Sanctuary, Jack-Tia Dahlma, 'Pre-Canon'
Title: Sanctuary
Summary: He isn’t sure why he comes back here; all he knows is that he always does.
Characters: Jack, Tia Dahlma
Pairing: Ambiguous
Rating: K+
Setting: Pre-Canon
He isn’t sure why he comes back here; all he knows is that he always does. It seems like a part of him belongs to the roof and the ceilings and the beams in the shack. He can’t help but feel comforted in this mystical place.
He hugs the blanket closer to him, trying to ward off the coming chill but somewhere deep inside he knows it’s no use. The chill will keep coming until he has nowhere else to go but into her arms. He doesn’t know what it is that draws him to her: perhaps it’s the fact that she knows a part of him that no one else does, that she sees a side to him that he sometimes doesn’t even let himself see.
It doesn’t escape his notice, and no doubt hers either, that he only ever comes back to her when something happens that shakes him to his very core. It’s as if being with her calms him, reassures him that he is there and alive and okay, only missing a smaller part of who he was the last time he was here.
He doesn’t understand it, really, because he knows how he is going to die.
“The keeper of your heart be the one who bring you down, Jack Sparrow. But she not only keep yours.”
He shivers at the memory and brings his head down to his hands. He feels her hand on his shoulder and he looks up into her dark eyes.
“It not be your time, Jack Sparrow,” she murmurs with her Caribbean lilt and he smiles at her, covering her hand for a moment with his own.
He knows that it isn’t his time but he somehow wishes that it is. There’s something about being shot in the chest and taken care of by two Singaporean would-be doctors that rattles a man to his very core. She hands him a cup and he sips at the burning liquid and smiles in pleasure as it heats his body from the inside out.
“I know you be coming, Jack Sparrow,” she murmurs and smirks, a smirk that he can’t help but return.
He isn’t surprised really: the witch has known of his arrival each time he has appeared at her shack cold and wet and wanting. He doesn’t have to explain himself to her; she always seems to just know what he needs.
“Well, I think if you knew I would be coming you’d be wearing a lot less clothes than you currently are attired in.” He sees the smile on her lips grow and he raises an eyebrow at her.
“I know you no’ be wanting that, Jack Sparrow,” she replies and touches his cheek tenderly, her fingers brushing tantalisingly over his lips. “Not yet anyway,” she continues as she drops her fingers to the still tender wound on his chest. He hisses as she applies pressure there, his eyes closing of their own accord. “You be hurting more than your wound, Jack Sparrow. You be thinkin’ ‘bout the girl again, hm?”
He doesn’t open his eyes for long moments after she has walked away from him. It hurts too much. “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” he grinds out indignantly, his hand reaching up to cradle his aching chest. He hears her grunt out a laugh and he opens an eye to peer at her. “I don’t, honestly.”
He sees her mixing together ingredients in a bowl and he doesn’t want to think about what they could be. Looking about the ambient room, he can’t help but notice the vast number of strange items hanging form jars on the ceiling: eyeballs, bats, sea creatures, thumbs… He shivers and drops his hand to the table in front of him, letting the blanket slide from his shoulders.
Suddenly, it’s very warm.
He feels a cool metal under his finger and he looks down to the silver crab heart that is there. He’d tried to steal it once and Tia had tried to kill him in return. It was the only thing that he wanted that she wouldn’t barter.
“That compass I bartered from you doesn’t seem to be working properly now, by the way,” he calls to her as she wanders through to another room. He slips a ring he finds on the table on one of his fingers and admires it until he sees her return to him.
“My compass work jus’ fine. It be you who no’ be working properly.” He doesn’t reply to that and sits in silence, watching her as she moves her hands about the top of the bowl, her eyes rolling back into her head. The sight used to scare the crap out of him but he’s used to it now. He doesn’t know how many times he’s seen her do it now. Minutes pass where the only sound is the chirping of the crickets outside and the water lapping against the beams that support her home. He allows himself to be lulled into a quiet restfulness with his eyes closed and so is surprised when he hears her voice:
“This help the wound,” she says and wafts the fumes from the bowl towards him. His eyes instantly tear up and he is sure that the candles in the room are burning red, not the orange flicker they were moments ago. “Talk help the other one.”
He groans and leans back in his chair, feeling lethargic all of a sudden.
“I don’t want to talk.” He doesn’t say anything for a while, feeling a calmness enveloping his body that he knows is purely drug induced because he knows he can never reach this level of calmness without her aide. “I can’t stop thinking about her.” He doesn’t need to elaborate on which ‘her’ he means. “Why would she do that to me?” His tongue feels furry and all he wants to do is lift his arm up so he can drink the rum she had given him a few minutes before. “She knew what the Pearl meant to me… I wonder what he promised her.” He can feel his eyelids getting heavier and thick but he doesn’t give up. “She left me for dead. Just stood back and watched as they marooned me on that island.” His throat is closing up and he doesn’t admit that it could be from tears and not the calming influence of Tia’s drug. “I thought you said she would kill me?”
“She no be the keeper of your heart, Jack Sparrow. It be another.” He wants to argue back that she is… was… has been the keeper of his heart and since her, he won’t let anyone else ‘keep his heart’, so technically she must be the keeper of his heart but he can’t. His voice doesn’t seem to want to work. “There’s a touch of destiny about your story, Jack Sparrow. In a few years, you’ll know who she be and you come back to me no more. I’ll have a heartless man to take care of.”
He nods as though he understands but her words are so distant that he thinks he may only remember about a fifth of them when he awakens. He wants to ask her what she means now, though, her riddles worm their way into his head. He wants to sit up and demand that she tell him the straight truth about how he is going to die. He breathes deeply and tries to open his eyes. He can feel a warmth spreading through his body, warding off all chills he has felt. He can feel the muscles in his legs melting; rising until he can no longer hold himself up on the chair he is seated in. He can hear Tia humming in the background. He wants to fight against her spells but he knows that he can’t, that it’s no use. He tries to speak but his vocal chords have collapsed, so all he manages is a groaning sound.
His world is grey, going black around the edges and he knows that it’s only a matter of second before his world is completely black and he is free, free from his pain, from his memories, from everything. He knows it won’t last long; that it never does; that when he wakes up he won’t want to talk to her and he’ll be out the door feeling right as rain, chasing after his beloved Black Pearl once more.
This is why he always comes back here, he remembers, because she always makes him feel okay, that he’ll be able to make it. And this time she’s given him another few years, at least.
He stops trying to fight and allows his thoughts to dissipate into the surrounding air and lets Tia’s warmth comfort him.
For now, this sanctuary will do.