Title: "Have You Ever Considered Piracy?"
Author: monimala
Fandom: PotC
Rating/Classification: SAC, angst, futurefic, J/E/W, B/A.
Disclaimer: Nope! They belong to the Evil Empire, not to me.
Summary: Sixth in "...And a Bottle of Rum." Further along in the future... a visit to Governor Swann proves illuminating.
The former governor was old. Soft. Slightly addle-brained. He had long since given up the pretense of wearing powdered wigs and the white curls atop his head were his own. The maids kept his chair out on the balcony for most of the day...so he could stare out at the sea.
The new governor, Norrington, and his family were kind and generous to let the old man, Swann, stay in the mansion. The whole island spoke well of them... keeping their more hushed, pitying, whispers for the eventide.
The boy had heard them all, of course. All the rumors. The stories told over flagons of ale in the pubs. The fact that Governor Swann had begun to lose his mind shortly after his daughter and her new husband set sail on a pirate vessel. To this day, he mourned his lost child. Neither the sporadic letters nor the trinkets sent through messengers offered any comfort. He hadn't seen his Elizabeth in nigh on sixteen years. She was as good as dead.
He watched the old man nap for an hour, leaning against the railing and picking at his nails with the tip of his cutlass. Whenever one of the maids popped her head out, he stepped into the billowing curtains and they were none the wiser.
When Swann finally awoke, abruptly, blinking his eyes like an owl, it was late afternoon. The sun was low in the sky and he knew it surrounded him in a halo. Dramatic entrances were his forte.
"W-who are you?" the old man wheezed, struggling to sit up in his chair. Alarm suffusing his face with pinks and whites. "What...what do you want?"
His long hair was the darkest of browns. Eyes, too. His shirt had a jaunty billow about it and his breeches were properly tight, tucked into the mouths of his boots. He was, as his mum liked to say, every *other* inch a pirate. "Billy," he said, simply, staring down at his grandfather. "I'm Billy Sparrow. Elizabeth's boy."
"S-sparrow?!?" Swann sputtered, looking near on the verge of apoplexy. "M-my Elizabeth...Sparrow...?!?" He shook his head. "No! No, it's a lie! It's a lie! My Elizabeth would never...no! She married that blacksmith and left me!"
"No, Grandfather," he assured, pleasantly, sheathing his knife. "It's the truth. The blacksmith is quite well, actually. I call him 'Papa'," he added.
He had been Turner for the first ten years of his life. Until the resemblance became too obvious to ignore and he tugged on his mother's skirts and asked why he and Cap'n Jack had the same eyes. Papa had flinched. Jack had docked the ship and disappeared for a week. Upon his return, there had been no further questions. Just a tentative hand brushing over his head. Then, he was Billy Sparrow and that was that.
By twelve, he understood what it meant that he hadn't slept in the main cabin for years. That he had his own bunk down with the crew. And his parents ... the three of them... shared one bed.
By fourteen, he didn't much care...because Anamaria, the most beautiful woman he'd ever known, took him into her bunk and taught him what it was that was so alluring, so damning, about that bed. She taught him to love the molasses-dark taste of her skin and crave the soft curve of her hips against his own. Afterwards, Will and Mum shouted at her for hours. These were things a boy learned at port... from a seasoned whore! And Ana had looked at him with her dark, seductive eyes... the lines around them sad...and reminded them that it was best he learn at home. Because there was no telling what he would catch from a whore.
At fifteen, mere weeks ago, he'd caught Papa and Jack, usually so careful, banging against the masthead shortly after midnight as Mum watched from the windows of the cabin with something ...something heartbreaking in her eyes. "I...I want to go home, Billy," she'd whispered, wearily, when he went to her side and tugged her away from what she was all ready well-used to seeing...to sharing. "But I can't...can I? I've made my bed...and we all must lie in it."
He realized, then, that he had never heard her and Jack Sparrow say they loved each other. But that they must.
Not like her and Papa...who still touched tenderly and quoted horrible poetry to one another even after all these years. But different. Harder. Obvious to everyone but themselves. In the way she waited, when he returned from one of his adventures, with a bucket of water to dash on his rum-soaked head. In the way he looked to her when they were fired on, to make certain she was armed ...and yet living. And in the way her fingers twined in the gray-streaked strands of his hair when they embraced. It would always be there. Something they could count on. Like the tide. Like the blazing heat of a stoked fire.
"You're...you're an abomination!"
So, now, here he was. An abomination.
Looking at an old, lost, man and understanding exactly why his mother had fled to the high seas.
Even the half-love of pirates was better than a half-life.
White sails were up on the ship in the harbor. Unassuming, it looked like any other merchant vessel. But there were black sails bunched at the base of the mast. His Black Pearl waiting.
Ana would keep a candle burning for him.
The same way his mother did for Jack.
To guide the sparrows home.
--end--
July 14, 2003.