Overcoming Complications - Chapter Ten

Leblanc was slouched against a barrel with his legs sprawled out in front of him, his shirt off and a bottle of rum in his hand. Carly sat nearby, admiring the rings on his hand. Her eyes traced the tattoo that ran from his forearm up to his collar bone until the gold hoop earring dangling from his ear caught her eye when he tipped his head back to drink. He swallowed and was about to raise the bottle to his lips again, when he noticed her watching him.

"Quoi? Encore?" he asked. Carly shrugged in confusion. "You should speak French, you know. A lot of people in the Caribbean speak French."

"I suppose. I have French perfume, that counts for something."

"Ah. So that's why you smell like a French whore."

Carly narrowed her eyes at him and pursed her lips, not sure if that was meant to be an insult or not. "I understand the uncontrollable urge you have to brag to the rest of the men about how you just had the best time of your life with me, but I'll have to ask you to resist. I'd rather not have them thinking I'm open for business."

"Which reminds me - how much do I owe you?"

Angry, Carly got to her feet, eying the bottles of rum and wishing she had something less valuable to chuck at his head.

"What? Quoi? Qu'est ce que j'ai dit? Pourquoi tu est fâchée?"

"I can't bloody understand you! You stupid French men with your weird throat noises, you're all a bunch of smelly, frog-eating bastards, you know that?"

"Mm-hm. Who was Liam?" he asked, casually.

"What?"

"Liam, your tattoo. That's an Irish name, n'est pas?"

Carly put her hand to her hip where she had the tattoo, a mermaid sitting on an anchor with Liam's name along the bottom of it. "That's very observant of you."

"Did you think I wouldn't notice?" he asked, wondering why she was so taken aback when she knew very well he'd only been inches away from it.

Carly ignored him and took a step towards the doorway, but stopped suddenly when she thought of something. She went back to him, grabbed the bottle of rum from his grasp, and took a couple gulps of it. Then she thrust the bottle at his chest, took his hand and looked over the rings she had been admiring earlier, and stole the one she liked the best off his finger.

Before she had a chance to get very far with the ring, Shea dropped the rum bottle and grabbed her wrist. "What do you think you're doing?"

"Payment," she replied and pulled her wrist from his grip, which he had loosened anyway.

Leblanc's expression hardened and he kept his eyes on her as she turned to leave. "Tell Mademoiselle Rae that I'm very sorry about her ship."

---

Jack looked out over the ocean. He felt so at peace there, more than he could feel anywhere else. A faint smile crossed his lips as he stood there, on his ship. There was no place else he'd rather be.

He walked back to the Captain's Quarters to rest for a bit. Sparrow was certain his life couldn't get better. There was no way. He just wanted the rest of his life to be just like this.

Awoken in the middle of the night, he heard something crash. Sparrow wasn't quite sure what it was, but figured he should go check on it. After all, it was his ship. The ship he'd taken a part in building even. His Pearl.

Jack went out in search of the sound he'd heard. It had come from below deck he was sure. Upon going below deck, he saw that everyone was still dead asleep. But there was an empty cot. He furrowed his brows, trying to think of who could be up.

Captain Jack shrugged and walked a bit further, back where the rum was stored. Someone else was over there, he just knew it. Then he heard shushing. Two people.

"Who go there?"

That's when someone came into view. Jack's friend Shea Leblanc, wearing only his pants. And even that was barely on.

Jack looked at him bewildered, "Who's there with you?"

There was but one woman on the ship, and she was with Jack. Pearl. The ship had been named for her, but Jack couldn't deny that the most important Pearl to him was, in deed, the ship.

"Who do you think?" came a female voice.

Jack was devastated, he didn't understand.

The woman looked bitter, "All you care about is your ship. It makes me sick. Can't you think about someone besides yourself?"

That would have been bad enough, but since Jack was so distracted with the love triangle going on below deck, he didn't even notice when something more serious came along.

Something life-threatening.

The Black Pearl was attacked by another pirate ship, and when Jack came to, he awoke on something of a ghost ship. The Flying Dutchman.

"Do you feel death...?"

"Where am I?"

"Where do you think?" Jones spat.

"It's only a legend," replied Jack, looking around.

"Nay."

Jones stared at Jack for a moment.

"My ship. What happened to my ship?"

"Sank."

"But..."

Jones, seeing how much Jack cared for the ship, offered him a proposition, "What say you to thirteen years with your precious ship, but once those years are up...you're mine."

---

Shea Leblanc looked back out at the water from his little safety boat. It was so calm.

The calm before the storm, he thought to himself.

He sighed and climbed about the Flying Dutchman where Jones had been waiting, not quite patiently, for him. Upon boarding the Dutchman, he stepped over the body of Beckett.

"Jones," Leblanc called out, "Sparrow is nearby. He's on the Contentious."

Jones turned to face the Frenchman and smiled sinisterly.

---

Carly went above deck to the captain's cabin and banged her fist on the door three times. She let herself in without waiting for a response from Rae and slammed the door shut.

"I hate French men, I really do. Why do we allow suspicious-looking men on your ship?"

"He has that effect on most people," said Sparrow.

"Speaking of suspicious-looking men..." For the first time since she'd entered, Carly looked at the table in the middle of the room. She hadn't noticed at first since she'd been too busy ranting to Rae, but there sat Jack Sparrow and Jacob along with the female captain. Jack sat with his feet up on the table and was looking at Carly with mild interest. Jacob, on the other hand, barely glanced at her and fixed his eyes on the candles burning in the center of the table.

"Did you find out anything of importance?" Rae asked. She had Jack's compass in front of her on the table, which Jack kept anxiously stealing glances at.

"I might have. What's he doing here?" she waved her hand towards Jack, "I thought he was locked up."

"Lucky for you - since you seem to have proved most unhelpful yet again - and fortunately for us, he's been telling us quite a bit about Shea,"

"Oh, well thank god for Mr. Sparrow since I'm most unhelpful. I tried to talk to Leblanc, he's a stubborn bastard. I have a limited amount of ladylike charm to work with, my apologies." Carly grit her teeth in anger at Rae. She heard Jacob chuckle and shot dagger eyes at him. "What?"

"Nothing, it's just amusing to hear your excuses," Jacob said. "I suppose he knows where your tattoo is now as well?"

"You only know where my tattoo is by accident and under completely different circumstances than him,"

"You have a tattoo?" Rae asked. Jack was looking over Carly curiously, trying to imagine where and what her tattoo was. He twirled one of the braids in his beard around his finger while he contemplated this, and then his eyes reverted back to the compass lying on the table. He saw that Rae was distracted by Carly and Jacob, and took advantage of the opportune moment to reach his hand out towards the compass.

"It sounded like you were enjoying yourself, I hope you had fun fooling around."

"Yep, I did."

"Well...good!" Jacob shouted. He pushed Carly aside and stormed out of the cabin, slamming the door shut behind himself.

"The two of you are replacing that door when it falls off its hinges, the way ye keep slamming it," Rae threatened.

"I don't understand him, he can be such a girl," Carly complained and put her hands on her hips. Jack noticed the new ring on her index finger and knew at once where he'd seen it before.

"Perhaps the lad is jealous that Monsieur Escargot got to - "

"We don't need a visual, thank you," Rae interrupted. "We have more pressing matters at hand than Jacob's feminine tendencies, so if we could deal with them then that would be much appreciated, unless of course you don't mind resigning yourself to Davy Jones' Locker. Aye?" she said to Carly, arching one of her eyebrows. "Firstly," she continued, "Leblanc has, in a sense, commandeered the ship. He probably fed the crew some story about treasure and whatnot, and now we're sailing in open water, which means we can count on running into Davy Jones so long as we're graced by Mr. Sparrow's presence."

"So why don't we un-grace ourselves with Mr. Sparrow's presence?"

"And dump him overboard as fish bait for the Kraken?"

"Does Mr. Sparrow have a say in this?" Jack interjected, but he was ignored by the girls.

"I thought he killed the Kraken, isn't that how he escaped last time?" Carly questioned.

"Doubtful, but either way, what we need to do now is save Jack from serving aboard the Flying Dutchman until he's a slimy, decomposing piece of human mass and..." But her voice was drowned out when they heard a gun fire and the exploding sound of a cannon shot bursting through the side of the Contentious. There was a brief pause, and then they were hit again, this time closer to the cabin. Rae and Jack jumped from their seats and ran to the door, following Carly, who was cursing like Jack had never heard a lady curse before.

Most of the crew had already come above deck to see what was going on, all of them wide awake now, even after being woken up from their beauty sleep. Rae's stomach did a flip; she could see a ship very near and sitting parallel to hers. Her fears were confirmed when Elizabeth yelled, "It's the Flying Dutchman!"

Will put his hand to his belt where he kept his knife - the knife his father had given to him. He stepped up onto the ledge on the side of the ship, gripping a rope for support, and scanned the deck of the Flying Dutchman.

"Your time is up, Sparrow!" Jones shouted. Jack hid behind Carly and held her firmly in place by the shoulders in front of him, ducking down to her height. "Let us settle this debt of yours once and for all, you've escaped twice and I will not wait any longer!"

Jack poked his head up over Carly's shoulder. "Actually I only escaped once, because the first time you gave me three days to - "

"We're not handing him over," Rae spoke, "Jack is neither dead nor dying and therefore has no place on your ship."

"Jack made a deal, my lady, and therefore has a debt to pay! You would protect a man that makes a deal and then fails to hold up his end of the bargain, a man who hides and risks others' lives when the time has come to pay his debt?"

"Even so, I won't condemn him to a lifetime of servitude aboard your rotting ship,"

Jones laughed - a sound that made Jack cringe - and then addressed Rae once more. "I'm sorry you feel that way. Perhaps you'll have a change of heart?"

Rae saw him turn to his crew, but she could not hear what he was ordering them to do. "Load the cannons," she said to her men. Seconds later there was a loud crunching sound from beneath them and the ship shook as if they'd hit a reef. Jack's eyes grew wide, while Ragetti and Pintel argued hysterically.

"The Kraken! Told you it was comin' back fer us!" they yelled at Carly.

"Forget the cannons, grab your swords, axes, whatever you can find!" Elizabeth shouted. Carly grabbed her by the wrist and pulled her out of the way when out of nowhere one of the Kraken's tentacles swung down and knocked into two of the ship's lamps, breaking them and catching the deck on fire. Elizabeth looked around and saw that Will had vanished. "Will...Will!"

---

Will had rowed away from the Contentious in one of the boats and was now climbing up the side of the Flying Dutchman, having missed the Kraken's attack by seconds. He quietly stepped foot on the deck of Jones' ship, unnoticed by the crew. Seeing that Jones and Leblanc were watching the action on the Contentious intently, he crept farther away from Jones, his father's knife in his hand, and was about to go below deck to the brig, when he was snatched by two of Jones' deformed crewmen. They dragged him to their captain with grins on their faces.

"Look who decided to join us,"

"Ah, Mr. Turner," Jones chuckled. "How fortunate that you've abandoned ship and escaped the wrath of the Kraken." Will struggled against his captors, but it only made them strengthen their grip and twist his arms tighter behind his back. Jones narrowed his eyes at Will with almost a smile on his lips, and then looked at his men. "Hold him there, he will watch his fiancée perish."

---

"Where do you think you're going?" Carly shouted at Jack. She had caught him fiddling around with one of the boats, likely attempting to get away.

"Well it seems that you've all got this Kraken thing under control, so I was just getting out of your way," he glanced around at the giant tentacles flying wildly around everywhere and the people shouting and scurrying about. Jack ducked when one of the Kraken's tentacles swung near them. Carly hacked at it with an ax, but it was useless, and the creature's tentacle retreated, taking her ax with it. When the slimy thing swung down again, Jack chopped at it a few times with no success and swore at it for squirming so much, then he finally cut a big gouge in it with his sword. Carly looked desperately around for another weapon, and then somebody grabbed hold of her arm.

"Jacob," she said, sounding half surprised and half relieved. They both looked up when the Kraken wrapped one of its tentacles around the mast. It snapped the mast in two and let go, allowing the mast to fall. Jacob pulled Carly by the arm and pulled her away, but she yelled when she saw that Jack was still trying to lower one of the boats. "Jack, look out!"

Jack turned his head and saw the mast, but it was too late. It fell on him, crushing the boat he had been attempting to escape in and pinning him between the fallen mast and the shards of wood. He could feel the giant splinters that pierced his stomach and chest, and he felt pain through his ribs and back. He was unable to move or breathe, even though he tried.

---

Davy Jones turned away from his men after commanding them to hold Will hostage so he could watch the Kraken destroy Rae's ship, and Elizabeth with it. When he looked back at the ship, Jack was no where to be seen. His eyes flashed fiercely, fearing that Jack had escaped once again.

"Où est-il?" Leblanc wondered aloud, thinking the same thing. Jones glared at him and grabbed him by the throat with his claw-hand.

"It seems that you have failed to hold up your end of the bargain," he growled. "Kill him," he said to his crew.

---

Jack looked up when a boot and a peg-leg appeared in front of him. He heard Jones laugh, sounding very satisfied with the situation, and watched him kneel down closer to Jack's eye level. He held up Jack's chin with his claw, waited while Jack attempted to focus his eyes on the face before him, and then posed a question to him in a low voice.

"Do you feel death, Jack Sparrow?" he asked slowly, stressing each word and smirking. Jack couldn't respond, but they both knew what the answer was.

---

Jones threw Jack down on the deck of the Dutchman and was greeted by cheers from his crew. Will was shocked when he saw the state that Jack was in, covered in blood and wood splinters and slumped weakly on the deck.

Jones looked proudly upon the Contentious, knowing that any second now the Kraken would swallow the entire ship and its surviving crew whole. He smiled as the Kraken began to raise up all of its tentacles around the ship.
"Stop," an unfamiliar voice commanded. Jones whipped his head around to see James Norrington standing there, holding the heart.