Warnings: This is NOT a happy story. Reader discretion is strongly advised.

Character death, morbid imagery, sexual references

Short of the History (Three triple drabbles)

Appearance

Jack couldn't get it up.

They agreed for another half an hour. He needed atleast some release, and the lady needed the pay.

He managed to let his mind wander, briefly stopping to try to recall if he'd given the lad clear enough orders to stay right put, before Jack himself dissipated into the fumes of Tortuga.

Jack paused at one specific moment.

Interestingly enough, the mental picture of Will became more focused.

Jack reached for the thought, intrigued, and twiddled it for closer inspection.

It was Will's appearance at their arrival to the port, unknowing of the turns the day was to take him to, his face flushed from the labour getting the Interceptor to the port and properly anchored and the heat of the day, Will's hair clinging to his neck, his shirt tied around his waist. Will taking huge gulps from the bottle of water and pouring the rest on his head in effort to get atleast some relief from the heat, the water trickling down Will's bare chest…

"Finally!"

The annoyed voice of the paid help pulled Jack rudely from his reverie, making him jerk his head up and glare at the woman viciously.

"Stow it!"

After the sudden reminder of the delicate position he was in, delivered in the form of rather sharp teeth, Jack smiled towards his lap pleasantly. "I mean, please, continue, luv, but quietly, if you will, thank you…"

He let his head fall back to the pillow and shaped the image back behind his eyes.

Envisaging the lips of his shipmate wrapped around his cock, he felt himself getting as hard as ever.

Sighing in relief he dwelled in the daydream and forgot everything but the man that was oblivious of his ability to tyrannically dictate the course of Jack's desire.

Silent Blessings

When Will came to Jack on the evening the Black Pearl set course for the Old World, Jack had known Will's request before the man had said a word. At the sight of the man picking his thumbnail, Jack had already acquiesced.

The month practically wasted for the detour held no weight nor value in Jack's mind when put in comparison to the joy Will returned with from visiting his mother's grave.

Sitting in the ale house, hiding from the winter cold wind wiping the streets and corners of Portsmouth, Will's cheeks were burning and his eyes gleamed in the light of the hearth.

The need to get a mother's blessing was something Jack didn't quite understand, but was more than happy to enjoy the effects of Will finding what he'd been looking for, when Will snuck his hand on Jack's thigh and smiled at him without the usual glancing over the surroundings to check for prying eyes.

"It was as if she was with me there, Jack, understanding… No, more than that, I…She knows me. She knows us. She knows I…"

Jack swept his finger gently on the lips of his mate to quiet him before there was nothing more to say. The rest of the words slipped soundlessly into their mouths, and the meaning of them weren't lost for the onlookers.

Will gave Jack a warm, open look and an impish grin before turning to his tankard.

"I know, Jack, but it doesn't stop me from wanting to declare it to the world."

He looked back up again, his eyes showing more self-knowledge that should, by all rights, be at his grasp.

"I just want to be me. With you."

What, indeed, could be more valuable than that? And suddenly Jack had the answer for himself.

"Me too."

...Nothing but Love

The colour of his skin had turned purple, nearing black, features swollen out of proportion, eyes replaced with a pair of black pearls that stared blindly into the distance, giving the once handsome form the face of a demon. The coarse hemp around his neck dug deeper with gravity's pull.

On his stretched neck there was a sign hanging, declaring his egregious crime:

"No Harm, nothing but Love"

Jack woke up strangled, gasping for air, ripping himself through the shrouds of another realm, away from the lingering tentacles sleep dragged him down with. He laid still, listening, breathing fast, eyes scrunched shut, horror in the very marrow of his bones.

"Hanged," said the echo of the demon, the pearls seeing nothing and knowing everything.

Jack forced his eyes open, unclasped his hands from their grip on the mattress and listened, motionless.

"Hanged, Jack, for my abominable Sins."

The black lips kept whispering behind Jack's consciousness, the soft voice familiar like the sun upon his skin.

He looked back into the pearls under his eyelids and saw they were beautiful again. Warm, fearless, loving, the face of the demon masked with the visage from his memory, limply hanging arms bearing the scars his tongue longed to trace.

Both mouths turned into a smile.

"Far from being ashamed, I took glory in it. Told them as much, Jack."

Smiles faded as the façade lifted again.

"Death."

The heaving whimpers that forced out of the man built a bridge between this side and there, offering a blessed path to reality where Jack could reach out his hand and touch.

He sidled further towards the middle of the bed and hugged his arm around the coldness, his fingers growing numb as he grabbed the sheet while his mind went as empty as the bed.

******

Sealing the History(Four triple drabbles)

Culprits

Stripped of any semblance of dignity, surrounded with the foul, pungent smell of rot and shit, trapped at the stocks at the market square as ordered by the court, Jack held up his head, petrified to a painful angle. His unblinking eyes welled with desperate tears he could not, would not, stop, for these tears fell for love and love alone. His blurred sight fixed steadfastly to the man so close, so very far away, standing at the gallows with his back straight and head held up high, looking around himself as much as the hemp rope allowed. Jack saw the crowd's, the audience's, commotion at something the man must've said, but could not hear him over the distance and the crowd.

Would not, said a voice. Never again.

Jack saw the man turning his head again, searching, the voice deep inside Jack screaming for them both to look away, while he couldn't, begged him to close his eyes, while he wouldn't, his body shaking and trembling uncontrollably, lips mouthing jumbled words, pleading in desperation; "No, no, don't see me, please, Will, don't find me, don't look at me, please don't…nononoNO!"

In that one moment everything happened at once. The hatch opened, Will's gaze locked with Jack's, Jack's heart slit with an audible snap, all perfectly timed with the instant of Will's death.

Not hearing himself roar, numb to the wood of the pillory digging deeper into his flesh in his renewed despair to reach, to deny, Jack thrashed against the contraption, until a blow with a pommel of a sword brought darkness.

Jack fell, plunged into an abyss of burning agony, of distraught righteousness, meeting the realm where there was nothing but an endless nightmare, the sharpened reality, where Jack found Will smiling at him for the last time.

Steady Hands

"We have to find him." Nothing more needed to be said, no affirmations, no titles, only a group of friends set to honour their brother the best they knew how. Jack received his sword from one of them, and quietly accepted the leather pouch handed to him with a nigh-on fatherly squeeze to his shoulder.

They found Will slumped on a cart with two fellow sinners, surrounded with guards given the duty to haul the dead away. Five men stood around the cart, two of them with razor blades in hand, one of the corpses already barbered, clotted, sickly bowel-black revealed by a wound in a scalp, Will's hair wrapped around a cruel hand.

"You cut one hair of that man's head and I'll kill you."

The cold, low voice came with the ring of a sword being drawn…then the movement reversed as one of the guards pulled out a whistle.

The odds weren't against Jack. There weren't odds to begin with. A fight would only end Jack's life, one way or the other. On land, it was a different set of laws. Here, all he could do was wait.

The guard snorted bemeaningly, recognizing Jack as a convicted sodomite, and proceeded with his handful of hair. Then the guard got an idea. His face brightening, skewed smile on his face, he cut a strand of Will's curls and stepped over to Jack. Rolling the strand around his finger, daring Jack to do something, he dropped it into Jack's pocket, then patronizingly patted Jack's cheek twice.

"There. Something for you to sniff at while playing with yourself." The rest of the guards burst into a guffaw.

Callously, Jack seared the guard's face into his memory, and lifted his chin towards Will. "He taught me to keep the promises I make."

Credulity

Staring at his distorted reflection blindly, Jack brought the scissors up again and clipped off another tuft, then another, until all that was left was an uneven tousle on his head. His jaw ached dully. The cut he'd not noticed making while shaving before he felt the wet trail of blood on his chest, had stopped bleeding with a bit of help from a red-hot knife. Jack didn't have time for such nonsense as caring for cuts.

Donned with a black cassock, a white collar around his neck, a masterfully crafted blade hidden on Jack's person, the reflection remained stoic as Jack dipped his hands into a bowl of water and smoothed his hair back, then evened it out with a bone comb.

The most remarkable thing with posing as a clergyman is the utter and complete lack of questions asked, no matter what is happening. Or, how much one is screaming and yelling or otherwise rousing a terrible havoc. All it takes is a solemn bow, a lowered gaze, an apologetic, amiable little smile, and there you have it! People believe it's the last rites being performed on a dying man, just like that. Only the man dying hasn't always necessarily accepted the call to his God's Kingdom yet. But those are only trifles. It is a standing invitation after all, innit?

It wasn't the best time to weigh anchor, but when Jack came back in the small hours, dotted with drops and streaks of gore, insanity making his eyes glisten and his voice snarl, it didn't occur to AnaMaria to argue when given the order to make sail, and snap to it. It wasn't that Jack rushed past her like the devil himself was upon him, but the devil in him that made her cross herself and spit.

Novelty

The lantern on the wall sheds the only light into the Great Cabin, gouging the hollows of the sunken eyes of the corpse even deeper with the shadows. Poised on a plank on the table, Will Turner waits to be fully wrapped into the sail for his proper burial at sea, while the man who loves him sits with him, and weeps weakly into his cold, waxen arm. To Will it means nothing.

Jack lifts his deplumed head and sweeps Will's brow tenderly with the side of his hand as if to tuck a curl behind his ear, only the curl isn't there. Instead Jack finds a sore that will never heal, and wonders out loud if it's possible to run out of tears, when a drop of his heart-blood splashes onto Will's shoulder. To Will, that, still, means nothing.

Jack raises from his seat and takes the needle in his hand to sew the rest of the sail closed, sealing Will's face from him forever. Staring down at the darkened lips, the bare scalp scattered with haphazard incisions, he tells Will that he killed the man who fouled the only thing Jack has left of Will, just like he promised. Not that it matters much, a curl is a curl, he'd just wanted to do the honours himself, private-like.

After pushing another stitch through the rough canvas, Jack leans over Will and kisses him for the last time. Will's moustache tickles Jack's bare lip for the first time.

The sensation is too new, too vivid, so intimate, so gone for eternity, that Jack crumbles, clutching his arms around Will and telling him how much he loves him.

It means nothing to Will.

Because Will doesn't see, doesn't hear, doesn't feel, and does not love Jack.

Because Will is dead.

******