The Pirate's Progress (4/5?)

[erinya]

"And then," Jack finished triumphantly, "I grabbed hold of two macaws that just happened to be flying past, see, all unawares, and took a quick step off that wall; and they bore me right over the bay handsomely and sweetly as you please to where the Black Pearl waited, leaving the Commodore, poor git, and all his limeys gaping after me."

He had

Comments

[veronica_rich]

I love the part with Jack telling the truth at long last. Everyone has to pay the piper sometime, I suppose ...

[erinya]

Indeed. I don't think he's ever told that story before, not as one coherent whole.

Thank you!

[choose2live]

hehehe... I love it! I'm glad he couldn't just charm his way out, he had to tell the truth, and best of all, I believe he won her over *because* he told the truth. Wonderful experience for him. And brings much more complexity to this scene than it otherwise might have. Nicely done.

[erinya]

Thanks! I think she wanted to be won over (what female wouldn't?) but yes, she had to hear the truth. And he had to tell it and to remember it, even though he didn't necessarily want to--remembering who you are is a survival mechanism in this particular version of the afterlife, as Tiresias pointed out, and...well, there's a whole semi-logical metaphysics behind this in my head, but I won't bore you with it. Suffice it to say that she helped him out in more than one way.

[artaxastra]

I totally get that. She gave him the cue he needed. And a bit more besides. Who says the Lady of the Dead can't have favorites too? *g*

[artaxastra]

That's so beautiful! I love the way you write Hades, with a smirk!

"It seems, Captain Sparrow," she said, "that you have lived something of a hero's life, though you are loath to claim it; and despite your best efforts to the contrary, have managed to die a hero's death as well."

Oh wonderful! And also true.

And it was at that moment-or so he swore when he told the tale, afterwards; and, after all, why would he not tell the truth?-it was at that moment that Jack saw the Queen of the Dead tilt her pretty dark head in a spill of shining ringlets, and wink saucily at him.

I love this. So much.

This is just the best! I'm waiting for the next bit with bated breath!

[erinya]

Hades looks and speaks exactly like Jeremy Irons in my head.

Thank you!

[sixpences]

This just gets better!

A stranger's, who had little or naught at all to do with him; he found himself struggling to disentangle the truth from the layered strands of his own and others' hyperbole, invention, myth.

I love that description; it does seem fitting that he's half-convinced of the myth himself, even though his real story is heroic and interesting enough as it is.

[erinya]

Thank you!

it does seem fitting that he's half-convinced of the myth himself, even though his real story is heroic and interesting enough as it is.

"Captain Jack Sparrow" is really a part that he's played most of his life. And there's a certain amount of forgetting that goes on in the Underworld.

[woolymonkey]

That is fantastic! (And now I see why you gave me such brilliantly useful advice for my own Jack-tells-his-story story on rough_magic.)
I love Jack struggling to even remember the true story of his life.

However, I can't resist a Spanish inquisition moment:
*"Not just yet, Sparrow." The Lord had not raised his voice, but somehow those three quiet words reached every corner of the hall,*
Erm, that would be FOUR quiet words, no?

[erinya]

I love Jack struggling to even remember the true story of his life.

One of those tricks of memory...if you tell a lie over and over, you start to actually believe it...

Erm, that would be FOUR quiet words, no?

Eeeep! Apparently I cannot count. Thank you!