"An Exchange of Gifts," PG, Gillette/Anamaria, for tiggothy.
Sorry, sorry, sorry. :(( I am the worst mod ever. Okay, so there should be a huge amount of fic-posting over tonight, and it will probably spill into 07. I don't want to be the posting to overtake the quality of all the fics, so I'm really reticent to post them all tonight even though, uh, it's the last day...
Title: An Exchange of Gifts
Author: Anonymous Secret Santa
Recipient: tiggothy
Pairing: Gillette / Anamaria
Rating: PG
Summary: A gift is neither a debt nor an obligation.
Author's Note: naming my betas would reveal my identity. I'll thank them once the author identities are made public.
An Exchange of Gifts
Pirates were common in Port Royal. There were only so many ports of size in the area, only so much land on the map, despite recent evidence to the existence of uncharted bits of it. Pirates slipped ashore at night, or haggled openly in the market, or raised mugs of watered rum in dingy pubs, looking to create more pirates, the level of secrecy dependent on the price on each one’s head.
Pirates were common enough. This one was not.
The motley band of seafarers, their sea-stained linen as much a uniform as His Majesty’s wool, shuffled toward the fort in a cloud of sweat and resentment. They were escorted by the best of the British marines, their leader’s face as red as his jacket. He manhandled several of the prisoners, then grabbed one boyish shoulder and twisted it sharply up. He shouted at the guard, “You fool! This is a strumpet, no pirate.”
She glared at the marine, and Gillette himself spoke her doom. “No, Major, she is as bold a pirate as ever burned a merchant vessel. Look to her hands, not her hair. She’s held a sword.”
“Your women are too weak to do the same,” Anamaria spat.
“We cherish our women,” the marine snarled back.
“I cherish my freedom.”
“Take them away.” The major shoved her roughly back into the cluster of prisoners.
Gillette had no choice but to watch, as bound by his rank as she was by the chains that dragged at her skin.
An officer of the king did not fetch or carry. He could no more bring her food or even water, than he could present her with the Crown jewels, but mocking? He was allowed to mock, to taunt. So he did. The guards, never vigilant, turned away to let the officer have his fun. She seemed smaller, somehow, sitting cross-legged on the floor of the cell, her back to the bars.
He sank to his heels, wary of actually touching either bars or floor. “Fancy meeting you here.”
“Where else would I be?” she spoke as quietly, as wary of the guards as her fellows.
“The Black Pearl, last I heard.”
“Sparrow may be a madman, but his quartermaster is not. Empty stomachs aren’t filled by words.”
“So you are here,” he waved generally at the rough hewn walls, ”for salt pork and portable soup?”
“Aye, though the service here…. I’ve had better at places that didn’t have a roof.”
“I understand the kitchen is better than their cellar.”
“Perhaps,” Anamaria said. “But I’ve yet to see it.”
“I could, perhaps, bring…” he trailed off. “No, I suppose I really couldn’t.”
“Well, if we aren’t eating, I’d rather not eat something other than ship’s biscuit and water.”
“We could not have tea,” he said. It took him a moment to recognize that her shaking was suppressed laughter.
“With those little cakes with raisins?” she whispered.
“Certainly. And scones with butter. Pineapple jelly, of course with mint. How do you take your tea?”
“With rum.”
“Oh,” that hadn’t actually occurred to him. “Well, I suppose we could…er…not have sherry.”
“I don’t think I want to die with sherry on my tongue.”
He paused, “Perhaps there’s something I can do.”
“You lie poorly. I would like to dice with you.”
“I don’t play dice. Cards, perhaps?”
“I don’t play cards. Not sea-worthy, little painted slips of paper. Blow away in a breeze. More fit for tearooms and salons. Places with walls.” She curled her hand around the bar.
He refrained from touching her. “I would free you.”
“I think perhaps that I would let you,” she answered. The sorrow in her voice did not surprise him, but the resignation did. She expected nothing from him. Only later did he realize she was the only one who didn’t.
Pirates swung at dawn, always, and two hours before, he pulled at her sleeve. She came awake immediately and silently, and he raised one finger to his lips. Together they crept past the sleeping inmates, past the dogs who slept with his muzzle on the ring of keys and a guard with his chin on his weapon, past the fortress walls. He slowed at the edge of town and frowned at the patches on her blouse before shaking off his jacket.
She stepped away quickly. “I’ve no interest in being your whore.”
“You’ve no…what?”
She pressed her lips together and narrowed her eyes at him.
He stepped forward and draped his second best coat over her thin shirt. “I don’t want to bed you, Anamaria. I want to play chess with you.”
She rubbed her wrists automatically. The shadowed moon was too dim; he could not tell whether the marks on her sleeves were rust or blood.
“Chess?” she asked.
“One can only drink so much tea…or rum, and I have on good authority that I’m not tempermentally suited for dice.”
Anamaria smiled at that, and ducked her head to hide it, though she did slip her arms into the sleeves of his jacket.
She took several steps away, then spun to face him, suddenly fierce. “I owe you nothing.”
“Consider it a gift.”
With the rising of the sun and that morning’s hanging, Jack Sparrow’s legend grew. The townspeople whispered of powers of escape so strong that they extended like an outstretched wing over his crew. Gillette was unpunished, in fact, unsuspected. An officer of the navy would never free a pirate.
---:::---
Jack was mad, everyone knew that; Gibbs even informed strangers of the fact with a certain amount of pride, but this insanity would cost them all their lives. No one outran the typhoon, not even Captain Jack Sparrow. He would die; his precious Pearl would die; they and the Dauntless in pursuit would all drown in the tempest. Jack knew the tides, and the Commodore had shown them that he knew the sea, but she knew the rigging better than any man alive and she felt the mast give before the thunder of its breaking cracked over the deck, before the sail swept her into the air. She reached for the rail, stretching herself, praying to feel the splintered wood of the railing under her hands.
She failed.
The water hit her in parts, the bitter sting of the spray, the force of the wave, the chill of the deep pulling at her clothes, her hair, flooding her eyes and nose with the ghosts of the men she’d had a hand in drowning. She fought the sea, scrambled to claw her fingers into the ropes knotted around the spar, hauled her head out of the water and saw the Navy boat crack and founder, the cannons still firing and pushing themselves that much more quickly into the deep. The sharks would dine well. She had only to make sure she wasn’t part of the feast. She swung one leg over the shattered spar and devoted herself to staying alive.
The dog watch brought calm and a gentle swell and dawn brought land, rocky and deserted and already dotted with bits of ship, some brightly navy painted, some sun-bleached, old bones of old wrecks. She crawled through the surf, too exhausted and salt-sick to stand, across the beach, past the fish bones and small shells that marked high tide, curled around a rock, and slept.
Voices woke her before the sun could crest her shelter, the low moan of a man about to die, shouts of scavengers, both the cry of the gull rooting for meat and the hoarse shouting of men, searching the dead.
The scavengers were dispatching navy men with calm efficiency and without knowing where she was, she knew enough. No man’s land, far from town or crown, men too rough for any contract, apprentice or sea. But here, so far from Tortuga, or more exactly Port Royal, was a familiar profile, though last seen in the half light before sunrise above a pirate’s cove. A double line of gouged sand showed where he’d dragged another sailor from the surf before collapsing and he still had one arm slung under his fellow’s body. A valiant effort and one worthy of a brother. A shame that the crabs were starting in on the fellow’s feet. A stout man with a rough carved wooden leg pulled the two Navy men apart, rolled Gilette over with the point of his cutlass, then laid the tip under his chin.
“Hold!”
Pegleg spun in surprise.
Quite honestly, she was a little surprised herself. She’d been unseen and had both an escape route and no reason to speak. But it was done now, and she’d spent enough time on Sparrow’s boat to know when to bluff. “He’s one of mine.” She stepped forth with more surety than she felt. They’d attracted the others, now. The scavenger ran a finger down the bright gold trim and rubbed his fingers wordlessly. Anamaria continued, “He was captured, though I’ll wager the uniform was his escape plan. He’s a clever one.”
Pegleg looked at Gillette with some curiosity, at her with less. Pegleg drew his pistol and aimed it carefully at her. “Why should I believe you?” he asked.
“Why shouldn’t you? I’ve no claim on that,” she waved down the beach where others were gathering around the bundles of wet red wool, “only for my crewman.”
“I’ll be taking the uniform,” he challenged.
She shrugged. “I’ve no use for it.”
He laughed rudely and she sneered, both at him and at the underfed gangly youth who joined him. She stood over them, impassive by long years of training, and watched as they rolled Gillette roughly in the sand and left him, barefoot in his shirt and trousers, at her feet. She knew she didn’t have the strength to get up again if she sat, so he grabbed his wrists roughly and dragged him away from the waves. The rough shells couldn’t do any more damage to his back than had already been done by storm tossed wood and sea water.
She'd had a fire going, sputtery and reeking of fish and resin, but enough to keep the wet air from chilling them, when he came to with a hacking cough that presaged croup in the winter to come.
“What?”
“Hurricane.”
“Where are…?”
“Possibly as far as Tripoli, though if so we made damn good time running before the storm." She looked over the thin limp grass that scrabbled to grow through the sand, at the stripped bodies left on the beach, at a gull walking the tide line.
“Who?”
"None, to my knowledge," her stern face dared him to say otherwise, though she still did not look at him.
He curled in on himself, not weeping, simply breathing. The shadows moved around them before he tried to speak again. "Is there water?"
"Not here. We'll have to forage, and for that we'll have to move."
"Thank you."
She frowned, "for what?"
“I dare say it’s apparent that you saved my life."
Her smile was slow, but all the more honest for it. "Consider it a gift."
--
Comments may be left here for the author; I'm sure they'll be appreciated.
Title: An Exchange of Gifts
Author: Anonymous Secret Santa
Recipient: tiggothy
Pairing: Gillette / Anamaria
Rating: PG
Summary: A gift is neither a debt nor an obligation.
Author's Note: naming my betas would reveal my identity. I'll thank them once the author identities are made public.
An Exchange of Gifts
Pirates were common in Port Royal. There were only so many ports of size in the area, only so much land on the map, despite recent evidence to the existence of uncharted bits of it. Pirates slipped ashore at night, or haggled openly in the market, or raised mugs of watered rum in dingy pubs, looking to create more pirates, the level of secrecy dependent on the price on each one’s head.
Pirates were common enough. This one was not.
The motley band of seafarers, their sea-stained linen as much a uniform as His Majesty’s wool, shuffled toward the fort in a cloud of sweat and resentment. They were escorted by the best of the British marines, their leader’s face as red as his jacket. He manhandled several of the prisoners, then grabbed one boyish shoulder and twisted it sharply up. He shouted at the guard, “You fool! This is a strumpet, no pirate.”
She glared at the marine, and Gillette himself spoke her doom. “No, Major, she is as bold a pirate as ever burned a merchant vessel. Look to her hands, not her hair. She’s held a sword.”
“Your women are too weak to do the same,” Anamaria spat.
“We cherish our women,” the marine snarled back.
“I cherish my freedom.”
“Take them away.” The major shoved her roughly back into the cluster of prisoners.
Gillette had no choice but to watch, as bound by his rank as she was by the chains that dragged at her skin.
An officer of the king did not fetch or carry. He could no more bring her food or even water, than he could present her with the Crown jewels, but mocking? He was allowed to mock, to taunt. So he did. The guards, never vigilant, turned away to let the officer have his fun. She seemed smaller, somehow, sitting cross-legged on the floor of the cell, her back to the bars.
He sank to his heels, wary of actually touching either bars or floor. “Fancy meeting you here.”
“Where else would I be?” she spoke as quietly, as wary of the guards as her fellows.
“The Black Pearl, last I heard.”
“Sparrow may be a madman, but his quartermaster is not. Empty stomachs aren’t filled by words.”
“So you are here,” he waved generally at the rough hewn walls, ”for salt pork and portable soup?”
“Aye, though the service here…. I’ve had better at places that didn’t have a roof.”
“I understand the kitchen is better than their cellar.”
“Perhaps,” Anamaria said. “But I’ve yet to see it.”
“I could, perhaps, bring…” he trailed off. “No, I suppose I really couldn’t.”
“Well, if we aren’t eating, I’d rather not eat something other than ship’s biscuit and water.”
“We could not have tea,” he said. It took him a moment to recognize that her shaking was suppressed laughter.
“With those little cakes with raisins?” she whispered.
“Certainly. And scones with butter. Pineapple jelly, of course with mint. How do you take your tea?”
“With rum.”
“Oh,” that hadn’t actually occurred to him. “Well, I suppose we could…er…not have sherry.”
“I don’t think I want to die with sherry on my tongue.”
He paused, “Perhaps there’s something I can do.”
“You lie poorly. I would like to dice with you.”
“I don’t play dice. Cards, perhaps?”
“I don’t play cards. Not sea-worthy, little painted slips of paper. Blow away in a breeze. More fit for tearooms and salons. Places with walls.” She curled her hand around the bar.
He refrained from touching her. “I would free you.”
“I think perhaps that I would let you,” she answered. The sorrow in her voice did not surprise him, but the resignation did. She expected nothing from him. Only later did he realize she was the only one who didn’t.
Pirates swung at dawn, always, and two hours before, he pulled at her sleeve. She came awake immediately and silently, and he raised one finger to his lips. Together they crept past the sleeping inmates, past the dogs who slept with his muzzle on the ring of keys and a guard with his chin on his weapon, past the fortress walls. He slowed at the edge of town and frowned at the patches on her blouse before shaking off his jacket.
She stepped away quickly. “I’ve no interest in being your whore.”
“You’ve no…what?”
She pressed her lips together and narrowed her eyes at him.
He stepped forward and draped his second best coat over her thin shirt. “I don’t want to bed you, Anamaria. I want to play chess with you.”
She rubbed her wrists automatically. The shadowed moon was too dim; he could not tell whether the marks on her sleeves were rust or blood.
“Chess?” she asked.
“One can only drink so much tea…or rum, and I have on good authority that I’m not tempermentally suited for dice.”
Anamaria smiled at that, and ducked her head to hide it, though she did slip her arms into the sleeves of his jacket.
She took several steps away, then spun to face him, suddenly fierce. “I owe you nothing.”
“Consider it a gift.”
With the rising of the sun and that morning’s hanging, Jack Sparrow’s legend grew. The townspeople whispered of powers of escape so strong that they extended like an outstretched wing over his crew. Gillette was unpunished, in fact, unsuspected. An officer of the navy would never free a pirate.
---:::---
Jack was mad, everyone knew that; Gibbs even informed strangers of the fact with a certain amount of pride, but this insanity would cost them all their lives. No one outran the typhoon, not even Captain Jack Sparrow. He would die; his precious Pearl would die; they and the Dauntless in pursuit would all drown in the tempest. Jack knew the tides, and the Commodore had shown them that he knew the sea, but she knew the rigging better than any man alive and she felt the mast give before the thunder of its breaking cracked over the deck, before the sail swept her into the air. She reached for the rail, stretching herself, praying to feel the splintered wood of the railing under her hands.
She failed.
The water hit her in parts, the bitter sting of the spray, the force of the wave, the chill of the deep pulling at her clothes, her hair, flooding her eyes and nose with the ghosts of the men she’d had a hand in drowning. She fought the sea, scrambled to claw her fingers into the ropes knotted around the spar, hauled her head out of the water and saw the Navy boat crack and founder, the cannons still firing and pushing themselves that much more quickly into the deep. The sharks would dine well. She had only to make sure she wasn’t part of the feast. She swung one leg over the shattered spar and devoted herself to staying alive.
The dog watch brought calm and a gentle swell and dawn brought land, rocky and deserted and already dotted with bits of ship, some brightly navy painted, some sun-bleached, old bones of old wrecks. She crawled through the surf, too exhausted and salt-sick to stand, across the beach, past the fish bones and small shells that marked high tide, curled around a rock, and slept.
Voices woke her before the sun could crest her shelter, the low moan of a man about to die, shouts of scavengers, both the cry of the gull rooting for meat and the hoarse shouting of men, searching the dead.
The scavengers were dispatching navy men with calm efficiency and without knowing where she was, she knew enough. No man’s land, far from town or crown, men too rough for any contract, apprentice or sea. But here, so far from Tortuga, or more exactly Port Royal, was a familiar profile, though last seen in the half light before sunrise above a pirate’s cove. A double line of gouged sand showed where he’d dragged another sailor from the surf before collapsing and he still had one arm slung under his fellow’s body. A valiant effort and one worthy of a brother. A shame that the crabs were starting in on the fellow’s feet. A stout man with a rough carved wooden leg pulled the two Navy men apart, rolled Gilette over with the point of his cutlass, then laid the tip under his chin.
“Hold!”
Pegleg spun in surprise.
Quite honestly, she was a little surprised herself. She’d been unseen and had both an escape route and no reason to speak. But it was done now, and she’d spent enough time on Sparrow’s boat to know when to bluff. “He’s one of mine.” She stepped forth with more surety than she felt. They’d attracted the others, now. The scavenger ran a finger down the bright gold trim and rubbed his fingers wordlessly. Anamaria continued, “He was captured, though I’ll wager the uniform was his escape plan. He’s a clever one.”
Pegleg looked at Gillette with some curiosity, at her with less. Pegleg drew his pistol and aimed it carefully at her. “Why should I believe you?” he asked.
“Why shouldn’t you? I’ve no claim on that,” she waved down the beach where others were gathering around the bundles of wet red wool, “only for my crewman.”
“I’ll be taking the uniform,” he challenged.
She shrugged. “I’ve no use for it.”
He laughed rudely and she sneered, both at him and at the underfed gangly youth who joined him. She stood over them, impassive by long years of training, and watched as they rolled Gillette roughly in the sand and left him, barefoot in his shirt and trousers, at her feet. She knew she didn’t have the strength to get up again if she sat, so he grabbed his wrists roughly and dragged him away from the waves. The rough shells couldn’t do any more damage to his back than had already been done by storm tossed wood and sea water.
She'd had a fire going, sputtery and reeking of fish and resin, but enough to keep the wet air from chilling them, when he came to with a hacking cough that presaged croup in the winter to come.
“What?”
“Hurricane.”
“Where are…?”
“Possibly as far as Tripoli, though if so we made damn good time running before the storm." She looked over the thin limp grass that scrabbled to grow through the sand, at the stripped bodies left on the beach, at a gull walking the tide line.
“Who?”
"None, to my knowledge," her stern face dared him to say otherwise, though she still did not look at him.
He curled in on himself, not weeping, simply breathing. The shadows moved around them before he tried to speak again. "Is there water?"
"Not here. We'll have to forage, and for that we'll have to move."
"Thank you."
She frowned, "for what?"
“I dare say it’s apparent that you saved my life."
Her smile was slow, but all the more honest for it. "Consider it a gift."
--
Comments may be left here for the author; I'm sure they'll be appreciated.