FIC: Sleeping with Ghosts (pt3)
LJ can't handle my awesome
***
Mercer’s hand on her shoulder made her jump. She hadn’t noticed him but some things never changed. Rose was crying, but her voice was steady on one word.
“Upstairs.”
Mercer was gone without so much as a nod. In the face of his purposefulness her knees weakened. After choking a few sobs into the wall she followed.
***
Mercer produced leather straps and was binding the unconscious creature to the bed. He had bade Rose press herself against the door. He was not certain Sparrow had it in him to strike a woman. He had wanted to bring chains, it would have eased his mind; but he could not think of a way not to look suspicious. Seeing Jack’s naked flesh, the first map his sweet lord had run his hands so wonderingly over, made him want to sink the knife between his shoulder blades without wasting another second. Sparrow’s long twisted locks were gone and David relished how pale and human he seemed.
“Whatever happens, you must not move,” he told her. “If there is any chance for him to escape he’ll take it.”
Rose nodded. She watched, but did not see. The words squeezed out of her.
“I’m afraid.”
He stopped, looked up at her. In an instant he was pressed against her, slamming her into the door.
“Don’t you dare do this to me now!” he hissed. “You started this, you wanted it as much as I do.”
Her breathing hitched and gasped like rhythmic sobs. She had begun to think of her father, of her mother reading to her from the Bible. There was natural faith in Rose Gillette and her own fear combated her desire for vengeance.
“Cross me,” Mercer whispered, “and I’ll kill him with your blade, then you with my bare hands.”
She turned her face away, but he saw in the way her muscles shifted that she would be true. David’s face softened. He took her in his arms.
“The first time is always hard. But this is right, pet. It’s justice.”
“Don’t call me that,” she murmured into his chest. “Just do it…”
His smile would wake her in the night for a long time. He knelt beside the pirate and after a second’s pause smacked him hard across the face. Rose winced.
“Time to wake up.”
Sparrow convulsed. His head snapped up and he growled incomprehensibly, looking up with glazed eyes until Mercer said:
“Evenin’, Jack.”
The fearsome, fearless pirate of Rose’s imaginings could not be found in the immense eyes and the face that drained of all blood. Six of Rose’s racing heartbeats went by and then:
“You…”
As David had anticipated his first instinct was to look to the door. His eyes locked with hers and she saw his pleas as clearly as if he was a little child, but in an instant he realized what she was about. His captors watched for a horrible moment as he struggled with the bonds. Mercer thought briefly about slicing one of his tendons to make him lie still, but after a moment he gave up on his own. He was panting. Sweat shone on his temple. He seemed, dare David even think it, weak. “Bitch,” he growled at her. “You set me up.”
She had nothing to say to this truthful accusation, just stared at him with her dead eyes. Jack Sparrow grinned a feral grin, twisting his neck to face Mercer. A few gold teeth caught the candlelight and the feverish light in his black eyes and for the first time his look frightened her. He let out a barking, dry laugh that went on for too long and left him panting further.
“I though’ for sure you’d wound up a carcas, old carrion,” he said. “Or e’en better, take me place in the Locker where you b’long.”
“Ain’t no locker now, Jack,” David replied as evenly as if Sparrow was sitting across from him at cards. “No Davy Jones as you said yourself.”
“Captain Turner would open it up for th’ likes a’ you…Bu’ then you ‘aven’t a soul t’ steal.”
“No more have you.” Mercer got very close to his prey’s face, tangling his fingers in the new curls. “But where you’re going it doesn’t matter.”
“Going to kill me now?”
It was a strange question; scared but not terrified, delivered with an arched eyebrow on a sheet white face in a voice of something between venom and resignation. Mercer chuckled.
“Not just yet.”
Rose’s head snapped up.
“David.” She tried not to sound pleading. “Can’t we make short work of this?”
“Be quiet.” Mercer was straddling the pirate’s back, one long, muscled leg hanging over each side of the bed. Sparrow grunted and turned his face towards her.
“So who’re you then, pretty one?” he almost spat the question at her. “Where do you fit in on this day always to be remembered as the day a rabid dog killed Captain Jack Sparrow?”
Mercer suddenly gripped a handful of Jack’s hair and yanked his head back, so that his eyes rolled back in his skull to face his executioner. Jack shouted in pain and Mercer placed one gloved finger over his lips.
“Shhhh, Jack. No one will remember because no one will know,” he whispered with that strange ease, almost a demented pleasantness, in his voice. “This is between the four of us-you, me, Rose and our master, Lord Cutler Beckett.”
With her face turned towards the door Rose made a strange, choked, animal groan at the sound of the name, involuntary and barely noticed to herself. But Jack heard it. He watched her slide down the door and fold her body into itself.
“David, please…” she sobbed.
“I told you to be still!” growled Mercer.
He took out her blade then and ran the cool, flat surface across the pirate’s back. Jack shuddered. At that instant both men recalled the touch of a third; one from a memory and the other from imagining what he had never been good enough for. A ghost had entered the room and as quickly as Rose had been recalled she was thrown away by its presence. It was as if punishment would not be for the deaths at all, but for Mercer’s undying jealousy of what Cutler had done in life. This was not what she wanted. She was on her feet again screaming:
“Just do it for Christ’s sake!”
They both looked over at her. She was shaking. Her hair was undone and fell into her face, growing wet with unstoppable tears from burning, wild eyes.
“Do it, god damn you. I can’t bear it.”
“This is no longer your concern.”
Mercer’s voice was barely heard as Sparrow overtook him.
“Wha’ did ‘ee do t’ you?”
“Fuck you,” she snarled.
“Hurt you, did ‘ee?” Jack’s voice was soft.
“Don’t say anything, Rose.”
A hundred answers spun through Rose’s brain.
Hurt me, took me apart, gave me a life, murdered me, loved me.
“Whatever he promised you it wasn’t true, dear.” There was pity in the pirate’s eyes. It set her ablaze.
“Shut up!” she screamed, throwing her hands over her ears. “You don’t know anything! You don’t know what you’ve done to me…You killed him. You killed them all…”
Jack’s eyes clouded with confusion. Mercer seized the second and stuffed one of his gloves into the victim’s mouth. He shouted a few curses around it and Mercer laughed outright.
“Now I’ll get what’s owed.”
He lowered the knife between the shoulder blades. Sparrow’s body tensed. Don’t look, Rose told herself. But her eyes only widened as she took a steadying breath.
The blade was keen. Rose often sat up all night sharpening it when she couldn’t sleep. She jumped when the first cut was made, a thrill running through her. Mercer sliced at a slight angle so that the flesh peeled away like the skin off a ripe mango. Blood gushed up, running down the back and slicking the tips of his fingers and still he worked on. And all the time Jack screamed.
They were muffled, and between the glove and the raucousness downstairs they could not be heard. Rose had never heard anything like it. The chords in his neck and forehead stood out and sweat streamed down his face which was rapidly turning a shade of grey Rose remembered from looking at her hands and arms in that time when she’d been pulled from the cellar when she’d been so very bad…The scream was an unbroken, hoarse and desperate peal that was cut off abruptly as Mercer finally lifted the blade. The pirate took ten great heaving breaths that ended in softer moans of pain. Rose stepped forward slowly, and looked at the deep, red circle on his back, where she could see just a hint of bone.
“A pound of flesh,” David remarked with satisfaction. He was sweating too, and let out a long trembling breath, shutting his eyes wearily.
“And now…”
His bloody fingers twisted in Sparrow’s hair and pulled his head back, holding the blade to his throat.
“Wait!”
Her hand shot out and stayed his.
“That’s not fair,” she said sharply. “What about me?”
He squinted at her.
“I’d like another. I’d like my own. A set. For Andrew and for James.”
Jack looked up at the name. Her eyes shone madly in the dim light. She was smiling at him, a bemused smile like an open wound and in her eyes then Mercer saw the mark as he had seen it on their master a lifetime ago. David reached out and touched her face, a bit of blood streaking her white cheek, like an anointment.
“Good girl,” he murmured. “Good girl.”
As he placed the knife to one side of the spine on the lower back Sparrow’s eyes welled up with tears. Rose’s grin grew wider seeing this and she knelt to look into his face. Mercer began cutting again. The screams were softer now, for the victim was tiring and losing blood, but his eyes focused on her as she spoke.
“You wouldn’t know my name,” she whispered as he strained beside her. “You wouldn’t know my family; you and your great legend. But I know you, Jack Sparrow, and tonight before you die you will know me too.”
The screaming rose in volume. She made herself heard above it.
“I had a twin, Captain, a brother who left me and went to sea after our parents died. He was my whole world you understand, I was so proud. He went on to become the second lieutenant on her majesty’s ship The Dauntless.”
Sparrow momentarily closed his eyes and opened them again. He sobbed.
“And you know of course what happened to that ship…and all the souls aboard it…don’t you, Jack?”
She reached up and pressed her fingers to one of the fresh wounds. Sparrow’s eyes popped and he struggled and howled. Rose positively shouted.
“Because of you the last person left to me is dead. You ruined James Norrington and brought him to the mercy of Beckett and you sapped that man of his heart and caused my end!”
By now the pirate was weeping openly with indescribable pain and maybe with pity towards this mad creature he was now at the mercy of. Mercer had finished the third pound and he could not move for exhaustion, he was shaking his head spasmodically, and finally spat out the glove.
“Please…” he begged. “I’m sorry, I’m sorry for your brother. I didn’t think they’d follow, I had t’ survive! Norring…Norrington…was a good man…and I am sorry for him too…but he died a hero’s death…As did Cutler…”
She struck him across the face.
“Don’t you say his name!” she hissed. “Don’t you put his name in your mouth. And in any case, Captain, I hate heroes.”
“Please-” He had barely any breath now. “Please…” He strained his face toward her, their noses almost touching. “I loved him once…But I had to do it. Please don’t let him-”
Before he could finish Rose, throwing one hand over her lips to still her own cry, she gestured with the other to Mercer and he slit Jack Sparrow’s throat without another word. Jack made a choking sound. A spray of blood splattered on the wall next to the bed. David tossed the limp head back down. He was dead.
For a moment there was nothing, only the sound of the assassins’ heavy breathing. Rose watched the blood trickle from the neck of the corpse down the bed frame and onto the floor. Jack’s eyes were wide and staring. She reached out with a trembling hand and shut them with her fingers, then she collapsed onto the floor and began to cry. Mercer slid from the bed and took her in his arms, handing her blade back to her.
“It’s all right, Rose,” he whispered against the soft red hair. “He’d be so proud.”
Suddenly, seized by a passion, she jumped from his embrace and began to saw at the straps that bound the corpse’s wrists together. When they slumped down, she grabbed the right arm in her hand, turning it to its underside and found the tattoo and the brand. James had often told her where they would be. Rose took her dagger and began to hack away the skin, now waxing over in death. Blood spraying on to her face, still weeping, she carved away all Jack Sparrow’s deeds, his piracy, his name.
***
Mercer’s hand on her shoulder made her jump. She hadn’t noticed him but some things never changed. Rose was crying, but her voice was steady on one word.
“Upstairs.”
Mercer was gone without so much as a nod. In the face of his purposefulness her knees weakened. After choking a few sobs into the wall she followed.
***
Mercer produced leather straps and was binding the unconscious creature to the bed. He had bade Rose press herself against the door. He was not certain Sparrow had it in him to strike a woman. He had wanted to bring chains, it would have eased his mind; but he could not think of a way not to look suspicious. Seeing Jack’s naked flesh, the first map his sweet lord had run his hands so wonderingly over, made him want to sink the knife between his shoulder blades without wasting another second. Sparrow’s long twisted locks were gone and David relished how pale and human he seemed.
“Whatever happens, you must not move,” he told her. “If there is any chance for him to escape he’ll take it.”
Rose nodded. She watched, but did not see. The words squeezed out of her.
“I’m afraid.”
He stopped, looked up at her. In an instant he was pressed against her, slamming her into the door.
“Don’t you dare do this to me now!” he hissed. “You started this, you wanted it as much as I do.”
Her breathing hitched and gasped like rhythmic sobs. She had begun to think of her father, of her mother reading to her from the Bible. There was natural faith in Rose Gillette and her own fear combated her desire for vengeance.
“Cross me,” Mercer whispered, “and I’ll kill him with your blade, then you with my bare hands.”
She turned her face away, but he saw in the way her muscles shifted that she would be true. David’s face softened. He took her in his arms.
“The first time is always hard. But this is right, pet. It’s justice.”
“Don’t call me that,” she murmured into his chest. “Just do it…”
His smile would wake her in the night for a long time. He knelt beside the pirate and after a second’s pause smacked him hard across the face. Rose winced.
“Time to wake up.”
Sparrow convulsed. His head snapped up and he growled incomprehensibly, looking up with glazed eyes until Mercer said:
“Evenin’, Jack.”
The fearsome, fearless pirate of Rose’s imaginings could not be found in the immense eyes and the face that drained of all blood. Six of Rose’s racing heartbeats went by and then:
“You…”
As David had anticipated his first instinct was to look to the door. His eyes locked with hers and she saw his pleas as clearly as if he was a little child, but in an instant he realized what she was about. His captors watched for a horrible moment as he struggled with the bonds. Mercer thought briefly about slicing one of his tendons to make him lie still, but after a moment he gave up on his own. He was panting. Sweat shone on his temple. He seemed, dare David even think it, weak. “Bitch,” he growled at her. “You set me up.”
She had nothing to say to this truthful accusation, just stared at him with her dead eyes. Jack Sparrow grinned a feral grin, twisting his neck to face Mercer. A few gold teeth caught the candlelight and the feverish light in his black eyes and for the first time his look frightened her. He let out a barking, dry laugh that went on for too long and left him panting further.
“I though’ for sure you’d wound up a carcas, old carrion,” he said. “Or e’en better, take me place in the Locker where you b’long.”
“Ain’t no locker now, Jack,” David replied as evenly as if Sparrow was sitting across from him at cards. “No Davy Jones as you said yourself.”
“Captain Turner would open it up for th’ likes a’ you…Bu’ then you ‘aven’t a soul t’ steal.”
“No more have you.” Mercer got very close to his prey’s face, tangling his fingers in the new curls. “But where you’re going it doesn’t matter.”
“Going to kill me now?”
It was a strange question; scared but not terrified, delivered with an arched eyebrow on a sheet white face in a voice of something between venom and resignation. Mercer chuckled.
“Not just yet.”
Rose’s head snapped up.
“David.” She tried not to sound pleading. “Can’t we make short work of this?”
“Be quiet.” Mercer was straddling the pirate’s back, one long, muscled leg hanging over each side of the bed. Sparrow grunted and turned his face towards her.
“So who’re you then, pretty one?” he almost spat the question at her. “Where do you fit in on this day always to be remembered as the day a rabid dog killed Captain Jack Sparrow?”
Mercer suddenly gripped a handful of Jack’s hair and yanked his head back, so that his eyes rolled back in his skull to face his executioner. Jack shouted in pain and Mercer placed one gloved finger over his lips.
“Shhhh, Jack. No one will remember because no one will know,” he whispered with that strange ease, almost a demented pleasantness, in his voice. “This is between the four of us-you, me, Rose and our master, Lord Cutler Beckett.”
With her face turned towards the door Rose made a strange, choked, animal groan at the sound of the name, involuntary and barely noticed to herself. But Jack heard it. He watched her slide down the door and fold her body into itself.
“David, please…” she sobbed.
“I told you to be still!” growled Mercer.
He took out her blade then and ran the cool, flat surface across the pirate’s back. Jack shuddered. At that instant both men recalled the touch of a third; one from a memory and the other from imagining what he had never been good enough for. A ghost had entered the room and as quickly as Rose had been recalled she was thrown away by its presence. It was as if punishment would not be for the deaths at all, but for Mercer’s undying jealousy of what Cutler had done in life. This was not what she wanted. She was on her feet again screaming:
“Just do it for Christ’s sake!”
They both looked over at her. She was shaking. Her hair was undone and fell into her face, growing wet with unstoppable tears from burning, wild eyes.
“Do it, god damn you. I can’t bear it.”
“This is no longer your concern.”
Mercer’s voice was barely heard as Sparrow overtook him.
“Wha’ did ‘ee do t’ you?”
“Fuck you,” she snarled.
“Hurt you, did ‘ee?” Jack’s voice was soft.
“Don’t say anything, Rose.”
A hundred answers spun through Rose’s brain.
Hurt me, took me apart, gave me a life, murdered me, loved me.
“Whatever he promised you it wasn’t true, dear.” There was pity in the pirate’s eyes. It set her ablaze.
“Shut up!” she screamed, throwing her hands over her ears. “You don’t know anything! You don’t know what you’ve done to me…You killed him. You killed them all…”
Jack’s eyes clouded with confusion. Mercer seized the second and stuffed one of his gloves into the victim’s mouth. He shouted a few curses around it and Mercer laughed outright.
“Now I’ll get what’s owed.”
He lowered the knife between the shoulder blades. Sparrow’s body tensed. Don’t look, Rose told herself. But her eyes only widened as she took a steadying breath.
The blade was keen. Rose often sat up all night sharpening it when she couldn’t sleep. She jumped when the first cut was made, a thrill running through her. Mercer sliced at a slight angle so that the flesh peeled away like the skin off a ripe mango. Blood gushed up, running down the back and slicking the tips of his fingers and still he worked on. And all the time Jack screamed.
They were muffled, and between the glove and the raucousness downstairs they could not be heard. Rose had never heard anything like it. The chords in his neck and forehead stood out and sweat streamed down his face which was rapidly turning a shade of grey Rose remembered from looking at her hands and arms in that time when she’d been pulled from the cellar when she’d been so very bad…The scream was an unbroken, hoarse and desperate peal that was cut off abruptly as Mercer finally lifted the blade. The pirate took ten great heaving breaths that ended in softer moans of pain. Rose stepped forward slowly, and looked at the deep, red circle on his back, where she could see just a hint of bone.
“A pound of flesh,” David remarked with satisfaction. He was sweating too, and let out a long trembling breath, shutting his eyes wearily.
“And now…”
His bloody fingers twisted in Sparrow’s hair and pulled his head back, holding the blade to his throat.
“Wait!”
Her hand shot out and stayed his.
“That’s not fair,” she said sharply. “What about me?”
He squinted at her.
“I’d like another. I’d like my own. A set. For Andrew and for James.”
Jack looked up at the name. Her eyes shone madly in the dim light. She was smiling at him, a bemused smile like an open wound and in her eyes then Mercer saw the mark as he had seen it on their master a lifetime ago. David reached out and touched her face, a bit of blood streaking her white cheek, like an anointment.
“Good girl,” he murmured. “Good girl.”
As he placed the knife to one side of the spine on the lower back Sparrow’s eyes welled up with tears. Rose’s grin grew wider seeing this and she knelt to look into his face. Mercer began cutting again. The screams were softer now, for the victim was tiring and losing blood, but his eyes focused on her as she spoke.
“You wouldn’t know my name,” she whispered as he strained beside her. “You wouldn’t know my family; you and your great legend. But I know you, Jack Sparrow, and tonight before you die you will know me too.”
The screaming rose in volume. She made herself heard above it.
“I had a twin, Captain, a brother who left me and went to sea after our parents died. He was my whole world you understand, I was so proud. He went on to become the second lieutenant on her majesty’s ship The Dauntless.”
Sparrow momentarily closed his eyes and opened them again. He sobbed.
“And you know of course what happened to that ship…and all the souls aboard it…don’t you, Jack?”
She reached up and pressed her fingers to one of the fresh wounds. Sparrow’s eyes popped and he struggled and howled. Rose positively shouted.
“Because of you the last person left to me is dead. You ruined James Norrington and brought him to the mercy of Beckett and you sapped that man of his heart and caused my end!”
By now the pirate was weeping openly with indescribable pain and maybe with pity towards this mad creature he was now at the mercy of. Mercer had finished the third pound and he could not move for exhaustion, he was shaking his head spasmodically, and finally spat out the glove.
“Please…” he begged. “I’m sorry, I’m sorry for your brother. I didn’t think they’d follow, I had t’ survive! Norring…Norrington…was a good man…and I am sorry for him too…but he died a hero’s death…As did Cutler…”
She struck him across the face.
“Don’t you say his name!” she hissed. “Don’t you put his name in your mouth. And in any case, Captain, I hate heroes.”
“Please-” He had barely any breath now. “Please…” He strained his face toward her, their noses almost touching. “I loved him once…But I had to do it. Please don’t let him-”
Before he could finish Rose, throwing one hand over her lips to still her own cry, she gestured with the other to Mercer and he slit Jack Sparrow’s throat without another word. Jack made a choking sound. A spray of blood splattered on the wall next to the bed. David tossed the limp head back down. He was dead.
For a moment there was nothing, only the sound of the assassins’ heavy breathing. Rose watched the blood trickle from the neck of the corpse down the bed frame and onto the floor. Jack’s eyes were wide and staring. She reached out with a trembling hand and shut them with her fingers, then she collapsed onto the floor and began to cry. Mercer slid from the bed and took her in his arms, handing her blade back to her.
“It’s all right, Rose,” he whispered against the soft red hair. “He’d be so proud.”
Suddenly, seized by a passion, she jumped from his embrace and began to saw at the straps that bound the corpse’s wrists together. When they slumped down, she grabbed the right arm in her hand, turning it to its underside and found the tattoo and the brand. James had often told her where they would be. Rose took her dagger and began to hack away the skin, now waxing over in death. Blood spraying on to her face, still weeping, she carved away all Jack Sparrow’s deeds, his piracy, his name.