized onto Jack like a drowning man, conscious only of the sensations wracking him, and only Jack's surprised oath had brought him to the realisation of how hard he'd bitten, how tightly he was gripping Jack.
Barbossa turned restlessly. Enough of that night. Enough of the past. He wanted to think of the future, to imagine and dream and plan what would happen once he was alone with Jack Sparrow once more. He'd be free then, and Jack would be the one who, cursed, felt nothing. He'd take Jack hard, that first time, and watch those expressive dark eyes as he thrust quick and hot into Jack's body. Would Jack hate him for it? After all these years, after everything that had passed between them, would Jack feel nothing?
If he felt nothing, Barbossa would be the one to feel everything: his duty, almost, to seek pleasure to the point of exhaustion. He'd have Jack use his hands and his mouth, keeping it slow and dreamlike, and he'd lie back and sip good wine. Eat an apple. Have Jack feed him the apple. He remembered kissing Jack: no, he remembered the feeling of surprise at the sheer passion that kiss had aroused in him. That had been new, unknown: that had been all Jack, and Barbossa wondered if it would happen again, once Jack fell under the curse.
And after the kiss, what then? Half-asleep, he remembered Jack smiling at him, and the feel of Jack's hand cupping his balls and Jack's hot, agile mouth on his cock. The feel of it ...
And so slipped into sleep.
* * *
The Turner boy had spirit, Barbossa gave him that. Whatever the other prisoners, or the crew, had said to him of his father, he did not beg for mercy or try any of the tricks he'd doubtless learned from Jack Sparrow. He approached his fate—perhaps too harsh a fate, but better safe, this time—with dignity. They'd told him, it was clear, that he was to die: that all his blood was needed for the Aztec gold.
Barbossa did not care. Ten years on a fool's quest for this boy and the trinket his misguided father had sent him. It had profited Bootstrap not at all, and the younger Turner's death would be as much of a waste. Then it'd be back to that unnamed island to find Jack Sparrow and make him lift the curse: and Barbossa knew all the ways to make a man do anything he was bidden do.
Or if this Aztec tale were true, Bootstrap—undrowned all these years—might yet rise barnacled from the waves, intent on vengeance, seeking out those who'd sacrificed his son to the heathen gods.
Barbossa chuckled. He'd deal with Bootstrap Bill Turner when he made himself known, and not a moment before. He'd send him down to the depths again, and this time be certain of some extra holes to let the water in. Or he'd tell Bill that 'twas all a tale, his son lived. Or had been slain by Jack Sparrow.
They'd be getting thirsty, there on the island. He wondered if Jack would beg for water, or whether he'd drunk the ocean and run mad already. Pretty Elizabeth would be none so pretty with her skin wrinkled and scaly like a lizard's.
... Enough. They were gathered again in the cave that gleamed with gold. Will Turner was sprawled over the stone chest that held the rest of the cursed treasure: let his blood stain it all.
There were ghosts in the shadows, but Barbossa paid them no mind. They had been there before, ever since that first time. Sometimes they whispered: sometimes they said his name, or spoke in clear King's English for him alone. Some of them had voices that he knew. He ignored them all, and raised the knife.
"Begun by blood..."
The ghosts were picking up his voice and reflecting it, making it resonate, making the air crackle with tension.
"Excuse me," said Jack Sparrow. Jack Sparrow's ghost.
"By blood un—" Barbossa went on grimly.
"Jack!" cried Will, and Barbossa scowled. The boy, too, could see this ghost.
"It's not possible," he growled, straightening. The knife in his hand felt hot and hungry.
"Not probable," Jack corrected him, with that insufferable smile.
"Where's Elizabeth?" said Will, levering himself upright against the carved stone chest.
"She's safe," Jack said, projecting sweet reason, "just like I promised. She's all set to marry Norrington, just like she promised. And you get to die for her, just like you promised. So we're all men of our word, really—except for Elizabeth, who is, in fact, a woman."
"Shut up!" said Barbossa. "You're next." An empty threat, but no one would know that. He pushed Will flat again, and leant back in to continue what he'd begun. Surely 'twas bad luck to leave a ritual incomplete.
From behind him he heard Jack say calmly, "You don't want to be doing that, mate."
Barbossa set his teeth. "No," he snarled, "I really think I do."
A beat, then: "Your funeral."
"Why don't I want to be doin' it?" demanded Barbossa.
"Well, because ... " Jack paused to remove the Bo'sun's hand from his shoulder, like a man brushing away a noisome insect. "Because the HMS Dauntless, pride of the Royal Navy is floating just offshore, waiting for you."
The pirates began to mutter, low and dangerous, a sound like swarming wasps. One thing to trick an adversary, and they'd all seen these two playing to win, before the mutiny and Jack's defeat: but it was quite another to be in league with the Navy, the Foe, the Law. Better the Devil than the King and his Navy. If Jack Sparrow had enlisted the help of the Royal Navy, death would be too good for him. And if he hadn't, how had he got past them without being captured himself?
"What's that got to do with the whelp?" cried Twigg.
"Nothing at all," said Jack. "Nothing to do with the whelp whatsoever, at all. Nothing to do with me, either, though I'm sure they'd like to stretch my neck for me."
"How unreasonable," said Barbossa. "What's your point, Jack Sparrow? What brings you back here?"
"Well," said Jack, "it's all down to that bloody girl you left me marooned with."
"Would you have preferred the young gentleman, then?" purred Barbossa, gesturing at Will Turner.
"The young gentleman," said Jack, rather scornfully, "wouldn't have decided to attract the notice of the next passing ship by setting fire to the food and the shade. Oh no. He'd have done something much less ... practical."
His gaze rested on Will for a moment, and Barbossa thought Jack's sneer held some affection.
"So she lit a beacon and the Navy came for you," he said. "A likely tale."
Jack chuckled and spread his hands. "Can it be that none of you gentlemen were ever formally introduced to the young lady?" he said, turning to smile at the crew.
"She said her name was Elizabeth Turner," said Pintel.
"It weren't, though," said Ragetti.
"Silence!" Barbossa thundered. "Her name?" he asked.
"The young lady you were so keen to be rid of?" said Jack, eyebrows raised.
"Aye," said Barbossa heavily. "The young lady in the crimson silk."
Jack Sparrow shot him a look of annoyance. "That was Elizabeth Swann," he said, addressing the crew as much as Barbossa himself.
The men muttered.
"Swann," said Barbossa. "That'd be the Governor's kin, then."
"Aye," said Jack. "His daughter. I'm sure he'll be overjoyed to see her safe. In fact," he paused, as though only just coming to it, "he'd probably have paid a fine ransom, had she fallen into the wrong hands. The man who held her might have asked for his heart's desire."
"Then it's as well that my heart's desire is nothing that Governor Swann can provide," said Barbossa, and he smiled his sharpest smile at Jack.
"Fortunate, really," said Jack after a moment; but Barbossa had seen him flinch. "So, as I was saying ..."
He glared at the crew, and their muttering subsided.
"As I was saying, HMS Dauntless came along and plucked us from the very jaws of death. Their commander, an unholy devil named Norrington—seven feet tall, and his eyes turn red when he's in a temper ... let him stand up properly," he said to the men holding Will, as the boy began to splutter and cough. "Weak chest. Eunuch, did I mention? Anyway, Norrington forced me to disclose the position of the Isla de Muerta. I swear I had no idea that you were headed straight for it, mate," he added, hands up in a parody of surrender even before Barbossa had drawn breath. "So here we are. And though Miss Swann is engaged to be married to Commodore Norrington, she remains fond of young Mr Turner, whose delightful singing brightened many an afternoon when they were children. So she helped me escape while the watch was being changed, so I could come and warn you all. And here I am."
He turned on his heel, bowing to the crew and to Barbossa. Will Turner was red in the face, and did not meet Jack's gaze, but at least he'd stopped coughing
"And why shouldn't we simply kill you now, Jack Sparrow?" said Barbossa coldly. "You've warned us, and we'll be sure to take care of the Navy before we take care of young Mr Turner and break the curse. So what need have I of you?"
"Only you can answer that," said Jack, looking steadily back at him. "Only you."
Something in Barbossa's chest lurched. Jack knew. Jack knew his plan.
But that wasn't possible.
"Tell us what you're planning, then," said Barbossa. "Unless you don't have a plan after all?"
There was laughter from the crew.
"Just hear me out, mate," said Jack, and Barbossa thought of the sticky threads of a web, catching and dulling and trapping. "You order your men to row out to the Dauntless. They do what they do best." He gestured, and some of the men chuckled and made approving noises. Barbossa watched them narrowly. Fickle as the wind and twice as treacherous. "Robert's your uncle, Fannie's your aunt, there you are with two ships—the makings of your very own fleet. 'Course," he went on, turning towards Barbossa and spreading his hands like a fortune-teller at the fair, "you'll take the grandest as your flagship, and who's to argue? But what of the Pearl?" The lilting, seductive voice dropped. "Name me captain, I'll sail under your colours, I'll give you ten per cent of me plunder, and you get to introduce yourself as ... Commodore Barbossa. Savvy?"
And your knife'll find its home in me heart before the month is out, thought Barbossa to himself. Unless I trap you in turn. Unless you're in my power.
"I s'pose in exchange ye want me not to kill the whelp," he said.
"No, no," said Jack, gesturing dismissively. "By all means kill the whelp. Just ... not yet."
Barbossa watched his gaze slide sideways to meet Will's indignant glare. Whatever else Jack Sparrow had planned, this was not part of it. Or perhaps Will Turner was learning, too late, that Jack Sparrow was never to be trusted: never, unless you had leverage to use.
"Wait to lift the curse," Jack was saying, "until the opportune moment. For instance—" He picked up a handful of coins, and Barbossa tensed, but at once Jack threw most of them back. "For instance, after you've killed Norrington's men. Every—"
Clink!
"—last—"
Clink!
"—one."
Clink! went the last of the coins.
"You've been planning this from the beginning!" Will said indignantly. "Ever since you learned my name!"
Jack Sparrow looked at him rather pityingly. "Yeah."
"I want fifty per cent of your plunder," Barbossa interrupted, before Will's accusations could become more detailed.
"Fifteen," retorted Jack at once.
"Forty."
"Twenty-five. And I'll buy you a hat, a really big one," said Jack. And then his voice dropped, and he was looking up at Barbossa through those long, dark lashes, as much of a flirt as any Tortuga whore, and prettier than half of them.
"Commodore," he said softly. An invitation.
Barbossa could have laughed. Something grabbed at where his heart used to be—no, at the base of his spine—no, somewhere, somewhere ... It was like a promise. And Jack Sparrow was looking at him with that smile that was almost honest...
"We have an accord," Barbossa said, and he reached out and took Jack's hand.
Ah, he remembered the feel of this hand, the heat of it. Shaking hands was nothing, a gentleman's agreement, a gesture of polite society. But what he remembered, and what he knew he had felt ...there was nothing polite about that.
Then Jack drew away, and turned to the crew. "All hands to the boats!" he commanded, spreading his hands wide like a conjuror.
Barbossa growled, very low, and glared.
"I apologise," Jack said hastily, raising his clasped hands like an obedient servant. "You give the orders."
Barbossa smiled, though it was not his most genial smile. That sleight-of-hand with the coins had given him time to think, and if this were truly a trap then he'd found the way to spring it.
"Gents!" he ordered. "Take a walk."
"Not to the boats?" protested Jack, almost timidly; and Barbossa smiled that pitying smile, the one Jack had bestowed on Will.
The game was his.
* * *
The gleam of the gold lit Jack Sparrow's face from beneath, making his expression more impenetrably demonic. Barbossa watched him as he wandered through the cave, eyes hungry for the gold that—had things turned out differently—he'd have claimed.
He hadn't asked Barbossa for a share of this ten years' treasure, and that rang false.
They were waiting, now; waiting for the crew to return with bloodthirsty tales of the Navy men they'd scragged. Or waiting for the Navy to burst in and kill whosoever could be killed. Surely they wouldn't let Jack Sparrow live, even if he'd plotted the Black Pearl's downfall—no, Barbossa's downfall—with them?
He wanted to be there when Jack Sparrow faced death. He wanted to see Jack smile.
He counted himself a clever man; yet Jack Sparrow was unknowable, now. Those ten years he'd lived, escaping from the island by some improbable trickery—Barbossa would not demean himself by asking again—had changed him in ways that Barbossa did not understand. Not yet.
"I thought I had ye figured," Barbossa said at last. "It turns out that you're a hard man to predict."
"Me?" said Jack brightly, turning back to face him across the cave. "I'm dishonest, and a dishonest man you can always trust to be dishonest." He smiled that showman's smile again, the one that he'd worn that far-off day in the Faithless Bride, mocking the Aztec curse. "Honestly! It's the honest ones you want to watch out for, because you can never predict when they're going to do something incredibly ... stupid."
One day Jack would follow a beat that wasn't the rhythm of his own words, the sound of his own voice. But as he finished speaking, he whirled and grabbed the sword from the nearest man. One kick sent him flying. Another sword, and this he threw to Will, who was still bound. Who was, Barbossa realised, suspiciously quiet.
They couldn't have planned this. There hadn't been time. And yet, and yet ... Will had expected that.
Barbossa was Jack's master, with the sword: always had been, when they'd fenced before, though they had never truly fought one another with anything other than words or fists. A shame, that. One he'd have to remedy. He leapt forward, parrying Jack's attack.
Jack Sparrow's swordplay had improved in that ten years. Within moments he'd sliced the feather from Barbossa's hat, with a smile of such impudence that Barbossa roared and redoubled his attack. That wiped the smirk from Jack's face and made him guard himself more carefully. Easy, though, to force him to retreat: to back him against the rock wall of the cavern, and relish the hitch in his breath at Barbossa's leer.
"You’re off the edge of the map, mate. Here be monsters."
From moment to moment, fighting, he watched Jack move. Jack Sparrow fighting for his life was something that Barbossa had seen before: but then, it had never been himself who was Jack's opponent. And even now, surely, they might come to some accord. Jack dead would be a waste. Jack living, or—better—half-living, in his power: now that was a prize worth fighting for.
And Jack might yet be the one to lift the curse. The curse that Barbossa wore now like armour, saving him from impetuous lunges and from the burn of his breath in his lungs. A curse that let him fight as though he would never grow tired.
Jack was tiring, he could see it. He wanted to force Jack down, to master him again. Again? The image was as rich as ever in his mind's eye. Best not to think of that night, now. But he became angry, kept from that by Jack's vain defence.
"You can't beat me, Jack," he said at last, drawing breath to offer some compromise: and, without any hesitation at all, Jack drove his sword right through Barbossa's body.
He could feel the cold metal running through him, and he could see the bloodlust in Jack Sparrow's heart. And suddenly he was tired after all, not in his body but in his ... not his soul, for that'd gone ten years ago. His heart, perhaps. Perchance simply his mind.
He sighed, and drew the sword free, and lunged forward to skewer Jack Sparrow.
He felt nothing.
Jack stared down at the sword that impaled him, eyes wide and dark and agonised. All of a sudden it was eerily quiet: the clatter of swords from across the cavern had stopped, and Barbossa saw Will stand stock-still, eyes fixed on Jack Sparrow.
Then Jack staggered back into the moonlight. And Barbossa understood the game that Jack was playing.
Jack raised his hand and swivelled his wrist, admiring the play of blue light on bone. "That's interesting," he said, and there was the familiar glimmer of gold in his mouth.
And oh, he'd played into Barbossa's own hand now. The gold! 'Twas the gold, for sure, at last; 'twas the cursed Aztecs and their gloomy shark-toothed gods who'd doomed the Black Pearl's crew these ten years gone.
And Jack Sparrow, who had not cursed them after all, was Barbossa's, fairly won, to do with as he wished. An easy thing, once they were both free of the curse, to trap Jack back into it. There he was, bones gleaming in the moonlight, taunting them all with a fool's lack of fear. He'd not spent ten years learning to live half-dead. He thought it a game, still. Tricked or promised or simply forced, he'd take another coin from the chest and be damned. Be Barbossa's.
Even now Jack flipped a coin—Cortez' own, like his damned compass—from finger to finger. Will was staring at them both, wide-eyed, as though...
As though Jack had betrayed him somehow.
"Couldn't resist, mate," said Jack to Will, and Barbossa wanted just that easy camaraderie again. After all these years, surely something would remain?
But already he saw the answer in Jack's eyes: there was no hiding, without flesh to hide behind.
Barbossa roared and brought up his own blade, and Jack perforce freed his from between his ribs. He parried, barely, and leapt back from Barbossa's scything blow.
Jack Sparrow, new to immortality, was still fighting for his life; he defended and feinted like a man who could be killed. Even the pain dimmed quickly, Barbossa remembered: soon enough it had become the mere knowledge of pain, a sensation through thick wool or like an ice-numbed hand clumsily touching something precious; wood, skin, gold.
But still, there'd be no end to this.
Barbossa let Jack's thrust bear him down until he lay sprawled over the stone chest where the cursed gold lay. He looked up at Jack.
"So what now, Jack Sparrow? Will it be we two immortals locked in an epic battle, until Judgment Day and the trumpets sound?"
"Or you could surrender," said Jack, quick and light, and he twisted out from Barbossa's hold and fled once more.
No use, he realised at last, to fight Jack. But Jack had shown his weakness, back before the curse. His weaknesses.
The Turner boy and his irritating wench (where had she sprung from?) had subdued the other pirates—and that was a dirty fight indeed, curse or no—and they were living still, almost unscathed. Will Turner was standing by the stone chest now, and he was watching the two of them fight.
No: watching Jack Sparrow.
Something sparkled in a beam of moonlight, something gold: something that Jack had thrown to Will.
Gold. Cursed gold.
Barbossa dragged the pistol from his belt and levelled it at Elizabeth as she came towards him. From the corner of his eye he could see her teetering on a rock mid-pool, precarious as on the plank the day before.
And then something small and cold and dull pushed fast through his coat, his shirt, his skin, his pectoral muscles, and homed in on the memory of that night. The ache, any road, was the same.
He turned his head and stared at Jack Sparrow.
"Ten years you carried that pistol," said Barbossa, caught between contempt and bewilderment, "and now you waste your shot."
But Jack was looking at him so ... so ... what was that feeling? That burn...
Will Turner said, "He didn't waste it." And, though it was unaccountably difficult, Barbossa turned and watched the two gold coins—varnished red—fall back into the chest.
That meant ... that meant ... curse this slowness, this ache! He pulled his coat open, and the cold of the cavern bit into his skin like a shark, like an Aztec god: all teeth and eagerness. There was a red blossom above the place his heart had been, and a ringing in his ears.
When he looked at Jack again, he could see the curse lifted. Jack was ablaze with life, burning with it, burning up; hot enough to melt every coin in that confounded...
Jack met his gaze. The ten years were all there in his eyes.
"I feel ... cold," Barbossa said. He wanted to go towards Jack, to warm himself on Jack, but the cold gripped him with its teeth and would not let go. He wanted to look away, but that would be a lie.
The darkness bore in, but the blaze was still there, just out of reach.
-end-
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