(no subject)
Title: Spiced Rum: Aged Ten - Desperate Times
Type: Gen at present
Genre: Character study/Angst
Fandom: Pirates of the Caribbean
Characters/Pairings: Jack Smith (eventually Sparrow); his parents, a harlot and a pirate; Lizzie, a harlot; Johnny, a pimp; Johnson, a preacher; and miscellaneous others.
Rating: PG-13
Warnings: Minor language, talk of whorin' and drinkin', angst of the death-pertaining sort, piracy, etc.
Word Count: ~1,650
Summary: Jack is five and loves his family.
Disclaimer: PoTC belongs to Disney, Bruckheimer, Elliot & Rossio, and Verbinski. Copyright, I respect. Infringe upon it, I intend to do not.
A/N: Written for everyfiveyears, also featuring this week's AWDT prompt.
Previous: Part One
For the first time in his memory, the docks are cold. Winter’s a relative term here, it always has been - it’s just the time of year when the sun doesn’t shine so bright and the winds bite a little bit harder. But now, it’s cold, and his very bones are icing over. Mama has her hands on his shoulders more for herself than for him. She’s wearing black today (her only bit of black), Lizzie and Johnny too, and everyone around them; Johnny’s wearing his only jacket that doesn’t smell like The Wineskin. And, in the middle of his huge, loving family, also for the first time he can remember, Jack feels hopelessly lost. The Wineskin regulars and Tom came out too; he had to get nice clothes for this, and Lizzie said he looked so handsome.
It’s hard to believe her when she has tears in her eyes, but they’re to be expected, aren’t they? Mama spent all night on Tuesday crying with the door shut; on Wednesday, her eyes were red and puffy, and she still ran back to her room sometimes. Even Johnny, once he’d had a few big tankards of rum, cried with the girls.
“Never a better man’n ol’ Jim,” he said over a rum Jack was sure he didn’t need. “Never better.”
Jack cleaned up all of Johnny’s glasses from Their Table; seemed like everyone in town had business drinking that night, and Tom was busy, and Tom’s serving girls were even more busy, and he even got his son to come and help, and everyone was overworked, it seemed. Not too different than any other night, really, save the son and the fact that no one was having a good time. Not even one grin, with missing teeth and red cheeks, from Tom to lighten the mood. As Jack took Johnny’s glasses, Johnny grabbed him by the wrist. He got his whole hand around it and looked up at Jack with red, blurry eyes and whimpered like a dog with a broken leg. Jack’s pretty sure that he was drunker than everyone else at The Wineskin that night, even the old sailor who’d been in there drinking since morning.
“Yeh look jes’ like ‘im, Jack, me boy. Jes’ like ‘im!”
“Johnny…” He struggled a bit, trying to get his arm free. “Let me go… Tom needs the flagons…”
“Was ‘is bes’ friend, yeh know! Bes’ friend! Thick as thieves, me an’ ‘im!”
“Right, but please-”
“Never a better man! Yeh… yeh look jes’ like ‘im!”
“I know, please-”
“Jack, ‘e… ‘e wanted better fer yeh. Better’n all this bloody mess.”
He let go after that, drank down that last glass, and Jack thought that, maybe, he could understand what papa meant when he said that, instead of questioning his sanity for saying it.
These nice clothes are uncomfortable and it’d be truer to papa if Jack would wear his shirt and breeches, and the girls would wear their filthy dresses, and Johnny would smell like piss and smoke and rum. The Jack in shirt and breeches was always what papa embraced after several months at sea. And it’s more like Jack than these old things.
He could swear to God that Johnson gives him a look as he walks up the docks, like they’re his church, like he bloody owns them; frosty confirmation sits in his cold, grey eyes that, though Jim Smith lived and died a pirate, never at a moral agreement with the sweet and fluffy Christian Lord, he’d get a “proper,” Christian send-off. Nothing about this whole mess is “proper”; he wanted to go out with a party - everyone drinking to excess and enjoying life without him - not with a funeral dirge. Even during the wholly wrong sermon, that long-winded, too-little-to-say preacher man takes a minute to look over to Jack and twist those liar’s lips into a smirk. He thinks he’s won, but… but hasn’t he, in some way, as much as Jack hates it? It’s just a shadow in the back of his mind, but, perhaps, Johnson’s right about something.
Looking around, he sees his world with a detailed eye too new to fully understand. Mama, always so vibrant and beautiful, has a lined face and shrunken skin, and her dress hangs too loosely, even though Lizzie tied it tight. She’s old, he realizes, and when this horrible, sweltering August passes, she’ll be that much older, even if her face won’t show it. She’s old, and, despite his efforts to the contrary, Johnny still smells like rum and smoke. And Lizzie, his Lizzie… she has a sea contained in the sea of her eyes. But it doesn’t come out, not fully… just enough to smudge her kohl, and, at that, only a little.
And they would have to do this on Jack’s birthday of all days. There’s not even a body, which would make it easier. A bit. Jack is ten years old, and the sea - his sea, his beautiful, blue ocean - the sea has swallowed his papa, taking the rest of Jack’s life and Jack with it. Not physically… he isn’t surrounded by dark water crushing down and in on him and he isn’t floundering to breathe, but the air is thick with salty tears, and salty grief, and sea salt from his salty ocean, and it chokes him but he still keeps breathing. Why does he keep breathing? How does it work?
The sermon ends with wooden words of sorrow for Jim Smith and painted words of grief for a pirate - a pirate and a good man. Johnson doesn’t believe a word of what he says, unless other people’s pain is his greatest pleasure (and it probably is, he is a clergyman after all), but he still says that Jack’s pirate father went to a “good place.” A better place than here on Earth, anyways. If not that good, then at least wherever it’s better than this sorry, sinning port. Always a way to moralize everything, isn’t there? Even when people are grieving, there has to be a moral. Jack wants to spit and curse, and yell at that filthy son of a sea rat that there could be no better life than this - society expects nothing of them, they expect nothing of society, the rum flows until dawn, and everyone’s free since they’ve got nothing to lose - but mama’s hands on his shoulders keep him in line. He only glares and gets a smirk in return.
That bastard preacher hasn’t won yet. Jack’ll show him someday.
…The Endeavor’s captain and his wife are there, with the little boy she’s mostly raised alone. He might not even be the captain’s son, since she’s been known to drink too much and entertain strange men, but said sorry excuse for a man keeps the boy and raises him anyway. …The boy’s quite lucky, even if his father smacks his mum when he’s full up on rum… after all. The captain could be dead, like Jack’s papa. His only justification for being alive is that his ship did not go down.
Sparrows hop around Jack’s feet once most everyone clears out. That’s what Lizzie called him once, and all the other girls picked it up and latched onto it like barnacles on a ship’s hull. She said it fit him, since the birds are always moving and so is he, and they’re enviable for their refusal to stop their own routines. The hands on his shoulders finally leave and, when Jack turns around to look, he sees why: Johnny has his arms around mama and she has her arms up between them; her hands are on his shoulders now. And her head’s in his shoulder too, and his hand’s in her hair… it suddenly all makes sense.
“Mary, Mary, sssh,” he whispers warmly, though his voice shakes. “No work tonight. Won’t have any of it, not tonight.”
“Johnny, what’ll we-”
“We’ll get piss drunk, that’s what. If we’re both drunk, it doesn’t matter.”
They have the door closed when Lizzie takes Jack and puts him to bed; it’s still closed by noon the next day. Lizzie closes her door too, and the other girls, when they laugh, sound hollowed out. …They leave too, soon enough, closing their doors and telling Jack to sit with Tom until someone comes back out. Tom gives him a tiny glass of rum, since the water’s rotten or something like that, and he wakes up in bed, not knowing how he got there.
It takes a week of suffocating everywhere - The Wineskin, the congested streets and empty alleys, his beloved docks - but, finally, papa’s talk of a better life makes all too much sense. There’s family here, and that’s it. Family and an eventual death, slow and sucking pain until, at long last, your life is leeched from you. But everything is on the sea. All opportunities open and each fate laid bare and made available. Everything is possible with that cruel mistress. Jack Smith, aged ten years and one week, knows now that he must choose between everything and nothing, and he wouldn’t disrespect his papa’s memory with the latter.
He leaves mama a note, finally grateful that she forced him to learn to do more than just make his mark, and steals Lizzie’s kohl… something to remember her by, and he hides away like early morning on a ship known as The Wicked Wench. They don’t find him until they’re well out to sea, and, at that, he’s just a rangy stowaway, sleeping peacefully amongst the bottles of rum. As it turns out, he can be more than that: they are, it seems, in constant need of cabin boys. And, somehow, the sea air and giving his name to the captain as “Sparrow” make him feel freer, though it’s only been a day.
Type: Gen at present
Genre: Character study/Angst
Fandom: Pirates of the Caribbean
Characters/Pairings: Jack Smith (eventually Sparrow); his parents, a harlot and a pirate; Lizzie, a harlot; Johnny, a pimp; Johnson, a preacher; and miscellaneous others.
Rating: PG-13
Warnings: Minor language, talk of whorin' and drinkin', angst of the death-pertaining sort, piracy, etc.
Word Count: ~1,650
Summary: Jack is five and loves his family.
Disclaimer: PoTC belongs to Disney, Bruckheimer, Elliot & Rossio, and Verbinski. Copyright, I respect. Infringe upon it, I intend to do not.
A/N: Written for everyfiveyears, also featuring this week's AWDT prompt.
Previous: Part One
For the first time in his memory, the docks are cold. Winter’s a relative term here, it always has been - it’s just the time of year when the sun doesn’t shine so bright and the winds bite a little bit harder. But now, it’s cold, and his very bones are icing over. Mama has her hands on his shoulders more for herself than for him. She’s wearing black today (her only bit of black), Lizzie and Johnny too, and everyone around them; Johnny’s wearing his only jacket that doesn’t smell like The Wineskin. And, in the middle of his huge, loving family, also for the first time he can remember, Jack feels hopelessly lost. The Wineskin regulars and Tom came out too; he had to get nice clothes for this, and Lizzie said he looked so handsome.
It’s hard to believe her when she has tears in her eyes, but they’re to be expected, aren’t they? Mama spent all night on Tuesday crying with the door shut; on Wednesday, her eyes were red and puffy, and she still ran back to her room sometimes. Even Johnny, once he’d had a few big tankards of rum, cried with the girls.
“Never a better man’n ol’ Jim,” he said over a rum Jack was sure he didn’t need. “Never better.”
Jack cleaned up all of Johnny’s glasses from Their Table; seemed like everyone in town had business drinking that night, and Tom was busy, and Tom’s serving girls were even more busy, and he even got his son to come and help, and everyone was overworked, it seemed. Not too different than any other night, really, save the son and the fact that no one was having a good time. Not even one grin, with missing teeth and red cheeks, from Tom to lighten the mood. As Jack took Johnny’s glasses, Johnny grabbed him by the wrist. He got his whole hand around it and looked up at Jack with red, blurry eyes and whimpered like a dog with a broken leg. Jack’s pretty sure that he was drunker than everyone else at The Wineskin that night, even the old sailor who’d been in there drinking since morning.
“Yeh look jes’ like ‘im, Jack, me boy. Jes’ like ‘im!”
“Johnny…” He struggled a bit, trying to get his arm free. “Let me go… Tom needs the flagons…”
“Was ‘is bes’ friend, yeh know! Bes’ friend! Thick as thieves, me an’ ‘im!”
“Right, but please-”
“Never a better man! Yeh… yeh look jes’ like ‘im!”
“I know, please-”
“Jack, ‘e… ‘e wanted better fer yeh. Better’n all this bloody mess.”
He let go after that, drank down that last glass, and Jack thought that, maybe, he could understand what papa meant when he said that, instead of questioning his sanity for saying it.
These nice clothes are uncomfortable and it’d be truer to papa if Jack would wear his shirt and breeches, and the girls would wear their filthy dresses, and Johnny would smell like piss and smoke and rum. The Jack in shirt and breeches was always what papa embraced after several months at sea. And it’s more like Jack than these old things.
He could swear to God that Johnson gives him a look as he walks up the docks, like they’re his church, like he bloody owns them; frosty confirmation sits in his cold, grey eyes that, though Jim Smith lived and died a pirate, never at a moral agreement with the sweet and fluffy Christian Lord, he’d get a “proper,” Christian send-off. Nothing about this whole mess is “proper”; he wanted to go out with a party - everyone drinking to excess and enjoying life without him - not with a funeral dirge. Even during the wholly wrong sermon, that long-winded, too-little-to-say preacher man takes a minute to look over to Jack and twist those liar’s lips into a smirk. He thinks he’s won, but… but hasn’t he, in some way, as much as Jack hates it? It’s just a shadow in the back of his mind, but, perhaps, Johnson’s right about something.
Looking around, he sees his world with a detailed eye too new to fully understand. Mama, always so vibrant and beautiful, has a lined face and shrunken skin, and her dress hangs too loosely, even though Lizzie tied it tight. She’s old, he realizes, and when this horrible, sweltering August passes, she’ll be that much older, even if her face won’t show it. She’s old, and, despite his efforts to the contrary, Johnny still smells like rum and smoke. And Lizzie, his Lizzie… she has a sea contained in the sea of her eyes. But it doesn’t come out, not fully… just enough to smudge her kohl, and, at that, only a little.
And they would have to do this on Jack’s birthday of all days. There’s not even a body, which would make it easier. A bit. Jack is ten years old, and the sea - his sea, his beautiful, blue ocean - the sea has swallowed his papa, taking the rest of Jack’s life and Jack with it. Not physically… he isn’t surrounded by dark water crushing down and in on him and he isn’t floundering to breathe, but the air is thick with salty tears, and salty grief, and sea salt from his salty ocean, and it chokes him but he still keeps breathing. Why does he keep breathing? How does it work?
The sermon ends with wooden words of sorrow for Jim Smith and painted words of grief for a pirate - a pirate and a good man. Johnson doesn’t believe a word of what he says, unless other people’s pain is his greatest pleasure (and it probably is, he is a clergyman after all), but he still says that Jack’s pirate father went to a “good place.” A better place than here on Earth, anyways. If not that good, then at least wherever it’s better than this sorry, sinning port. Always a way to moralize everything, isn’t there? Even when people are grieving, there has to be a moral. Jack wants to spit and curse, and yell at that filthy son of a sea rat that there could be no better life than this - society expects nothing of them, they expect nothing of society, the rum flows until dawn, and everyone’s free since they’ve got nothing to lose - but mama’s hands on his shoulders keep him in line. He only glares and gets a smirk in return.
That bastard preacher hasn’t won yet. Jack’ll show him someday.
…The Endeavor’s captain and his wife are there, with the little boy she’s mostly raised alone. He might not even be the captain’s son, since she’s been known to drink too much and entertain strange men, but said sorry excuse for a man keeps the boy and raises him anyway. …The boy’s quite lucky, even if his father smacks his mum when he’s full up on rum… after all. The captain could be dead, like Jack’s papa. His only justification for being alive is that his ship did not go down.
Sparrows hop around Jack’s feet once most everyone clears out. That’s what Lizzie called him once, and all the other girls picked it up and latched onto it like barnacles on a ship’s hull. She said it fit him, since the birds are always moving and so is he, and they’re enviable for their refusal to stop their own routines. The hands on his shoulders finally leave and, when Jack turns around to look, he sees why: Johnny has his arms around mama and she has her arms up between them; her hands are on his shoulders now. And her head’s in his shoulder too, and his hand’s in her hair… it suddenly all makes sense.
“Mary, Mary, sssh,” he whispers warmly, though his voice shakes. “No work tonight. Won’t have any of it, not tonight.”
“Johnny, what’ll we-”
“We’ll get piss drunk, that’s what. If we’re both drunk, it doesn’t matter.”
They have the door closed when Lizzie takes Jack and puts him to bed; it’s still closed by noon the next day. Lizzie closes her door too, and the other girls, when they laugh, sound hollowed out. …They leave too, soon enough, closing their doors and telling Jack to sit with Tom until someone comes back out. Tom gives him a tiny glass of rum, since the water’s rotten or something like that, and he wakes up in bed, not knowing how he got there.
It takes a week of suffocating everywhere - The Wineskin, the congested streets and empty alleys, his beloved docks - but, finally, papa’s talk of a better life makes all too much sense. There’s family here, and that’s it. Family and an eventual death, slow and sucking pain until, at long last, your life is leeched from you. But everything is on the sea. All opportunities open and each fate laid bare and made available. Everything is possible with that cruel mistress. Jack Smith, aged ten years and one week, knows now that he must choose between everything and nothing, and he wouldn’t disrespect his papa’s memory with the latter.
He leaves mama a note, finally grateful that she forced him to learn to do more than just make his mark, and steals Lizzie’s kohl… something to remember her by, and he hides away like early morning on a ship known as The Wicked Wench. They don’t find him until they’re well out to sea, and, at that, he’s just a rangy stowaway, sleeping peacefully amongst the bottles of rum. As it turns out, he can be more than that: they are, it seems, in constant need of cabin boys. And, somehow, the sea air and giving his name to the captain as “Sparrow” make him feel freer, though it’s only been a day.