Day Two: Old friends make the best strangers

[captjacksparrow]

The room, when Jack finds it, is no where near the bar. In fact, it's up in the air -- stairs that take far too long to climb for the simple goal of lying horizontal for a bit. The decoration matches the rest of this place -- whatever this place is -- decadent to the point of being nauseous

Comments

[commodore_jln]

The place really does seem to be a hotel, James finds, as he makes his way through the lobby, up stairs, and finally to his room. The number 305 is etched on the back of his key, and it is at that door that he stops after trudging up flights of stairs. This whole situation is beyond strange, but James accepts it all with a tired sort of bemusement, content for the moment in the knowledge that he is dead, and therefore, that nothing has any obligation to make sense. As far as an afterlife goes, he supposes, this place is no stranger than any he might have imagined.

The key scrapes dully against the lock when he fits it, and with a click, the door opens. James regards it distastefully for a moment; it's lush and luxurious, even more so than the house he'd kept in Port Royal, and while he's always been a man who appreciates comfort, James is ill at ease with such decadence

[captjacksparrow]

The voice is crisp, ill-humoured, and English. The line of muscles in Jack's back tense against his will. He knows voices like that, upper class merchants and gentry, ill at ease with anything that does not mean more money to stuff their pockets, even if it comes at the cost of others. Jack has had more than enough of that life.

The words, though, are curious. Dead, is he? Jack doesn't feel dead. He feels quite awake, the sheets soft beneath him and the cool air of the room circulating over his skin. He also might feel a bit drunk.

Without turning to face the man, Jack replies, "Don't know about that. Dead men, in my experience, aren't the greatest conversationalists."

[commodore_jln]

James arches an eyebrow, shutting the door behind him. Of all the people he's ever met, Sparrow certainly has the loosest definition of what death is- undead pirates and Davy Jones, he himself coming back to life even after being eaten by a giant squid... That doesn't sound like him at all

[captjacksparrow]

The comment on dead men catches Jack off guard. That is ridiculous, and to hear a man like this stranger profess as much is even more ridiculous. Dead is dead. There is no in-between.

Unless one thinks of situations like his father, eternal, neither dead nor living if the stories are to be believed. Jack doesn't give much heed to those stories, to Captain Teague and his book of codes. Only good men follow those rules, and it seems there are even fewer of those in the world than Jack once gave credit.

He stills completely as the man crosses the room, panic freezing his muscles into stone. The man wears the uniform of an officer in the Navy -- Jack knows his rank is higher than Captain but his interaction with the Navy has been limited. Commodore, maybe. And with a sword in plain sight.

The hotel must have a sense of irony. First he met a woman who wouldn't believe him to be a pirate and now he must sleep in the same room with a man who must not find the brand at all costs. Clever, Jack thinks to the room, and begins to slowly