Categories > Movies > Pirates of the Caribbean > Legarou
DISCLAIMER: Disney keeps these characters in a vault. I just let them out for some fresh air. But I don't own them, no-siree.
PART 4:
/"Dreaming men are haunted men." -Stephen Vincent Benét/
/He was clean-shaven and properly dressed, looking at his reflection in a mirror framed with intricate gold filigree. The only things he recognized of himself were his two brown eyes. He hadn't seen his reflection in this fashion in so long that it was a slightly disconcerting sight to see. /
Apparently, he was adjusting the tie in his hair and smoothing out the wrinkles in his naval dress uniform. On his dresser, his powdered wig was resting on a wooden bust.
A memory...
It twisted-the door to his old room crashed open, and bright moonlight poured in. Two creatures came, snarling and cursing after him. One carried a sword and a pistol; the other held a saber. Skin was rotting off the first one, an eyeball sagged in its socket, and its hair was hanging in matted clumps atop its visible skull-beads and coins echoed as they clacked against the bone. Jack immediately knew what it was-/who it was. He'd often had nightmares about this creature-the one he'd become not too long ago. It was his cursed self. /
"It's not a bad look, really..."
Jack also recognized the second being that stood in the rubble of the front wall. Andre had been that beast a few nights ago. Yet, unlike Andre's form, this hellish hound bore a great tear in its forehead.
Jack cried out in fear and he felt blood run down his forehead. His own wound-and it mirrored the beast's. The skeletal pirate laughed at him and fired his pistol. The single shot ripped through his gut-fire blazed along his spine, and Jack could feel the bones shatter.
/ /It's a dream! Why does it hurt so much?!?
The Hell hound and the pirate both laughed at his agony, and all Jack could do was stare at what used to be his abdominal cavity...blood was on his hands, all over his hands. Was it just his blood? Or was it someone else's as well? So much blood.
The Hell hound...Legarou...whatever you wished to call it...leaned forward and sniffed curiously at the crown of Jack's head. He shook in fright, choked on his own blood and coughed.
"Fear yourself, Leftenant Sparrow?"
Jack coughed again and looked up to meet Legarou's eyes. They were too familiar.
"Fear Death, Leftenant Sparrow?" it asked.
Jack couldn't speak.
"Don't fear us," its lips peeled back to reveal too-long teeth in a macabre grin. Oddly, Jack recognized the gold caps as his own. "Fear them," it pointed to its left, and Jack followed the gesture with his eyes. In the window stood a gaggle of people. Norrington, Gibbs, Will, Lizzie, Anamaria, his long-dead father, Bootstrap, and Governor Swann-armed to the teeth with a mish-mash of weaponry. The governor was wielding a candelabra.
"You...shot me..." Jack sputtered.
"They're going to kill you, Leftenant."
Jack took a deep breath. "Out of the depths have I cried unto thee, O Lord; Lord, hear my voice: let thine ears be attentive... To my cry for mercy... De profundus...de profundus clamo ad te domine. Mercy!"
Legarou reared back to its full height and brandished its saber. "Mercy is to spare you of this pain."
The blade seared through his neck, and he never got a chance to scream.
/He choked when he jerked into the waking world. Grabbing at his throat /and kicking out at nothing, Jack let out his terror in the most blood-curdling scream. He took a few moments to calm himself, and all he could feel was the rhythmic and frantic pounding of his own heart. Jack had never been too prone to nightmares.
Thankfully, no one had been wakened by his fearful cry.
Jack stood on shaky legs and wiped sweat off of his face with the back of his hand. Methodically, he removed his hat and fanned himself with it once more. The rush of cool air met his forehead, and he was a bit surprised to feel it react with a wet patch. His cut...
Carefully, Jack prodded at it and came away with a bloody finger.
"Bleeding hell..." he muttered.
This wasn't good.
*
Elizabeth could not sleep for the life of her. She was exhausted, but the rest she so desperately needed would not come. Beside her, Will was sprawled with one arm wound across her middle and his face buried against the back of her neck. Every so often, his breath would tickle the skin there, and Elizabeth would shiver.
Pouting, she wondered why her husband should sleep while she did not. With the dig of a sharp elbow (a trait found in every female) in his abdomen, Will woke up.
"Ouch," he mumbled, rubbing at the stinging skin with his knuckles.
"I can't sleep," Elizabeth explained.
Will gave her a bleary eyed look and raised one brow. "So you decided to wake me just to tell me this?"
"No," Elizabeth corrected, "I decided to wake you so that I did not have to suffer alone."
Will sat up and propped a pillow behind his back. "Are you well?" he asked her. He discretely looked her over to see if anything had changed other than the slight swell of her middle.
Elizabeth nodded. "As well as one can be without as much as a wink of sleep. I'm worried."
"About Jack?"
"Not so much Jack as Mr. Gibbs. Estrella has told me he has taken quite ill."
"He was ill before, Elizabeth," Will reasoned.
"Yes, but now he refuses to wake," she added. Will's reasoning took a perfect swan dive out the window then. "I fear of what may happen if we do nothing."
Will responded by pulling her closer to his side and she looped her arms around his waist. He didn't say a word, for what could he say? Slowly, the rhythm of his breathing and the thrum of his heartbeat lulled Elizabeth into a deep sleep.
Listening to her soft snores Will took up her previous train of thought. He did not fall back to slumber-land.
*
Anamaria woke at dawn to rouse the crew, but something made her pause on the way to the bell. It wasn't unusual for her captain to be awake at such an early hour, but it was unusual to see him without his coat and vest on. The French man-Andre-was in the same state of undress-wearing only breeches and a military-issue shirt.
"Captain?" she queried, lifting one eyebrow to the sky. She approached Jack when he made no move to address her.
Normally, Sparrow would be staring out at the horizon with a slight smile, but now... He was struggling to take a breath, his eyes were pained, and the clothing he did wear was soaked through with sweat.
"Captain?" Anamaria tried again.
"Get the crew on deck, Anamaria. We'll reach Port Royal by this evening," as an afterthought, he turned to look at her. "Savvy?"
Reluctantly, she nodded. "Aye, Captain."
As soon as she left to ring the bell, a wave of unnatural heat drenched Jack's body even further, and he had to grip the deck railing to keep from tumbling over into the roiling black waters below.
To himself he wondered at his illness. It had been a little over a month since Petite Terre-a month of evading Commodore Norrington and trying to find Joshamee Gibbs to clear up the whole "thief" mess. He and Andre thought that the return of the saber would end the French man's curse, but at the moment Jack had to rethink that.
A month and almost a week had passed since Legarou bit him, and the wound still complained and oozed. The rum-soaked cloth seemed to help, but the streaking yellow and red lines of infection and general lack of full healing were not good signs.
Neither was that ship in the distance that suspiciously looked like the /H.M.S. Dauntless/.
"Weigh the anchor and drop sail!" he ordered and listened to his command repeat across the deck from pirate to pirate. To himself, Jack muttered, "And the barnacle on my keel returns."
*
"He's catchin' our wind, Captain!" Duncan reported from the crow's nest.
Jack yanked his hat on and pulled it down as far as it would go. "Had a feelin' that old 'n stodgy would catch up to me soon."
"Got a plan?" Anamaria asked.
Even though he felt as though Hell was calling for his very soul, Jack smirked. "Aye," he said. "Lower a lifeboat and raise sail!" he bellowed.
Anamaria repeated the orders and didn't question him.
Jack hadn't counted on the loud protestations of his own sore muscles as he rowed. He ignored it, regardless, and listened half-heartedly to the orders that Norrington bellowed. Once Jack was close enough, he was hauled on board the /Dauntless /and immediately set upon by several naval officers with bayonet-tipped rifles.
Commodore Norrington looked positively smug. "Finally giving yourself up, Mr. Sparrow?" he asked, purposefully disrespecting the pirate that stood defiantly before him.
Jack straightened himself further, and Norrington frowned a bit at the sickly pallor the scalawag had. "Commodore, how many times must I repeat myself? It's 'Captain.'"
Norrington ignored him.
"Right," Jack sighed and plucked at the collar of his shirt. "I'm here to turn meself in-but only on your word that you will cease your ruthless pursuit of my ship and crew."
Norrington gave him a skeptical look, and then truly noticed the man's current state. Jack was unarmed and swaying on his feet, but it wasn't the customary "drunken-like" sway that he usually had. It was clearly related to how hard he was trying to remain stationary with a fever raging through his system. Norrington could feel the heat radiating off of the man from his own stoic position three feet away.
"Do we have an accord?" Sparrow extended his hand, and Norrington took it in his own-albeit reluctantly.
"I believe we do, Captain Sparrow," he added with only a little amount of mockery coloring his tone.
Norrington released his hand as quickly as possible, not liking the sensation that crawled up his spine when he gripped the man's hand. As Lieutenant Gillette followed his orders and placed Jack Sparrow in irons, James Norrington watched with a critical eye. The last time he'd been on contact with Sparrow, the man had shown incredible balance-even when he toppled over the battlement. The move had been deliberate.
But now...
That was definitely not the stance of a healthy man.
"He's ill..." Norrington muttered aloud.
*
The bars in the brig were cool, and so Jack removed his hat and leaned his face against them with a sigh. He basked in the noises around him-however loud to his ears-and tried to calm his racing heart.
In the cell across from him, a man cleared his throat. "They catch you too?"
Jack tried to get a better look, but everything was drenched in shadows. "More or less," he answered. To his own ears, his voice sounded foreign and he didn't relish hearing it again when this other pirate (he assumed) fired another query in his direction.
"Hmph," the man said. He scooted a bit closer to the bars of his own cell and propped himself up against them. As soon as the filtered sunlight warmed his face, Jack recognized him.
"Bootstrap?"
The other pirate startled and seemed to give Jack the same once-over. "Jack?!"
"One 'n the same, Bill."
Bootstrap offered him a boyish smile that made him look an awful lot like his son, and Jack shivered in remembering his nightmare. "I thought you were dead."
"Funny how that works, innit? You thought I was dead, I thought you were dead..."
"How'd you escape?"
Jack considered another long, drawn out tale like so many that he'd heard before, but his mouth did the work for him. "Rum runners found me. I was only there for three days."
Bootstrap laughed, and the sound of it should have made Jack happy, but it created a different sensation. It grated on his ears and made his head throb and his response frightened both Bootstrap and himself.
A low growl reverberated through the brig.
"...Jack?"
Jack didn't answer. He was too busy shivering in fear and wondering what was happening to his body.
Review, please!
DISCLAIMER: Disney keeps these characters in a vault DISCLAIMER: Disney keeps these characters in a vault. I just let them out for some fresh air. But I don't own them, no-siree.
PART 4:
/"Dreaming men are haunted men." -Stephen Vincent Benét/
/He was clean-shaven and properly dressed, looking at his reflection in a mirror framed with intricate gold filigree. The only things he recognized of himself were his two brown eyes. He hadn't seen his reflection in this fashion in so long that it was a slightly disconcerting sight to see. /
Apparently, he was adjusting the tie in his hair and smoothing out the wrinkles in his naval dress uniform. On his dresser, his powdered wig was resting on a wooden bust.
A memory...
It twisted-the door to his old room crashed open, and bright moonlight poured in. Two creatures came, snarling and cursing after him. One carried a sword and a pistol; the other held a saber. Skin was rotting off the first one, an eyeball sagged in its socket, and its hair was hanging in matted clumps atop its visible skull-beads and coins echoed as they clacked against the bone. Jack immediately knew what it was-/who it was. He'd often had nightmares about this creature-the one he'd become not too long ago. It was his cursed self. /
"It's not a bad look, really..."
Jack also recognized the second being that stood in the rubble of the front wall. Andre had been that beast a few nights ago. Yet, unlike Andre's form, this hellish hound bore a great tear in its forehead.
Jack cried out in fear and he felt blood run down his forehead. His own wound-and it mirrored the beast's. The skeletal pirate laughed at him and fired his pistol. The single shot ripped through his gut-fire blazed along his spine, and Jack could feel the bones shatter.
/ /It's a dream! Why does it hurt so much?!?
The Hell hound and the pirate both laughed at his agony, and all Jack could do was stare at what used to be his abdominal cavity...blood was on his hands, all over his hands. Was it just his blood? Or was it someone else's as well? So much blood.
The Hell hound...Legarou...whatever you wished to call it...leaned forward and sniffed curiously at the crown of Jack's head. He shook in fright, choked on his own blood and coughed.
"Fear yourself, Leftenant Sparrow?"
Jack coughed again and looked up to meet Legarou's eyes. They were too familiar.
"Fear Death, Leftenant Sparrow?" it asked.
Jack couldn't speak.
"Don't fear us," its lips peeled back to reveal too-long teeth in a macabre grin. Oddly, Jack recognized the gold caps as his own. "Fear them," it pointed to its left, and Jack followed the gesture with his eyes. In the window stood a gaggle of people. Norrington, Gibbs, Will, Lizzie, Anamaria, his long-dead father, Bootstrap, and Governor Swann-armed to the teeth with a mish-mash of weaponry. The governor was wielding a candelabra.
"You...shot me..." Jack sputtered.
"They're going to kill you, Leftenant."
Jack took a deep breath. "Out of the depths have I cried unto thee, O Lord; Lord, hear my voice: let thine ears be attentive... To my cry for mercy... De profundus...de profundus clamo ad te domine. Mercy!"
Legarou reared back to its full height and brandished its saber. "Mercy is to spare you of this pain."
The blade seared through his neck, and he never got a chance to scream.
/He choked when he jerked into the waking world. Grabbing at his throat /and kicking out at nothing, Jack let out his terror in the most blood-curdling scream. He took a few moments to calm himself, and all he could feel was the rhythmic and frantic pounding of his own heart. Jack had never been too prone to nightmares.
Thankfully, no one had been wakened by his fearful cry.
Jack stood on shaky legs and wiped sweat off of his face with the back of his hand. Methodically, he removed his hat and fanned himself with it once more. The rush of cool air met his forehead, and he was a bit surprised to feel it react with a wet patch. His cut...
Carefully, Jack prodded at it and came away with a bloody finger.
"Bleeding hell..." he muttered.
This wasn't good.
*
Elizabeth could not sleep for the life of her. She was exhausted, but the rest she so desperately needed would not come. Beside her, Will was sprawled with one arm wound across her middle and his face buried against the back of her neck. Every so often, his breath would tickle the skin there, and Elizabeth would shiver.
Pouting, she wondered why her husband should sleep while she did not. With the dig of a sharp elbow (a trait found in every female) in his abdomen, Will woke up.
"Ouch," he mumbled, rubbing at the stinging skin with his knuckles.
"I can't sleep," Elizabeth explained.
Will gave her a bleary eyed look and raised one brow. "So you decided to wake me just to tell me this?"
"No," Elizabeth corrected, "I decided to wake you so that I did not have to suffer alone."
Will sat up and propped a pillow behind his back. "Are you well?" he asked her. He discretely looked her over to see if anything had changed other than the slight swell of her middle.
Elizabeth nodded. "As well as one can be without as much as a wink of sleep. I'm worried."
"About Jack?"
"Not so much Jack as Mr. Gibbs. Estrella has told me he has taken quite ill."
"He was ill before, Elizabeth," Will reasoned.
"Yes, but now he refuses to wake," she added. Will's reasoning took a perfect swan dive out the window then. "I fear of what may happen if we do nothing."
Will responded by pulling her closer to his side and she looped her arms around his waist. He didn't say a word, for what could he say? Slowly, the rhythm of his breathing and the thrum of his heartbeat lulled Elizabeth into a deep sleep.
Listening to her soft snores Will took up her previous train of thought. He did not fall back to slumber-land.
*
Anamaria woke at dawn to rouse the crew, but something made her pause on the way to the bell. It wasn't unusual for her captain to be awake at such an early hour, but it was unusual to see him without his coat and vest on. The French man-Andre-was in the same state of undress-wearing only breeches and a military-issue shirt.
"Captain?" she queried, lifting one eyebrow to the sky. She approached Jack when he made no move to address her.
Normally, Sparrow would be staring out at the horizon with a slight smile, but now... He was struggling to take a breath, his eyes were pained, and the clothing he did wear was soaked through with sweat.
"Captain?" Anamaria tried again.
"Get the crew on deck, Anamaria. We'll reach Port Royal by this evening," as an afterthought, he turned to look at her. "Savvy?"
Reluctantly, she nodded. "Aye, Captain."
As soon as she left to ring the bell, a wave of unnatural heat drenched Jack's body even further, and he had to grip the deck railing to keep from tumbling over into the roiling black waters below.
To himself he wondered at his illness. It had been a little over a month since Petite Terre-a month of evading Commodore Norrington and trying to find Joshamee Gibbs to clear up the whole "thief" mess. He and Andre thought that the return of the saber would end the French man's curse, but at the moment Jack had to rethink that.
A month and almost a week had passed since Legarou bit him, and the wound still complained and oozed. The rum-soaked cloth seemed to help, but the streaking yellow and red lines of infection and general lack of full healing were not good signs.
Neither was that ship in the distance that suspiciously looked like the /H.M.S. Dauntless/.
"Weigh the anchor and drop sail!" he ordered and listened to his command repeat across the deck from pirate to pirate. To himself, Jack muttered, "And the barnacle on my keel returns."
*
"He's catchin' our wind, Captain!" Duncan reported from the crow's nest.
Jack yanked his hat on and pulled it down as far as it would go. "Had a feelin' that old 'n stodgy would catch up to me soon."
"Got a plan?" Anamaria asked.
Even though he felt as though Hell was calling for his very soul, Jack smirked. "Aye," he said. "Lower a lifeboat and raise sail!" he bellowed.
Anamaria repeated the orders and didn't question him.
Jack hadn't counted on the loud protestations of his own sore muscles as he rowed. He ignored it, regardless, and listened half-heartedly to the orders that Norrington bellowed. Once Jack was close enough, he was hauled on board the /Dauntless /and immediately set upon by several naval officers with bayonet-tipped rifles.
Commodore Norrington looked positively smug. "Finally giving yourself up, Mr. Sparrow?" he asked, purposefully disrespecting the pirate that stood defiantly before him.
Jack straightened himself further, and Norrington frowned a bit at the sickly pallor the scalawag had. "Commodore, how many times must I repeat myself? It's 'Captain.'"
Norrington ignored him.
"Right," Jack sighed and plucked at the collar of his shirt. "I'm here to turn meself in-but only on your word that you will cease your ruthless pursuit of my ship and crew."
Norrington gave him a skeptical look, and then truly noticed the man's current state. Jack was unarmed and swaying on his feet, but it wasn't the customary "drunken-like" sway that he usually had. It was clearly related to how hard he was trying to remain stationary with a fever raging through his system. Norrington could feel the heat radiating off of the man from his own stoic position three feet away.
"Do we have an accord?" Sparrow extended his hand, and Norrington took it in his own-albeit reluctantly.
"I believe we do, Captain Sparrow," he added with only a little amount of mockery coloring his tone.
Norrington released his hand as quickly as possible, not liking the sensation that crawled up his spine when he gripped the man's hand. As Lieutenant Gillette followed his orders and placed Jack Sparrow in irons, James Norrington watched with a critical eye. The last time he'd been on contact with Sparrow, the man had shown incredible balance-even when he toppled over the battlement. The move had been deliberate.
But now...
That was definitely not the stance of a healthy man.
"He's ill..." Norrington muttered aloud.
*
The bars in the brig were cool, and so Jack removed his hat and leaned his face against them with a sigh. He basked in the noises around him-however loud to his ears-and tried to calm his racing heart.
In the cell across from him, a man cleared his throat. "They catch you too?"
Jack tried to get a better look, but everything was drenched in shadows. "More or less," he answered. To his own ears, his voice sounded foreign and he didn't relish hearing it again when this other pirate (he assumed) fired another query in his direction.
"Hmph," the man said. He scooted a bit closer to the bars of his own cell and propped himself up against them. As soon as the filtered sunlight warmed his face, Jack recognized him.
"Bootstrap?"
The other pirate startled and seemed to give Jack the same once-over. "Jack?!"
"One 'n the same, Bill."
Bootstrap offered him a boyish smile that made him look an awful lot like his son, and Jack shivered in remembering his nightmare. "I thought you were dead."
"Funny how that works, innit? You thought I was dead, I thought you were dead..."
"How'd you escape?"
Jack considered another long, drawn out tale like so many that he'd heard before, but his mouth did the work for him. "Rum runners found me. I was only there for three days."
Bootstrap laughed, and the sound of it should have made Jack happy, but it created a different sensation. It grated on his ears and made his head throb and his response frightened both Bootstrap and himself.
A low growl reverberated through the brig.
"...Jack?"
Jack didn't answer. He was too busy shivering in fear and wondering what was happening to his body.
Review, please!
PART 4:
/"Dreaming men are haunted men." -Stephen Vincent Benét/
/He was clean-shaven and properly dressed, looking at his reflection in a mirror framed with intricate gold filigree. The only things he recognized of himself were his two brown eyes. He hadn't seen his reflection in this fashion in so long that it was a slightly disconcerting sight to see. /
Apparently, he was adjusting the tie in his hair and smoothing out the wrinkles in his naval dress uniform. On his dresser, his powdered wig was resting on a wooden bust.
A memory...
It twisted-the door to his old room crashed open, and bright moonlight poured in. Two creatures came, snarling and cursing after him. One carried a sword and a pistol; the other held a saber. Skin was rotting off the first one, an eyeball sagged in its socket, and its hair was hanging in matted clumps atop its visible skull-beads and coins echoed as they clacked against the bone. Jack immediately knew what it was-/who it was. He'd often had nightmares about this creature-the one he'd become not too long ago. It was his cursed self. /
"It's not a bad look, really..."
Jack also recognized the second being that stood in the rubble of the front wall. Andre had been that beast a few nights ago. Yet, unlike Andre's form, this hellish hound bore a great tear in its forehead.
Jack cried out in fear and he felt blood run down his forehead. His own wound-and it mirrored the beast's. The skeletal pirate laughed at him and fired his pistol. The single shot ripped through his gut-fire blazed along his spine, and Jack could feel the bones shatter.
/ /It's a dream! Why does it hurt so much?!?
The Hell hound and the pirate both laughed at his agony, and all Jack could do was stare at what used to be his abdominal cavity...blood was on his hands, all over his hands. Was it just his blood? Or was it someone else's as well? So much blood.
The Hell hound...Legarou...whatever you wished to call it...leaned forward and sniffed curiously at the crown of Jack's head. He shook in fright, choked on his own blood and coughed.
"Fear yourself, Leftenant Sparrow?"
Jack coughed again and looked up to meet Legarou's eyes. They were too familiar.
"Fear Death, Leftenant Sparrow?" it asked.
Jack couldn't speak.
"Don't fear us," its lips peeled back to reveal too-long teeth in a macabre grin. Oddly, Jack recognized the gold caps as his own. "Fear them," it pointed to its left, and Jack followed the gesture with his eyes. In the window stood a gaggle of people. Norrington, Gibbs, Will, Lizzie, Anamaria, his long-dead father, Bootstrap, and Governor Swann-armed to the teeth with a mish-mash of weaponry. The governor was wielding a candelabra.
"You...shot me..." Jack sputtered.
"They're going to kill you, Leftenant."
Jack took a deep breath. "Out of the depths have I cried unto thee, O Lord; Lord, hear my voice: let thine ears be attentive... To my cry for mercy... De profundus...de profundus clamo ad te domine. Mercy!"
Legarou reared back to its full height and brandished its saber. "Mercy is to spare you of this pain."
The blade seared through his neck, and he never got a chance to scream.
/He choked when he jerked into the waking world. Grabbing at his throat /and kicking out at nothing, Jack let out his terror in the most blood-curdling scream. He took a few moments to calm himself, and all he could feel was the rhythmic and frantic pounding of his own heart. Jack had never been too prone to nightmares.
Thankfully, no one had been wakened by his fearful cry.
Jack stood on shaky legs and wiped sweat off of his face with the back of his hand. Methodically, he removed his hat and fanned himself with it once more. The rush of cool air met his forehead, and he was a bit surprised to feel it react with a wet patch. His cut...
Carefully, Jack prodded at it and came away with a bloody finger.
"Bleeding hell..." he muttered.
This wasn't good.
*
Elizabeth could not sleep for the life of her. She was exhausted, but the rest she so desperately needed would not come. Beside her, Will was sprawled with one arm wound across her middle and his face buried against the back of her neck. Every so often, his breath would tickle the skin there, and Elizabeth would shiver.
Pouting, she wondered why her husband should sleep while she did not. With the dig of a sharp elbow (a trait found in every female) in his abdomen, Will woke up.
"Ouch," he mumbled, rubbing at the stinging skin with his knuckles.
"I can't sleep," Elizabeth explained.
Will gave her a bleary eyed look and raised one brow. "So you decided to wake me just to tell me this?"
"No," Elizabeth corrected, "I decided to wake you so that I did not have to suffer alone."
Will sat up and propped a pillow behind his back. "Are you well?" he asked her. He discretely looked her over to see if anything had changed other than the slight swell of her middle.
Elizabeth nodded. "As well as one can be without as much as a wink of sleep. I'm worried."
"About Jack?"
"Not so much Jack as Mr. Gibbs. Estrella has told me he has taken quite ill."
"He was ill before, Elizabeth," Will reasoned.
"Yes, but now he refuses to wake," she added. Will's reasoning took a perfect swan dive out the window then. "I fear of what may happen if we do nothing."
Will responded by pulling her closer to his side and she looped her arms around his waist. He didn't say a word, for what could he say? Slowly, the rhythm of his breathing and the thrum of his heartbeat lulled Elizabeth into a deep sleep.
Listening to her soft snores Will took up her previous train of thought. He did not fall back to slumber-land.
*
Anamaria woke at dawn to rouse the crew, but something made her pause on the way to the bell. It wasn't unusual for her captain to be awake at such an early hour, but it was unusual to see him without his coat and vest on. The French man-Andre-was in the same state of undress-wearing only breeches and a military-issue shirt.
"Captain?" she queried, lifting one eyebrow to the sky. She approached Jack when he made no move to address her.
Normally, Sparrow would be staring out at the horizon with a slight smile, but now... He was struggling to take a breath, his eyes were pained, and the clothing he did wear was soaked through with sweat.
"Captain?" Anamaria tried again.
"Get the crew on deck, Anamaria. We'll reach Port Royal by this evening," as an afterthought, he turned to look at her. "Savvy?"
Reluctantly, she nodded. "Aye, Captain."
As soon as she left to ring the bell, a wave of unnatural heat drenched Jack's body even further, and he had to grip the deck railing to keep from tumbling over into the roiling black waters below.
To himself he wondered at his illness. It had been a little over a month since Petite Terre-a month of evading Commodore Norrington and trying to find Joshamee Gibbs to clear up the whole "thief" mess. He and Andre thought that the return of the saber would end the French man's curse, but at the moment Jack had to rethink that.
A month and almost a week had passed since Legarou bit him, and the wound still complained and oozed. The rum-soaked cloth seemed to help, but the streaking yellow and red lines of infection and general lack of full healing were not good signs.
Neither was that ship in the distance that suspiciously looked like the /H.M.S. Dauntless/.
"Weigh the anchor and drop sail!" he ordered and listened to his command repeat across the deck from pirate to pirate. To himself, Jack muttered, "And the barnacle on my keel returns."
*
"He's catchin' our wind, Captain!" Duncan reported from the crow's nest.
Jack yanked his hat on and pulled it down as far as it would go. "Had a feelin' that old 'n stodgy would catch up to me soon."
"Got a plan?" Anamaria asked.
Even though he felt as though Hell was calling for his very soul, Jack smirked. "Aye," he said. "Lower a lifeboat and raise sail!" he bellowed.
Anamaria repeated the orders and didn't question him.
Jack hadn't counted on the loud protestations of his own sore muscles as he rowed. He ignored it, regardless, and listened half-heartedly to the orders that Norrington bellowed. Once Jack was close enough, he was hauled on board the /Dauntless /and immediately set upon by several naval officers with bayonet-tipped rifles.
Commodore Norrington looked positively smug. "Finally giving yourself up, Mr. Sparrow?" he asked, purposefully disrespecting the pirate that stood defiantly before him.
Jack straightened himself further, and Norrington frowned a bit at the sickly pallor the scalawag had. "Commodore, how many times must I repeat myself? It's 'Captain.'"
Norrington ignored him.
"Right," Jack sighed and plucked at the collar of his shirt. "I'm here to turn meself in-but only on your word that you will cease your ruthless pursuit of my ship and crew."
Norrington gave him a skeptical look, and then truly noticed the man's current state. Jack was unarmed and swaying on his feet, but it wasn't the customary "drunken-like" sway that he usually had. It was clearly related to how hard he was trying to remain stationary with a fever raging through his system. Norrington could feel the heat radiating off of the man from his own stoic position three feet away.
"Do we have an accord?" Sparrow extended his hand, and Norrington took it in his own-albeit reluctantly.
"I believe we do, Captain Sparrow," he added with only a little amount of mockery coloring his tone.
Norrington released his hand as quickly as possible, not liking the sensation that crawled up his spine when he gripped the man's hand. As Lieutenant Gillette followed his orders and placed Jack Sparrow in irons, James Norrington watched with a critical eye. The last time he'd been on contact with Sparrow, the man had shown incredible balance-even when he toppled over the battlement. The move had been deliberate.
But now...
That was definitely not the stance of a healthy man.
"He's ill..." Norrington muttered aloud.
*
The bars in the brig were cool, and so Jack removed his hat and leaned his face against them with a sigh. He basked in the noises around him-however loud to his ears-and tried to calm his racing heart.
In the cell across from him, a man cleared his throat. "They catch you too?"
Jack tried to get a better look, but everything was drenched in shadows. "More or less," he answered. To his own ears, his voice sounded foreign and he didn't relish hearing it again when this other pirate (he assumed) fired another query in his direction.
"Hmph," the man said. He scooted a bit closer to the bars of his own cell and propped himself up against them. As soon as the filtered sunlight warmed his face, Jack recognized him.
"Bootstrap?"
The other pirate startled and seemed to give Jack the same once-over. "Jack?!"
"One 'n the same, Bill."
Bootstrap offered him a boyish smile that made him look an awful lot like his son, and Jack shivered in remembering his nightmare. "I thought you were dead."
"Funny how that works, innit? You thought I was dead, I thought you were dead..."
"How'd you escape?"
Jack considered another long, drawn out tale like so many that he'd heard before, but his mouth did the work for him. "Rum runners found me. I was only there for three days."
Bootstrap laughed, and the sound of it should have made Jack happy, but it created a different sensation. It grated on his ears and made his head throb and his response frightened both Bootstrap and himself.
A low growl reverberated through the brig.
"...Jack?"
Jack didn't answer. He was too busy shivering in fear and wondering what was happening to his body.
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DISCLAIMER: Disney keeps these characters in a vault DISCLAIMER: Disney keeps these characters in a vault. I just let them out for some fresh air. But I don't own them, no-siree.
PART 4:
/"Dreaming men are haunted men." -Stephen Vincent Benét/
/He was clean-shaven and properly dressed, looking at his reflection in a mirror framed with intricate gold filigree. The only things he recognized of himself were his two brown eyes. He hadn't seen his reflection in this fashion in so long that it was a slightly disconcerting sight to see. /
Apparently, he was adjusting the tie in his hair and smoothing out the wrinkles in his naval dress uniform. On his dresser, his powdered wig was resting on a wooden bust.
A memory...
It twisted-the door to his old room crashed open, and bright moonlight poured in. Two creatures came, snarling and cursing after him. One carried a sword and a pistol; the other held a saber. Skin was rotting off the first one, an eyeball sagged in its socket, and its hair was hanging in matted clumps atop its visible skull-beads and coins echoed as they clacked against the bone. Jack immediately knew what it was-/who it was. He'd often had nightmares about this creature-the one he'd become not too long ago. It was his cursed self. /
"It's not a bad look, really..."
Jack also recognized the second being that stood in the rubble of the front wall. Andre had been that beast a few nights ago. Yet, unlike Andre's form, this hellish hound bore a great tear in its forehead.
Jack cried out in fear and he felt blood run down his forehead. His own wound-and it mirrored the beast's. The skeletal pirate laughed at him and fired his pistol. The single shot ripped through his gut-fire blazed along his spine, and Jack could feel the bones shatter.
/ /It's a dream! Why does it hurt so much?!?
The Hell hound and the pirate both laughed at his agony, and all Jack could do was stare at what used to be his abdominal cavity...blood was on his hands, all over his hands. Was it just his blood? Or was it someone else's as well? So much blood.
The Hell hound...Legarou...whatever you wished to call it...leaned forward and sniffed curiously at the crown of Jack's head. He shook in fright, choked on his own blood and coughed.
"Fear yourself, Leftenant Sparrow?"
Jack coughed again and looked up to meet Legarou's eyes. They were too familiar.
"Fear Death, Leftenant Sparrow?" it asked.
Jack couldn't speak.
"Don't fear us," its lips peeled back to reveal too-long teeth in a macabre grin. Oddly, Jack recognized the gold caps as his own. "Fear them," it pointed to its left, and Jack followed the gesture with his eyes. In the window stood a gaggle of people. Norrington, Gibbs, Will, Lizzie, Anamaria, his long-dead father, Bootstrap, and Governor Swann-armed to the teeth with a mish-mash of weaponry. The governor was wielding a candelabra.
"You...shot me..." Jack sputtered.
"They're going to kill you, Leftenant."
Jack took a deep breath. "Out of the depths have I cried unto thee, O Lord; Lord, hear my voice: let thine ears be attentive... To my cry for mercy... De profundus...de profundus clamo ad te domine. Mercy!"
Legarou reared back to its full height and brandished its saber. "Mercy is to spare you of this pain."
The blade seared through his neck, and he never got a chance to scream.
/He choked when he jerked into the waking world. Grabbing at his throat /and kicking out at nothing, Jack let out his terror in the most blood-curdling scream. He took a few moments to calm himself, and all he could feel was the rhythmic and frantic pounding of his own heart. Jack had never been too prone to nightmares.
Thankfully, no one had been wakened by his fearful cry.
Jack stood on shaky legs and wiped sweat off of his face with the back of his hand. Methodically, he removed his hat and fanned himself with it once more. The rush of cool air met his forehead, and he was a bit surprised to feel it react with a wet patch. His cut...
Carefully, Jack prodded at it and came away with a bloody finger.
"Bleeding hell..." he muttered.
This wasn't good.
*
Elizabeth could not sleep for the life of her. She was exhausted, but the rest she so desperately needed would not come. Beside her, Will was sprawled with one arm wound across her middle and his face buried against the back of her neck. Every so often, his breath would tickle the skin there, and Elizabeth would shiver.
Pouting, she wondered why her husband should sleep while she did not. With the dig of a sharp elbow (a trait found in every female) in his abdomen, Will woke up.
"Ouch," he mumbled, rubbing at the stinging skin with his knuckles.
"I can't sleep," Elizabeth explained.
Will gave her a bleary eyed look and raised one brow. "So you decided to wake me just to tell me this?"
"No," Elizabeth corrected, "I decided to wake you so that I did not have to suffer alone."
Will sat up and propped a pillow behind his back. "Are you well?" he asked her. He discretely looked her over to see if anything had changed other than the slight swell of her middle.
Elizabeth nodded. "As well as one can be without as much as a wink of sleep. I'm worried."
"About Jack?"
"Not so much Jack as Mr. Gibbs. Estrella has told me he has taken quite ill."
"He was ill before, Elizabeth," Will reasoned.
"Yes, but now he refuses to wake," she added. Will's reasoning took a perfect swan dive out the window then. "I fear of what may happen if we do nothing."
Will responded by pulling her closer to his side and she looped her arms around his waist. He didn't say a word, for what could he say? Slowly, the rhythm of his breathing and the thrum of his heartbeat lulled Elizabeth into a deep sleep.
Listening to her soft snores Will took up her previous train of thought. He did not fall back to slumber-land.
*
Anamaria woke at dawn to rouse the crew, but something made her pause on the way to the bell. It wasn't unusual for her captain to be awake at such an early hour, but it was unusual to see him without his coat and vest on. The French man-Andre-was in the same state of undress-wearing only breeches and a military-issue shirt.
"Captain?" she queried, lifting one eyebrow to the sky. She approached Jack when he made no move to address her.
Normally, Sparrow would be staring out at the horizon with a slight smile, but now... He was struggling to take a breath, his eyes were pained, and the clothing he did wear was soaked through with sweat.
"Captain?" Anamaria tried again.
"Get the crew on deck, Anamaria. We'll reach Port Royal by this evening," as an afterthought, he turned to look at her. "Savvy?"
Reluctantly, she nodded. "Aye, Captain."
As soon as she left to ring the bell, a wave of unnatural heat drenched Jack's body even further, and he had to grip the deck railing to keep from tumbling over into the roiling black waters below.
To himself he wondered at his illness. It had been a little over a month since Petite Terre-a month of evading Commodore Norrington and trying to find Joshamee Gibbs to clear up the whole "thief" mess. He and Andre thought that the return of the saber would end the French man's curse, but at the moment Jack had to rethink that.
A month and almost a week had passed since Legarou bit him, and the wound still complained and oozed. The rum-soaked cloth seemed to help, but the streaking yellow and red lines of infection and general lack of full healing were not good signs.
Neither was that ship in the distance that suspiciously looked like the /H.M.S. Dauntless/.
"Weigh the anchor and drop sail!" he ordered and listened to his command repeat across the deck from pirate to pirate. To himself, Jack muttered, "And the barnacle on my keel returns."
*
"He's catchin' our wind, Captain!" Duncan reported from the crow's nest.
Jack yanked his hat on and pulled it down as far as it would go. "Had a feelin' that old 'n stodgy would catch up to me soon."
"Got a plan?" Anamaria asked.
Even though he felt as though Hell was calling for his very soul, Jack smirked. "Aye," he said. "Lower a lifeboat and raise sail!" he bellowed.
Anamaria repeated the orders and didn't question him.
Jack hadn't counted on the loud protestations of his own sore muscles as he rowed. He ignored it, regardless, and listened half-heartedly to the orders that Norrington bellowed. Once Jack was close enough, he was hauled on board the /Dauntless /and immediately set upon by several naval officers with bayonet-tipped rifles.
Commodore Norrington looked positively smug. "Finally giving yourself up, Mr. Sparrow?" he asked, purposefully disrespecting the pirate that stood defiantly before him.
Jack straightened himself further, and Norrington frowned a bit at the sickly pallor the scalawag had. "Commodore, how many times must I repeat myself? It's 'Captain.'"
Norrington ignored him.
"Right," Jack sighed and plucked at the collar of his shirt. "I'm here to turn meself in-but only on your word that you will cease your ruthless pursuit of my ship and crew."
Norrington gave him a skeptical look, and then truly noticed the man's current state. Jack was unarmed and swaying on his feet, but it wasn't the customary "drunken-like" sway that he usually had. It was clearly related to how hard he was trying to remain stationary with a fever raging through his system. Norrington could feel the heat radiating off of the man from his own stoic position three feet away.
"Do we have an accord?" Sparrow extended his hand, and Norrington took it in his own-albeit reluctantly.
"I believe we do, Captain Sparrow," he added with only a little amount of mockery coloring his tone.
Norrington released his hand as quickly as possible, not liking the sensation that crawled up his spine when he gripped the man's hand. As Lieutenant Gillette followed his orders and placed Jack Sparrow in irons, James Norrington watched with a critical eye. The last time he'd been on contact with Sparrow, the man had shown incredible balance-even when he toppled over the battlement. The move had been deliberate.
But now...
That was definitely not the stance of a healthy man.
"He's ill..." Norrington muttered aloud.
*
The bars in the brig were cool, and so Jack removed his hat and leaned his face against them with a sigh. He basked in the noises around him-however loud to his ears-and tried to calm his racing heart.
In the cell across from him, a man cleared his throat. "They catch you too?"
Jack tried to get a better look, but everything was drenched in shadows. "More or less," he answered. To his own ears, his voice sounded foreign and he didn't relish hearing it again when this other pirate (he assumed) fired another query in his direction.
"Hmph," the man said. He scooted a bit closer to the bars of his own cell and propped himself up against them. As soon as the filtered sunlight warmed his face, Jack recognized him.
"Bootstrap?"
The other pirate startled and seemed to give Jack the same once-over. "Jack?!"
"One 'n the same, Bill."
Bootstrap offered him a boyish smile that made him look an awful lot like his son, and Jack shivered in remembering his nightmare. "I thought you were dead."
"Funny how that works, innit? You thought I was dead, I thought you were dead..."
"How'd you escape?"
Jack considered another long, drawn out tale like so many that he'd heard before, but his mouth did the work for him. "Rum runners found me. I was only there for three days."
Bootstrap laughed, and the sound of it should have made Jack happy, but it created a different sensation. It grated on his ears and made his head throb and his response frightened both Bootstrap and himself.
A low growl reverberated through the brig.
"...Jack?"
Jack didn't answer. He was too busy shivering in fear and wondering what was happening to his body.
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