FicWad

AN: Ah! I finally got my first fic up and running. ^^ Go me. And that summary sucked.
Anyway, this idea was not entirely mine. At least, I don't think it was. o.O The idea of the setting came up while I was roleplaying with my awesomely awesome friend Paige, so... yeah. Thank you so much!

Disclaimer: If I owned /Pirates of the Caribbean/, I wouldn't be spending countless hours of my life writing about it. And if I owned Jack Sparrow... that would just be wonderful. 0.0 'Nough said.

Also, the ah... name... of this fanfiction... belongs to The Pink Spiders. ^^;;

Pretend That This is Fiction

Bare, callused feet brushed across a navy blue sand as he circled his makeshift hell for the hundredth time in a row. The Pearl sat, broken and disemboweled, to his right, along with a sea so black it made nights in a cell feel cozy. To his front was an incredibly familiar trail of prints while in his left loomed a cliff, blood red, that was no less than thirty meters high. In a dream, this would have been acceptable. In a dream/, this would have been /normal/. But when Jack Sparrow, former captain of the still-beautiful /Black Pearl/, awoke from /dreams about joyful romps in the Caribbean to find a permanently black crescent in front of a dark purple sky, he couldn't help but think that this was unusual. That this was discomforting. No... not even that.

This was frightening.

At home, he had been the most wanted pirate in the Caribbean. At home, he had been faced with every challenge known to man, and he had overcome nearly all of them with extreme ease.

But he had always had followers. Crewmembers. Even whores. There was always someone to go to bed with, always someone to shout orders to. There was always someone to call his underling. Here was different.

Here, when he went to sleep on the fragmented remains of the deck of his ship, he did it alone. When he awoke to the cloudless and starless day of night, when he stepped onto the sand and out of his cove, he did it alone. When he started walking around his little c-shaped island, /he did it alone/. There was no one to talk to him, no one to help.

There was no one at all.

This surreal life came with no audience, no playwright. It came with no coffee and doughnuts. This life was his home, his /reality/. When his cuts wouldn't heal, when the water would tint his skin black, that was his reality.

He was shirtless and sunless, and under his cuts, bruises, and brownish black skin, he was scared. He was scared for his life and scared for his sanity.

There was no one here, but in the sheer darkness of this hell, anything was possible. There was no way up that cliff, but he was sure he had heard things. Nothing could survive in that water, but he was sure he had seen things. The constant stillness - the constant silence - of everything had played tricks on his mind. Had pried at the shredded remains of his already shaky sanity like and unyielding crowbar. It had dug deeper and deeper into his brain until he heard voices. Until he saw monsters.

And even then it would not leave him alone.

There was no wind, no rain. Neither food nor water. He was always hungry and yet he never needed to eat. He was always thirsty, but his lack of drinking had not affected him in the least. He wasn't just hurting, but dying of pain from his non-healing injuries and every day he woke up. Every day he /lived/. This crowbar had thrown reality out the window and had substituted for it, a hell so surreal it could only be defined as a curse.

But it wasn't a curse. It couldn't be. Curses were designed to punish the unheeding, to teach the unlearning. In most senses, he had done neither, so why was this happening to him? He, in his tattered pants and braided hair, had done nothing, so why was he being treated like this?

Because Jones wanted him to suffer?

(Something tells me I'd 've joined his crew...)

Was this where the Kraken spat people out?

(Everyone else is where...?)

Was this hell?

(Not even Port Royal's this strange.)

Every solution was flawed, every answer contradicted. Nothing made sense.

These thoughts, this general confusion, had made a home in his head over the next few nights (it was almost impossible to call them days, after all). Not an obsessive home, like the one between fangirl and celebrity, but a more than active one. Like seeing someone you know and not remembering their name, it was a puzzle to him. An annoying, tiresome, and extremely painful puzzle. Every day of the never-ending night he would walk around his island and he would work on it.

And every day it made a little more sense.

Each day he would shuffle his very bruised, very bloodied feet to the blackened sea, the cliff, and then the sand, where he would record his notes on grain so blue it reminded him of the Royal Navy.

And each day it would become a little clearer.

A week into his research, he stopped to look at his findings. At the notes he had taken.

And he had solved it.

Heaving a sigh, he sat down for the first time in hours, unable to believe what he now believed to be true. The Immortal Captain Jack Sparrow, even in his head, his voice sounded melancholy, "has finally been claimed by the sea."

-~*~-

ANOTHER AN: I love reviews to death, even if they're hateful. --Hint-- So even if you despised the story, dignifying my exictence with a review would be greatly appreciated.