[LAS #1 -- Uncanny] Haunted
Title: Haunted
Author: sammistarr
Word Count: 300
Rating: R
Pairing: Speckett
Warnings: non-graphic mentions of a slash relationship, character death
Summary: Jack and Cutler's final meeting...
Author notes: Written for the Last Author Standing challenge at cutler_beckett.
Thus when I come to shape here at this table between my hands the story of my life and set it before you as a complete thing, I have to recall things gone far, gone deep, sunk into this life or that and become part of it; dreams, too, things surrounding me...those old half-articulate ghosts who keep up their hauntings by day and night... shadows of people one might have been...
--Virginia Woolf
It had been nearly six months since Jack found himself shackled and standing before the haunting spectre of his past. It had been uncanny, really, how the man hardly seemed any different from the boy Jack had once known, held, loved, until he spoke, and the velvet-cloaked words belied the depravity of one who had once been an innocent.
Since that day, ghosts, haunting memories plagued him--grey eyes clenching shut in the throes of passion were replaced by a steely glare; murmured affection whispered against sweat-damp skin was erased by vitriolic sneers; the touch of silk-soft hands scoured away by unforgiving shackles.
And he had known from the moment their paths crossed again that it would not end well.
Instinct, the primal urge to survive, drove him to yell out one fateful word, prompting iron to blast through wood. He had not considered the fact that the boy would be so stubborn, so proud, the type of man who would go down with his ship. As he watched the great ship slip quietly beneath the waves, he felt numbness wash over him as he realized he had underestimated the boy all along.
His compatriots were celebrating their victory, his victory, their triumph still fresh in their minds as they toasted each other, reveling in their freedom while the Endeavour lay broken on the sea bed, her Chairman dead alongside her. And Jack obligingly raised his bottle in salute, somehow managing to twist his still-numb face into a toothy grin as they praised him, trying to drown himself in the bittersweet bite of the rum.
But no matter how much he drank, or how hard he tried to forget, on every face, he could only see the forlorn stare of the boy he had loved, the boy he had destroyed.