Fic: Crossing the Bar (14/?)
Author: Honorat
Rating: R for language and blood
Characters: Jack Sparrow, Anamaria
Pairing: Jack/Anamaria
Disclaimer: The characters of PotC! She’s taken them! Get after her, you feckless pack of ingrates!
Summary: The chase continues. The Navy pursues. Jack finishes his needlework. (My only excuse is too many conversations between a nurse and a pathologist at the dinner table.) H/C but the snark is extreme. The alphabet and Latin-can that possibly be made interesting? Every once in awhile, I have to write some raving sailing. Norrington has finally got the Black Pearl trapped. Jack is bound to do something crazy, but will it be the last thing he does?
Thanks to geek_mama_2 for the beta help.
1 Ambush
2 No Regrets
3 The Judgment of the Sea
4 The Sea Pays Homage
5 Risking All That Is Mortal and Unsure
6 Troubles Come Not Single Spies
7 To Dare Do All That May Become a Man
8 Abandon Hope All Ye Who Enter Here
9 A Special Providence in the Fall
10 For Where We Are Is Hell
11 To Beat the Surges Under and Ride Upon Their Backs
12 One Equal Temper of Heroic Hearts
13 Though the Seas Threaten, They are Merciful
* * * * *
14 He Jests at Scars Who Never Felt a Wound
Anamaria decided that it was worse to expect pain than to actually experience it. The needle and thread and rum awaited, lurking ominously, inciting in her imagination images she’d rather not contemplate. In the bobbing light of the lantern, she watched the captain moving about his cabin, searching among the debris and damaged furniture for the materials he needed. Each item he added to the array on the table sent a little spike of foreshadowing agony up her leg. Cloths for cleaning the wound-her flesh writhed at the thought. A slender dagger, its blade drawn slowly through the lantern flame to clear it off-her pulse drummed too fast in her ears. The roll of heavy leather, well-tooled with the marks of teeth-her stomach had a brief argument with the rum. A bucket-in case she lost that argument, she supposed. She tried to tell herself that the intense flame of pain enveloping her leg could not get any worse, but she could not make herself believe it.
Give her a nice sharp sword cut in the heat of a fight any day.
Too soon, Jack was ready. She had to help ease him out of his coat because of his ribs- and wasn’t he going to be getting vengeance on her for that bit of doctoring! Then he rolled up his sleeves over much-scarred forearms in which the muscles slid like taut halyards with his motion. In silence, his slender, rough hands adjusted the position of her leg in the light. It always surprised her how that strength in him could be restrained into such gentleness.
She was so very glad it was him and not Peytoe.
Jack settled himself in a chair by the bed and picked up the leather roll. He held it up to her, a question in his eyes.
She didn’t want the thing. But she knew she might need it. Reluctantly, she reached for it. With a grimace that put an answering wry quirk in Jack’s own mouth, she bit down on the disgusting object. The first part was going to be the worst.
Finally, Jack spoke. “Ready, darlin’?”
She was never going to be ready. But she nodded anyway.
At the first splash of rum in the wound, Anamaria’s world dissolved into white fire. She hadn’t thought she would scream. But when the pain ebbed enough for her to see and hear again, her throat hurt and there were tears on her cheeks. She figured she was glad for that awful piece of leather; otherwise she’d probably have been joining Cotton in parrot ownership. Her jaw ached. Her hands were gripping the cloth she was lying on so hard that they’d started to bleed again. She’d been wrong. Experiencing pain was worse.
Jack was on his feet again, bent over her, one arm braced across her thighs with his weight holding her legs down, while he concentrated on removing the edges of her boot from the wound, now that he’d softened the material. The expression on his face was grim, his lips thinned and pressed hard together. He looked up, sensing her gaze on him. “You with me again, love?” he asked, lightly enough, though his eyes looked strained.
Anamaria nodded. She attempted to slow her panicked breaths. Just relax, she tried to tell her body. This ain’t goin' to kill you. Her body wasn’t convinced. Her mind thought death sounded like a good idea right about now.
By the time Jack had removed her boot and cut away the leg of her breeches from the gash, the muscles and tendons of Anamaria’s neck were strained from holding her jaw so tight and her whole body was shuddering. Even though she felt chilled through the bone, she was sweating.
“Need a break?” Jack asked.
She shook her head. Just get it over with.
Jack thoroughly soaked a cloth and bent over to begin cleaning out the wound. He might as well have been gnawing it off at the knee. The air was thick with the coppery scent of blood and the sweet sting of rum as they flowed in crimson patterns over her leg. Anamaria felt her stomach lurch in an attempt to abandon ship. She spat out the leather.
“Bucket!” she gasped as she leaned over the edge of the bed.
He glanced up quickly. “You’re not goin’ to . . .” But he knew that look. “Oh, you are.” He grabbed the bucket and whisked it under her head in the nick of time. With his other bloodstained hand he caught her hair away from her face.
Having parted company with the last of the rum she’d consumed, Anamaria sagged back against the mattress.
“Feelin’ better?” Jack inquired solicitously.
“Depends what you’re comparin’ it to,” Anamaria managed.
Picking up the discarded leather roll, Jack offered it to her. “Ready for another round?”
“No,” Anamaria said. “But I guess I don’t have much choice.”
“Got to be done, sooner or later,” Jack agreed. “These splinters ain’t goin’ t’ do you any good. And you’re bleedin’ all over me bed.” He offered the leather again.
Anamaria shook her head. “I think I can handle it now.”
Jack’s brow crept up to brush his scarf. “You sure?”
“Aye,” Anamaria sighed. “And I’m feelin’ the need t’ send a few things to the devil.”
“Ah!” said Jack, enlightened. “Go ahead, love. No point in takin’ this like a Spartan. Turn the air as blue as you need to. I won’t hold anythin’ you say about me against you, under the circumstances.” He frowned at her, considering. “On the other hand, if you hit me or start kickin’, I promise I’ll get Gibbs to come hold you down.” He placed the well-bitten roll within easy reach of her hand. “It’s there if you need it.”
And with that threat secured over her head, he returned to the task of probing her torn flesh for shards of the Pearl’s erstwhile spritsail yard.
Anamaria took him at his word. She consigned the Royal Navy, collectively and individually to any number of perditions. She waxed eloquently blasphemous over several pantheons. As Jack searched for the deadly scraps of wood in the ruin of her leg with tender, relentless fingertips, using the point of the knife to work them free, she called him the worst names she could think of, cast aspersions on his ancestors to the third and forth generation, and accused him of indecent relations with a multitude of inappropriate objects, animate and inanimate.
When she paused to gasp for breath, he’d calmly suggest a few more. “Try that one love. Got it off an Italian mercenary. Does wonders.”
When she pressed him for a translation, he evaded her playfully. “What does it mean? Now do you really expect me t’ tell an innocent lass like yourself any such thing?”
Occasionally he’d raise an eyebrow. “Now that’s a new one.”
Once he’d looked intrigued. “I really think that’s quite impossible, darlin’, but as soon as you’re feelin’ more the thing, I’d be willin’ t’ experiment.”
Altogether, he kept her pain so edged with laughter that she didn’t know which was more responsible for the wetness of her cheeks and the trembling of her body. And almost, she could ignore the occasional horrifying scrape of steel on bone.
The pitch and roll of the ship moving through the storm did not seem to affect the sureness of Jack’s hands in the least. The little pile of bloody shards and slivers grew on the tabletop. But when the cabin shuddered with the impact of a shot from the Defender, the tip of the blade he’d been working under a deeply-driven splinter sliced into her.
“Jack!” Anamaria cried out, reflexes taking over, coiling away from him.
“Shit!” Jack snatched the knife away. The splinter twisted. “Sorry!”
“Oh god, oh god!” Anamaria was whimpering now.
Jack dropped the knife and steadied her with his hands, “Shhhh. Easy now, love,” he soothed. “Deep breaths. Try not to move your leg. You’ll only make it worse. I’m sorry about that.” He glared at the cracked timbers where the shot had nearly penetrated the cabin. “Bloody sodding Navy!”
Letting him return her to her original position, Anamaria lay there breathless for the moment. Her leg was pulsing to the beat of her heart until she thought it must explode. Jack did not immediately resume his work, for which she was grateful. She noticed his hands weren’t quite steady as he picked up the knife again. He stared at the blade, rotating it so the light ran along the reddened steel.
“Somehow,” said Jack reflectively, “when I pictured you in this cabin on this bed sayin’ those words, this wasn’t exactly what I had in mind.”
Anamaria threw the leather roll at his head. It missed by a handspan. Which said plenty about how shaken she was. Anamaria never missed a shot like that. But it helped-to be angry again, instead of terrified.
Silently, Jack retrieved the hated object and returned it to her reach. He smiled at her, though she could see the lines of tension about his mouth. “Breathin’ fire again, my dragon lady?”
Huffing a tiny breath of laugh, Anamaria gave up. It was impossible to stay mad at Jack Sparrow-the incorrigible flirt. Particularly when she suspected he was being extra outrageous just to redirect her attention from what he was going to have to continue doing to her.
“Carry on.” She gave a grand wave. “Time to get this torture over with.”
“Aye, aye, ma’am,” Jack saluted comically.
Four hundred and ninety years later, it seemed, he laid aside the knife, brushed away the sweat that had been dripping off his nose for the past three hundred or so of those years with one crimson-soaked sleeve, and sighed. “All clear, love. Or as clear as I can see to make it.”
Anamaria opened her eyes. They’d been silent for some time now. She’d given in and replaced the leather roll about the time she’d bitten her lip until it bled. Grinding her teeth into the heavy surface, she’d simply endured, leaving gory handprints clasped on the coverlet, concentrating on the sound of her breathing and the rhythm of her heart.
Jack reached over with a relatively clean cloth and blotted her face. “Still survivin’?”
She nodded and spat out the gag. Her breath still sounded far too fast and loud. She only wanted one thing-well, one that she could actually have. “Rum!” she said hoarsely.
“Not heeled over far enough, eh love?” Jack asked, getting up to re-fill the flask.
“Not stoppin’ ‘til ‘m capsized,” she replied with conviction, although her voice was shaking.
Her voice wasn’t the only thing. When she tried to take the flask from Jack, her hands wouldn’t cooperate and she nearly dropped it.
The captain snatched it to safety from her fumbling fingers. “Oh no you don’t,” he scolded. “Wastin’ good rum’s a particularly heinous crime, ‘round here.”
But when he held the flask for her, she discovered that her neck was included in the revolution the rest of her body was staging, and she couldn’t even keep her head up.
“Hmmph,” Jack snorted. “Do I have to do everything for you, woman?”
Nevertheless, his hand was gentle as he awkwardly reached around her to support her shoulders with his more functional left arm. With his other hand he touched the flask to her lips.
“We are a pair of shipwrecks, aren’t we?” he commented as she downed gulps of rum she scarcely tasted.
When she’d had enough, he eased her head back to the bed and sampled the rum himself. “Ah!” he sighed. “Nectar of the gods.” He set the empty flask back on the table and massaged the small of his back.
The captain had been bent over her leg for an awfully long time, Anamaria reflected, although not as long as it had seemed.
“Gettin’ stiff, old man?” she teased, reviving slightly under the influence of the alcohol. “That experiment won’t work at all if you are.”
“Trust me,” said Jack suggestively. “If it’s possible at all, I am not too stiff.”
“Every time I trust you,” Anamaria reflected, “I end up fightin’ undead pirates, or vengeful cuckolds, or jealous lightskirts, or wrathful shopkeepers, or self-righteous do-gooders, or insulted holy men, or panicked merchants, or disturbed wild beasts, or greedy privateers, or dead-eye marines, or bloody commodores with battleships. And then you don’t want me t’ kill ‘em! ’M not sure trustin’ you is so good for my health.”
“Course it is,” Jack insisted. “You’d have died of boredom long before this, hangin’ about in a bay callin’ ‘Here fishy, fishy!’ Besides,” he continued, “you have to admit I patch you up beautifully.”
Anamaria simply fixed him with her best “You have got to be kidding!” look.
Jack eyed the ruin of her leg and shut up. “Well then,” he said cheerfully after a minute-if a bit hollowly, “time to start that pretty sampler.”
“I guess it’s got to happen,” Anamaria sighed.
As Jack began to thread the needle, frowning at it fiercely as though to scare the thread through the hole, Anamaria closed her eyes again. This wasn’t going to be any worse than what she’d already lived through, but there was something unnatural about shoving steel through one’s flesh on purpose, and she’d rather not watch.
She felt Jack’s quiet, skilled touch as he brought the ragged edges of the gash together, then the tiny nip of the needle tip sliding into her skin. In spite of her best intentions, her breath hissed through her teeth.
“A,” said Jack whimsically. “‘A’ for ‘Anamaria’ and ‘astrolabe’ and ‘anaconda.’”
Reading lessons. The daft fool was giving her reading lessons while he sewed up her leg. God, she loved this man. A watery smile worked its way past her permanent grimace.
“And ‘apple’ and ‘a-lee’ and ‘abbey-lubber,’” she whispered.
“Which is what you’ll be,” Jack suggested provocatively as he tied the knot.
“’Ass,’” said Anamaria with satisfaction. “Which is what you are.”
Flourishing his needle, Jack started on the next stitch. “ ‘B’,” he said. “For ‘the Black Pearl’ and ‘bee-blocks’ and ‘broadside.’”
Another shot rocked the ship. Jack flinched as though it had struck him. “And bloody British brigs, may the devil take ‘em all.”
He’d stopped working, so Anamaria opened her eyes. Jack was rubbing his eyes tiredly with the backs of his wrists. “Don’t they ever give up?” he asked when he saw her looking.
“Of course not,” she said. “You’re Captain Jack Sparrow, don’t y’ know!”
That won her a bitter laugh. But he shook off whatever he was thinking, tightened his jaw and resumed his needlework. “ ‘B’ for ‘banana’ and ‘boom-jigger.’”
“And the ‘bats in your belfry,’” Anamaria managed, though her teeth clenched around the words.
“Annnndddd . . . ,” Jack drew out the word as though he were having a really bad idea, “for . . .”
“Stop it right there while you’re still alive, Captain!” Anamaria didn’t open her eyes, but she pointed one nail-less forefinger in the direction of his head.
So she was utterly shocked when she felt the soft brush of a kiss on her fingertip. “For the beautiful, brave lass who saved my ship,” Jack finished.
“Nice save,” she muttered, pulling her hand back as though he’d bitten it.
Jack knotted the second stitch before responding. “’T weren’t a joke, love,” he said soberly. “I haven’t said it yet, but thank you.”
“’Tweren’t nothin’,” Anamaria said, embarrassed. “Just my job.”
“It was everything,” Jack countered. “And it almost cost us too much.”
“Ain’t no price too much for freedom,” Anamaria said. “And you know it, Jack Sparrow. That’s why you let her run.”
He was quiet for a moment, hands still and resting against her leg. “I do know it,” he said finally. “Thank you.”
Uncomfortably, Anamaria reminded him, “You got twenty-four more letters t’ go, an’ the Lord’s Prayer, so you might want t’ quit lollygaggin’.”
Jack gave a soft snort and picked up his needle. “You’re an odd sort of female, Anamaria. You’d rather take a needle in the leg than a compliment.”
“’M better with insults,” Anamaria muttered. “ ‘C’,” she supplied, to turn the topic, “for ‘Cotton’ and ‘cathead’ and ‘crazy captain.’”
Sighing in resignation, Jack took the stitch. “ ‘C’,” he agreed. “For ‘crabby, cantankerous chucklehead.’”
Anamaria choked a laugh. Then, as the unremitting ordeal continued, she set her teeth and thought of the alphabet.
* * * * *
She tried not to interrupt the captain at his work but by the time he’d got to the letter ‘P’ for ‘Parrot’ and ‘parsnip’ and ‘peagoose,’ and a particularly mangled bit of her leg, she’d been unable to hold on one minute longer.
“Stop! Jack, I can’t . . .” she gasped.
He instantly removed his hands. “Too much? That’s all right. We’ll stop.”
The cold sweat soaking her already wet body, the tremors she couldn’t remove from her hands no matter how she clenched her fists, the staccato drill of her pulse that would not slow down made Anamaria feel idiotic and weak. As Jack dried her forehead again, she swatted his hand away angrily. “I hate this!” she snapped with a despicable high note in her voice. “I should be able to take this.”
If Jack had been sympathetic she would have bitten him.
But he simply looked quizzically at her and offered, “I could knock you over the head.”
That surprised a half-sobbing laugh out of her. “And let you embroider who knows what on my leg?” she asked, with a little of the old spark back in her voice. “I’ve got t’ keep my eye on you, Jack Sparrow.”
He leaned over her with that wide-eyed expression that would make you swear the one solitary thought in his head was dying of loneliness, and batted his eyelashes. “Enjoy the view, darlin’!”
What with the smears of kohl and her blood added to the traces from his own head wound, Jack’s face was actually looking particularly awful. “You look worse than me,” Anamaria informed him.
“That’s as may be,” Jack said loftily, “but we all know you look excessively lovely, so I must still be quite the show.”
“I’ll have you know, I’m trying not to throw up,” Anamaria complained. “And you’re making it very hard.”
“That’s my job,” Jack smirked. “Pain and puking with Jack Sparrow are better than wine and dancing with any other man.”
He would not have been half so annoying if he hadn’t been right. And it was frustrating to have to be so grateful to the man for stirring up a fight with her when she really needed one.
“If you can see around that bloated self-opinion of yours,” she told him, “Perhaps you could get on with the needlepoint. I’m sure you have better things t’ be doin’.”
She should have remembered that Jack Sparrow never fought fair. The cheery, compassionate battle-light in his eyes shifted to something darker and smouldering until Anamaria thought surely the fabric under her head must be catching fire. With a slow caress, he drew the backs of two fingers along the undamaged side of her calf, the way she had often seen him stroke the Black Pearl. His voice lowered to star-shimmering, tropical midnight velvet. “I can’t think of a single one, love.”
Damn the man! She was glad she was in too much pain to react to that note in his voice, to that touch, to . . . All right she needed to be in more pain.
“Sew!” she commanded, the word quivering with conviction.
Jack raised his hands in surrender. “As you wish, my lady,” he agreed, all brisk business again.
She would not be sorry.
Then the bite of the needle removed all thoughts of regrets or Jack Sparrow’s damnable allure. Anamaria welcomed the pain.
“ ‘Q’,” he continued, as though they’d never been interrupted, “for ‘quartermaster,’ ‘quinte,’ and ‘Quetzalcoatl,’”
“That ain’t a word,” Anamaria said firmly. “You’re cheatin’. Though why I should be surprised at that . . .”
“Is too a word.” Jack defended his problematic honour. “Quetzalcoatl is one of those Aztec gods.”
Anamaria shuddered. “Why you wantin’ to know the name of one o’ them?”
“Oh, he’s one of the nice ones,” Jack said airily. “Feathered snaky guy. Real reasonable. Not in the least bloodthirsty.”
“Well, good. The two of you ought t’ get along just dandy,” Anamaria said, marveling again at the eclectic trivia Jack stored in that thick skull of his.
“Besides, I know ‘em all,” Jack continued offhandedly. “Decided it was best t’ have an idea who I might be runnin’ across one of these days. What their angle was, as it were. Most of their people are gone, now. So they haven’t a lot to do but rattle around gettin’ meddlesome.”
He tied off the knot, trimmed the stitch, and contemplated his handiwork. “Very nice, if I do say so myself.”
“And you always do,” Anamaria remarked dryly, congratulating herself on keeping any and all hitches out of her voice.
* * * * *
Jack gave her another respite at the end of the alphabet, although she hadn’t asked him to. “No need to push this,” he explained.
“What’s a zebra?” Anamaria asked curiously between deep breaths to relax.
“Stripy sort of donkey thing,” Jack told her. “Find ‘em in Africa. Wild. No use whatsoever, but striking t’ look at.”
“Oh,” said Anamaria. “You mean like a pirate captain.”
Jack glared at her indignantly.
“All right, all right. I take it back,” Anamaria conceded.
“Except for the striking to look at?” Jack prodded.
Anamaria rolled her eyes. “Fribble,” she accused.
Jack smirked.
It was rather ironic that he should know more about Africa than she did.
With that uncanny ability of his, Jack seemed to read her mind. “You’ve never been there, have you?” he asked. “Africa, I mean.”
She shook her head. “My father’s father was from there, but I never knew him.”
“We’ll go there,” Jack decided enthusiastically. “There are all sorts of weird things to see. Course the Europeans have messed up the port towns, but we’ll take a camel and go visit the underground Coptic temples in Abyssinia, or maybe we’ll hop an elephant and go see zebras and wildebeests and gnus and lions.”
“What’s a camel?”
“Um,” Jack considered. “Something like a horse, but . . . um . . . with a hump, or two, on its back . . .”
“A hump.”
“Swear to God,” Jack said earnestly, his hands trying to describe the strange creature in the air. “And a droopy nose and big flat feet with toes and a really terrible disposition-spits at you for no reason at all.” He paused. “Rather like a first mate, come to think of it.”
“Jack,” Anamaria warned.
“But really beautiful brown eyes. Big. You could melt right into them,” Jack added hurriedly. He eyed her warily. “All right, I take it back, too.”
“How clever of you,” Anamaria said coldly. “I really think you should start the Lord’s Prayer. You’re goin’ t’ need it.”
Jack picked up the needle again. “But you’ll go to Africa with me?” he asked hopefully.
Anamaria gave up. “Yes, you unprincipled baboon. Yes, I’ll go with you anywhere you want to go.”
At Jack’s alert look, she quickly amended. “Have to, don’t I? We’re on the same boat, and last I checked I couldn’t walk on water.”
Damn! She had to be careful what she promised that man. It wasn’t fair that he had her drunk and half out of her mind with pain. He’d never promised her a thing except to be her captain when she’d signed his articles, and she had no reason to expect he ever would. If Captain Jack Sparrow had plighted his troth to any woman, it was to the Black Pearl. And Anamaria had no intentions of giving up anything she couldn’t afford to lose-least of all her heart. Not without adequate ransom. She was a pirate, after all. Take what you can; give nothing back. She could never forget that Jack was, too.
Still, she didn’t know how to interpret Jack’s small shrug as he resumed his employment.
“Pater noster,” he murmured, and the thread tightened, stinging.
“Latin?” Anamaria winced. “You want me to learn Latin now?”
“Why not?” Jack asked. “Lots of good stuff written in it. Qui es in caelis.” He took another stitch.
“You’re mad,” Anamaria said firmly.
“I’m just doin’ a proper sampler,” Jack argued. “And it’s one in the eye for the ol’ church of England. Now stop squirming.”
“I am not squirming,” she protested.
“I know a squirm when I see one. Sanctificetur nomen tuum,” Jack said virtuously and reinserted the needle. “There. You did it again. Squirm. Now be still or I’ll switch to Arma virumque cano!”
“I gather that’s a threat,” Anamaria said through clenched teeth. “And I was just shifting. That bloody hurts!”
“Virgil’s Aenied,” Jack said with relish, tying off the thread. “‘I sing of men and arms.’ Twelve books long. You’d look like a tapestry instead of a sampler. Ragetti can tell you all about it. It’s his favourite story. It’ll hurt worse if you don’t keep still. Adveniat regnum tuum.”
Anamaria gritted her teeth and suffered in silence until Jack reached Sed libera nos a malo.
“How many more?” she asked, not sure she wanted the answer.
Jack measured the remaining gap in her leg with his hand and compared it to the stitched portion. “’Bout sixteen more, I’d say. I’ve put in thirty-eight. Plenty enough for the little ship and her flag. And the Amen.”
And he added stitch thirty-nine.
“Bloody hell,” said Anamaria with feeling.
“Amen,” said Jack, scrubbing at his sweating face with his gory sleeve. “This’ll about do me in.”
Anamaria glared at him, “Do you in? Just whose leg is it that's gettin’ drilled full of holes anyway?”
“Calm down, lass,” Jack soothed. “You’ll carry the honours for the most sufferin’. No worries about that. But I might point out that I am missin’ a couple of key ribs to which I was extremely attached and thus I have a right to grouse.”
Of course. She had forgotten about that in her own agony. Jack must be half-dead. Concern for him overrode any thought of herself. “Are you going to be all right?” she asked contritely. “You need to get your arm back in that sling. Here, give me that needle. I’ll finish it myself.”
“Now just hold on one bloody minute, you madwoman!” Jack batted her hand away. “Did I say I couldn’t do this? I don’t recall hearin’ myself say any such thing. You can’t even sit up by yourself, you ridiculous creature. Now. Stop. Squirming. Or I swear it’s Virgil and the foundin’ of Rome for you!” With pigheaded determination, he set about making the next stitch. “And now for the fun part. ‘Keel.’”
Anamaria subsided, knowing he was right, but worrying over him like a dog with a bone. She scarcely paid attention to the misery traveling towards her knee as she searched for signs of fatigue and pain in Jack-the lack of grace in his posture, the set of his jaw as he worked, the extra line by his mouth, the slight flare of his nostrils as he breathed, the way his skin was drawn harshly over the fine structure of his face. The way he winced in more than mental pain when the Pearl was struck by the Defender’s unflagging attacks.
“Our very own guardian destroying angel,” Jack murmured after one heavy hit. “I hope they’re getting paid well for this.”
“I hope they run out of shot,” Anamaria said more viciously. “I hope their cannons overheat and explode. Why can’t they leave us alone? We’re not hurtin’ them. And they’ve already managed to hurt us more than we’ve ever hurt anyone. Ever.”
“They do seem to have skipped the ‘love your enemy’ part and exceeded the ‘eye for an eye’ one by full fathom five,” Jack admitted. “Must be prophetic vengeance-punishin’ us for all the deeds we haven’t done yet.”
“Does that mean we’re sinnin’ on credit, from now on?”
Jack gave her a sultry look and said, in that voice of his that could raise the temperature in a fire-less room in the middle of a storm, “Give you any ideas, darlin’?”
The effect was spoiled by the needle running through her torn skin and muscle again.
“Damn it, Jack!” Anamaria cringed.
“I’ll take that as a comment on my needlework and remain hopeful about the sinning,” Jack said with determined humour. “‘Mizzenmast.’” He tied the knot. “Almost done with your little boat, love.”
* * * * *
Finally Jack inserted the needle for the last time. “‘Jolly Roger,’” he proclaimed in weary triumph. Swiftly he drew the thread through, tugged the last small gap of flesh together, and tied off the stitch. “It’s over now. You can relax.” He patted her fist knotted in the coverlet, encouragingly.
Anamaria let out a long shivering sigh.
“Best get this off before your leg falls off,” Jack said, removing the bandage on her thigh.
As the strange ache of returning circulation throbbed in her leg, Anamaria lay there, eyes closed, consciously stilling her breathing, and explored the shape and boundaries and weight of the pain that remained now that the sudden intense shocks of it had ceased, coming to an accord with it. Thus far, and no farther. Defining the space it would occupy in her life for the foreseeable future. She could-she must-bear this. Then she began to pull the bits of herself from around the edges of that pain back into something coherent enough to function. When she had reached some measure of success, Anamaria opened her eyes.
Jack sat unmoving beside her, his shoulders curved in an exhausted arc as he rested his forehead in the crook of his arm on the mattress. His right arm was cradled against his chest as though it were acting as a splint again. Anamaria reached out to thread abused fingers in the damp locks of hair against his cheek.
“Mmmm.” She felt, more than heard, his sigh vibrate against her fingertips, and he nudged his face against her hand. The barest hint of a smile curved her lips. He was such an unabashed hedonist. But for once she could indulge herself, while Jack was far too tired to take advantage. And so she let herself enjoy the varied textures of smooth skin and fine beard in a brief caress, before withdrawing her hand.
The tremor of the Pearl under another shot from the Defender reminded them that this sense of calm was merely an illusion. Jack would have to drain the last dregs of his strength and return to his duties as captain, made doubly arduous by her absence. And she would be left to recover as best she could in frustrating inactivity.
“Guess I’m wanted on deck, lass,” he sighed. “Still got a Navy to outrun tonight.”
Watching Jack move usually made her want to stretch and purr like a cat, there was such relish for the swing and range of muscles, such graceful energy to him. But now, watching him stand made her ache.
As he scrubbed at the dried blood on his hands, he nodded at Duncan. “You can snuggle up to the drunken sot, there. Keep each other warm. I’ll send Peytoe in with lint and bandages to finish your leg.”
Anamaria had not looked at her injury yet. Not when it had happened. Not while everyone had been gathering supplies. Not while Jack had been cleaning and stitching it. Suddenly she wanted to get it over with while he was still here.
“Jack?” she stalled his departure. “I want to see what . . . what happened.”
“Of course.” He didn’t laugh at her, merely returned to her side and helped her sit up so that she could inspect his workmanship. “There you are, darlin’. Fifty-four of Sparrow’s finest. You won’t find a neater stitch outside of a London mantuamaker’s.”
Somehow, with all their conversation, Anamaria had almost expected to see swirling letters, tiny Latin phrases, and a black ship with flag flying embroidered into her leg. What she actually saw was a trail of precise, evenly-spaced, tiny black stitches spanning the long, ugly, irregular red line that closed what had been a gaping wound. The flesh around it was purple-black with bruises, bloodstained and distorted.
“Very nice,” she said attempting to be enthusiastic. The stitches were so much better than they could have been. She glanced at the somnolent Duncan. Much better.
“Something wrong?” Jack asked, although she’d said nothing negative.
“No. Of course not. Thank you so much, Jack.”
“You’ll have a whale of a scar, won’t you, love?” he responded understandingly.
“I suppose so,” Anamaria tried to laugh. She’d nearly died. Would have if this magnificent, brave ship had not somehow held on to her. She could very easily have lost the leg entirely. And she was worried about a scar? How stupid could she be? Stupid enough, apparently.
And so she found herself turning her face into Jack’s shoulder as the arm with which he was supporting her tightened comfortingly, and succeeding in not crying. She had that much self-respect at least.
“That is always going to be the most beautiful scar you have,” Jack mused against her hair, stroking sweat-dampened tendrils from her face with soothing fingertips. She could feel the strands catch on his calluses. “Every time I see it, I’ll remember the price you were willing to pay and what you won for us.”
Anamaria did not know whether she was equal to the task of not loving this man too much.
“Besides,” he continued, and she could hear the smile in his voice. “You’ll look ever so dashing and dangerous with that mark on you. We’ll have to make a ballad about the fearsome pirate Anamaria, bane of the Royal Navy, and sing it in every tavern in the Caribbean.”
“And Africa?” she asked, laughing shakily and pulling away from him again.
“And Africa.” Jack smirked. He waved his left arm expansively. “The whole world!”
Without his arm bracing her, Anamaria began to fold back against the bed. Jack caught her again and lowered her less abruptly. Her eyes closed in the lassitude of extreme weakness. In the haze of rum and blood-loss and exhaustion that clouded her mind as her body gave up fighting, she was dimly aware of Jack drawing soggy blankets over her, and then his warm, ship-worn palms cupping her face and the scratch of his beard and the tapping of the little braids on her nose as he kissed her forehead.
She sneezed, and he laughed softly.
As though from several decks away, she heard him murmur, “It’s good to have you back, Anamaria.”
And then he was gone-back to charm power from the rioting winds and swiftest flight from a tall black ship.
* * * * *
TBC
15 To Strive, To Seek, To Find, And Not To Yield
Rating: R for language and blood
Characters: Jack Sparrow, Anamaria
Pairing: Jack/Anamaria
Disclaimer: The characters of PotC! She’s taken them! Get after her, you feckless pack of ingrates!
Summary: The chase continues. The Navy pursues. Jack finishes his needlework. (My only excuse is too many conversations between a nurse and a pathologist at the dinner table.) H/C but the snark is extreme. The alphabet and Latin-can that possibly be made interesting? Every once in awhile, I have to write some raving sailing. Norrington has finally got the Black Pearl trapped. Jack is bound to do something crazy, but will it be the last thing he does?
Thanks to geek_mama_2 for the beta help.
1 Ambush
2 No Regrets
3 The Judgment of the Sea
4 The Sea Pays Homage
5 Risking All That Is Mortal and Unsure
6 Troubles Come Not Single Spies
7 To Dare Do All That May Become a Man
8 Abandon Hope All Ye Who Enter Here
9 A Special Providence in the Fall
10 For Where We Are Is Hell
11 To Beat the Surges Under and Ride Upon Their Backs
12 One Equal Temper of Heroic Hearts
13 Though the Seas Threaten, They are Merciful
* * * * *
14 He Jests at Scars Who Never Felt a Wound
Anamaria decided that it was worse to expect pain than to actually experience it. The needle and thread and rum awaited, lurking ominously, inciting in her imagination images she’d rather not contemplate. In the bobbing light of the lantern, she watched the captain moving about his cabin, searching among the debris and damaged furniture for the materials he needed. Each item he added to the array on the table sent a little spike of foreshadowing agony up her leg. Cloths for cleaning the wound-her flesh writhed at the thought. A slender dagger, its blade drawn slowly through the lantern flame to clear it off-her pulse drummed too fast in her ears. The roll of heavy leather, well-tooled with the marks of teeth-her stomach had a brief argument with the rum. A bucket-in case she lost that argument, she supposed. She tried to tell herself that the intense flame of pain enveloping her leg could not get any worse, but she could not make herself believe it.
Give her a nice sharp sword cut in the heat of a fight any day.
Too soon, Jack was ready. She had to help ease him out of his coat because of his ribs- and wasn’t he going to be getting vengeance on her for that bit of doctoring! Then he rolled up his sleeves over much-scarred forearms in which the muscles slid like taut halyards with his motion. In silence, his slender, rough hands adjusted the position of her leg in the light. It always surprised her how that strength in him could be restrained into such gentleness.
She was so very glad it was him and not Peytoe.
Jack settled himself in a chair by the bed and picked up the leather roll. He held it up to her, a question in his eyes.
She didn’t want the thing. But she knew she might need it. Reluctantly, she reached for it. With a grimace that put an answering wry quirk in Jack’s own mouth, she bit down on the disgusting object. The first part was going to be the worst.
Finally, Jack spoke. “Ready, darlin’?”
She was never going to be ready. But she nodded anyway.
At the first splash of rum in the wound, Anamaria’s world dissolved into white fire. She hadn’t thought she would scream. But when the pain ebbed enough for her to see and hear again, her throat hurt and there were tears on her cheeks. She figured she was glad for that awful piece of leather; otherwise she’d probably have been joining Cotton in parrot ownership. Her jaw ached. Her hands were gripping the cloth she was lying on so hard that they’d started to bleed again. She’d been wrong. Experiencing pain was worse.
Jack was on his feet again, bent over her, one arm braced across her thighs with his weight holding her legs down, while he concentrated on removing the edges of her boot from the wound, now that he’d softened the material. The expression on his face was grim, his lips thinned and pressed hard together. He looked up, sensing her gaze on him. “You with me again, love?” he asked, lightly enough, though his eyes looked strained.
Anamaria nodded. She attempted to slow her panicked breaths. Just relax, she tried to tell her body. This ain’t goin' to kill you. Her body wasn’t convinced. Her mind thought death sounded like a good idea right about now.
By the time Jack had removed her boot and cut away the leg of her breeches from the gash, the muscles and tendons of Anamaria’s neck were strained from holding her jaw so tight and her whole body was shuddering. Even though she felt chilled through the bone, she was sweating.
“Need a break?” Jack asked.
She shook her head. Just get it over with.
Jack thoroughly soaked a cloth and bent over to begin cleaning out the wound. He might as well have been gnawing it off at the knee. The air was thick with the coppery scent of blood and the sweet sting of rum as they flowed in crimson patterns over her leg. Anamaria felt her stomach lurch in an attempt to abandon ship. She spat out the leather.
“Bucket!” she gasped as she leaned over the edge of the bed.
He glanced up quickly. “You’re not goin’ to . . .” But he knew that look. “Oh, you are.” He grabbed the bucket and whisked it under her head in the nick of time. With his other bloodstained hand he caught her hair away from her face.
Having parted company with the last of the rum she’d consumed, Anamaria sagged back against the mattress.
“Feelin’ better?” Jack inquired solicitously.
“Depends what you’re comparin’ it to,” Anamaria managed.
Picking up the discarded leather roll, Jack offered it to her. “Ready for another round?”
“No,” Anamaria said. “But I guess I don’t have much choice.”
“Got to be done, sooner or later,” Jack agreed. “These splinters ain’t goin’ t’ do you any good. And you’re bleedin’ all over me bed.” He offered the leather again.
Anamaria shook her head. “I think I can handle it now.”
Jack’s brow crept up to brush his scarf. “You sure?”
“Aye,” Anamaria sighed. “And I’m feelin’ the need t’ send a few things to the devil.”
“Ah!” said Jack, enlightened. “Go ahead, love. No point in takin’ this like a Spartan. Turn the air as blue as you need to. I won’t hold anythin’ you say about me against you, under the circumstances.” He frowned at her, considering. “On the other hand, if you hit me or start kickin’, I promise I’ll get Gibbs to come hold you down.” He placed the well-bitten roll within easy reach of her hand. “It’s there if you need it.”
And with that threat secured over her head, he returned to the task of probing her torn flesh for shards of the Pearl’s erstwhile spritsail yard.
Anamaria took him at his word. She consigned the Royal Navy, collectively and individually to any number of perditions. She waxed eloquently blasphemous over several pantheons. As Jack searched for the deadly scraps of wood in the ruin of her leg with tender, relentless fingertips, using the point of the knife to work them free, she called him the worst names she could think of, cast aspersions on his ancestors to the third and forth generation, and accused him of indecent relations with a multitude of inappropriate objects, animate and inanimate.
When she paused to gasp for breath, he’d calmly suggest a few more. “Try that one love. Got it off an Italian mercenary. Does wonders.”
When she pressed him for a translation, he evaded her playfully. “What does it mean? Now do you really expect me t’ tell an innocent lass like yourself any such thing?”
Occasionally he’d raise an eyebrow. “Now that’s a new one.”
Once he’d looked intrigued. “I really think that’s quite impossible, darlin’, but as soon as you’re feelin’ more the thing, I’d be willin’ t’ experiment.”
Altogether, he kept her pain so edged with laughter that she didn’t know which was more responsible for the wetness of her cheeks and the trembling of her body. And almost, she could ignore the occasional horrifying scrape of steel on bone.
The pitch and roll of the ship moving through the storm did not seem to affect the sureness of Jack’s hands in the least. The little pile of bloody shards and slivers grew on the tabletop. But when the cabin shuddered with the impact of a shot from the Defender, the tip of the blade he’d been working under a deeply-driven splinter sliced into her.
“Jack!” Anamaria cried out, reflexes taking over, coiling away from him.
“Shit!” Jack snatched the knife away. The splinter twisted. “Sorry!”
“Oh god, oh god!” Anamaria was whimpering now.
Jack dropped the knife and steadied her with his hands, “Shhhh. Easy now, love,” he soothed. “Deep breaths. Try not to move your leg. You’ll only make it worse. I’m sorry about that.” He glared at the cracked timbers where the shot had nearly penetrated the cabin. “Bloody sodding Navy!”
Letting him return her to her original position, Anamaria lay there breathless for the moment. Her leg was pulsing to the beat of her heart until she thought it must explode. Jack did not immediately resume his work, for which she was grateful. She noticed his hands weren’t quite steady as he picked up the knife again. He stared at the blade, rotating it so the light ran along the reddened steel.
“Somehow,” said Jack reflectively, “when I pictured you in this cabin on this bed sayin’ those words, this wasn’t exactly what I had in mind.”
Anamaria threw the leather roll at his head. It missed by a handspan. Which said plenty about how shaken she was. Anamaria never missed a shot like that. But it helped-to be angry again, instead of terrified.
Silently, Jack retrieved the hated object and returned it to her reach. He smiled at her, though she could see the lines of tension about his mouth. “Breathin’ fire again, my dragon lady?”
Huffing a tiny breath of laugh, Anamaria gave up. It was impossible to stay mad at Jack Sparrow-the incorrigible flirt. Particularly when she suspected he was being extra outrageous just to redirect her attention from what he was going to have to continue doing to her.
“Carry on.” She gave a grand wave. “Time to get this torture over with.”
“Aye, aye, ma’am,” Jack saluted comically.
Four hundred and ninety years later, it seemed, he laid aside the knife, brushed away the sweat that had been dripping off his nose for the past three hundred or so of those years with one crimson-soaked sleeve, and sighed. “All clear, love. Or as clear as I can see to make it.”
Anamaria opened her eyes. They’d been silent for some time now. She’d given in and replaced the leather roll about the time she’d bitten her lip until it bled. Grinding her teeth into the heavy surface, she’d simply endured, leaving gory handprints clasped on the coverlet, concentrating on the sound of her breathing and the rhythm of her heart.
Jack reached over with a relatively clean cloth and blotted her face. “Still survivin’?”
She nodded and spat out the gag. Her breath still sounded far too fast and loud. She only wanted one thing-well, one that she could actually have. “Rum!” she said hoarsely.
“Not heeled over far enough, eh love?” Jack asked, getting up to re-fill the flask.
“Not stoppin’ ‘til ‘m capsized,” she replied with conviction, although her voice was shaking.
Her voice wasn’t the only thing. When she tried to take the flask from Jack, her hands wouldn’t cooperate and she nearly dropped it.
The captain snatched it to safety from her fumbling fingers. “Oh no you don’t,” he scolded. “Wastin’ good rum’s a particularly heinous crime, ‘round here.”
But when he held the flask for her, she discovered that her neck was included in the revolution the rest of her body was staging, and she couldn’t even keep her head up.
“Hmmph,” Jack snorted. “Do I have to do everything for you, woman?”
Nevertheless, his hand was gentle as he awkwardly reached around her to support her shoulders with his more functional left arm. With his other hand he touched the flask to her lips.
“We are a pair of shipwrecks, aren’t we?” he commented as she downed gulps of rum she scarcely tasted.
When she’d had enough, he eased her head back to the bed and sampled the rum himself. “Ah!” he sighed. “Nectar of the gods.” He set the empty flask back on the table and massaged the small of his back.
The captain had been bent over her leg for an awfully long time, Anamaria reflected, although not as long as it had seemed.
“Gettin’ stiff, old man?” she teased, reviving slightly under the influence of the alcohol. “That experiment won’t work at all if you are.”
“Trust me,” said Jack suggestively. “If it’s possible at all, I am not too stiff.”
“Every time I trust you,” Anamaria reflected, “I end up fightin’ undead pirates, or vengeful cuckolds, or jealous lightskirts, or wrathful shopkeepers, or self-righteous do-gooders, or insulted holy men, or panicked merchants, or disturbed wild beasts, or greedy privateers, or dead-eye marines, or bloody commodores with battleships. And then you don’t want me t’ kill ‘em! ’M not sure trustin’ you is so good for my health.”
“Course it is,” Jack insisted. “You’d have died of boredom long before this, hangin’ about in a bay callin’ ‘Here fishy, fishy!’ Besides,” he continued, “you have to admit I patch you up beautifully.”
Anamaria simply fixed him with her best “You have got to be kidding!” look.
Jack eyed the ruin of her leg and shut up. “Well then,” he said cheerfully after a minute-if a bit hollowly, “time to start that pretty sampler.”
“I guess it’s got to happen,” Anamaria sighed.
As Jack began to thread the needle, frowning at it fiercely as though to scare the thread through the hole, Anamaria closed her eyes again. This wasn’t going to be any worse than what she’d already lived through, but there was something unnatural about shoving steel through one’s flesh on purpose, and she’d rather not watch.
She felt Jack’s quiet, skilled touch as he brought the ragged edges of the gash together, then the tiny nip of the needle tip sliding into her skin. In spite of her best intentions, her breath hissed through her teeth.
“A,” said Jack whimsically. “‘A’ for ‘Anamaria’ and ‘astrolabe’ and ‘anaconda.’”
Reading lessons. The daft fool was giving her reading lessons while he sewed up her leg. God, she loved this man. A watery smile worked its way past her permanent grimace.
“And ‘apple’ and ‘a-lee’ and ‘abbey-lubber,’” she whispered.
“Which is what you’ll be,” Jack suggested provocatively as he tied the knot.
“’Ass,’” said Anamaria with satisfaction. “Which is what you are.”
Flourishing his needle, Jack started on the next stitch. “ ‘B’,” he said. “For ‘the Black Pearl’ and ‘bee-blocks’ and ‘broadside.’”
Another shot rocked the ship. Jack flinched as though it had struck him. “And bloody British brigs, may the devil take ‘em all.”
He’d stopped working, so Anamaria opened her eyes. Jack was rubbing his eyes tiredly with the backs of his wrists. “Don’t they ever give up?” he asked when he saw her looking.
“Of course not,” she said. “You’re Captain Jack Sparrow, don’t y’ know!”
That won her a bitter laugh. But he shook off whatever he was thinking, tightened his jaw and resumed his needlework. “ ‘B’ for ‘banana’ and ‘boom-jigger.’”
“And the ‘bats in your belfry,’” Anamaria managed, though her teeth clenched around the words.
“Annnndddd . . . ,” Jack drew out the word as though he were having a really bad idea, “for . . .”
“Stop it right there while you’re still alive, Captain!” Anamaria didn’t open her eyes, but she pointed one nail-less forefinger in the direction of his head.
So she was utterly shocked when she felt the soft brush of a kiss on her fingertip. “For the beautiful, brave lass who saved my ship,” Jack finished.
“Nice save,” she muttered, pulling her hand back as though he’d bitten it.
Jack knotted the second stitch before responding. “’T weren’t a joke, love,” he said soberly. “I haven’t said it yet, but thank you.”
“’Tweren’t nothin’,” Anamaria said, embarrassed. “Just my job.”
“It was everything,” Jack countered. “And it almost cost us too much.”
“Ain’t no price too much for freedom,” Anamaria said. “And you know it, Jack Sparrow. That’s why you let her run.”
He was quiet for a moment, hands still and resting against her leg. “I do know it,” he said finally. “Thank you.”
Uncomfortably, Anamaria reminded him, “You got twenty-four more letters t’ go, an’ the Lord’s Prayer, so you might want t’ quit lollygaggin’.”
Jack gave a soft snort and picked up his needle. “You’re an odd sort of female, Anamaria. You’d rather take a needle in the leg than a compliment.”
“’M better with insults,” Anamaria muttered. “ ‘C’,” she supplied, to turn the topic, “for ‘Cotton’ and ‘cathead’ and ‘crazy captain.’”
Sighing in resignation, Jack took the stitch. “ ‘C’,” he agreed. “For ‘crabby, cantankerous chucklehead.’”
Anamaria choked a laugh. Then, as the unremitting ordeal continued, she set her teeth and thought of the alphabet.
* * * * *
She tried not to interrupt the captain at his work but by the time he’d got to the letter ‘P’ for ‘Parrot’ and ‘parsnip’ and ‘peagoose,’ and a particularly mangled bit of her leg, she’d been unable to hold on one minute longer.
“Stop! Jack, I can’t . . .” she gasped.
He instantly removed his hands. “Too much? That’s all right. We’ll stop.”
The cold sweat soaking her already wet body, the tremors she couldn’t remove from her hands no matter how she clenched her fists, the staccato drill of her pulse that would not slow down made Anamaria feel idiotic and weak. As Jack dried her forehead again, she swatted his hand away angrily. “I hate this!” she snapped with a despicable high note in her voice. “I should be able to take this.”
If Jack had been sympathetic she would have bitten him.
But he simply looked quizzically at her and offered, “I could knock you over the head.”
That surprised a half-sobbing laugh out of her. “And let you embroider who knows what on my leg?” she asked, with a little of the old spark back in her voice. “I’ve got t’ keep my eye on you, Jack Sparrow.”
He leaned over her with that wide-eyed expression that would make you swear the one solitary thought in his head was dying of loneliness, and batted his eyelashes. “Enjoy the view, darlin’!”
What with the smears of kohl and her blood added to the traces from his own head wound, Jack’s face was actually looking particularly awful. “You look worse than me,” Anamaria informed him.
“That’s as may be,” Jack said loftily, “but we all know you look excessively lovely, so I must still be quite the show.”
“I’ll have you know, I’m trying not to throw up,” Anamaria complained. “And you’re making it very hard.”
“That’s my job,” Jack smirked. “Pain and puking with Jack Sparrow are better than wine and dancing with any other man.”
He would not have been half so annoying if he hadn’t been right. And it was frustrating to have to be so grateful to the man for stirring up a fight with her when she really needed one.
“If you can see around that bloated self-opinion of yours,” she told him, “Perhaps you could get on with the needlepoint. I’m sure you have better things t’ be doin’.”
She should have remembered that Jack Sparrow never fought fair. The cheery, compassionate battle-light in his eyes shifted to something darker and smouldering until Anamaria thought surely the fabric under her head must be catching fire. With a slow caress, he drew the backs of two fingers along the undamaged side of her calf, the way she had often seen him stroke the Black Pearl. His voice lowered to star-shimmering, tropical midnight velvet. “I can’t think of a single one, love.”
Damn the man! She was glad she was in too much pain to react to that note in his voice, to that touch, to . . . All right she needed to be in more pain.
“Sew!” she commanded, the word quivering with conviction.
Jack raised his hands in surrender. “As you wish, my lady,” he agreed, all brisk business again.
She would not be sorry.
Then the bite of the needle removed all thoughts of regrets or Jack Sparrow’s damnable allure. Anamaria welcomed the pain.
“ ‘Q’,” he continued, as though they’d never been interrupted, “for ‘quartermaster,’ ‘quinte,’ and ‘Quetzalcoatl,’”
“That ain’t a word,” Anamaria said firmly. “You’re cheatin’. Though why I should be surprised at that . . .”
“Is too a word.” Jack defended his problematic honour. “Quetzalcoatl is one of those Aztec gods.”
Anamaria shuddered. “Why you wantin’ to know the name of one o’ them?”
“Oh, he’s one of the nice ones,” Jack said airily. “Feathered snaky guy. Real reasonable. Not in the least bloodthirsty.”
“Well, good. The two of you ought t’ get along just dandy,” Anamaria said, marveling again at the eclectic trivia Jack stored in that thick skull of his.
“Besides, I know ‘em all,” Jack continued offhandedly. “Decided it was best t’ have an idea who I might be runnin’ across one of these days. What their angle was, as it were. Most of their people are gone, now. So they haven’t a lot to do but rattle around gettin’ meddlesome.”
He tied off the knot, trimmed the stitch, and contemplated his handiwork. “Very nice, if I do say so myself.”
“And you always do,” Anamaria remarked dryly, congratulating herself on keeping any and all hitches out of her voice.
* * * * *
Jack gave her another respite at the end of the alphabet, although she hadn’t asked him to. “No need to push this,” he explained.
“What’s a zebra?” Anamaria asked curiously between deep breaths to relax.
“Stripy sort of donkey thing,” Jack told her. “Find ‘em in Africa. Wild. No use whatsoever, but striking t’ look at.”
“Oh,” said Anamaria. “You mean like a pirate captain.”
Jack glared at her indignantly.
“All right, all right. I take it back,” Anamaria conceded.
“Except for the striking to look at?” Jack prodded.
Anamaria rolled her eyes. “Fribble,” she accused.
Jack smirked.
It was rather ironic that he should know more about Africa than she did.
With that uncanny ability of his, Jack seemed to read her mind. “You’ve never been there, have you?” he asked. “Africa, I mean.”
She shook her head. “My father’s father was from there, but I never knew him.”
“We’ll go there,” Jack decided enthusiastically. “There are all sorts of weird things to see. Course the Europeans have messed up the port towns, but we’ll take a camel and go visit the underground Coptic temples in Abyssinia, or maybe we’ll hop an elephant and go see zebras and wildebeests and gnus and lions.”
“What’s a camel?”
“Um,” Jack considered. “Something like a horse, but . . . um . . . with a hump, or two, on its back . . .”
“A hump.”
“Swear to God,” Jack said earnestly, his hands trying to describe the strange creature in the air. “And a droopy nose and big flat feet with toes and a really terrible disposition-spits at you for no reason at all.” He paused. “Rather like a first mate, come to think of it.”
“Jack,” Anamaria warned.
“But really beautiful brown eyes. Big. You could melt right into them,” Jack added hurriedly. He eyed her warily. “All right, I take it back, too.”
“How clever of you,” Anamaria said coldly. “I really think you should start the Lord’s Prayer. You’re goin’ t’ need it.”
Jack picked up the needle again. “But you’ll go to Africa with me?” he asked hopefully.
Anamaria gave up. “Yes, you unprincipled baboon. Yes, I’ll go with you anywhere you want to go.”
At Jack’s alert look, she quickly amended. “Have to, don’t I? We’re on the same boat, and last I checked I couldn’t walk on water.”
Damn! She had to be careful what she promised that man. It wasn’t fair that he had her drunk and half out of her mind with pain. He’d never promised her a thing except to be her captain when she’d signed his articles, and she had no reason to expect he ever would. If Captain Jack Sparrow had plighted his troth to any woman, it was to the Black Pearl. And Anamaria had no intentions of giving up anything she couldn’t afford to lose-least of all her heart. Not without adequate ransom. She was a pirate, after all. Take what you can; give nothing back. She could never forget that Jack was, too.
Still, she didn’t know how to interpret Jack’s small shrug as he resumed his employment.
“Pater noster,” he murmured, and the thread tightened, stinging.
“Latin?” Anamaria winced. “You want me to learn Latin now?”
“Why not?” Jack asked. “Lots of good stuff written in it. Qui es in caelis.” He took another stitch.
“You’re mad,” Anamaria said firmly.
“I’m just doin’ a proper sampler,” Jack argued. “And it’s one in the eye for the ol’ church of England. Now stop squirming.”
“I am not squirming,” she protested.
“I know a squirm when I see one. Sanctificetur nomen tuum,” Jack said virtuously and reinserted the needle. “There. You did it again. Squirm. Now be still or I’ll switch to Arma virumque cano!”
“I gather that’s a threat,” Anamaria said through clenched teeth. “And I was just shifting. That bloody hurts!”
“Virgil’s Aenied,” Jack said with relish, tying off the thread. “‘I sing of men and arms.’ Twelve books long. You’d look like a tapestry instead of a sampler. Ragetti can tell you all about it. It’s his favourite story. It’ll hurt worse if you don’t keep still. Adveniat regnum tuum.”
Anamaria gritted her teeth and suffered in silence until Jack reached Sed libera nos a malo.
“How many more?” she asked, not sure she wanted the answer.
Jack measured the remaining gap in her leg with his hand and compared it to the stitched portion. “’Bout sixteen more, I’d say. I’ve put in thirty-eight. Plenty enough for the little ship and her flag. And the Amen.”
And he added stitch thirty-nine.
“Bloody hell,” said Anamaria with feeling.
“Amen,” said Jack, scrubbing at his sweating face with his gory sleeve. “This’ll about do me in.”
Anamaria glared at him, “Do you in? Just whose leg is it that's gettin’ drilled full of holes anyway?”
“Calm down, lass,” Jack soothed. “You’ll carry the honours for the most sufferin’. No worries about that. But I might point out that I am missin’ a couple of key ribs to which I was extremely attached and thus I have a right to grouse.”
Of course. She had forgotten about that in her own agony. Jack must be half-dead. Concern for him overrode any thought of herself. “Are you going to be all right?” she asked contritely. “You need to get your arm back in that sling. Here, give me that needle. I’ll finish it myself.”
“Now just hold on one bloody minute, you madwoman!” Jack batted her hand away. “Did I say I couldn’t do this? I don’t recall hearin’ myself say any such thing. You can’t even sit up by yourself, you ridiculous creature. Now. Stop. Squirming. Or I swear it’s Virgil and the foundin’ of Rome for you!” With pigheaded determination, he set about making the next stitch. “And now for the fun part. ‘Keel.’”
Anamaria subsided, knowing he was right, but worrying over him like a dog with a bone. She scarcely paid attention to the misery traveling towards her knee as she searched for signs of fatigue and pain in Jack-the lack of grace in his posture, the set of his jaw as he worked, the extra line by his mouth, the slight flare of his nostrils as he breathed, the way his skin was drawn harshly over the fine structure of his face. The way he winced in more than mental pain when the Pearl was struck by the Defender’s unflagging attacks.
“Our very own guardian destroying angel,” Jack murmured after one heavy hit. “I hope they’re getting paid well for this.”
“I hope they run out of shot,” Anamaria said more viciously. “I hope their cannons overheat and explode. Why can’t they leave us alone? We’re not hurtin’ them. And they’ve already managed to hurt us more than we’ve ever hurt anyone. Ever.”
“They do seem to have skipped the ‘love your enemy’ part and exceeded the ‘eye for an eye’ one by full fathom five,” Jack admitted. “Must be prophetic vengeance-punishin’ us for all the deeds we haven’t done yet.”
“Does that mean we’re sinnin’ on credit, from now on?”
Jack gave her a sultry look and said, in that voice of his that could raise the temperature in a fire-less room in the middle of a storm, “Give you any ideas, darlin’?”
The effect was spoiled by the needle running through her torn skin and muscle again.
“Damn it, Jack!” Anamaria cringed.
“I’ll take that as a comment on my needlework and remain hopeful about the sinning,” Jack said with determined humour. “‘Mizzenmast.’” He tied the knot. “Almost done with your little boat, love.”
* * * * *
Finally Jack inserted the needle for the last time. “‘Jolly Roger,’” he proclaimed in weary triumph. Swiftly he drew the thread through, tugged the last small gap of flesh together, and tied off the stitch. “It’s over now. You can relax.” He patted her fist knotted in the coverlet, encouragingly.
Anamaria let out a long shivering sigh.
“Best get this off before your leg falls off,” Jack said, removing the bandage on her thigh.
As the strange ache of returning circulation throbbed in her leg, Anamaria lay there, eyes closed, consciously stilling her breathing, and explored the shape and boundaries and weight of the pain that remained now that the sudden intense shocks of it had ceased, coming to an accord with it. Thus far, and no farther. Defining the space it would occupy in her life for the foreseeable future. She could-she must-bear this. Then she began to pull the bits of herself from around the edges of that pain back into something coherent enough to function. When she had reached some measure of success, Anamaria opened her eyes.
Jack sat unmoving beside her, his shoulders curved in an exhausted arc as he rested his forehead in the crook of his arm on the mattress. His right arm was cradled against his chest as though it were acting as a splint again. Anamaria reached out to thread abused fingers in the damp locks of hair against his cheek.
“Mmmm.” She felt, more than heard, his sigh vibrate against her fingertips, and he nudged his face against her hand. The barest hint of a smile curved her lips. He was such an unabashed hedonist. But for once she could indulge herself, while Jack was far too tired to take advantage. And so she let herself enjoy the varied textures of smooth skin and fine beard in a brief caress, before withdrawing her hand.
The tremor of the Pearl under another shot from the Defender reminded them that this sense of calm was merely an illusion. Jack would have to drain the last dregs of his strength and return to his duties as captain, made doubly arduous by her absence. And she would be left to recover as best she could in frustrating inactivity.
“Guess I’m wanted on deck, lass,” he sighed. “Still got a Navy to outrun tonight.”
Watching Jack move usually made her want to stretch and purr like a cat, there was such relish for the swing and range of muscles, such graceful energy to him. But now, watching him stand made her ache.
As he scrubbed at the dried blood on his hands, he nodded at Duncan. “You can snuggle up to the drunken sot, there. Keep each other warm. I’ll send Peytoe in with lint and bandages to finish your leg.”
Anamaria had not looked at her injury yet. Not when it had happened. Not while everyone had been gathering supplies. Not while Jack had been cleaning and stitching it. Suddenly she wanted to get it over with while he was still here.
“Jack?” she stalled his departure. “I want to see what . . . what happened.”
“Of course.” He didn’t laugh at her, merely returned to her side and helped her sit up so that she could inspect his workmanship. “There you are, darlin’. Fifty-four of Sparrow’s finest. You won’t find a neater stitch outside of a London mantuamaker’s.”
Somehow, with all their conversation, Anamaria had almost expected to see swirling letters, tiny Latin phrases, and a black ship with flag flying embroidered into her leg. What she actually saw was a trail of precise, evenly-spaced, tiny black stitches spanning the long, ugly, irregular red line that closed what had been a gaping wound. The flesh around it was purple-black with bruises, bloodstained and distorted.
“Very nice,” she said attempting to be enthusiastic. The stitches were so much better than they could have been. She glanced at the somnolent Duncan. Much better.
“Something wrong?” Jack asked, although she’d said nothing negative.
“No. Of course not. Thank you so much, Jack.”
“You’ll have a whale of a scar, won’t you, love?” he responded understandingly.
“I suppose so,” Anamaria tried to laugh. She’d nearly died. Would have if this magnificent, brave ship had not somehow held on to her. She could very easily have lost the leg entirely. And she was worried about a scar? How stupid could she be? Stupid enough, apparently.
And so she found herself turning her face into Jack’s shoulder as the arm with which he was supporting her tightened comfortingly, and succeeding in not crying. She had that much self-respect at least.
“That is always going to be the most beautiful scar you have,” Jack mused against her hair, stroking sweat-dampened tendrils from her face with soothing fingertips. She could feel the strands catch on his calluses. “Every time I see it, I’ll remember the price you were willing to pay and what you won for us.”
Anamaria did not know whether she was equal to the task of not loving this man too much.
“Besides,” he continued, and she could hear the smile in his voice. “You’ll look ever so dashing and dangerous with that mark on you. We’ll have to make a ballad about the fearsome pirate Anamaria, bane of the Royal Navy, and sing it in every tavern in the Caribbean.”
“And Africa?” she asked, laughing shakily and pulling away from him again.
“And Africa.” Jack smirked. He waved his left arm expansively. “The whole world!”
Without his arm bracing her, Anamaria began to fold back against the bed. Jack caught her again and lowered her less abruptly. Her eyes closed in the lassitude of extreme weakness. In the haze of rum and blood-loss and exhaustion that clouded her mind as her body gave up fighting, she was dimly aware of Jack drawing soggy blankets over her, and then his warm, ship-worn palms cupping her face and the scratch of his beard and the tapping of the little braids on her nose as he kissed her forehead.
She sneezed, and he laughed softly.
As though from several decks away, she heard him murmur, “It’s good to have you back, Anamaria.”
And then he was gone-back to charm power from the rioting winds and swiftest flight from a tall black ship.
* * * * *
TBC
15 To Strive, To Seek, To Find, And Not To Yield