Pirates of the Caribbean: Isla de Almas Perdidas

Indigo Blue.x

Author's Note: So presumably I wasn't the only person to think I'd never get around to continuing this fic? To be honest I've not written a word of fiction since last November, when I did NaNoWriMo… which seemed to put me off for the next seven months, heh. Well I saw 'At World's End' last Friday, and it got me thinking about writing again. Thanks to Rising Star 10101 (whose review reminded me of this story's existence, actually), twadrummer, tresdrole, shotgunxwedding, jla2snoopy and Ms xDivine for the reviews

Chapter Three: Ship-shaped

The mist was very convenient, Jack thoughts critically, surveying the white-gold beach and faded line of sketchy trees decorating The Island That Shouldn't Have Been There. It gave the distinct impression that some omnipotent artist had begun drawing the land, decided halfway through that no one would come close enough to inspect it, and swept a charcoal veil of mist over the remainder to save time. He dug the scuffed toe of a boat into the sand reflectively, watching it stream from the salt-hardened leather in a perfectly choreographed wave.

The sand shifted guiltily under his gaze, swept into swirling patterns by an optimistic wind.

Jack gave it a hard look to let it know that he still wasn't entirely convinced before turning his attentions back to the crew, who were stood looking dubious by the now-moored Sea's Deceit.

'Right then,' he announced, before he'd had time to even consider what he was going to say. 'If you feel you can all entertain yourselves for a short while, I'll be exploring this fine island. Meet the locals, show them a good time, that sort of thing.' He closed his fist automatically around the pearl in his pocket, then recoiled slightly – the surface was hot, burning through the material.

'What if there're savages?' a crew member objected. After the shock of the pearl, Jack had to pause a moment to remember what he was talking about, which the man obviously saw as a cue to continue. 'Ye could be attacked, Jack. Captain. At least a group of us should go.'

Jack held up a hand. 'I see where you're taking this. You think we should get the neighbours round, bring the rum, be off on a merry voyage round this aforementioned scrap of land, get like-as-not attacked by a group of less than friendly natives, and scurry back to our charming ship here to find that due to not leaving a loyal crew here armed with cutlasses and cannons and whatnot-' he took a quick breath, '-the natives in general have seized their happy opportunity to commandeer our stately vessel, complete with swords and pistols. And rum. At which point, at the mercy of such savages, we would probably be,' he hesitated for effect, 'eaten.'

He was met by a sea of blank faces.

'The alternative,' he added, 'is for me to go off adventuring, you lot hold base down here while I ascertain who seems friendly and who cannibalistic, I return with the know-how, and then we all go off for the interesting bit, get your treasure and such-like, and cut down anyone in our paths. Savvy?' One man nodded slowly, so Jack seized on him. 'In my short term absence, if you would be so kind…' he struggled for the name, '…Shoelace, you can be in charge. Wearing the hat, so to speak. The metaphorical hat.'

'Bootstrap,' the man began, before another interrupted.

'Aye, but what should we do here?'

Jack, who was now squinting near his foot, wondering what exactly was wrong with his bootstrap, waved an airy hand. 'Poker?'

.X

Something had changed since Jack had sat opposite Anamaria in the Faithful Bride. For starters, his right hand was now heavily bandaged in the length of dust coloured material otherwise tied several times around his waist as he held it out in front of him, seeming disproportionate to his lean, brown arms in their rolled up shirt sleeves. And on top of this provisional cushion, balanced in the folds, was the black pearl. It was burning hot now; so much that when he had tried to hold it at first it had scorched Jack's well-worn skin, and now it lay proudly, gleaming like onyx in the hot sun.

The crew had remained at the ship after all, not daring to defy Jack's bewildering logic when it came to matters cannibalistic. Whether they were playing poker was another thing entirely, although the last thing he'd seen before he'd marched off had been Bootstrap trying to teach the rest of them a game involving far too many dice and no snakes or ladders whatsoever. This, Jack had decided, was probably not something he wanted to be involved in anyway.

His feet stopped.

A couple of seconds later the rest of his body caught up, and he realised the difference. The persistent, invisible pull that the pearl had been exerting since the moment Jack had found his feet back on deck following the sinking of his ship- had stopped.

There was a long, cold moment as Jack shrugged the makeshift bandage from his hand, letting it slither to the sand as he cupped the jewel in both fists as if it were one of Bootstrap's dices. As if his destiny rested in this one throw. The heat had gone, like it had never existed, and for one moment the pearl was just another ordinary thing in a world full of them. Something else that had promised adventure, that had seemed so real when he had convinced Anamaria that here was another fairy-tale to follow. The latest adventure of would-be-Captain Jack Sparrow. A jewel that could have bought him another world of stories.

Jack was not a pessimist, and in another moment the feeling was gone.

'Go on then,' he told the pearl in his hand softly. His breath rebounded off his skin and came back hot. 'Show me.'

His worn boots circled and crossed each other, leaving a figure of eight scuffed into the sand as Jack turned slowly, squinting into the uncomfortable mist. He looked almost like he was dancing without a partner, or practising his footwork for a fight, but for the fact he was alone on an uneasy beach.

But perhaps, perhaps he was not so alone.

There was a brief second in which his eyes alighted on a dark figure slumped on the shoreline before his sword was in his hand and he was darting in a sort of exaggerated tiptoe across the dusty sand. His unsheathed blade sliced through the haze before him –he held it at arms length when it seemed he was about to mutilate himself- and his other arm was held up in the air just in a nod to the unnecessary gesture. It was not exactly a stance designed for fighting, but then again there seemed relatively little threat; the figure was small, perhaps a seal or dog, and more pressingly, it looked slightly dead.

Jack stopped for the second time to take in exactly what he was seeing.

'What the…' he murmured, his voice low and rough.

He dropped to a crouch with his head tilted to one side, letting his sword slide to the ground by his feet with a muffled thud. A hand, heavy with rings and wrapped in a frayed black rag, hesitated in midair before he decided he might be wiser not to touch the figure and let it drop back to graze the sand. Instead he picked up his sword again and poked it carefully with the blunt end.

The figure swore at him.

Jack immediately felt less concerned.

'The question is, darling, what are you doing here?' he answered with a smirk, abandoning both sword and pearl together on the ground in order to get a better look. It was, it transpired, neither a seal nor a dog- rather, a young woman lying stretched out on her side. One arm was out-stretched as if reaching for something while the other crossed her chest where it was clenched in a fist over her heart, yet there was something a little wooden in her posture, as if she had fallen awkwardly. She wore a well patched black dress of a rough material –almost like canvas, almost like a sail- that was saturated and darkened with water from where she lay on the tide line. And yet, there was something achingly familiar about her – but how could there be, with her face half hidden by salt-starched curls of dark red hair? It was as if, Jack thought suddenly, she was someone he had seen out of the corner of his eye every day of his life but never really noticed.

This worried him, so he poked her in the ribs again.

'If you do that again,' she said through gritted teeth, still not opening her eyes, 'I will bind you to the mast and cut off every one of your toes one by one, and then I will feed them to the sharks while you watch, at which point I will carve out your still-beating heart and eat it before leaving your bloody carcass rotting on the shore where the gulls will pluck out your eyeballs. Do you understand?'

Jack considered this.

'It would be more effective, in my professional opinion,' he suggested, 'if you let the gulls pluck out my eyeballs before you ate my heart. Otherwise I'd miss the ending, which would be a bit of a tragedy since you put so much effort in, eh?'

The one eye he could see flashed open and revealed itself to be a bright, sea green. 'I thought that was quite good, for the spur of the moment.'

'Not bad,' he agreed, inclining his head. 'And it's a shame we can't make a day of it, but it seems I have inadvertently found the cannibalistic native I was warned so earnestly against, so if you'll excuse me-'

She sat up suddenly in a wooden, stiff movement, as if she wasn't quite expecting it herself. The side of her face that was against the ground was covered in a dust of pale sand, and grains clung to her thin, weather-marked arms, but it was those bright green eyes that caught his own. He saw, in fact, the exact moment that the panic filled them.

'Oh no,' she said.

It was not particularly unusual for young women to wake up next to Jack Sparrow with this particular reaction, but usually he had done something to warrant it. He was torn between feeling rather hurt, and being relieved at being back on familiar ground. However, since she hadn't slapped him yet, he decided to let it go by.

'Yes, I'm afraid so,' he agreed over his shoulder –he was back on his feet now and beating a jaunty retreat. 'Not to worry though, eh?'

'Jack Sparrow,' she said.

He stopped for a brief moment, his back still to her, before turning slightly. His air of casual amusement had faded slightly, ebbing into the bottomless darkness of his black rimmed eyes. The wind caught at the length of material round his waist, the corners of his coat, his heavy lengths of dark hair. He looked- he looked like a pirate. A man who could, and would, kill without a second thought.

'Now,' he said in a voice all the more dangerous for its offhand tone, 'that's not a name you're supposed to know, is it?'

She didn't reply, just sat stiffly on the sand staring at him.

'That makes me wonder,' he continued, his words velvety, 'what else you know about my being here, and what with me being a gentlemanly soul I'm sure you're going to take a moment to explain yourself now, so I'll just wait,' he took a step back towards her, 'one,' he took another step, 'minute.'

She jerked into life again, scrambling to her feet and throwing one arm out towards him as if hoping to stop him in his tracks. 'No,' she said breathlessly, 'I-'

There was no need to continue.

They stood opposite each other. Her face was upturned to match his height, burned and freckled by the sun and streaked with the spray of salt water. Her hair pushed back. Her arm outstretched. And he realised how he knew her.

'You're the figurehead,' he said, in what could almost pass for a reverent whisper. 'You're the Pearl.' Her arm dropped loosely to her side once again and he paused.

The truth was, he had hoped the black pearl would lead him back to his ship. Or else, something fairly valuable that would achieve the same general result. He hadn't counted on his ship being alive, or female, or no-longer-made-of-wood. Or looking at him with desperate, accusing green eyes as her chest heaved breathlessly in a rather, er, becoming way. And yet he knew it was her, just as he had run his hand over the wheel of the Sea's Deceit earlier and known it wasn't the same. Ships have spirit. His fingers rubbed the surface of the pearl unconsciously now.

'What's that?' she asked, noticing immediately.

Automatically dishonest, Jack feigned surprise and squinted at the jewel. 'This?' he repeated. 'This… this is a maritime snack,' he decided. 'Good for… scurvy.'

He popped it in his mouth to avoid suspicion, swallowed, and grinned charmingly at her. 'It has come to my attention,' he announced, his voice lighter, 'that you are a young lady marooned on a distant island all by your onesie, and might easily –and tragically- fall prey to marauding pirates and general wrong-doers if left by your vulnerable self, hmm?'

She looked suspicious. Probably he was the first marauding pirate and general wrong-doer she'd come across since she'd been there.

'I propose,' he continued quickly, to stop her dwelling on that too long, 'that you come aboard with my delightful group of… respectable, law-abiding adventure seekers, and join the crew, what say you? Temporarily,' he added when she seemed about to answer. 'A woman aboard, terrible bad luck, we'll probably sink. Again. All that.'

Another hesitation. 'How are you- how did you get here?' she asked, guardedly.

Jack looked more than a little affronted at the question. 'I borrowed a ship,' he informed her importantly. 'Contrary to popular belief, there is indeed more than one in the Caribbean. People were falling over themselves to lend them to me. Very popular man,' he added with a gesture to himself, by way of explanation.

'Where is it?'

He flourished a hand in its general direction. 'That-a-way.' A pause while they stared each other out again. 'After you.'

He waited till she'd trudged past him down the beach before allowing his lips to curve into a wickedly audacious smile. 'Oh, Tia,' he addressed the air softly, watching his ship walk off. Even from behind he could tell she didn't trust him. 'You'd better give me a good answer for this one, luv.'

He paused suddenly, as if he'd only just remembered something, and then coughed throatily, twice.

The pearl dropped into his open hand.

Jack smiled.