erm, songfic meta. and fic. yay fic.
I wouldn't mention it now, but I've had songfics on the brain lately. Combination of Across the Universe, the Beatles musical with the very pretty boys, and my
potcfest fic, which wouldn't have been possible had the iPod not shuffled just right.
ATU uses lyrics to tell stories, to hold conversations and advance the plot. It uses images and short stretches of dialogue to frame those lyrics, and in that, it's a brilliant example of the appeal.
Movies have an advantage over us ficcers, though, in that they can both present the musical accompaniment and select images to accomplish their ends. It's as telling who sings as it is which shots made the cut, and it's marvelous storytelling for the combination.
Ficcers, though, we don't have that option. Only thing that matters is what makes the page, and where we let blotches of lyrics stand for conversation, for character development or plot, we generally fail.
Our job's to cobble together those elements of story, to organize them in such a way that readers stand some chance of experiencing those same reactions evoked by said song through said fic.
All too often, "songfic" is used to mean, "This is a song I love by a band I squee," when really, what it should mean is, "There is a song I react to, this is what I feel when I hear this song as applied to these characters, your mileage may vary."
Because maybe Mika's "Relax (Take It Easy)" sounds like Malfoy begging drunk Harry to dance, and maybe "Hey Jude" sounds like boys kissing in a cab, but I doubt it. Maybe you've heard Jack and James (finally) make peace in Linkin Park's "Leave Out All The Rest". Maybe you haven't.
I have, and at some point, I set it to paper.
If you require knowledge of those songs to understand the fics, I've failed.
Off the soapbox now, I promise.
~~~
There is a song I react to. This is what I feel when I hear this song as applied to these characters. Your mileage may vary.
PG for themes, from a first-round
potcfest post-AWE prompt wherein Will gives James one more day. Gen., pre-slash if you'd like. Death and the Dutchman (check the prompt), so consider yourself warned.
porridgebird and
enkanowen kept me from making a big twit of myself, for which I have boundless gratitude and the offer of naked boys upon request.
"And if I don't want it?" James stares straight ahead, gaze fixed, shoulders squared, every inch the officer he is no longer worthy of calling himself.
Turner hesitates. Mark of a new leader, that hesitation; James has seen it cost men their lives. Time will absolve this small sin, time and the task, and not for the first time, James thanks whichever gods are listening that while yes, he is trapped in a lamentable state of non-living, he is not so unfortunate as to be commander here.
He holds no desire to helm the Dutchman. Truth told, he holds no desire to do much of anything. Dead, isn't he? And while yes, he will acknowledge that on occasion, he regrets his actions in life, he has made his peace with his demise and now wishes to enjoy it. Such as he's able.
He fared best under Jones, who took no note of him for good or ill; since Turner's taken the helm, his afterlife has been a swirl of condemned men working before the mast and Turner's lamentable guilt.
This, too, shall pass. James knows what command costs a man, and while the Dutchman is no ship of His Majesty's fleet, James doesn't imagine the running of her will be less invasive.
As this is not - nor has it ever been - Turner's calling, James feels a rare sort of pity, well-meant and sincere. He is not the pitying sort, mind, nor is Turner disposed to being pitied, but James can't help how he feels.
"Why wouldn't you want it, Norrington?" Turner asks, remarkably human and achingly young.
"What is there to compel me, Mr. Turner? Surely you're aware of my...I see no reason to take you up on your offer, generous as it is. Though I do thank you for thinking of me."
"It's another day. Alive, for 24 hours more. Most people would die for that chance, and you're turning it down?"
James doesn't bother pointing out the fallacy of dying for another chance at life. This is not that sort of engagement. "Most people have someone with whom to share those hours, I should expect." Neither is there need to say that he doesn't. Turner is sharp enough in his way.
"Do it for me, then? Please?" The boy - no, man now - is so utterly earnest in his request. Death appears to bring out the sincerity in them both.
"Live again? For you? Why?"
Turner blows out a hard breath James suspects is mostly affectation; he's unconvinced the deceased require such function but he grants that Turner's state of demise is likely newer than James's. "My father told me how you died. That you did it for Elizabeth."
Turner's eyes say the rest.
"And what would you have me do?" He cannot imagine explaining these hours to his sisters or their husbands, and his mother has long since passed to her reward. He has no desire to see Andrew or Teddy again, nor Elizabeth, nor Weatherby. There is, alas, no one with whom he'd wish to pass his gifted day, so while he appreciates Turner's offer all the more for the man's reasons, which smack of honour, he cannot accept.
Then Turner says, "Watch Jack," and James feels an impending sense of doom.
***
All Turner asks is that he maintain some form of contact with one Jack Sparrow, who is apparently increasingly prone to wild disasters from which Turner has surmised a death wish.
James can do that much, he supposes, if only to assure Turner there is honour yet in Norrington, despite the events of the East India Trading Company's turn in Port Royal.
***
Turner sets him to port on a rummy lair of hedonism which reeks of failure and decay in ways Tortuga has not. There are fewer painted whores on these streets, fewer drink-addled sailors tottering to their beds, and when James surveys the dock, he finds it wanting. Turner waves him on and reminds him of their accord.
One last day of James's life spent chasing Sparrow, then everlasting peace.
He's looking forward to it.
***
Sparrow looks wrong; haggard, which James is sure shouldn't exist in a man of Captain Jack Sparrow's acclaim. The man is meant to be boundless enthusiasm and unending treachery, a slew of plots and addle-minded plans which succeed despite themselves. He's meant to be drunk and dirty and singing, a lecherous fool with untold depths of depravity.
He is most assuredly not meant to be sober and solemn and unflinchingly bleak.
James makes good his approach, Turner's promise propelling him forward. He sits beside his prey, brushes the man's coat sleeve with his own, half-expecting Sparrow to snap.
Instead, he finds himself under dark-eyed survey, an unfamiliar sneer on those lying lips. His adornments give away his quiver in the slight tap of beads.
***
James expects tentative questions and awkward answers. He does not expect swift certainty.
"Struck a deal with our Will, then, have you, Commodore?"
"So it would seem."
Sparrow nods, rubs idly at his chin. "Here t' make sure I behave, are you?" Sparrow bleats a madman's laugh. "Pity, you've finally caught me proper and you can't do a thing about it, aye?"
"I'm not here to 'catch' you, Jack." Another Turner request, that he attempt friendliness if he feels himself at all able. James sees why when Sparrow's retort falters.
"So why are you?"
"Don't ask questions unless you are prepared to deal with the consequences of the answers you receive."
"Consequences? Ah, Commodore, see, and I've missed you, too. No one does a proper menacing like you. Even when there's nothing worthy of menace."
***
"This is self-pity, then?" He steels himself and looks around them as though if he leans right, he'll see something else. It is, alas, still the rundown pit it was when he entered; broken down women and barely-there men and the stench of hard luck. If Sparrow's determined to lay waste to his life, he has chosen an excellent location.
"Self-pity? I'm Captain Jack Sparrow, savvy? There's nothing to pity."
"Nonetheless," James says, and pries the rum from Sparrow's grip. "That is undoubtedly what you're about, Captain. If you'd be so kind, I rather expect I'd enjoy an explanation."
"S'nothing t' explain," Sparrow mumbles. James grips the man's hand.
"Pity is for fools, Jack, and self-pity for imbeciles. I'll grant you the first but not the second."
"Careful, Commodore, that almost sounded like a compliment."
"Heaven forbid." But James thinks Jack sees his ghostly smirk because the pirate leers back.
***
"So, Jack, what does one do with pirates in port when menacing's off the table?"
"Salut?" Jack lifts his rum suggestively.
What a surprise.
***
As it turns out, there's quite a lot to do with pirates in port without menacing, law enforcing, or hanging. Most of it's tawdry, and a good deal's uncivil, but James has a sun sweeping west and the promise of peace when it's come, so he throws himself into the madness of it with due diligence.
Sparrow, of course, thinks him a stick in the mud.
"You've really never been here, Commodore?"
James casts a weather eye over the grimy tavern and represses his shudder. "I can safely say I have not had this particular pleasure."
"Speaking of pleasures…" Jack trails off, distracted by the sight of a serving girl moving through the room, pitcher in hand and hell in her eyes. He claps James on the back once, a congenial measure, and sits up to snare her attention. "Can't have you going back without, aye? Eternity's a devil long time."
James knits the pattern, Jack and a whore and a bloody bad idea, then straightens himself to ward the man off. "No, no, it's all right, Jack, I'm fine."
The last thing he needs is the discovery that he's not all here.
"Sure about that, are you?" Jack slants speculation, an honest sort of survey. "I promise not to leave without you, if that's your worry. Might be I'll even stay where you can see me, if you ask nice."
James revises. That is the last thing he needs. "You mean to say you'll watch."
"If you'd like." Jack Sparrow's an unholy tease. When James tells him so, Sparrow agrees and mercifully, lets it drop.
***
The places Jack's been are twice as exotic as the places James has, if not quite as shocking.
"You? Were in Singapore?"
"You thought I began my naval career sailing out to the Caribbean?"
Jack prods his ribs with a finger, jabbing at the grotty cloth of James's coat with irritating regularity. "What did you do there? Got into trouble, aye? Can't go to Singapore without misbehaving. S'not right with the Code."
"Need I remind you I'm not a pirate; hence, your Code fails to apply?"
"Could've been, though. Decent sailor under all that wig, Commodore. Would have made a bloody fine pirate if you'd taken the stick out."
"I am many things, not all of them civil, but I am no pirate, Captain, I promise you that."
"Dunno about that. You did all right on me Pearl."
Inspiration strikes with the audacity of that. "If I'm a pirate, you're an officer."
Sparrow surprises him again. "Might've been. Thought about it a time or two, but never really loved the hats."
It pains him to ask, but he feels compelled. "The hats?"
"A ship's a ship unless you're captain, aside from the rules - which are clearly meant to be broken, and so shouldn't be taken into account as it's not an honest accounting - so it comes a time when any man who loves the sea has to ask himself why he's on the ship he's on and not on another one. Without me Pearl and me crew, m' just a pirate, and there's not more to that than freedom, but I'm as owned as any of your little men without me own means, aye? So do I choose the ship what won't stretch m' neck at an opportune moment and give the appearance of means, if not quite the reality of it? Or do I take m' chances as they come and risk m' neck? One's as bad as the other until you're the boss, and there's rum on your ships same as mine, so it all comes down t' the hats."
"You chose piracy for the hats?" James nearly believes it.
"I chose against your navy for the hats."
"Well, that's one crisis averted." Jack Sparrow, in the navy.
"You really think so?"
"I can safely say you have the makings of a fine court martial."
Jack preens.
***
"Really you were in Singapore?"
"Yes, Sparrow, for the tenth time, yes, really I was in Singapore. And Vienna, and Rome, and India, and-"
"Vienna?"
"Yes, Vienna. Can we not move on already? Surely you don't need every detail of my every travel, do you?"
"No, but…About Vienna: were there eunuchs?"
There's such hopeful dread in Sparrow's question, James can't even answer.
***
He has expected a day of adversity, tracking the man down and holding him to accounts. He has expected to pay for his promised peace with one last day of duty, and he has anticipated honour seeing him through.
He has not expected Jack Sparrow as he finds him any more than he has anticipated the curious sense of camaraderie which forms between them while they've no one else's rules but their own.
***
"I'm glad it was you." James frowns and runs through his own phrasing for the problem. "My last day. My...this one. I'm glad Turner sent me to find you. This might have..." Jack cuts him off with a finger pressed to James's mouth.
"Stop while y' can, aye? Can't be complimentin' me twice in an hour, s' bad luck."
"Is it?"
"Gibbs'd say so."
"As I recall, Mr. Gibbs has a particular fondness for obscure divinations."
"Weren't always wrong."
"Nor was he right."
***
The day bleeds out in a wash of detail. Stifled air that closes in on him, presses him out of doors and onto strange, cluttered streets. Sweat and salt and persons, the gamey scent of port he's only just now recalling. Sounds, too, of wood knocking about, tin as it rattles, the coarseness of speech uttered colloquially. Mashes of language and patchworks of sound, each so distinct he feels a rush of tight focus, like the world's coming in on him, and he wants nothing more than to cover his ears with his hands and block it all out.
"S'a lot to take in, aye?" Jack says quietly, chest brushing shoulder, and James feels the world sweep back like tide. Jack's there like driftwood, solid and safe, a thought as unreasonable as it is valid. "Hard to miss the world until it's gone, and once it is, harder still to come back."
James wants to say a half-dozen things, most of them foolishly witless. "You died, too," perhaps, or "I'm not sure I missed it," or "I can't think anymore," but he knows they're all witless under the circumstances, so he says, "Not long left, I expect," and Jack nods.
"C'mon, then, we'll find someplace better t' waste your life."
James is relieved.
***
"Never been fishing." Jack does what he can to chew his moustache in contemplation of his pole.
"Never? I find that hard to believe." It's evening now and Jack's confession - as it were - aside, they've largely fallen to pacific silence.
"Not like this, anyway. Pole and everything." Jack shakes it as proof. "S'a bit fancy."
Jack Sparrow is the only person dead or living James can imagine calling a stick and a bit of string "fancy" while wearing a king's ransom in rings, but James finds he enjoys the contradictions.
***
"I meant what I said before. What you wouldn't let me finish."
"Shh, no, no, leave it be, Commodore, you're almost home, aye?"
James stops, drags Jack to a similar halt. He has but a few hours left, by God, and he won't waste them. He fears perhaps he's wasted too many already. "No, I won't. Ca- Jack, I can't. Once I'm 'home', as you've so deftly described that barnacle-riddled tub, I won't see you again. Not for years, if ever. And I won't say...this. I won't say this. And...and I feel I should."
"So say it, then. I'm not stopping you." A patent lie, but Jack's known for them.
James grips Jack's arm, holds him in place. Sincerity, he's noticed, tends to repel the vaguely-moraled.
"I realize we weren't anything, really; enemies perhaps, problems to solve but nothing more. You were a thorn in my side from the moment you sailed into my port and I suspect I held a similar position in your life…Had anyone said I'd be glad for another moment in your presence, I would have thought them mad. And yet…" And yet, in this moment, James can't think of anyone he'd rather spend this time with, which draws him up short. He tries to say as much, works himself up for it because the words are hard but required, and Jack shuts him up with a look.
Not a leer, a look, one which says Jack needs no words.
James feels he hasn't at all been clear and curses his traitorous tongue, which has apparently determined Jack Sparrow some manner of unwed chit to be dealt with in blithering idiocy.
"Rivals," Jack says, as James says, "No one else would have cared."
***
Their confused squawks cross like ships in the night.
***
"Rivals," Jack says again. "We were more rivals than anything else. Even if ye tried to kill me sometimes, I sunk your pretty ship and had a hand in the whelp stealing your pretty lass, as it were, and I'd like to think we'd squared ourselves with that. Aye?" He dips his head, leans in all tentative presumption, and James hasn't even realized such contradiction is possible until he sees it. He should not be surprised it's Jack Sparrow's doing.
***
"He offered before he ordered," James says. "Anywhere I wanted, anyone I wanted to spend it with. And I said no, because who would I have shared it with? Honestly."
"And yet, here you are."
"A gift, he said, for sparing Elizabeth. He was trying to repay me, I believe, for saving her life."
"So he put you to work following me? Not much of a gift, then, is it?"
"It was a matter of honour."
"And now?"
"I believe he may have been more successful than we'd thought," James says. "You may not like me, Sparrow. You may not respect me, or comprehend me, or even tolerate me, really. You won't miss me, despite what you've said, or think about me once the Dutchman's left, and that's as it should be, I suppose. I'm certain you won't mourn for me." He spares Sparrow a wry, fond smile then, and sees those endless dark eyes pinch in mild sting. "But you will, I believe, in some respect, remember me, and that's all any man can ask."
***
"We're not so different, you and me, Commodore."
"Good men and hiding it well?" James tries.
Jack nods his consideration. "Men of the sea, judged by those on land and found wanting for it."
"I've made my mistakes." Made and paid, those mistakes, and he has no use now for regrets.
"Fact of life, mistakes. S'what makes it interesting."
James thinks of Elizabeth, who's not happy yet but will be, and Beckett, who'd taken everything and offered nothing, and Sparrow, who'd turned a single day into a lifetime, then done it again. "We have been interesting, haven't we?"
"A Chinese curse, living in interesting times."
"A Caribbean one, too," James thinks, and says, "As well it should be."
***
"You're wrong," Jack says as James's last hour dies. They've watched the sun set and rise on the horizon, spilled a hundred salty tales and more rum than James has consumed in years, and when he stares at Jack in the morning light, he finds a peace there that wasn't yesterday.
"I'm never wrong, Captain. I'm always irritatingly correct. It's a requirement of His Majesty's Service. No mistakes, no admissions."
"Liar," Jack scoffs. Solemns again as the sky flares green over deep blue water. "Before, what you said. You're wrong. Bloody will miss you now, you bastard."
"Well, perhaps there's justice in the world yet, Sparrow, and you'll meet your well-earned end at sea." Odd as it feels to part like this, the Dutchman comes and part they must. James falters at the sight of the little boat rowing hard to shore, but when he can make out Maccus with an oar, James presses on. "For what it's worth, Jack, so will I."
***
Life as he loses it this time hurts unimaginably.
***
Will presses for answers to the questions he's asked, how Jack's doing, why all the risks, what have they done, and when James allows only silence, it says all it needs.
"Was it worth it?" Will asks, that haunting, ill-fitting maturity in his probing gaze. Time and the task are weighing already, that's plain as his face, and because James remembers being drowned by command, he says, "Every second," before he heads belowdecks.
He doesn't watch the ship sink but as the sea rises in greeting, flooding through portholes to spill over the floor, James thinks he feels cold.
***
Will thinks it's failure when, six months after James's last day on shore, they arrive at a wreck and find Captain Jack Sparrow sitting at the ready, grinning and dead and waiting to serve.
James thinks it's about bloody time.
~f~
potcfest fic, which wouldn't have been possible had the iPod not shuffled just right.
ATU uses lyrics to tell stories, to hold conversations and advance the plot. It uses images and short stretches of dialogue to frame those lyrics, and in that, it's a brilliant example of the appeal.
Movies have an advantage over us ficcers, though, in that they can both present the musical accompaniment and select images to accomplish their ends. It's as telling who sings as it is which shots made the cut, and it's marvelous storytelling for the combination.
Ficcers, though, we don't have that option. Only thing that matters is what makes the page, and where we let blotches of lyrics stand for conversation, for character development or plot, we generally fail.
Our job's to cobble together those elements of story, to organize them in such a way that readers stand some chance of experiencing those same reactions evoked by said song through said fic.
All too often, "songfic" is used to mean, "This is a song I love by a band I squee," when really, what it should mean is, "There is a song I react to, this is what I feel when I hear this song as applied to these characters, your mileage may vary."
Because maybe Mika's "Relax (Take It Easy)" sounds like Malfoy begging drunk Harry to dance, and maybe "Hey Jude" sounds like boys kissing in a cab, but I doubt it. Maybe you've heard Jack and James (finally) make peace in Linkin Park's "Leave Out All The Rest". Maybe you haven't.
I have, and at some point, I set it to paper.
If you require knowledge of those songs to understand the fics, I've failed.
Off the soapbox now, I promise.
~~~
There is a song I react to. This is what I feel when I hear this song as applied to these characters. Your mileage may vary.
PG for themes, from a first-round
potcfest post-AWE prompt wherein Will gives James one more day. Gen., pre-slash if you'd like. Death and the Dutchman (check the prompt), so consider yourself warned.
porridgebird and
enkanowen kept me from making a big twit of myself, for which I have boundless gratitude and the offer of naked boys upon request.
"And if I don't want it?" James stares straight ahead, gaze fixed, shoulders squared, every inch the officer he is no longer worthy of calling himself.
Turner hesitates. Mark of a new leader, that hesitation; James has seen it cost men their lives. Time will absolve this small sin, time and the task, and not for the first time, James thanks whichever gods are listening that while yes, he is trapped in a lamentable state of non-living, he is not so unfortunate as to be commander here.
He holds no desire to helm the Dutchman. Truth told, he holds no desire to do much of anything. Dead, isn't he? And while yes, he will acknowledge that on occasion, he regrets his actions in life, he has made his peace with his demise and now wishes to enjoy it. Such as he's able.
He fared best under Jones, who took no note of him for good or ill; since Turner's taken the helm, his afterlife has been a swirl of condemned men working before the mast and Turner's lamentable guilt.
This, too, shall pass. James knows what command costs a man, and while the Dutchman is no ship of His Majesty's fleet, James doesn't imagine the running of her will be less invasive.
As this is not - nor has it ever been - Turner's calling, James feels a rare sort of pity, well-meant and sincere. He is not the pitying sort, mind, nor is Turner disposed to being pitied, but James can't help how he feels.
"Why wouldn't you want it, Norrington?" Turner asks, remarkably human and achingly young.
"What is there to compel me, Mr. Turner? Surely you're aware of my...I see no reason to take you up on your offer, generous as it is. Though I do thank you for thinking of me."
"It's another day. Alive, for 24 hours more. Most people would die for that chance, and you're turning it down?"
James doesn't bother pointing out the fallacy of dying for another chance at life. This is not that sort of engagement. "Most people have someone with whom to share those hours, I should expect." Neither is there need to say that he doesn't. Turner is sharp enough in his way.
"Do it for me, then? Please?" The boy - no, man now - is so utterly earnest in his request. Death appears to bring out the sincerity in them both.
"Live again? For you? Why?"
Turner blows out a hard breath James suspects is mostly affectation; he's unconvinced the deceased require such function but he grants that Turner's state of demise is likely newer than James's. "My father told me how you died. That you did it for Elizabeth."
Turner's eyes say the rest.
"And what would you have me do?" He cannot imagine explaining these hours to his sisters or their husbands, and his mother has long since passed to her reward. He has no desire to see Andrew or Teddy again, nor Elizabeth, nor Weatherby. There is, alas, no one with whom he'd wish to pass his gifted day, so while he appreciates Turner's offer all the more for the man's reasons, which smack of honour, he cannot accept.
Then Turner says, "Watch Jack," and James feels an impending sense of doom.
***
All Turner asks is that he maintain some form of contact with one Jack Sparrow, who is apparently increasingly prone to wild disasters from which Turner has surmised a death wish.
James can do that much, he supposes, if only to assure Turner there is honour yet in Norrington, despite the events of the East India Trading Company's turn in Port Royal.
***
Turner sets him to port on a rummy lair of hedonism which reeks of failure and decay in ways Tortuga has not. There are fewer painted whores on these streets, fewer drink-addled sailors tottering to their beds, and when James surveys the dock, he finds it wanting. Turner waves him on and reminds him of their accord.
One last day of James's life spent chasing Sparrow, then everlasting peace.
He's looking forward to it.
***
Sparrow looks wrong; haggard, which James is sure shouldn't exist in a man of Captain Jack Sparrow's acclaim. The man is meant to be boundless enthusiasm and unending treachery, a slew of plots and addle-minded plans which succeed despite themselves. He's meant to be drunk and dirty and singing, a lecherous fool with untold depths of depravity.
He is most assuredly not meant to be sober and solemn and unflinchingly bleak.
James makes good his approach, Turner's promise propelling him forward. He sits beside his prey, brushes the man's coat sleeve with his own, half-expecting Sparrow to snap.
Instead, he finds himself under dark-eyed survey, an unfamiliar sneer on those lying lips. His adornments give away his quiver in the slight tap of beads.
***
James expects tentative questions and awkward answers. He does not expect swift certainty.
"Struck a deal with our Will, then, have you, Commodore?"
"So it would seem."
Sparrow nods, rubs idly at his chin. "Here t' make sure I behave, are you?" Sparrow bleats a madman's laugh. "Pity, you've finally caught me proper and you can't do a thing about it, aye?"
"I'm not here to 'catch' you, Jack." Another Turner request, that he attempt friendliness if he feels himself at all able. James sees why when Sparrow's retort falters.
"So why are you?"
"Don't ask questions unless you are prepared to deal with the consequences of the answers you receive."
"Consequences? Ah, Commodore, see, and I've missed you, too. No one does a proper menacing like you. Even when there's nothing worthy of menace."
***
"This is self-pity, then?" He steels himself and looks around them as though if he leans right, he'll see something else. It is, alas, still the rundown pit it was when he entered; broken down women and barely-there men and the stench of hard luck. If Sparrow's determined to lay waste to his life, he has chosen an excellent location.
"Self-pity? I'm Captain Jack Sparrow, savvy? There's nothing to pity."
"Nonetheless," James says, and pries the rum from Sparrow's grip. "That is undoubtedly what you're about, Captain. If you'd be so kind, I rather expect I'd enjoy an explanation."
"S'nothing t' explain," Sparrow mumbles. James grips the man's hand.
"Pity is for fools, Jack, and self-pity for imbeciles. I'll grant you the first but not the second."
"Careful, Commodore, that almost sounded like a compliment."
"Heaven forbid." But James thinks Jack sees his ghostly smirk because the pirate leers back.
***
"So, Jack, what does one do with pirates in port when menacing's off the table?"
"Salut?" Jack lifts his rum suggestively.
What a surprise.
***
As it turns out, there's quite a lot to do with pirates in port without menacing, law enforcing, or hanging. Most of it's tawdry, and a good deal's uncivil, but James has a sun sweeping west and the promise of peace when it's come, so he throws himself into the madness of it with due diligence.
Sparrow, of course, thinks him a stick in the mud.
"You've really never been here, Commodore?"
James casts a weather eye over the grimy tavern and represses his shudder. "I can safely say I have not had this particular pleasure."
"Speaking of pleasures…" Jack trails off, distracted by the sight of a serving girl moving through the room, pitcher in hand and hell in her eyes. He claps James on the back once, a congenial measure, and sits up to snare her attention. "Can't have you going back without, aye? Eternity's a devil long time."
James knits the pattern, Jack and a whore and a bloody bad idea, then straightens himself to ward the man off. "No, no, it's all right, Jack, I'm fine."
The last thing he needs is the discovery that he's not all here.
"Sure about that, are you?" Jack slants speculation, an honest sort of survey. "I promise not to leave without you, if that's your worry. Might be I'll even stay where you can see me, if you ask nice."
James revises. That is the last thing he needs. "You mean to say you'll watch."
"If you'd like." Jack Sparrow's an unholy tease. When James tells him so, Sparrow agrees and mercifully, lets it drop.
***
The places Jack's been are twice as exotic as the places James has, if not quite as shocking.
"You? Were in Singapore?"
"You thought I began my naval career sailing out to the Caribbean?"
Jack prods his ribs with a finger, jabbing at the grotty cloth of James's coat with irritating regularity. "What did you do there? Got into trouble, aye? Can't go to Singapore without misbehaving. S'not right with the Code."
"Need I remind you I'm not a pirate; hence, your Code fails to apply?"
"Could've been, though. Decent sailor under all that wig, Commodore. Would have made a bloody fine pirate if you'd taken the stick out."
"I am many things, not all of them civil, but I am no pirate, Captain, I promise you that."
"Dunno about that. You did all right on me Pearl."
Inspiration strikes with the audacity of that. "If I'm a pirate, you're an officer."
Sparrow surprises him again. "Might've been. Thought about it a time or two, but never really loved the hats."
It pains him to ask, but he feels compelled. "The hats?"
"A ship's a ship unless you're captain, aside from the rules - which are clearly meant to be broken, and so shouldn't be taken into account as it's not an honest accounting - so it comes a time when any man who loves the sea has to ask himself why he's on the ship he's on and not on another one. Without me Pearl and me crew, m' just a pirate, and there's not more to that than freedom, but I'm as owned as any of your little men without me own means, aye? So do I choose the ship what won't stretch m' neck at an opportune moment and give the appearance of means, if not quite the reality of it? Or do I take m' chances as they come and risk m' neck? One's as bad as the other until you're the boss, and there's rum on your ships same as mine, so it all comes down t' the hats."
"You chose piracy for the hats?" James nearly believes it.
"I chose against your navy for the hats."
"Well, that's one crisis averted." Jack Sparrow, in the navy.
"You really think so?"
"I can safely say you have the makings of a fine court martial."
Jack preens.
***
"Really you were in Singapore?"
"Yes, Sparrow, for the tenth time, yes, really I was in Singapore. And Vienna, and Rome, and India, and-"
"Vienna?"
"Yes, Vienna. Can we not move on already? Surely you don't need every detail of my every travel, do you?"
"No, but…About Vienna: were there eunuchs?"
There's such hopeful dread in Sparrow's question, James can't even answer.
***
He has expected a day of adversity, tracking the man down and holding him to accounts. He has expected to pay for his promised peace with one last day of duty, and he has anticipated honour seeing him through.
He has not expected Jack Sparrow as he finds him any more than he has anticipated the curious sense of camaraderie which forms between them while they've no one else's rules but their own.
***
"I'm glad it was you." James frowns and runs through his own phrasing for the problem. "My last day. My...this one. I'm glad Turner sent me to find you. This might have..." Jack cuts him off with a finger pressed to James's mouth.
"Stop while y' can, aye? Can't be complimentin' me twice in an hour, s' bad luck."
"Is it?"
"Gibbs'd say so."
"As I recall, Mr. Gibbs has a particular fondness for obscure divinations."
"Weren't always wrong."
"Nor was he right."
***
The day bleeds out in a wash of detail. Stifled air that closes in on him, presses him out of doors and onto strange, cluttered streets. Sweat and salt and persons, the gamey scent of port he's only just now recalling. Sounds, too, of wood knocking about, tin as it rattles, the coarseness of speech uttered colloquially. Mashes of language and patchworks of sound, each so distinct he feels a rush of tight focus, like the world's coming in on him, and he wants nothing more than to cover his ears with his hands and block it all out.
"S'a lot to take in, aye?" Jack says quietly, chest brushing shoulder, and James feels the world sweep back like tide. Jack's there like driftwood, solid and safe, a thought as unreasonable as it is valid. "Hard to miss the world until it's gone, and once it is, harder still to come back."
James wants to say a half-dozen things, most of them foolishly witless. "You died, too," perhaps, or "I'm not sure I missed it," or "I can't think anymore," but he knows they're all witless under the circumstances, so he says, "Not long left, I expect," and Jack nods.
"C'mon, then, we'll find someplace better t' waste your life."
James is relieved.
***
"Never been fishing." Jack does what he can to chew his moustache in contemplation of his pole.
"Never? I find that hard to believe." It's evening now and Jack's confession - as it were - aside, they've largely fallen to pacific silence.
"Not like this, anyway. Pole and everything." Jack shakes it as proof. "S'a bit fancy."
Jack Sparrow is the only person dead or living James can imagine calling a stick and a bit of string "fancy" while wearing a king's ransom in rings, but James finds he enjoys the contradictions.
***
"I meant what I said before. What you wouldn't let me finish."
"Shh, no, no, leave it be, Commodore, you're almost home, aye?"
James stops, drags Jack to a similar halt. He has but a few hours left, by God, and he won't waste them. He fears perhaps he's wasted too many already. "No, I won't. Ca- Jack, I can't. Once I'm 'home', as you've so deftly described that barnacle-riddled tub, I won't see you again. Not for years, if ever. And I won't say...this. I won't say this. And...and I feel I should."
"So say it, then. I'm not stopping you." A patent lie, but Jack's known for them.
James grips Jack's arm, holds him in place. Sincerity, he's noticed, tends to repel the vaguely-moraled.
"I realize we weren't anything, really; enemies perhaps, problems to solve but nothing more. You were a thorn in my side from the moment you sailed into my port and I suspect I held a similar position in your life…Had anyone said I'd be glad for another moment in your presence, I would have thought them mad. And yet…" And yet, in this moment, James can't think of anyone he'd rather spend this time with, which draws him up short. He tries to say as much, works himself up for it because the words are hard but required, and Jack shuts him up with a look.
Not a leer, a look, one which says Jack needs no words.
James feels he hasn't at all been clear and curses his traitorous tongue, which has apparently determined Jack Sparrow some manner of unwed chit to be dealt with in blithering idiocy.
"Rivals," Jack says, as James says, "No one else would have cared."
***
Their confused squawks cross like ships in the night.
***
"Rivals," Jack says again. "We were more rivals than anything else. Even if ye tried to kill me sometimes, I sunk your pretty ship and had a hand in the whelp stealing your pretty lass, as it were, and I'd like to think we'd squared ourselves with that. Aye?" He dips his head, leans in all tentative presumption, and James hasn't even realized such contradiction is possible until he sees it. He should not be surprised it's Jack Sparrow's doing.
***
"He offered before he ordered," James says. "Anywhere I wanted, anyone I wanted to spend it with. And I said no, because who would I have shared it with? Honestly."
"And yet, here you are."
"A gift, he said, for sparing Elizabeth. He was trying to repay me, I believe, for saving her life."
"So he put you to work following me? Not much of a gift, then, is it?"
"It was a matter of honour."
"And now?"
"I believe he may have been more successful than we'd thought," James says. "You may not like me, Sparrow. You may not respect me, or comprehend me, or even tolerate me, really. You won't miss me, despite what you've said, or think about me once the Dutchman's left, and that's as it should be, I suppose. I'm certain you won't mourn for me." He spares Sparrow a wry, fond smile then, and sees those endless dark eyes pinch in mild sting. "But you will, I believe, in some respect, remember me, and that's all any man can ask."
***
"We're not so different, you and me, Commodore."
"Good men and hiding it well?" James tries.
Jack nods his consideration. "Men of the sea, judged by those on land and found wanting for it."
"I've made my mistakes." Made and paid, those mistakes, and he has no use now for regrets.
"Fact of life, mistakes. S'what makes it interesting."
James thinks of Elizabeth, who's not happy yet but will be, and Beckett, who'd taken everything and offered nothing, and Sparrow, who'd turned a single day into a lifetime, then done it again. "We have been interesting, haven't we?"
"A Chinese curse, living in interesting times."
"A Caribbean one, too," James thinks, and says, "As well it should be."
***
"You're wrong," Jack says as James's last hour dies. They've watched the sun set and rise on the horizon, spilled a hundred salty tales and more rum than James has consumed in years, and when he stares at Jack in the morning light, he finds a peace there that wasn't yesterday.
"I'm never wrong, Captain. I'm always irritatingly correct. It's a requirement of His Majesty's Service. No mistakes, no admissions."
"Liar," Jack scoffs. Solemns again as the sky flares green over deep blue water. "Before, what you said. You're wrong. Bloody will miss you now, you bastard."
"Well, perhaps there's justice in the world yet, Sparrow, and you'll meet your well-earned end at sea." Odd as it feels to part like this, the Dutchman comes and part they must. James falters at the sight of the little boat rowing hard to shore, but when he can make out Maccus with an oar, James presses on. "For what it's worth, Jack, so will I."
***
Life as he loses it this time hurts unimaginably.
***
Will presses for answers to the questions he's asked, how Jack's doing, why all the risks, what have they done, and when James allows only silence, it says all it needs.
"Was it worth it?" Will asks, that haunting, ill-fitting maturity in his probing gaze. Time and the task are weighing already, that's plain as his face, and because James remembers being drowned by command, he says, "Every second," before he heads belowdecks.
He doesn't watch the ship sink but as the sea rises in greeting, flooding through portholes to spill over the floor, James thinks he feels cold.
***
Will thinks it's failure when, six months after James's last day on shore, they arrive at a wreck and find Captain Jack Sparrow sitting at the ready, grinning and dead and waiting to serve.
James thinks it's about bloody time.
~f~