Immortality, Jack Sparrow often reflected these days, wasn't exactly all that it was cracked up to be. The boredom, for instance, after the first couple of centuries, that tended to manifest as bleakest, blackest depression on Sunday afternoons: things like that tended to show up in the bloody fine print.

A book Jack had found himself reading at an airport some years ago had got the phenomenon named aright: the Long Dark Teatime of the Soul.

Truth be told, Jack Sparrow had been suffering from increasing levels of boredom ever since the 1950s. Piracy as an art form was dead, these days, except in some of the most desperate parts of the world. Technological marvels were still bright and shiny, and interesting, but not enough to quite catch his fancy yet. He'd found himself reading more fiction than usual, of late: stuff that whispered promises of where that technology might go, but it seemed as though it had spoiled the matter for him. Now that he had a good idea where all this stuff was going, he was left impatiently waiting for it instead of enjoying the present as he had always been wont to do before.

Piracy was dead. Professional thievery could only entertain him for about a decade at a time. Politics and military matters alternated between numbingly dull and gut-wrenchingly horrible, as per their usual. The families Jack had adopted over time had seen enough of him lately, and to keep them from wondering too much about how old he really was and what relation he actually was to them, it was time to leave them alone for a while.

And he was homesick for the sea something awful: for the sea, and for sailing.

That was how he'd wound up here, in one of the least-touristy parts of Greece, where men still sailed between islands named in the Odyssey—both for the sake of socialization, and survival, living off the sea as they'd been doing for ages, but with more modern boats. The boats were modern, aye, but they still had bloody sails, and so no one thought Jack Sparrow mad for spending weeks at a time on a small one-man sloop he'd designed a decade back, nor were there a great deal of greatly monied tourists or super-rich in their yachts to tempt him into trying a bit of improvised piracy.

Time had changed him. He'd long ago had to change his hair, because it'd had enough memories woven into it that it was killing his neck. He'd kept it short now and then, and often wound up altering it to best suit his purposes on various ventures. Now, casual as he was feeling these days, it was shoulder-length, in lots of long thin braids with the occasional bead or trinket hidden amongst them. He also wore a pair of kohl-black sunglasses with circular lenses; they wouldn't have been out of place on a blues musician, and neither would his black fedora, which he kept below-deck as the sailing winds tended to disrupt it. Whilst sailing he wore tall boots, but they were modern and more comfortable than they used to be. His black t-shirt was actually of very fine quality, and had some intriguing abstract designs on it, but it had been through some abuse, and not just because Jack had taken a pair of scissors to the bottom of the collar, causing it to open in a "v" that showed the top of his collarbone.

His five ear-piercings, his sailor's tan, the few heavy old rings on his fingers, the precious metals still visible in his grin, the cloth cuffs on his wrists (so handy for slipping things under for sleight-of-hand tricks) and the cut of his beard made him look like an eccentric, oddly tribal and bohemian intellectual. When he added his dark grey, fine-tailored but heavily battered trench coat into the mix (as he often did when not enjoying the feel of sailing winds on his skin) he appeared as thoroughly disreputable as ever, which he still thought was his best look.

His sloop was made up partly of more modern materials, and had some modern amenities, but her design had touches of the old world to it. Her deck felt like the deck of a boat made a few hundred years ago. She smelled like wood and tar, just as she should, so far as Jack was concerned. She was fast, when she wanted to be, and her name was Opal.

Jack had been enjoying a fine day's sail, and had only just returned his ship to the small Greek family who kept her for him and made sure she was never kept away from the sea, when he was aware of an odd little ship coming in to dock. She was larger than Opal, and built to sail in the open sea, but still was a one-man vessel, and there was something about the shape of her that made Jack's mind wander back to ships he'd once, long ago, commandeered: sleek and naval, but not modern-naval. Jack plucked his small spyglass from the pocket of his coat and peered at her closer.

The name, on the side of the little ship, was The Fleetwing, which sounded inexplicably familiar. The man at her helm was tall, but Jack couldn't make out his features in the late-evening light, especially given how the stranger's hair was just long enough to obscure his face. Something nagged at the back of Jack's mind, and he almost dismissed it, but it was Sunday evening, and he'd not much else to occupy his mind just now. He let curiosity bid him to investigate.

Warily, Jack kept his distance from the little vessel, watching her dock from down the nearby pier a ways, at a familiar restaurant and bar with a big open balcony on its second story.

The Fleetwing's sailor treated her well, with a mixture of affectionate care and habitual military efficiency as he bound up her sails and tied her up to the dock. The more Jack watched him work, the more he could see bits of old-world style in the ship's design: the old world he himself had been born in.

All the while, another man, an American if Jack had to guess, stood on the dock beside The Fleetwing, talking at the sailor in a highly impatient manner. Something about the American boded ill, Jack sensed, but his presence revealed something about the sailor: he was English. Jack would recognize that aristocratic bearing, aloofness and visibly droll style from a mile away. It was growing dark by the time that the two men strolled under the balcony and into the bar, and Jack cursed, because he had only heard the American's voice, and seen neither of their faces, thus not allowing him to see if he could identify either of them, be it from rumor or, less likely, from his own memory. He thought, though, that he might've been seen by the Englishman, who seemed to be intriguingly sharp and oh-so-aware of his surroundings: a common habit among predators, Jack knew, since he was a predator himself.

After twenty minutes or so, Jack gave in to curiosity and wandered downstairs. He ordered rum at the bar, using the mirror behind the barkeep to scan the room behind him. He was impressed to note that the men had found one of the few little alcoves not visible in that mirror: wary folk, were these ones. Jack took his rum, and swaggered toward the table he most suspected they'd pick, since he knew the other two had been frequently occupied of late by drug-peddlers.

Jack sat with his back to them, watching their reflection in the rectangular metal napkin-holder on his table. It obscured their features, but he could read their body-language. He noted that when he sat down, the Englishman immediately turned his head, and if the reflection had been a little clearer, Jack had no doubt they'd have made eye-contact. Despite wanting very much to see their faces clearly, Jack did not turn, did not glance over his shoulder. He pretended to ignore them, and listened closely.

The American was loud, and in his mid-fifties. His accent was southern.

"What the fuck are you doing here anyway? It's the middle of nowhere Greece. What can a man like you want here?"

The Englishman was quieter, and timed his reply so that it was mostly-obscured by the sounds of men elsewhere in the bar shouting at the results of a soccer game on the television, but Jack still heard him, and something about the rough baritone slide of that impeccable English drawl made the hairs stand up on the nape of his neck. "I meant it when I said that I planned to take a vacation."

"Bullshit. I know people, man, and I know your type: detectives, espionage spooks, soldiers with a thing for the thrill of the chase."

The Englishman inclined his head in reluctant agreement. His hair was dark brown, and cut in a modern, flattering way: about earlobe-length, with no product in it, and had been at some point smoothed down from its earlier wind-blown state.

"Most of you die young."

Inexplicably, this made the Englishman smile crookedly, as though at a private joke. "Trust me, I know."

"I've met a hundred men of your sort before, and those few that live to be older than me have just barely learned to relax enough to take a real vacation. You're not that old, so I suspect that this is—"

"I am older than I look," the Englishman interrupted curtly. "Furthermore, I shall not help you in your current venture. I know all about it, and I have chosen vacation instead." He tossed back the remainder of his beer like a sailor, despite how posh his accent sounded, and set his mug down firmly as he got to his feet and sidled around to the American's side of the table, his back to Jack, which obscured the words so that the pirate really had to strain to listen. "And I doubt very much that you would have met another man quite like me were you twice the age you are now. I am a hunter, yes, but do not make the grave mistake of lumping me in with every other hunter you have known, or you will sorely regret it, Mr. Harris."

The American was conspicuously silent.

"Get the hell out of Greece. Here are your tickets for the next flights out." The Englishman tugged an envelope from his back pocket and slapped it down on the table. "If I see you again before our next appointed meeting, I shall find more agreeable partnerships than yours in our shared hunting grounds. You are lucky that I am no longer involved in espionage, or I would have made your life miserable, whether I happened to serve on the side of America or of Somalia. Goodnight, Mr. Harris." The Englishman then shot one last suspicious glance over his shoulder at Jack and withdrew, slipping out the door into the night.

Jack sat very still once the Englishman left: not quite so still as the American, who looked bone-pale and as though his life had just flashed before his eyes, and who clutched at that envelope as though it were a lifeline.

Slowly, the former pirate finished off his rum, lost deep in thought.

The very first thing Jack had begun doing, upon seeking immortality, was to sharpen up his memory. As a result, after years of practice, he could remember the faces of nearly everyone he'd ever met, going back over two hundred years. Voices were a more slippery matter. He'd heard an awful lot of them, and people of similar races and nationality all tended to sound pretty familiar after a while, to the point that now and again Jack had been caught completely off-guard by hearing the voice of someone long-dead from the lips of a complete stranger. The older his memory of a voice, the less able he was to even recall from whom he thought he'd heard it.

This one, Jack felt, was impressive. Muscle-memory over two centuries old had sent a chill down his spine and made him feel a crick in his neck. The Englishman's voice had rung inexplicably, impossibly familiar, but when Jack tried to think of how or why, he was distracted by thoughts of quite how appealing it was: baritone and polished, impeccably controlled and yet clearly dangerous. It was the sort of voice Jack wanted to hear in bed, and find out what it would sound like when its owner lost control.

Honestly, it made Jack remember a tall and equally dangerous man he'd known ages ago, and whom he'd broken once, on accident, and never gotten the chance to get close to as he might've liked. He thought back on that green-eyed commodore-rogue-admiral now and then, more than he probably should, and usually when he least expected to because something small would bring back a memory. It was always both a little discomfiting, and a little wistful. Jack hadn't let himself think about the habit overmuch, since Norrington had been dead for so many years, but pirates, even if they're not really pirates anymore, have a tendency not to forget missed chances, especially when the treasure missed happened to be so pretty and so... promising.

Jack had, in his original plans, fully intended to make his way to an airport in a few days' time, much as Mr. Harris the American would now have to, since there weren't any international ones handily nearby. Jack had fully intended to, from the airport, head to Singapore and re-absorb the parts of that city that never really changed.

Never one to let his original intentions get in the way of pursuing an unexpected gleam or glitter of golden opportunity, Jack let his old plans fall apart and came up with a new one; in the morning, he would seek out that English sailor. He knew, deep within his very bones, that there was treasure to be found there.