Disclaimer: I don't own anything Pirates, unless it's a character I created. But everything else belongs to Disney.
Update as of 1/2/08 (Please read!): At this point, I know very well where this is going. This is a note mostly to those of you who randomly click on this story (which I thank you profusely for doing!): Don't worry, there is a plot, this is going somewhere.
Give Captive a chance, and I'm sure that you'll find that this isn't the usual sappy romance with self-insert Mary Sues. I'm trying very hard to make Helen, the OC in this, be as complex as possible. I like conflict too much to bore you with happy endings!
Please read and review! (:
Author's Note: This is my first fanfic, so cut me a little slack. I have no idea where this is going yet; I just got the idea one day and decided to try it out. We'll see where it goes.
If you like my writing at all, please leave a review!
Chapter One
The capture went smoothly, as captures are wont to go when the Jolly Roger makes itself known.
Jack Sparrow stood on the deck of the merchant ship, staring contentedly up at the black flag snapping in the wind. Second to the sea, the Jolly Roger, unscathed and triumphantly raised, was his favorite sight in the world. It meant that the Black Pearl was riding lower and ever lower in the water, and that he had more and more money to spend on rum and whores back in port. He missed his rum most of all.
"Captain?"
Jack forced himself to stop examining his ship and turned to face his First Mate.
"The crew is secure, all in irons. We searched them; they were well-armed, apparently. Ready for a fight." Gibbs motioned at a haphazard pile of swords, cutlasses, pistols, rifles, and all manner of weapons.
"Apparently," Jack repeated, a note of amusement in his voice. He was sure that, had the merchant ship had enough time to prepare, they would have put up a good fight indeed. But as it were, the Pearl encountered them purely by surprise. "And the loot?"
"Most of our men are below. From what I've seen, it seems they were carrying spices and fabric and the like."
Jack nodded and clapped Gibbs on the shoulder. "Good job, then." He passed the line of pitiful sailors. Most kept their heads low, staring at the warped wood of the deck; others stared at him with varying degrees of hatred and awe. All of them looked as if they expected to die.
He had to step over a few fallen bodies on his way to the stairs belowdecks. With every step, his shoes left a perfect, rusty red print in his wake. He wiped his boot against a tattered canvas in annoyance. What an inconvenience.
On the cramped decks below, his scant crew bustled around quickly, heaps of bags or lengths of fabric in their arms. He stopped one of his men. "How much longer?"
The sailor grinned. "They were carrying tons, Captain. We'll be rich!"
Jack stepped aside and the man stumbled up the steps. He walked mostly silent among his men, only continuing to the next level below after he had completely surveyed the level he was on. On one of the lower decks, where the air was cool and moist, and the sturdy curved walls creaked with the pressure, he stopped in front of a sturdy door. He tried pulling it open, but it was locked. His men hadn't gotten there yet. He was surprised the door hadn't been busted open; humans by nature are very curious, greedy pirates maybe even more so.
Judging that the door was too thick to merely shoot off the lock, Jack looked around the deck for something to open the door with. He wasn't sure what he was looking for until he came across a sturdy ax laying on the floor.
The ax bit into the rotting wood with satisfying ease. It was only a few minutes before he completely destroyed the lock. The door swung open easily as the ship rose and tipped on an ocean swell. Jack held the ax at the ready in one hand, half expecting a hoard of sailors to come rampaging out at him.
There was no one inside. It was almost completely dark, so he grabbed a candle and walked inside carefully. The captain's secret stash? he wondered.
The candle's light reflected off of miscellaneous bottles and other unidentifiable metallic objects. Jack's interest focused immediately on the bottles. He took down one. Wine from France, 1646. "Well, well, Captain," Jack muttered under his breath. He grinned and set the candle down on a crate so he could pry out the cork.
Someone was breathing in the darkness behind him. He turned quickly, but the small halo of light from the candle didn't reach to the other side of the room. He set the wine bottle down carefully and picked up the candle. "Who's there?"
He walked a few paces, then saw the familiar vertical pattern of iron bars. The brig. A merchant ship with a brig. Jack raised his eyebrows and slowly walked closer, holding one hand over the flame so it wouldn't extinguish.
A groan, the dull scrape of iron against wood.
Jack stopped as soon as he was close enough to see by the dim candlelight. He lifted his hand from the flame.
All he could see was a tangled mass of bodies. People curled against each other, around each other, under each other. Most of them looked dead, and some of them obviously were.
He took the steps by twos and strode over to where the crew of the merchantman was huddling together in self-pity. "Who has the key to the brig?"
No one answered, but a few of the men looked up in surprise.
Jack stopped in front of the captain. "Where is the key?"
The man looked at first as if he were going to deny everything, feign innocence. He sighed in frustration. As if to justify himself, he said, "They're all criminals."
Jack crossed his arms. "So am I, which might be why I have such a humane interest in their survival. Where is the key?"
The captain remained tightlipped.
"Search him," Jack said to one of his crew. The key was tucked inside a secret pocket in his jacket. Key in hand, Jack hurried back down belowdecks.
Gibbs followed after him quickly. "Captain, what are you doing?"
"Get some water, some food. A lot of it. Is there a surgeon on this ship?" He walked straight up to the iron bars of the brig and unlocked the door. Some bodies of sailors, half-dead or dead already, fell to the floor at his feet. Gibbs stopped in the doorway, his mouth slightly open. "Go, now. Get some men down here, too. But make sure that you leave enough up there to watch the prisoners."
As Gibbs ran up to the main deck, Jack worked at untangling the prisoners. Most of them were dead; some had even been shot or stabbed, their wounds swollen and infected. The live ones were close to madness. They looked at Jack like he was the Devil himself.
Reinforcements filtered in, and Jack stood back to let them finish the job. The bottle of French wine was still standing on the floor next to some crates. He picked it up with his candle and walked across the rest of the room.
It did appear to be mostly the captain's personal effects, except for the prisoners. Decorative swords hung off pegs in the walls, coats were folded neatly in boxes, warped books filled many of the small nooks and crannies.
He heard noise coming from the far corner of the room. He approached it without fear this time, sure that if anyone had actually planned on ambushing him, they would have done it before, when he was alone and defenseless. Whoever was hiding had to be afraid of him.
Lifting the candle above his head, he squinted into the darkness.
Two eyes stared back at him. All he could see of them was the pale reflection of the candle flame. The shadowy figure flinched backwards suddenly. Jack stopped.
Very slowly, he crouched down in an attempt to make himself as unthreatening as possible. He spoke as if to a child: "Here now, it's all right. I'm not going to hurt you." When no protests were raised, Jack inched closer, until the light from the candle lit this captive's face.
It was a girl. She curled close to the wall, practically hugging it, like she was trying to sink into it and disappear. Her dress – probably of fine quality at some point in its life – was torn and stained. Her hands were cuffed, and they pressed together in a grotesque plea for mercy.
"Captain–" Gibbs walked across the room toward him, stopping only when his badly adjusted eyes finally saw the dim form of the girl. He paused. "I don't suppose the key will work on her, too."
"Doubtful."
"I'll get it from the captain."
Jack turned back to the girl, and she shrank further away from him. She looked half-conscious, starved, or sleep-deprived, or both. "What's your name?"
Her wide eyes relaxed a little, but her mouth remained closed. Her attention drifted to the men laid out on the deck behind Jack. Only a few of them had enough life left in them to stir and groan and mumble. The room was eerily close and quiet.
"Were you a passenger on their ship?" He didn't stop for and answer. "They'll be fine. Don't worry."
Gibbs was long in returning, and Jack's impatience with the merchant captain grew. He sat with his back against the wall, next to the girl, and darkly contemplated shooting the uncooperative man as an example for the rest.
Finally, Gibbs walked across the room to him. "Fucking bastard. He wouldn't give it up. He almost took off my finger, when I finally did find it." He held up his right hand, and in the dim light, Jack could see faint crescent moons of blood on Gibbs' index finger. He handed Jack the key. "This had better work, otherwise I have something to say to that son of a bitch." Gibbs always got a bit cranky when injured.
The girl had curled weakly on the floor, with her curved back pressed against the wall. She didn't flinch away from Jack when he reached for her hands – not much, at least – but merely watched distantly as he unlocked the irons. Long, swollen sores wrapped around her wrists. Pus oozed out of infected wounds around her protruding bones. Jack watched her eyes roll back in her head in a dead faint; all he could see was eerie white where there should have been irises and pupils. She was still breathing.
Gibbs waited at his shoulder for orders. Jack reached out and shut her eyelids, so now she looked to be peacefully asleep. "Bring any live men above for now. We will decide what to do with the captain and his crew later. We have to make sure at least some of the prisoners survive."
Jack scooped the unconscious girl up in his arms. Even as emaciated as she was, she was still heavy enough. She made no sign of waking up. He had to step over corpses as he made his way back up to the main deck.
A few of the live prisoners were already laid out on the deck. Some of his crew helped them sit up to drink water. He laid the girl at the end of the short line, then turned to the merchantman crew. "I would be interested to hear your explanation for all this," he said, addressing the captain.
The man stared stubbornly down at his knees.
"It wasn't meant to be a polite question. Answer me." He held his pistol loosely in his hand at his side.
He remained silent, but shifted just a little away from the gun, almost imperceptibly.
Jack cocked it. "Now, you may think you have the advantage, because I'm asking you for information. But, you see, I have a very short temper, and I would just as rather shoot you as I would force it out of you."
The man sneered. "They deserve everything they got."
Jack's hand didn't relax on his pistol.