Many A Broken Spar and Tatter'd Sail

by Edoraslass

Pairing: J/N implied
Rating: R
Disclaimer: Nope, not mine.
Originally Posted: 7/04/08
Note: Title is from "Or From That Sea of Time" by Walt Whitman
Warning: AU, fairly dark, mentions of deeds strange, bloody, and creepy but nothing graphic
Summary: He doesn't expect to remember everything. He's almost two hundred years old—give or take a decade or three, it's 's all started to blur and Jack's never been very good at keeping track of time anyway.

He's not entirely sure why he left the Caribbean, but he's fairly certain it had something to do with the way he's always not dying. When people who are half your age are suddenly twice your age and you look exactly the same as you ever did, that kind of thing gets noticed, and not in a friendly way. First in an amazed way, then in a superstitious way (especially in the Caribbean, where no-one quite disbelieves any story they hear about Captain Jack Sparrow, no matter how outlandish), then in a frightened, determined-to-see-you-dead-by-hook-crook-or-burning-at-the-stake way.

Once someone said, "You can't blame them, Jack. It's been nigh on fifty years, and you've not aged a bit since that day on the docks. Are you sure you've not got one of those coins stowed away somewhere?"

He can't remember now who asked him that question, nor what a coin would have to do with his persistent state of not-dying. He knows he was able to die, once upon a time. He did die, was left to die quite a horrible death, actually, and did so rather admirably, majestically, heroically, even.

Was murdered, not to put too fine a point on it, by one Miss Elizabeth Swann, Pirate King. You don't forget the name of your murderer. Although apparently you can forget what she looked like, or why she'd've wanted you dead.

Jack doesn't remember who said that to him, but he knows she was old, and that he was telling her good-bye when she said it.

~*~

He doesn't expect to remember everything. He's almost two hundred years old—give or take a decade or three, it's all started to blur and Jack's never been very good at keeping track of time anyway. Of course memory's going to tatter and fray like a water-rotted sail. He doesn't know why he woke up with blood all over his greatcoat and boots this very morning, how the fuck can he expected to remember more than bits and pieces of things that happened nearly two centuries ago?

It isn't just time, either, that's nibbled holes in his powers of recall. It's various and sundry intoxicants, it's brawls and blows to the head, it's week-long fevers and exotically revolting illnesses, because even though he's yet to die permanently, apparently he can still be caught by disease. He just can't be killed by it.

He would like to be able to remember who Pearl was, and why sleeping in her dark arms was so comforting; he'd like to be to remember what the man with those green, green eyes was to him, why he dreams so vividly of those eyes all these years later.

He'd like to know why he collected those little trinkets he now wears round his neck, and why he can't bring himself to pawn the ancient compass that doesn't point north. He both would and wouldn't like to know why his bonny black ship was burned to the waterline by Spaniards.

He almost knows all these things, on staggeringly drunken midnights when he's leaning against some filthy London alley, hoping he'll make it back to his room unmolested—well, un-robbed, at least. Almost he remembers.

Sometimes he remembers that a man stole his heart; he remembers that his heart was important, that he needed it for something, and that a man stole it. Sometimes he thinks it wasn't his heart the man stole, which makes no sense, even for a slippery bastard of a memory, for who else's heart could be stolen from Jack than his very own? And sometimes he thinks that it both was and wasn't his heart that the man stole.

Jack trusts his dreams more than his waking mind; he knows that his dreams are true memories, popping to the surface like bloated corpses after a shipwreck. Under the noonday sun, he can't trust anything he thinks he remembers.

~*~

He does vaguely remember something about a peanut, and he thinks maybe that small, innocent nut has something to do with his current state of perpetual living, but it's a false memory indeed, for who would be foolish enough to eat food offered in the land of the dead?

~*~

He didn't go by "Jack Sparrow" for a century and a half. Sometimes it was Jack Turner, sometimes Jack Gibbs, once recently (recently being within the last fifty or so years) he introduced himself as Jack Norrington, immediately began laughing like a syphilitic monkey and was unceremoniously arrested for public intoxication, in New Orleans of all places. Arrested for being drunk in New Orleans, he hadn't known that was actually possible.

He lay awake in that cell for hours, unable to quite remember why that was so funny. Eventually he gave it up as a lost cause—he doesn't know where "Turner" or "Gibbs" came from, either—sucked off a guard in exchange for a conveniently-turned back and slipped away into the night.

~*~

When he first arrived in London, though, he took back his name—everyone who'd remember that name is six feet under or lying full fathom five, who's now going to indignantly accuse him of pretending to be himself?

Unexpectedly, it set him off balance, to have people call out, "Jack Sparrow!" after lifetimes of going by other names. He felt as if he should know whoever was speaking to him, as if people were seeing who he actually was, not all the other Jacks he's pretended to be. Once he even absently corrected a drunken Irishman: "Captain. Captain Jack Sparrow."

The Irishman had laughed and sneered, "I don't see your ship," and something about that had sent Jack diving headfirst into a bottle, a pipe, and the arms of a none-too-young, none-too-clean whore, and he'd waked up in a cell with no idea what he'd done to get there.

He'd started going by Jack Swann after that, he just told people they'd misremembered what bird shared his name. It pleases him giddily, to take the name of the woman who killed him.

~*~

Jack's been all over the world—Constantinople, Tahiti, Marseilles, Tripoli, Melbourne, Charleston, San Francisco, Calcutta, Indochina, tiny villages that aren't on any map and strangely nebulous islands that might or might not actually exist.

He's left behind friends, partners, enemies, acquaintances, at least one wife and if he left behind any children, no-one's told him about it. He's been a merchant, tavern-keeper, brothel owner (as well as a whore), smuggler, art dealer, carpenter, actor, street magician, more professions than he'd care to count if he could. He spent a good deal of time as an able seaman on many different vessels, but never stayed on any one too long, because none of those ships felt right, and every single ship he stepped foot on resented him, which was fine, because he resented every single one of them for still sailing, when his bonny lass was gone for good this time.

A fortune teller in Alexandria ran him out of her shop, terrified, screaming that he had no soul nor heart, and Jack knew she was right. He lost both when he left the Caribbean, and he's not been the same since.

~*~

He's no idea why he came to London, and he's not sure how long he's been there. He just wandered where his feet took him, and wound up on the Thames. Jack's gotten used to following his feet and not questioning where they're going. It's why he hasn't yet left London, although he doesn't particularly like it—his feet haven't started itching to be on the move.

~*~

He's never denied that he's always had a fondness for whores. Tall or short, young or old, pale or with skin like cinnamon; slim or plump, blonde or brunette, flat-chested or endowed like the prow of a ship of the line, Jack has always enjoyed whores. 'Tis an easy occupation to carry a fondness for; a coin or two and they'll draw undreamed of delights from a man, cooing compliments and flicking supple tongues over hidden, sensitive flesh.

But Jack doesn't know where that fondness took a turn. He can't pinpoint when whores went from soft, warm creatures of pleasure to hard, embittered women who'd just as soon kick you in the teeth as swive you. Maybe it's the latitude that turns those women into hollow-eyed specters of their Caribbean counterparts, haunting the corners of the East End like wan shadows cast from a brighter world.

~*~

Polly, Annie, Elizabeth—he's known many women by all those names, and one is far more familiar than the others—of course he knows why "Elizabeth" is familiar; you don't forget the name of your murderer, after all. He doesn't know who the other women might be, any more than he knows why he awakes with his muscles aching, hands sticky with blood, or where the cold, grey lumps of flesh in the drawer of his bureau came from.

~*~

Some nights, he dreams of pristine, white sands, blinding his eyes and seeping between his toes...

Some nights, he dreams of a sea-shore on fire, a column of smoke rising into the air, drawing in ships from far and near.

Some nights, he dreams of a low, spine-tingling chuckle, roughened yet gentle fingers tracking a line along his hipbone, the rasp of whiskers along his neck and a deep voice murmuring, God, yes, Jack. Jack. Jack.

Some nights, he dreams of a woman's neck under his fingers, of flailing, struggling limbs, gasping breaths and his hands covered in still-warm blood. On those nights, Jack wakes up suffocated by panic, afraid to look to closely at his fingernails or clothes or his own reflection, and he doesn't sleep again for days.

~*~

Jack reads the broadsheets; everyone in London does, especially the terrified denizens of Whitechapel. They don't publish all the mocking letters in black and white, and Jack's afraid that he doesn't need to see them to know their content. He's afraid, from the soles of his earth-bound feet to the depths of his pirate soul, that he already knows what those letters say:

I was not codding dear old Boss when I gave you the tip, you'll hear about Saucy Jacky's work tomorrow double event this time number one squealed a bit couldn't finish straight off. ha not the time to get ears for police. thanks for keeping last letter back till I got to work again.

Saucy Jack. He does remember a beautiful dark-skinned woman who smelled of tar and sweat calling him that—that, and far less kind things, right before she slapped him hard enough to knock him out of the bed.

~*~

Jack flees London when he knows the name of the most recent victim without ever having read the broadsheet. He boards a ship, aiming to run as far and as fast as he can from Mother England. Jack doesn't trust his own memory, his actions, his eyes, nor even his own voice, and he can't convince himself they're only hellishly detailed nightmares.

All he trusts is the sea; no matter how far he's gone inland, it's never stopped whispering to him. The sea's never left him, and so it's to the sea he must return.

In all this time, he's never tried to drown himself. Other people have tried to drown him, certainly, but even though immortality hasn't turned out quite like Jack Sparrow thought it would, it's never occurred to him to kill himself. Still too much to do and too much to see in this wide world.

But when he'd found a blood-streaked knife he didn't know he owned shoved into the ashes of his lonely fire, that's when he thought that maybe he should try to shuffle off the mortal coil. He hasn't thought about those wicked tropical curses in decades upon decades, but one thing he remembers is that if you want to break the blasted things, you can't come at it straight on. There's always an angle to the buggers.

And if the sea doesn't kill him, why sure he'll make a home on the ocean's floor, find a cave to live in, maybe the ruins of a ship. Take up with the sharks and dolphins and sea turtles, sprout gills and let barnacles grow on his flesh.

He can't quite remember why that whimsical idea makes his skin crawl.

~*~

Oh, and the sea welcomes him. He waits until he's sure it's his beloved Caribbean—so hard to tell these days, so hard to keep his up and down straight, much less his longitude and latitude, but it smells right and feels right and the air's filled with a mixture of strange languages, rum, spices, heady, herbal concoctions few other parts of the world have yet tasted.

Jack sinks into her embrace with relief, a sense of completion, something like curiosity. Surely a single peanut can't keep him chained to the solid earth til the end of days. Surely he'll break free at the bottom of the briny depths. Surely now, he's finished.