Archive of Our Own

The Turner girl was pretty enough, and fiery, but he'd lost the taste for women these ten years gone. Even before the curse had begun to bite, he'd wanted something different, other, more.

And he'd found what he wanted. He'd had it and lost it: thrown it away, traded it for the Black Pearl and the captaincy and an empty decade of blood and gold and haunting dreams. Now he sat in the captain's cabin, counting out the gold sols and doubloons from Port Royal. Elizabeth Turner's medallion lay, still on its chain, in a pool of light before him. The ghosts in the shadows gibbered, but he was immune to them; all but the one who grinned and winked at him, like an invitation.

The crew were raising sail and bickering over the spoils. The Turner girl was locked away in the stern-cabin, at least until they were out of sight of land. The monkey, Jack, was sleeping on his perch: and someone rapped on the door.

"What is it?" called Barbossa.

"It's me, Captain. Twigg. I've some news you'll want to hear."

Barbossa doubted that. Tonight, after ten years, he'd seen the last of the Aztec gold come back to him. Whether it lifted the curse or not, that was welcome news for the crew, and thus for him their captain. No hope of better news that that.

But Twigg would not have dared disturb him for nothing.

"Come in, then, and let me hear it."

Twigg entered the cabin, eyes -- Barbossa was pleased to see -- lowered. Like the rest of the crew, he had learnt not to stare at the gold, or to peer at the shadowy ghosts in the corners of the big cabin.

"Tell me," Barbossa invited. Twigg's excitement was palpable, like a scent (a familiar scent) in the air. He had brought his news like treasure to lay before Barbossa.

"Never guess who we saw in Port Royal, Captain."

"The King of England?" Barbossa enquired, for form's sake. "The Virgin Mary? The Pope?"

Twigg shook his head, grinning.

"Why don't you be tellin' me, then," suggested Barbossa.

"We was looking for the armoury, see," Twigg explained. "An' we must've took a wrong turn, or those redcoats told us wrong, 'cause we ended up in the gaol instead."

"Then I'd guess you found some prisoners there," said Barbossa, impatient already. "Some ne'er-do-wells. Some of the Brethren, maybe? Out with it!"

"They've got Jack Sparrow locked up in that fort, they 'ave," said Twigg.

It was no surprise -- he'd always known that somehow, despite everything, Jack would still be alive -- but something, some emotion, must have shown on his face, because Twigg was looking at him with satisfaction.

"You remember," he said. "Him as was captain afore ye. Him we marooned. Fancy-lookin' bloke. Gold --"

"I know who he is," said Barbossa softly, and Twigg flinched. "Is he still there? Did ye not free him?"

"Free him, Captain?" At least he was speaking more respectfully now. "Why'd you want 'im freed? Happen the Navy'll hang 'im and finish the job."

"He's still there."

"Aye, Captain."

"Well," said Barbossa. "Jack Sparrow, alive alive-oh." Something in the shadows moved, and he turned his head to look at it. So, with a guilty fascination, did Twigg.

"Off with ye!" Barbossa roared, gesturing, and Twigg turned and fled.

Jack Sparrow, alive. They'd heard stories, from time to time, but nothing Barbossa would credit: Jack Sparrow cheating the harbourmaster at Savannah, impersonating a Spanish nobleman in Jamestown, raising the dead in New Orleans. Nothing that could be proved. Nothing that another man couldn't have done.

They had sailed back to the nameless island where they'd left him that grey morning, but his bones were nowhere to be found, though Barbossa had wanted to break them into pieces to lift the curse. All this time Jack had haunted him, whispering and gesturing and smiling, reminding Barbossa (waking or sleeping) of that one last night they had spent together. All this time his ghost had taunted him with what he'd lost; the one ghost of the Black Pearl to whom Barbossa was still not, and never would be, indifferent.

Who wasn't a ghost after all.

He had lost count of the gold, and he didn't care. Let them say what they liked, out on deck: it was not the gold that was cursed, but the mutinous crew who'd left Jack Sparrow to die. Not all the gold in the world could lift that curse.

But Jack Sparrow, more alive these ten years than any man aboard the Black Pearl, could set them free. If he cared to do so. If he thought it worth his while.

Barbossa found himself remembering again. Never a day that he forgot: Jack's face, pretty as a girl without the beard; Jack's eyes widening at the feel of Barbossa's hand on him; Jack's mouth closing around Barbossa's cock. The feel of Jack Sparrow under him, letting him --

Barbossa cursed, and monkey-Jack leapt from his perch and swung wildly between the beams.

He wanted -- needed -- to go back and retrieve Jack Sparrow from the cells at Port Royal. If he was even still there, of course; Jack Sparrow had been able to talk his way out of most things, when Barbossa had known him before.

But then, ten years can do strange things to a man.

He stuffed the Turner medallion in his pocket and beckoned Jack-monkey to his shoulder before he opened the door and went out on deck.

If Pintel objected to waiting on Miss Turner, he was clever enough not to say so. Ragetti, everyone agreed, wasn't clever enough for anything very much; but he let himself be guided by his friend's behaviour, and that was probably what had kept him alive, back when any of the Black Pearl's crew could be slain.

The two of them stood biddably in the captain's cabin, waiting for their orders. Ragetti's wooden eye seemed drawn to the darkest corner, by the bed, but Barbossa was almost sure that it saw nothing there. No matter, anyway.

He had kept the crimson silk dress close by, all these years. Neither Pintel nor Ragetti remarked on that; but then, they had no reason to remember this dress, and they had not seen --

"Take this to Miss Turner," he instructed, holding out the armful of crimson silk. He could still smell Jack on it, sweat and musk as fresh as ever, but the stains hardly showed any more. He had never let any of his other captives wear it: but tonight, after all, was a special occasion. "Tell her she may do me the honour of wearing it to dine with me."

"An' -- an' what if she says no, Captain?"

Barbossa bared his teeth. "If she says no -- if she is disinclined to acquiesce -- then she is at liberty to hand the dress back and dine with the crew."

"N-naked?" said Ragetti, with a leer.

"Shut up!" snapped Pintel, elbowing him. "It's not like we're able to --"

"Ah, but Miss Turner won't know that," said Barbossa, chuckling. "Tell her she may dine naked with the crew, if she'll not honour me with the pleasure of her company."

He let them go and sat back, reaching again for the medallion that Miss Turner had worn. The girl was tall like her father, Bootstrap Bill, though otherwise there was not much resemblance. Light bones, she'd have, like a bird. Maybe she'd eat from his hand, like Jack had done. Maybe she'd suck the rich sauces from his fingers, and put her slender arm around his neck. Maybe --

There was almost a taste, a sour bitter taste, in Barbossa's mouth.

Dinner had been good sport, and Miss Turner had looked fine -- though not as fine as Jack Sparrow -- in the crimson silk. She'd taken the story of the Aztec curse quite well, all things considered, after her stroll on deck had cured her of her disdain for ghost stories. There was no use in telling her of Jack Sparrow's curse: and no profit to be found, either, in driving her mad. That little trick with the knife ... well, she'd more spirit than her father had shown at the end. The life had gone out of Bootstrap -- Barbossa smiled grimly to himself -- after the mutiny, after he'd stood by and let Jack Sparrow be driven out.

Barbossa remembered that day: Bootstrap Bill half-conscious and calling down the curse upon them, even while Twigg and the Bo'sun had been tying him to the great gun that had carried him down to the depths. He'd have to tell Miss Turner what had befallen her da, for sure. Just as soon as the moment was ripe.

But that moment was not yet. He lay in his wave-rocked bunk, safely away from the treacherous moonlight again, and banished thoughts of Bootstrap Bill's fate with his sovereign remedy. The events of that long-ago night were strung out in his memory, moment by moment, like pearls on a thread.

Sometimes, it seemed, he could even remember how it had felt.

Jack Sparrow had invited him to dine that night ten years ago, and Barbossa had gorged himself, not on meat or drink, but on sensation. First had come the sight of Jack, practically glowing in the lamplight, teeth gleaming and skin shiny with sweat, and the luxurious sheen of the crimson silk wrapping him. Then the sound of Jack's low voice, asking him, begging him for more: and, better, the sound of his voice when at last he'd gone beyond words. And the smell of his skin -- that scent still fresh, by some miracle, on the silk: but Elizabeth Turner wore the dress now, and Barbossa frowned at the thought of her female scent overlaying Jack Sparrow's musk and spice and salt.

He'd tasted that on Jack's mouth, tasted his own seed and Jack's, too: and Jack, shameless, had licked more than just rich sauces and oils from Barbossa's fingers. It had felt ...

It had felt. Had been enough to drive him to distraction (and Jack Sparrow to his ruin, Barbossa reminded himself). But that was lost, for now: and the feel of his hand, instinctually on his cock, was no more than the knowledge of skin against skin.

The news that Jack was alive and well -- oh, better by far than his mutinous first mate -- made Barbossa almost wistful, there in the bed. For a moment he wished for company. Elizabeth Turner had asked to know the fate of the dress's last owner. Maybe he'd have her brought to him, and he'd bid her sit and listen while he told the tale of how a pirate captain had begged when Barbossa slid his hand up under the warm silk, feeling the heat of Jack's body like a furnace ... Who knew what Elizabeth Turner might be brought to do, in that red dress that stank of semen and sweat and Jack?

But it would feel like nothing, now. Everything did. All he wanted tonight, all he'd wanted for years, was release -- any release at all, let alone what he'd felt with Jack Sparrow before Jack stole his heart and his nerves and his life. That one night had been more than any man might hope for again, but there'd been other times, simple times, times when they'd pressed together eagerly in the dark, hands comfortable on one another's bodies, bringing each other off just for friendly favour.

All gone now, and no way back to it. And he couldn't simply turn the ship and head back to Port Royal: the crew were mad for this notion of lifting the curse, and they'd rise up against him if he stood in their way. And, after all, there was no harm to it: just another voyage to the Isla de Muerta, and another little game with Miss Elizabeth Turner, and another futile attempt at freeing the Black Pearl's crew from the curse.

Oh, but if the curse were lifted, to seek out Jack Sparrow: to make his claim...

Barbossa snorted, and monkey-Jack on his perch chittered in surprise. Jack Sparrow wouldn't come to him again, not the way he'd come that night before the mutiny: not willing and eager and filled with heat.

But maybe, for all that, there was a way that he would come.

Even years after the mutiny, with Jack Sparrow surely dead and his vanished bones ground to sand, he'd come to Barbossa in dreams. Usually his ghost would say nothing at all, but just reach out his hand to touch Barbossa's face with spectral fingers that drifted over his skin too lightly to be felt. Or, sometimes, he'd take Barbossa's hand in his own and trail the bony fingers over his own skin. And Barbossa would not be able to look away as Jack's face reflected the sensation of every caress, every nerve ending, every scar that snagged against his skeletal fingers. Dead, Jack Sparrow still felt more than Barbossa had for years.

Dawn was dull and grey, and the waters around the Isla de Muerta were shrouded and flattened by sea mist. The crimson silk was the colour of spilled wine in the dim light, and it drew the colour out of Elizabeth Turner's face. She looked pale and afraid and altogether less fiery than the night before. Barbossa, wracked by dreams, was glad of it.

In the depths of the cavern, the treasure seemed to glow with its own light. This was the closest he came to warmth, any more. Just being near to so much wealth seemed sufficient to brighten the humour of the crew as they gathered to watch the last of the blood-payments. Already, even while they laboured to bring in the harvest from Port Royal, they were murmuring of what they'd do once quit of the curse: sensual pleasures, wine and women and lying in the sun. They'd be rich men. They would spend, not hoard. They need never work again.

Elizabeth Turner was silent and fearful at his side, but he cared nothing for her any more. As soon as the curse was lifted -- or, as he suspected, when the curse did not lift -- he'd be free to seek Jack Sparrow and exact his own payment, or claim his reward.

"Gentlemen!" he cried. "The time has come! Salvation is nigh! Our torment is near an end!"

The men cheered.

"For ten years we've been tested and tried, and each man-jack of you here has proved his mettle, a hundred times over and a hundred times again!"

More cheering. They were his, all his, and loyal to him as they'd never been to Jack Sparrow. There was a kind of glow to that too, a prideful glow, and for a moment he wished that this trembling girl could truly be the remedy to their ills. So much hope washing over him, so much desperation ...

It was a shame that Miss Turner's blood wouldn't save a single one of them.

"Punished we were, the lot of us, disproportionate to our crime." He had played this scene over and over, now, and the words came to him like an actor's speech on the stage. The men were his audience, then, caught and captivated by the familiar phrases: held by each word he spoke. There was a glory in this eloquence, however empty it turned out to be.

One hand to the carved stone lid of the chest: "Here it is!" Cast the lid aside: that first time, it had felt heavy, but now it was hardly an effort at all to throw it down. "The cursed treasure of Cortez himself." The gold shone, calling him, and he ran his hands over the coins in the chest. They were neither warm nor cold. They simply were. "Every last piece that went astray we have returned..." He gestured at the medallion around Elizabeth Turner's neck. "Save for this!"

Perhaps the Aztec priests had woven this magic with their words. Perhaps their heathen followers had shouted and exclaimed at every phrase they spoke. The Black Pearl's crew had no use for priests now: they followed him.

"And who amongst us has paid the blood sacrifice owed to the heathen gods?" he called.

"Us!" they chorused.

"And whose blood must yet be paid?"

"Hers!"

At his side, Elizabeth Turner whimpered. For a moment he wanted to reassure her: for another moment he wanted her blood to be the key, after all, so that he could feel her skin, her touch ... Truth be told, there was much he missed of life, and a woman's touch might not be so very great a loss.

"You know the first thing I'm going to do after the curse is lifted?" he asked. "Eat a whole bushel of apples."

And then, as they roared, so easy to grasp her hand and slit her palm with the stone knife that he'd used on every man-jack of the crew. "Begun by blood, by blood undone!"

Blood on stone: blood on gold: gold on gold, and Miss Turner demanding, "That's it?"

"Waste not," said Barbossa, with a private smile. He closed his eyes and waited to come back to life.

"Did it work?" said Koehler at last, into the taut silence.

"I don't feel no different," Ragetti complained.

"How do we tell?"

Barbossa sighed, and dragged the pistol from his sash. He hardly bothered to aim before he fired.

"You're not dead!"

"No," said Pintel, wonderingly: then his expression hardened. "'e shot me!"

"It didn't work," said Twigg. "The curse is still upon us!"

Barbossa scowled. He'd expected this, and it almost proved him right at last, almost proved that this was Sparrow's curse. He hadn't told them that tale yet, though. The only tale they'd heard was the Aztec curse, with simple rules that, followed, would set them free. Thus here they were, with Bill Turner's child, and Barbossa had known that the girl's blood on the coin wouldn't lift Jack Sparrow's curse on his mutinous crew.

But damned if he wouldn't play by those rules, their rules, for it was himself that they'd followed in mutiny. He'd be loyal to them in return.

Elizabeth Turner looked entirely too pleased with herself.

"You, maid!" he demanded, taking her by the shoulders. "Your father -- what was his name?"

Elizabeth Turner looked at him and smiled, and said nothing.

"Was your father William Turner?" Barbossa said harshly, shaking her: and behind him the men began to murmur as the suspicion hit home.

"No," said the girl triumphantly. Well-spoken for a maid, now that he thought on it ... and 'twas all, damnation to it, to be done again: another bloody child traced and found and brought to the gold. It was all Jack Sparrow's fault. Even the confounded brat they sought was the child of Jack Sparrow's good friend Bootstrap Bill Turner, who'd sent the gold home to England to keep the curse alive. "We deserve that curse for what we done to Jack Sparrow," Bootstrap had said. Much good Turner's loyalty had done him, but he'd surely be laughing now at the confusion he'd caused.

Never mind the heathen gods. The crew needed Bill Turner's blood to lift the curse.

"Where's his child? The child that came from England eight years ago, the child in whose veins flows the blood of William Turner?" He could see her jaw tightening, holding back whatever it was that she knew. He'd get it out of her. He shook her again. "Where?"

She said nothing, and his fury overwhelmed him like cold water. He backhanded her and turned away even before she came to rest, unconscious, by the water's edge.

The crew were bickering amongst themselves. "You two!" cried the Bo'sun, rounding on Pintel and Ragetti. "You brought us the wrong person!"

"No! She had the medallion. She's the proper age."

She'd known about the Black Pearl, too. Claimed she'd seen the ship that day they'd attacked the Dorset Rose, the merchantman that -- they'd all felt the pull -- had carried a piece of the Aztec gold on its voyage out of Bristol. No survivors, they'd thought, but the gold was not to be found; and with His Majesty's Navy prowling the wreckage, Barbossa had let the mists hide their retreat.

If he'd known Bootstrap's brat -- whether it be this girl or another -- had been on board, he'd not have rested until the child was slit and filleted at his feet, and the gold (Bootstrap's last trick) safe in his hand.

And after all this, it was Twigg who had the nerve to turn on him. "You brought us 'ere for nothing!" he shouted, and Barbossa wished for the curse to lift from this one man first, so that Barbossa could watch him die.

"I won't take questions! No second guesses now, not from the likes of you, Master Twigg!"

"Who's to blame?" cried someone else, and they were turning on him like a pack of feral dogs. "Every decision you've made has led us from bad to worse!"

"'Twas you sent Bootstrap to the depths!" chimed in another.

"And it's you who brought us here in the first place!" the Bo'sun yelled. None of them were looking at the gold -- the gold he'd led them to -- any more. None of them were hanging back, as men had hung back (Barbossa did not forget) on the morning they'd relieved Jack Sparrow of his command.

Rage, oh, rage felt good; rage felt human and real and alive.

"Any coward here dare challenge me, let him speak!" he roared, bracing himself for their attack: and no one, not a single one of the craven bastards, spoke.

Still his.

"I say we cut her throat and spill all her blood, just in case," said Koehler after a moment; and that met with their approval. And truly, 'twas a fine idea: let Miss Turner, or whoever she was, pay the price for trying to fool Barbo --

Monkey-Jack gibbered and gestured from the rock where he sat, and Barbossa turned on his heel.

The place where she'd fallen was empty again.

"The medallion! She's taken it!"

Could they do nothing without him?

"Well, after her, you pack of ingrates!" he bellowed: and they turned and ran like dogs.

The Isla de Muerta was riddled with caves and passageways and blind tunnels, like a weevil-infested cheese, and the maze echoed with calls and exclamations as the pirates hunted their prey.

And oh, what prey, what prize. God rot the girl, and the Devil take the Aztec gold, for here was a treasure greater than either: Jack Sparrow, alive, alive-oh.

Whenever Barbossa thought of Jack, he saw him alone in the cabin that night, in crimson and candlelight and gleaming gold. He'd forgotten how slight Jack Sparrow looked beside Twigg or Koehler or the hulking Bo'sun. It was all show, for sure: deceptive as whatever Jack Sparrow was about to say.

"Jack," he said slowly, playing to the crew and yet wishing them to Hell. The two of them should be alone...

"Barbossa," said Jack, with that ready, obsequious smile that he'd kept for strangers.

There was a small silence between the two of them, never mind the breathing and shuffling of the men, and the far-off echoing halloos of the hunt for the girl. Barbossa could read nothing in Jack Sparrow's eyes, but he glittered and swayed as enticing as ever, even while the men held him captive. Touching him.

Too much and never enough: this yellow-bellied crew would not see him soften.

"How the blazes did you get off that island?" he demanded instead.

"When you marooned me on that godforsaken spit of land, you forgot one very important thing, mate."

Barbossa looked at him, bewildered: and Jack Sparrow smiled, full of charm and duplicity as ever, the same as ever, and it was --

"I'm Captain Jack Sparrow."

-- too much. Barbossa wanted to get his hands on Jack's throat, bear him down, throttle him, make him kneel and repent. Make him resign that title, for it was Barbossa who was captain now, though the Black Pearl had never quite been his own the way she'd been Jack's.

Jack Sparrow's smile drove him mad, and said that Jack knew it.

Barbossa bit back his spleen. "Ah, well," he drawled, moving closer to Jack. "I'll not be making that mistake again. Gents, you all remember Captain Jack Sparrow?"

Let them be his own, let them not remember being Jack's crew.

"Kill him," said Barbossa, and the racket of muskets primed and pistols cocked and swords grating free from their scabbards was triumphal. Break his bones and the curse will lift. Let him die, that we may --

Barbossa turned away: and from behind him Jack Sparrow said, louder than before, "The girl's blood didn't work, did it?"

"Hold your fire!" Barbossa roared, and scowled when their obedience was less rapid. "You know whose blood we need?"

"I know whose blood ye need," drawled Jack, not quite mocking him.

"Why don't ye just be tellin' me, then, Jack?" said Barbossa, smiling, for this was the game all over again. "Tell me the name, and I'll let ye go free."

"Come, now," said Jack Sparrow, walking towards him. The men let him go, and though they held his cutlass and pistol, Barbossa knew there'd be blades concealed in sleeves, boots, sash. But Jack Sparrow would know better than any that no blade could harm him now; and with a knife, like Elizabeth last night, he'd be so near and so warm...

"Come now," said Jack again. "Have you given me any reason to trust you, lately? You're forsworn, Barbossa, you most of all: you pledged me your loyalty, and then you cast me ashore to die."

"And is that all, Jack Sparrow?" said Barbossa, his smile broadening as he let himself think again of that night. Did Jack hate him for that? Had Jack thought of it too, all those long nights since the checkmate of their last game?

Jack looked back at him, perfectly at ease despite the goad. "Is that not enough?" he said.

"Had you rather we spoke of this ... alone?" said Barbossa, leering.

Jack shrugged, and Barbossa's eyes narrowed. Insolent as ever; and for a moment he was minded to tell the tale after all, and let the men make what they would of it. They'd be jeering, jealous, wanting the same but cheated by the curse ...

But there was no shame in Jack's expression, no distaste. It was as though he felt nothing, remembered nothing of that night, or as if he cared nothing for the consequences of Barbossa's threat.

"The girl's gone, Captain," said the Bo'sun, emerging from one of the tunnels at the back of the cave. "She's --"

He stopped short, mouth still open, as he caught sight of Jack Sparrow.

"You -- you're dead!"

"So everybody keeps telling me," said Jack brightly. "But not all the stories are true, you know. For example, that one about the girl who --"

"Back to the Black Pearl with ye all!" Barbossa shouted, scowling furiously at Jack Sparrow.

But already a couple of the men were smiling, willing to be won over by wit and charm and Jack Sparrow's voice. As he'd wooed and won them all before.

He'd not let Jack Sparrow cheat him again.

Whoever it was that had taken the oars, they'd missed a few of the boats, and Barbossa as captain had claimed the first of them. Now he let Pintel and Ragetti row, and watched as the Black Pearl's former captain set eyes on his lost command.

There were gashes in the hull where their prey had fought back. Barbossa preferred to leave them unrepaired, like scars of battle. Every man who saw her at sea would dread her, from her black rags of sails to the solemn-faced gilded beauty, a century out of fashion, at her prow. Jack Sparrow lowered his head, but not before Barbossa saw the anguish on his face. He waited for Jack to speak, but he said nothing, staring at the bottom of the boat, hiding behind the fall of his hair and the tilt of his hat as the Black Pearl loomed above them.

The man on watch tossed them a rope, eyes widening when he saw it caught by his former captain. Barbossa seized the rope from Jack, scowling, and hauled himself aboard, the monkey clinging to his shoulder. Jack followed him, as supple and capable as ever, and his hands lingered like a lover's on the splintery wood of the rail as he swung himself on board.

The Black Pearl pitched smoothly under their feet, and Jack smiled. He looked about him, and now he was every inch the captain, practical and sharp-eyed. Barbossa saw him note the filthy deck, the fouled stays, the ugly hatchet-work where the gun-ports had been enlarged.

"No lick-spittle Navy ways here, I'm afraid, Jack."

"Glad to hear it," said Jack amiably. "Shall we go below? Or do you conduct your business on deck these days?"

"Of course not," said Barbossa, turning towards the steps that led down to the stateroom and the captain's cabin.

"You never know," Jack went on, following him. "A lot can change in ten years. Why, I'd hardly have recognised you, except for the hat."

Barbossa growled, but he did not look back.

The ghosts in the corners of the stern-cabin gibbered and fled when Jack sauntered in, glancing around as if to make sure that it was still his own. Barbossa set his teeth. Jack might be full of himself now, but he'd sing a different tune later, when Barbossa turned the tables on him once more. Just for a moment, he let himself imagine how it would be. Jack on his knees, forced to give fulfilment and finding none at all. Jack letting Barbossa master him once more: or, mayhap, Jack unwilling, and Barbossa master anyway.

"I've heard tell of the Black Pearl," said Jack Sparrow, taking a seat without waiting for Barbossa's invitation. "You've quite the reputation, these days."

"There's none can take the Black Pearl," said Barbossa.

"Or her new ... captain," said Jack Sparrow, with just enough of a pause to be insulting. "A man so evil, I hear, that hell itself spat him back out. I'd have thought you'd have been ready to give it all up by now, mate. You've got enough loot in that cave for you all to live like kings."

"'Tis never enough," said Barbossa, "and you know it."

Jack leant back, shrugging, eyebrows raised.

"'Twas you who cursed us!" cried Barbossa, swinging round to point an accusing finger at Jack.

"Cursed you?" Jack frowned and tilted his head, the epitome of polite enquiry. "I never did. If you're cursed, it has naught to do with me."

"You know of the curse," Barbossa growled.

"Of course I know of the curse," said Jack cheerfully. "I told you of the curse, remember? All about the Aztec gods, with their mouths like sharks' and their terrible lust for blood. All about Cortez an' how he pissed them off. Course, you don't have so good a memory for things you'd prefer to forget, do you, Barbossa? Oaths of loyalty and the like."

"You cursed us. You cursed me!"

Jack regarded him lazily, from half-closed eyes. "You've been out in the sun too long, mate."

Barbossa sat back, and beckoned to the monkey. It scampered across the table and leapt onto his shoulder. Jack sneered.

"Glad to see you've found yourself a loyal follower," he observed. "A bit mangy, but he seems to like you. Trustworthy, is he? "

"I remember everything, Jack Sparrow," said Barbossa. "I remember when I could feel the wind in my face, taste the wine, feel skin ... against skin."

He watched Jack carefully. Nothing about him had changed, nothing important, though there were new scars and tattoos on his skin and new beads in his hair. His eyes were the same, black as night and seductive as sin, but now Barbossa could not read them at all.

"I remember that too," Jack said quietly, and he was not smiling now.

"Everything tastes of ashes," said Barbossa. "Every touch is like a touch on your hand when you've been in the cold too long."

"You're cold?"

"I feel no cold! I feel --" Barbossa's fist clenched. "-- no heat. Can you imagine that, Jack Sparrow? No heat. No fire. No wanting."

"Ah," said Jack, and that might almost have been pity in his voice, "but want can be a dreadful thing." He uncoiled himself from the chair, running one hand along the back of the seat as he stood. "Me, now, I want the Black Pearl."

"But you couldn't keep her," said Barbossa softly. "You lost her."

"I lost her to a friend I trusted too far," said Jack idly, examining the scrollwork on the back of the chair. "But I'll not be making that mistake again." He met Barbossa's gaze again, and now there was nothing seductive or charming about his expression at all. "I'll trade you for her," he said.

Barbossa laughed. "Trade me what? I'd say you're not doing so well, Jack, for all the tales they tell of ye."

Jack looked absurdly pleased. "You've heard them, then," he said. "You'll have heard them say how I always get what I want, in the end."

"I haven't heard the one about you in a dress, yet," Barbossa said mockingly. "Fine crimson silk, it was, and you on your knees."

"Have you not?" said Jack, raising an eyebrow. "I hear there's a book made of it now. Collector's edition, I believe. I doubt you'd find it very interesting, these days."

The words were light, but the voice was not.

"I believe we were bargaining," said Jack. "For my ship. I'll give you Bill Turner's child, and you may be quit of the curse laid on that gold by the shark-mouthed gods of the Aztecs."

"There's no such curse," Barbossa growled.

Jack brought a hand up, gesturing at himself. "I'd love to claim it for my own, but I'm no heathen priest to accomplish such a thing." He opened his mouth wide, displaying his teeth: there was more gold there than before. "See?" he said, indistinctly. "No' shar'."

Barbossa looked at Jack's mouth and thought about how it had felt on him, how it might feel now, with more gold, with the beard and the moustache and ten years' more practice of kissing and licking, sucking and --

Sharks' teeth.

"Tell me your terms, Jack," he said, leaning back. The monkey on his shoulder made an enquiring noise, and he patted its head.

"I'll give you the Turner child," said Jack in that patient, practical tone that had fooled customs officers and lawyers, "and you'll give me the Black Pearl, and enough men -- my choice of 'em, mind -- to crew her to Tortuga, where I'll let them ashore and you may collect them."

"And while you're sailing off in my ship, where will I and the Turner girl --"

"Or boy," Jack interrupted, raising a hand. "It may be that Bootstrap's child was a son, after all."

Barbossa sighed. "Where will I and the Turner child -- and the rest of my crew -- be, while you're off to Tortuga on my ship?"

"My ship," corrected Jack. "You'll be ... hmm." He put a finger to his lip, pretending to consider the matter. Barbossa watched him hungrily.

"You give the order to sail for Tortuga," said Jack, "and once we're drawing near, I'll take the wheel and head for one of those coves on the north coast of Hispaniola. Shouldn't have any problems finding food and water there." His gaze sharpened. "Wouldn't want you to find yourself without fresh water, as I did."

"And the Turner child?" demanded Barbossa.

"Ah, well, of course I can't be producing him -- or her, or her -- out of thin air," said Jack brightly. "And once you've seen her, or him as the case may be -- unless it's both, which is something you might want to consider. Both, or neither --"

"Jack!"

"-- could be a eunuch --"

"Jack!"

"Once you have the child," said Jack, his face implacable, "there'd be nothing to stop you knocking me on the head and playing the same old trick on me. And I'm hoping we can come to an arrangement where there's no knocking on the head, no mutiny, no impolite behaviour of any kind."

"And your point?" said Barbossa wearily.

"Once I'm at the helm of my Pearl," said Jack, stroking a beam lovingly, "I'll call the name to you. Can be found in Port Royal, I'll tell you that for nothing."

"So you expect to leave me standing on some beach with nothing but a name and your word it's the one I need, and watch you sail away with my ship?"

Jack smiled, and if Barbossa had known him less well (too well, still) then that smile might have seemed warm.

"No," he said mildly. "I expect to leave you standing on some beach with absolutely no name at all, watching me sail away on my ship."

Did the hull creak?

"Then I'll shout the name back to you. Savvy?"

Barbossa could feel the pull of him like gold. He wanted to believe, accept, be drawn in. Be caught. Jack Sparrow strutting back in, claiming his ship and his attention and every nerve in his nerveless, lifeless body...

"But that still leaves us with the problem of me standing on some beach with naught but a name and your word it's the one I need."

Jack Sparrow was examining the apples in the fruit-bowl they had left for Miss Turner. "Of the two of us," he said, still mild, "I'm the only one who hasn't committed mutiny, therefore my word is the one we'll be trusting. Although, I suppose I should be thanking you because in fact, if you hadn't betrayed me and left me to die, I would have an equal share of that curse, same as you." He took a bite from the apple in his hand. Barbossa could see the sap spurt.

"Funny ol' world, innit?" said Jack, proffering the bowl of fruit: then he pulled back, as though he'd just recalled the curse -- the curse which, he maintained, was not his.

There was a noise on the steps, and the Bo'sun came in. He didn't knock, and Barbossa saw Jack register that discourtesy and hide it away for later.

"Captain, we're coming up on the Interceptor."

The monkey shrieked in excitement and darted for the door, bounding ahead of the Bo'sun as though it understood what was happening.

Barbossa swore, and followed them up to the deck. It was a fine brisk afternoon, a fine day for sailing. There was a good strong wind behind them: behind the Interceptor too, of course, but she hadn't the sleekness and cunning of the Black Pearl, and so they'd catch her in the end.

He set the spyglass to his eye and sought out familiar faces on the deck of their prey. ... A flash of colour, there at the bow. Was that the girl, still in the crimson silk he'd let her wear?

Then someone slid between glass and distance, and Jack Sparrow was there, blocking his view, too near and too alive to be comfortable.

"I'm having a thought here, Barbossa," he called, over the rush of wind and wave. "What say we run up a flag of truce? I scurry over to the Interceptor and I negotiate the return of your medallion, eh? What say you to that?"

Barbossa could feel the charm, the old magic, radiating off him like heat. He was cursed, he reminded himself: he felt nothing: he would be, must be, could make himself immune.

"Now ye see, Jack," he said amicably, "that's exactly the attitude that lost ye the Black Pearl."

The sudden hurt on Jack's face almost felt good.

"People are easier to search when they're dead," said Barbossa, smiling broader; and over his shoulder to the Bo'sun, "Lock him in the brig."

He confiscated Jack's apple as the Bo'sun manoeuvred him towards the stairs, and for a moment he thought of biting into it. Maybe the lingering savour of Jack's mouth would work some magic, and let him taste again. Maybe he'd taste Jack's mouth, at one remove.

He hurled the apple overboard.

Half a mile ahead, and the Interceptor was almost within range of the bow-chasers. Her crew -- Jack Sparrow's latest recruits, no doubt retrieved from some Tortugan stew -- were jettisoning everything on board now, hurling barrels and crates overboard to lighten the vessel. Wasting their time, thought Barbossa with grim satisfaction. They'd never outrun the Black Pearl.

But they might yet reach the relative safety of the shallower water that lay on the port bow. Barbossa, glass to his eye, could see waves breaking white on a sandbar. He'd not take the Black Pearl in too close, though the Interceptor was already altering her course to make for that scant safety.

"Haul on the mainbrace!" he called. "Make ready the guns!" To the Bo'sun, he added, "And run out the sweeps!"

Most of the crew had been up on deck, watching the progress of their latest prize, but now the gun crews and the oarsmen headed for the lower decks, and within a minute Barbossa was almost alone. He raised the glass to his eye again and watched as the crew of the Interceptor worked frantically to escape. The girl -- Elizabeth -- was there by the helm, next to a young man who Barbossa was sure he'd seen before. Elizabeth was still wearing the crimson silk dress, and his hands twitched with the urge to rip it off her and reclaim it, ready for ...

Even above the noise of the guns being run out, he fancied he could hear the groan of the Interceptor's timbers as the starboard anchor caught and she was swung around, wrenched around, broadside on.

They were making a stand, damn them to hell. Barbossa acknowledged a little more respect for whoever was in command on board the other ship. It was a madman's strategy, but there was a certain glory to it.

"Retract the starboard oars!" he cried, and the Black Pearl began to come about, her momentum still carrying her towards the Interceptor. Barbossa could hear the gun crews cheering at the sight of their prey, calling out obscenities and suggestions to the scanty crew of the other ship.

Closer, closer ...

Barbossa drew his sword. "Fire!" he commanded, and heard the same command, like an echo, from the Interceptor.

The Black Pearl shuddered like an animal as the guns roared, but Barbossa did not bother to duck. The hull was holed already and still she sailed. And the Interceptor's shot was light and ineffectual, while the heavy chain-shot from the Black Pearl's guns wrought havoc on her deck.

They had no chance. The Black Pearl outgunned and outmanned them, and besides was protected by whatever strange deities watched over her. (Barbossa thought of Jack Sparrow in the brig, seeing nothing and hearing everything, and smiled to himself.)

"Grapnels at the ready! Prepare to board!"

After the first broadside, the Black Pearl's crew hurled grappling-irons into the rigging of the Interceptor, as much to hold her fast as to let them swing over to her deck. Fearsomely armed and invulnerable, they outnumbered the other vessel's crew. Barbossa stayed where he was, on board the Black Pearl, and bellowed orders to the crew: some of them to the powder magazine, others to search for the medallion. If that lying girl was on board, then Bill Turner's lost piece of Aztec gold would be there too.

The monkey jumped up and down on Barbossa's shoulder, squawking with excitement. Barbossa petted him. "Find the gold," he murmured to the little animal. "Bring me the gold." He pointed to the Interceptor and watched as the monkey climbed nimbly through the tangled rigging towards the hatch that led below deck.

Out of the corner of his eye he saw a familiar figure emerge from the companionway. Jack Sparrow! He had escaped the brig somehow, and now he was at liberty on a ship he knew as well as the back of his hand. Barbossa muttered an oath under his breath, and vowed to find the idiot who'd left Jack unguarded. Better to have locked him in the captain's cabin: better to have kept him here where Barbossa could see him. And yet that would be too much like the old days, back when Barbossa had been First Mate of the Black Pearl and Jack Sparrow had been her captain.

Barbossa squinted, and narrowed his eyes. He'd seen Jack swing across to the deck of the doomed Interceptor, he was sure of it, but what had drawn him there, and why? And where was he now? Barbossa put the glass to his eye again, but Jack Sparrow had disappeared. Oh, but there was the monkey, scrambling up through the holed deck and running towards the Interceptor's fallen mainmast. Barbossa strode across the deck to meet his pet.

Monkey-Jack scampered back along the felled mast, and those tedious months of training had been no waste: the creature bore the medallion in its tiny paw. Barbossa smiled to see Jack Sparrow follow his namesake, almost as nimble as the monkey. He remembered Jack springing aloft like a common sailor to reef the topsails in bad weather. He remembered feeling the stretch and flex of those muscles: and his smile thinned cruelly.

"Why, thankee, Jack," he said, sweet as pie, as the monkey leapt to his shoulder once more.

Jack Sparrow smiled, swift and insincere. "You're welcome."

"Not you," said Barbossa, enjoying this small victory. "We named the monkey Jack." Oh, that look of hatred: had he been mortal again, it would have warmed him and frozen him at once. It was the most honest thing to have passed between them these ten years and more.

But he'd given up honesty when he'd won the Black Pearl.

"Gents!" he cried to his bloodstained, disfigured crew. "Gents! Our hope is restored!"

Already the Interceptor was listing, and her paltry crew were tied and led aboard the Black Pearl. Pintel had gathered them all along the larboard side of the deck, where they'd see what became of the Interceptor, and see too that there was no hope. He and Ragetti were threatening them, empty threats for now. Barbossa stood apart from them, stroking the regained gold. The prisoners were watching him, but he paid them no attention.

Elizabeth, or whatever her name was, was watching the crippled ship as avidly as Barbossa himself: as though she had left all her hope on board. She still wore the crimson silk, though it was scorched and stained with gunpowder and blood. He saw Jack Sparrow notice that, and grow still for a moment as they bound his hands and hauled him off to stand with his old messmates.

And then the powder magazine blew, and the Interceptor broke and slipped, swiftly and almost silently, beneath the waves.

"Will!" screamed the girl, and the next moment she was shrieking incoherently and attacking Barbossa again, though without the benefit of a dinner-knife this time.

Barbossa held her off one-handed, enjoying the picture she made. The shrew had thought to fool him: well, she'd be paying for that for a while.

"Welcome back, Miss," he said, smiling. "You took advantage of our hospitality last time. Only fair now that you return the favour." And with a twist of his arm and a brutal shove in the small of her back, he consigned her to the crew.

They were all over her in a moment, fingers in her hair and on her skin, tracing the curve of her waist as though it still meant something. Perhaps it did. Perhaps it reminded them of gentler times. Or perhaps, like him, they could smell the scent of that night still fresh on the silk, and like himself they were driven mad by it.

Barbossa watched Jack Sparrow. It must surely remind him of that other mob-madness, the morning after the mutiny, when the crew that he'd hired had turned against him. Without Bootstrap Bill to stop them, their horseplay might have become murderous that day, and left nothing to maroon, nothing to sit and wait and set that curse. They wouldn't murder the girl: no profit in that for any of them, when they might sell her to the highest bidder. But profit had been far from their minds that night ten years ago, when Barbossa had called them to him and they'd come.

And then a voice from behind him called his name, and he turned to see another ghost.

This one walked in daylight like a man: and swam in the ocean like any sailor, too, for his hair and shirt were soaking wet. He stood on deck, pistol in hand, water streaming from him: and the crew shrank back as Elizabeth cried, "Will!"

"She goes free," the young man said to Barbossa, raising the pistol.

"What's in your head, boy?" Barbossa growled. He knew at once who this was: whose son he was. It was plain as moonlight. More mettle than his father, for sure. He had no shot-pouch at his waist, and no powder-horn: there'd be a single ball in the weapon, and then adieu sweet prince.

And yet he meant to go down fighting.

Barbossa saw the young man -- Will, she'd cried out -- glance at Jack Sparrow. Like father, like son: the boy was entrapped, sure enough, enchanted and delighted and half in love. So vulnerable. So human.

But it was the girl's liberty he'd asked for, not Jack's.

"She goes free!" he repeated, brandishing the pistol as though it were a sword.

"You've only got one shot," drawled Barbossa, "and we can't die."

There amongst the crew, Jack Sparrow grimaced at the lad, and mouthed something.

"You can't," said Will. Will Turner, his name would be. Barbossa was sure of it. "I can." And in a flash he'd leapt to the rail and turned the pistol on himself.

Jack Sparrow made a face.

"Who are you?" said Barbossa, for the sake of the slower ones. No matter who the boy's mother was: he'd taken after Bootstrap, and been named for him too. A mystery, now, how he'd ever taken the girl Elizabeth for Bootstrap's get --

And here was bloody Jack Sparrow, pleading the boy's case. "No one," he babbled. "He's no one. A distant cousin of my aunt's nephew, twice removed. Lovely singing voice, though. Eunuch."

He gestured.

Barbossa smiled tolerantly. Maybe the boy was Jack's catamite. Perhaps in those ten years Jack had acquired a taste for mastery all of his own, and he'd played out that same game with his old friend's son. The thought of the boy pleading with Jack to touch him (as Jack had pleaded with Barbossa himself, that night), of Jack relenting at last and taking him hard, made Barbossa restless and thirsty.

"My name is Will Turner," said the young man, with dignity. "My father was Bootstrap Bill Turner. His blood runs in my veins."

Jack Sparrow scowled and edged away.

"e's the spittin' image of Bootstrap Bill," murmured Ragetti, "come back to 'aunt us."

It was what Barbossa had thought, that first moment after Will Turner had called his name, and so he did not waste time on punishment.

"On my word," said Will, "do as I say, or I'll pull this trigger and be lost forever to Davy Jones' locker!"

From that angle he probably wouldn't miss, though even before the curse Barbossa had seen men survive worse. And nothing in the tales, forbye, to say the blood must be warm and living. But maybe 'twas better to have it so.

"Name your terms, Mr Turner," said Barbossa amiably.

"Elizabeth goes free," said Will hotly.

"Yes, we know that one," said Barbossa, becoming exasperated. "Anything else?"

Jack Sparrow was gesturing again, waving his arms around like some demented puppeteer.

"And the crew," said Will, obviously prompted. "The crew are not to be harmed."

"Agreed," said Barbossa, eyeing them. An unchancy lot, scarce worth the cost of feeding. And one of them a woman! He'd put them ashore in some quiet port. Let them tell stories of Barbossa the Merciful, for once.

There was a loud creaking noise as two of the men swung the plank into place. Barbossa smiled, watching the reactions of his prisoners. Some of them knew that sound, right enough: Jack Sparrow was frowning as though Barbossa had done something unexpected. Something wrong. Will Turner and the girl Elizabeth were blithely ignorant, like children who'd never been afloat before.

"Bring Miss ... well, missy," said Barbossa. "I'd guess that Turner's not your name after all. Unless you're crying out to your brother here through simple sisterly affection?"

That made her blush, but she lifted her chin defiantly.

"Bring the young lady," said Barbossa genially, "and let her inspect her new home as we approach." Sheer serendipitous fortune, to have been so near to this latitude when they'd caught the Interceptor: sheer fortune, or the Black Pearl's unnatural good luck. Jack Sparrow knew where they were, for sure, and he'd been looking askance at Barbossa ever since the shape of the island came clear.

Two or three of the men, with jovial bluster, led Elizabeth aft. Barbossa kept an eye on her, and was pleased to see her dismay when she set eyes on the small, remote island. Dismay that sharpened to horror when her captors guided her to the plank.

"Barbossa!" cried Will Turner. "You lying bastard! You swore she'd go free!"

Barbossa's temper was fraying, and he did not sugar his words. "Don't ye dare impugn me honour, boy," he said, low and nasty. "I agreed she'd go free. It was you who failed to specify when or where." He waved a hand at the crew. Someone produced a filthy rag from about his person and gagged Will, quick and efficient. Enough of that.

He took another long look at Elizabeth. Surely just the Turner lad's doxy, though with that fine talk and the disdain in her whole body ... Ah well. She'd stay where they left her, at least for a while. Chances were she'd be much friendlier by the time the Black Pearl returned.

"Though it does seem a shame to lose something so fine," he mused aloud. "Don't it, lads?"

They cheered him, though he doubted one in ten of them knew what he meant.

"So I'll be having that dress back afore ye go," he drawled, holding out his hand. Oh, let her refuse: let her make him fetch it. The simple power of the situation made him forget, for a moment, the shadow-feelings that the dress evoked.

Across the deck he met Jack Sparrow's eyes, and they were blacker than Hell.

And then the moment passed, and the crew were cheering and whistling appreciatively. Elizabeth fought her way free of the crimson silk as though it were a trap. Jack Sparrow had been more gentle with it, but he had taken his time, though Barbossa had been standing over him in the grey-lit cabin with a knife in each hand, newly declared Captain and ready to shed blood for it. Now he set his teeth at the sound of tearing silk. Her smell on it, and the smell of gunpowder ...

He'd be coming back this way before long. He'd have debts to collect once this curse was lifted and the Turner boy settled.

Elizabeth hurled the dress at him as though it were a filthy rag, but he caught it and cradled it and breathed deep while she stood there, poised above the ocean in her flimsy white petticoats.

All he could smell, despite the gunpowder and the sea air, was that night. Nothing would erase that night. Nothing was strong enough.

"Oooh, it's still warm," he crooned, remembering, and was rewarded by the disgust on Will's face above the gag.

Jack Sparrow looked back at him with a disdain that matched Elizabeth's.

The crew were becoming impatient. They needed their spectacle, their games.

"Off you go! Come on!" cried Twigg, and Elizabeth teetered and swung her arms wildly for balance.

"Too long!" roared the Bo'sun, and kicked the plank hard. Elizabeth overbalanced and fell, and Barbossa heard her hit the water shouting and spluttering. He did not care to watch: it was a game they'd played often enough before. Sink or swim, pretty maid, sink or swim.

He nodded again, and a couple of the men dragged Jack Sparrow up to the end of the plank.

"I'd really rather hoped that we were past all this," said Jack directly to him, as though they were discussing some mild misdemeanour alone, over dinner.

Barbossa looked at his old adversary. His old lover. He couldn't read Jack at all: had never been able to read him well, but sometimes Jack Sparrow was easy. Easy to read, easy to fool. Easy -- Barbossa's mouth twitched -- in other ways.

Ten years gone. Ten years of life for Jack Sparrow to learn from, hide behind, flaunt in Barbossa's face. Oh, he'd be keen enough, when Barbossa came back this way. Curse lifted or not, there were some things he would have from Jack Sparrow before the end.

He slung his arm over Jack's shoulders, and felt him flinch deliciously.

"Jack, Jack," he said, gently reproving. "Did you not notice? That bit of island is the same bit that we made you Governor of on our last little trip."

"I did notice," said Jack.

"Perhaps you'll be able to conjure up another miraculous escape," said Barbossa, smile widening. Were there sharks? The girl was still splashing and kicking: he could hear her. "But I doubt it," he added, drawing his sword.

Jack eyed the blade, and looked back at Barbossa. "Last time," he said, and Barbossa recognised the beginning of another tangle of words, "last time you left me a pistol with one shot."

"By the powers, you're right," said Barbossa genially. "Where be Jack's pistol?" he demanded. "Bring it forth!"

"Seeing as there's two of us," Jack went on, "a gentleman would give us a pair of pistols."

Barbossa chuckled at the sheer effrontery of the man. He let his eyes narrow. Maybe it was time to remind Jack of just how ungentlemanly he could be.

But if Jack had forgotten ... Well. His eyes said he had not. And there'd be time enough.

"It'll be one pistol as before," said Barbossa. "And ye can be the gentleman and shoot the lady and starve to death yourself."

And without more ado he hurled the pistol over the rail and into the sea.

For one brief moment there was that flash of hatred in Jack's eyes, and Barbossa wondered if he would feel it, after all, when the curse was lifted. Then Jack Sparrow had turned and dived, neatly, into the centre of the spreading ring of water where his pistol had sunk.

Barbossa did not wait to watch him surface. He turned, chuckling, and laughed aloud at the outrage on the Turner boy's face.

"To the brig with him!" he ordered. "And set course for the Isla de Muerta!"

The Black Pearl seemed to groan as she approached the island once more. Barbossa sprawled on the bed in the captain's cabin, listening to the noises of the ship that he'd won from Jack Sparrow at the price of his soul. Were the curse lifted, would the Black Pearl remain what she was -- a vessel of darkness, feared everywhere, faster and luckier than any other ship?

Would she remain his?

The ghosts were quiet tonight, and the monkey sat still on its perch and would not eat. Barbossa could not stop thinking of Jack Sparrow, and those instants of furious hatred that he'd let show. Jack had been a fool to trust his first mate, and a fool twice over and more to put himself in Barbossa's power, never mind how pleasant or how heated their hours together had been: but he seldom let his feelings show without reason.

And maybe his reasoning had been nothing more than the desire -- desire, aye, thought Barbossa longingly -- to show that he was still alive, uncursed, with heart and soul intact.

Oh, to see Jack Sparrow on his knees begging to be alive once more. To hold this power over him that he held over Barbossa and the crew who'd left him -- twice, now -- to die.

It would be easy, if the tales were true. If the gold were cursed for Cortez' crimes, and none of this death-in-life was punishment for what Barbossa had done to Jack Sparrow, after all. ... If the gold was cursed, and the Turner boy's blood would mend what was broken and restore what was taken ...why, then Barbossa might have his own curse lifted, and let Jack be fresh accursed. Then Barbossa would take the coin from him (for the curse would still be Jack's) and so hold, safe and powerful, his soul.

And Jack would do as he bade him.

It was ten years since he'd been inside another body, ten years since he'd felt warm flesh close around him, since he'd pushed inside someone, and fucked them, and come. That would have to be first, once Jack was in his power. He'd lie here on this bed and bid him strip. Jack being Jack, he'd refuse or resist, and Barbossa would have to remind him -- gently, oh, gently at the start -- of who was master now. He remembered the sight of Jack naked, the morning of the mutiny, stripping off the sweat-damp crimson silk. It had been tight across the shoulders, and he'd had to writhe and contort himself to get free of it. Barbossa had not offered to help. He had stood there, watching, feeling himself getting hard (he remembered the inconvenience it had been, with the men in an ugly mood and the act of mutiny still incomplete) all over again despite the hours he'd spent, spending himself in Jack, making Jack come even as he insisted, breathless and half-laughing, that he couldn't come any more.

Eventually Jack had stood there naked, face as impassive as a statue's, taking his shirt and breeches from the cupboard where he'd put them. Barbossa had told him to hurry, and Jack had glared at him and dressed without haste, covering up his scarred, tanned skin limb by limb, covering the bruises and the bites and the scratches that Barbossa had left on him. Sometimes he'd meant to mark Jack: at other moments during that long night, he'd seized onto Jack like a drowning man, conscious only of the sensations wracking him, and only Jack's surprised oath had brought him to the realisation of how hard he'd bitten, how tightly he was gripping Jack.

Barbossa turned restlessly. Enough of that night. Enough of the past. He wanted to think of the future, to imagine and dream and plan what would happen once he was alone with Jack Sparrow once more. He'd be free then, and Jack would be the one who, cursed, felt nothing. He'd take Jack hard, that first time, and watch those expressive dark eyes as he thrust quick and hot into Jack's body. Would Jack hate him for it? After all these years, after everything that had passed between them, would Jack feel nothing?

If he felt nothing, Barbossa would be the one to feel everything: his duty, almost, to seek pleasure to the point of exhaustion. He'd have Jack use his hands and his mouth, keeping it slow and dreamlike, and he'd lie back and sip good wine. Eat an apple. Have Jack feed him the apple. He remembered kissing Jack: no, he remembered the feeling of surprise at the sheer passion that kiss had aroused in him. That had been new, unknown: that had been all Jack, and Barbossa wondered if it would happen again, once Jack fell under the curse.

And after the kiss, what then? Half-asleep, he remembered Jack smiling at him, and the feel of Jack's hand cupping his balls and Jack's hot, agile mouth on his cock. The feel of it ...

And so slipped into sleep.

The Turner boy had spirit, Barbossa gave him that. Whatever the other prisoners, or the crew, had said to him of his father, he did not beg for mercy or try any of the tricks he'd doubtless learned from Jack Sparrow. He approached his fate -- perhaps too harsh a fate, but better safe, this time -- with dignity. They'd told him, it was clear, that he was to die: that all his blood was needed for the Aztec gold.

Barbossa did not care. Ten years on a fool's quest for this boy and the trinket his misguided father had sent him. It had profited Bootstrap not at all, and the younger Turner's death would be as much of a waste. Then it'd be back to that unnamed island to find Jack Sparrow and make him lift the curse: and Barbossa knew all the ways to make a man do anything he was bidden do.

Or if this Aztec tale were true, Bootstrap -- undrowned all these years -- might yet rise barnacled from the waves, intent on vengeance, seeking out those who'd sacrificed his son to the heathen gods.

Barbossa chuckled. He'd deal with Bootstrap Bill Turner when he made himself known, and not a moment before. He'd send him down to the depths again, and this time be certain of some extra holes to let the water in. Or he'd tell Bill that 'twas all a tale, his son lived. Or had been slain by Jack Sparrow.

They'd be getting thirsty, there on the island. He wondered if Jack would beg for water, or whether he'd drunk the ocean and run mad already. Pretty Elizabeth would be none so pretty with her skin wrinkled and scaly like a lizard's.

... Enough. They were gathered again in the cave that gleamed with gold. Will Turner was sprawled over the stone chest that held the rest of the cursed treasure: let his blood stain it all.

There were ghosts in the shadows, but Barbossa paid them no mind. They had been there before, ever since that first time. Sometimes they whispered: sometimes they said his name, or spoke in clear King's English for him alone. Some of them had voices that he knew. He ignored them all, and raised the knife.

"Begun by blood..."

The ghosts were picking up his voice and reflecting it, making it resonate, making the air crackle with tension.

"Excuse me," said Jack Sparrow. Jack Sparrow's ghost.

"By blood un --" Barbossa went on grimly.

"Jack!" cried Will, and Barbossa scowled. The boy, too, could see this ghost.

"It's not possible," he growled, straightening. The knife in his hand felt hot and hungry.

"Not probable," Jack corrected him, with that insufferable smile.

"Where's Elizabeth?" said Will, levering himself upright against the carved stone chest.

"She's safe," Jack said, projecting sweet reason, "just like I promised. She's all set to marry Norrington, just like she promised. And you get to die for her, just like you promised. So we're all men of our word, really -- except for Elizabeth, who is, in fact, a woman."

"Shut up!" said Barbossa. "You're next." An empty threat, but no one would know that. He pushed Will flat again, and leant back in to continue what he'd begun. Surely 'twas bad luck to leave a ritual incomplete.

From behind him he heard Jack say calmly, "You don't want to be doing that, mate."

Barbossa set his teeth. "No," he snarled, "I really think I do."

A beat, then: "Your funeral."

"Why don't I want to be doin' it?" demanded Barbossa.

"Well, because ... " Jack paused to remove the Bo'sun's hand from his shoulder, like a man brushing away a noisome insect. "Because the HMS Dauntless, pride of the Royal Navy is floating just offshore, waiting for you."

The pirates began to mutter, low and dangerous, a sound like swarming wasps. One thing to trick an adversary, and they'd all seen these two playing to win, before the mutiny and Jack's defeat: but it was quite another to be in league with the Navy, the Foe, the Law. Better the Devil than the King and his Navy. If Jack Sparrow had enlisted the help of the Royal Navy, death would be too good for him. And if he hadn't, how had he got past them without being captured himself?

"What's that got to do with the whelp?" cried Twigg.

"Nothing at all," said Jack. "Nothing to do with the whelp whatsoever, at all. Nothing to do with me, either, though I'm sure they'd like to stretch my neck for me."

"How unreasonable," said Barbossa. "What's your point, Jack Sparrow? What brings you back here?"

"Well," said Jack, "it's all down to that bloody girl you left me marooned with."

"Would you have preferred the young gentleman, then?" purred Barbossa, gesturing at Will Turner.

"The young gentleman," said Jack, rather scornfully, "wouldn't have decided to attract the notice of the next passing ship by setting fire to the food and the shade. Oh no. He'd have done something much less ... practical."

His gaze rested on Will for a moment, and Barbossa thought Jack's sneer held some affection.

"So she lit a beacon and the Navy came for you," he said. "A likely tale."

Jack chuckled and spread his hands. "Can it be that none of you gentlemen were ever formally introduced to the young lady?" he said, turning to smile at the crew.

"She said her name was Elizabeth Turner," said Pintel.

"It weren't, though," said Ragetti.

"Silence!" Barbossa thundered. "Her name?" he asked.

"The young lady you were so keen to be rid of?" said Jack, eyebrows raised.

"Aye," said Barbossa heavily. "The young lady in the crimson silk."

Jack Sparrow shot him a look of annoyance. "That was Elizabeth Swann," he said, addressing the crew as much as Barbossa himself.

The men muttered.

"Swann," said Barbossa. "That'd be the Governor's kin, then."

"Aye," said Jack. "His daughter. I'm sure he'll be overjoyed to see her safe. In fact," he paused, as though only just coming to it, "he'd probably have paid a fine ransom, had she fallen into the wrong hands. The man who held her might have asked for his heart's desire."

"Then it's as well that my heart's desire is nothing that Governor Swann can provide," said Barbossa, and he smiled his sharpest smile at Jack.

"Fortunate, really," said Jack after a moment; but Barbossa had seen him flinch. "So, as I was saying ..."

He glared at the crew, and their muttering subsided.

"As I was saying, HMS Dauntless came along and plucked us from the very jaws of death. Their commander, an unholy devil named Norrington -- seven feet tall, and his eyes turn red when he's in a temper ... let him stand up properly," he said to the men holding Will, as the boy began to splutter and cough. "Weak chest. Eunuch, did I mention? Anyway, Norrington forced me to disclose the position of the Isla de Muerta. I swear I had no idea that you were headed straight for it, mate," he added, hands up in a parody of surrender even before Barbossa had drawn breath. "So here we are. And though Miss Swann is engaged to be married to Commodore Norrington, she remains fond of young Mr Turner, whose delightful singing brightened many an afternoon when they were children. So she helped me escape while the watch was being changed, so I could come and warn you all. And here I am."

He turned on his heel, bowing to the crew and to Barbossa. Will Turner was red in the face, and did not meet Jack's gaze, but at least he'd stopped coughing

"And why shouldn't we simply kill you now, Jack Sparrow?" said Barbossa coldly. "You've warned us, and we'll be sure to take care of the Navy before we take care of young Mr Turner and break the curse. So what need have I of you?"

"Only you can answer that," said Jack, looking steadily back at him. "Only you."

Something in Barbossa's chest lurched. Jack knew. Jack knew his plan.

But that wasn't possible.

"Tell us what you're planning, then," said Barbossa. "Unless you don't have a plan after all?"

There was laughter from the crew.

"Just hear me out, mate," said Jack, and Barbossa thought of the sticky threads of a web, catching and dulling and trapping. "You order your men to row out to the Dauntless. They do what they do best." He gestured, and some of the men chuckled and made approving noises. Barbossa watched them narrowly. Fickle as the wind and twice as treacherous. "Robert's your uncle, Fannie's your aunt, there you are with two ships -- the makings of your very own fleet. 'Course," he went on, turning towards Barbossa and spreading his hands like a fortune-teller at the fair, "you'll take the grandest as your flagship, and who's to argue? But what of the Pearl?" The lilting, seductive voice dropped. "Name me captain, I'll sail under your colours, I'll give you ten per cent of me plunder, and you get to introduce yourself as ... Commodore Barbossa. Savvy?"

And your knife'll find its home in me heart before the month is out, thought Barbossa to himself. Unless I trap you in turn. Unless you're in my power.

"I s'pose in exchange ye want me not to kill the whelp," he said.

"No, no," said Jack, gesturing dismissively. "By all means kill the whelp. Just ... not yet."

Barbossa watched his gaze slide sideways to meet Will's indignant glare. Whatever else Jack Sparrow had planned, this was not part of it. Or perhaps Will Turner was learning, too late, that Jack Sparrow was never to be trusted: never, unless you had leverage to use.

"Wait to lift the curse," Jack was saying, "until the opportune moment. For instance --" He picked up a handful of coins, and Barbossa tensed, but at once Jack threw most of them back. "For instance, after you've killed Norrington's men. Every --"

Clink!

"--last --"

Clink!

"-- one."

Clink! went the last of the coins.

"You've been planning this from the beginning!" Will said indignantly. "Ever since you learned my name!"

Jack Sparrow looked at him rather pityingly. "Yeah."

"I want fifty per cent of your plunder," Barbossa interrupted, before Will's accusations could become more detailed.

"Fifteen," retorted Jack at once.

"Forty."

"Twenty-five. And I'll buy you a hat, a really big one," said Jack. And then his voice dropped, and he was looking up at Barbossa through those long, dark lashes, as much of a flirt as any Tortuga whore, and prettier than half of them.

"Commodore," he said softly. An invitation.

Barbossa could have laughed. Something grabbed at where his heart used to be -- no, at the base of his spine -- no, somewhere, somewhere ... It was like a promise. And Jack Sparrow was looking at him with that smile that was almost honest...

"We have an accord," Barbossa said, and he reached out and took Jack's hand.

Ah, he remembered the feel of this hand, the heat of it. Shaking hands was nothing, a gentleman's agreement, a gesture of polite society. But what he remembered, and what he knew he had felt ...there was nothing polite about that.

Then Jack drew away, and turned to the crew. "All hands to the boats!" he commanded, spreading his hands wide like a conjuror.

Barbossa growled, very low, and glared.

"I apologise," Jack said hastily, raising his clasped hands like an obedient servant. "You give the orders."

Barbossa smiled, though it was not his most genial smile. That sleight-of-hand with the coins had given him time to think, and if this were truly a trap then he'd found the way to spring it.

"Gents!" he ordered. "Take a walk."

"Not to the boats?" protested Jack, almost timidly; and Barbossa smiled that pitying smile, the one Jack had bestowed on Will.

The game was his.

The gleam of the gold lit Jack Sparrow's face from beneath, making his expression more impenetrably demonic. Barbossa watched him as he wandered through the cave, eyes hungry for the gold that -- had things turned out differently -- he'd have claimed.

He hadn't asked Barbossa for a share of this ten years' treasure, and that rang false.

They were waiting, now; waiting for the crew to return with bloodthirsty tales of the Navy men they'd scragged. Or waiting for the Navy to burst in and kill whosoever could be killed. Surely they wouldn't let Jack Sparrow live, even if he'd plotted the Black Pearl's downfall -- no, Barbossa's downfall -- with them?

He wanted to be there when Jack Sparrow faced death. He wanted to see Jack smile.

He counted himself a clever man; yet Jack Sparrow was unknowable, now. Those ten years he'd lived, escaping from the island by some improbable trickery -- Barbossa would not demean himself by asking again -- had changed him in ways that Barbossa did not understand. Not yet.

"I thought I had ye figured," Barbossa said at last. "It turns out that you're a hard man to predict."

"Me?" said Jack brightly, turning back to face him across the cave. "I'm dishonest, and a dishonest man you can always trust to be dishonest." He smiled that showman's smile again, the one that he'd worn that far-off day in the Faithless Bride, mocking the Aztec curse. "Honestly! It's the honest ones you want to watch out for, because you can never predict when they're going to do something incredibly ... stupid."

One day Jack would follow a beat that wasn't the rhythm of his own words, the sound of his own voice. But as he finished speaking, he whirled and grabbed the sword from the nearest man. One kick sent him flying. Another sword, and this he threw to Will, who was still bound. Who was, Barbossa realised, suspiciously quiet.

They couldn't have planned this. There hadn't been time. And yet, and yet ... Will had expected that.

Barbossa was Jack's master, with the sword: always had been, when they'd fenced before, though they had never truly fought one another with anything other than words or fists. A shame, that. One he'd have to remedy. He leapt forward, parrying Jack's attack.

Jack Sparrow's swordplay had improved in that ten years. Within moments he'd sliced the feather from Barbossa's hat, with a smile of such impudence that Barbossa roared and redoubled his attack. That wiped the smirk from Jack's face and made him guard himself more carefully. Easy, though, to force him to retreat: to back him against the rock wall of the cavern, and relish the hitch in his breath at Barbossa's leer.

"You're off the edge of the map, mate. Here be monsters."

From moment to moment, fighting, he watched Jack move. Jack Sparrow fighting for his life was something that Barbossa had seen before: but then, it had never been himself who was Jack's opponent. And even now, surely, they might come to some accord. Jack dead would be a waste. Jack living, or -- better -- half-living, in his power: now that was a prize worth fighting for.

And Jack might yet be the one to lift the curse. The curse that Barbossa wore now like armour, saving him from impetuous lunges and from the burn of his breath in his lungs. A curse that let him fight as though he would never grow tired.

Jack was tiring, he could see it. He wanted to force Jack down, to master him again. Again? The image was as rich as ever in his mind's eye. Best not to think of that night, now. But he became angry, kept from that by Jack's vain defence.

"You can't beat me, Jack," he said at last, drawing breath to offer some compromise: and, without any hesitation at all, Jack drove his sword right through Barbossa's body.

He could feel the cold metal running through him, and he could see the bloodlust in Jack Sparrow's heart. And suddenly he was tired after all, not in his body but in his ... not his soul, for that'd gone ten years ago. His heart, perhaps. Perchance simply his mind.

He sighed, and drew the sword free, and lunged forward to skewer Jack Sparrow.

He felt nothing.

Jack stared down at the sword that impaled him, eyes wide and dark and agonised. All of a sudden it was eerily quiet: the clatter of swords from across the cavern had stopped, and Barbossa saw Will stand stock-still, eyes fixed on Jack Sparrow.

Then Jack staggered back into the moonlight. And Barbossa understood the game that Jack was playing.

Jack raised his hand and swivelled his wrist, admiring the play of blue light on bone. "That's interesting," he said, and there was the familiar glimmer of gold in his mouth.

And oh, he'd played into Barbossa's own hand now. The gold! 'Twas the gold, for sure, at last; 'twas the cursed Aztecs and their gloomy shark-toothed gods who'd doomed the Black Pearl's crew these ten years gone.

And Jack Sparrow, who had not cursed them after all, was Barbossa's, fairly won, to do with as he wished. An easy thing, once they were both free of the curse, to trap Jack back into it. There he was, bones gleaming in the moonlight, taunting them all with a fool's lack of fear. He'd not spent ten years learning to live half-dead. He thought it a game, still. Tricked or promised or simply forced, he'd take another coin from the chest and be damned. Be Barbossa's.

Even now Jack flipped a coin -- Cortez' own, like his damned compass -- from finger to finger. Will was staring at them both, wide-eyed, as though ...

As though Jack had betrayed him somehow.

"Couldn't resist, mate," said Jack to Will, and Barbossa wanted just that easy camaraderie again. After all these years, surely something would remain?

But already he saw the answer in Jack's eyes: there was no hiding, without flesh to hide behind.

Barbossa roared and brought up his own blade, and Jack perforce freed his from between his ribs. He parried, barely, and leapt back from Barbossa's scything blow.

Jack Sparrow, new to immortality, was still fighting for his life; he defended and feinted like a man who could be killed. Even the pain dimmed quickly, Barbossa remembered: soon enough it had become the mere knowledge of pain, a sensation through thick wool or like an ice-numbed hand clumsily touching something precious; wood, skin, gold.

But still, there'd be no end to this.

Barbossa let Jack's thrust bear him down until he lay sprawled over the stone chest where the cursed gold lay. He looked up at Jack.

"So what now, Jack Sparrow? Will it be we two immortals locked in an epic battle, until Judgment Day and the trumpets sound?"

"Or you could surrender," said Jack, quick and light, and he twisted out from Barbossa's hold and fled once more.

No use, he realised at last, to fight Jack. But Jack had shown his weakness, back before the curse. His weaknesses.

The Turner boy and his irritating wench (where had she sprung from?) had subdued the other pirates -- and that was a dirty fight indeed, curse or no -- and they were living still, almost unscathed. Will Turner was standing by the stone chest now, and he was watching the two of them fight.

No: watching Jack Sparrow.

Something sparkled in a beam of moonlight, something gold: something that Jack had thrown to Will.

Gold. Cursed gold.

Barbossa dragged the pistol from his belt and levelled it at Elizabeth as she came towards him. From the corner of his eye he could see her teetering on a rock mid-pool, precarious as on the plank the day before.

And then something small and cold and dull pushed fast through his coat, his shirt, his skin, his pectoral muscles, and homed in on the memory of that night. The ache, any road, was the same.

He turned his head and stared at Jack Sparrow.

"Ten years you carried that pistol," said Barbossa, caught between contempt and bewilderment, "and now you waste your shot."

But Jack was looking at him so ... so ... what was that feeling? That burn...

Will Turner said, "He didn't waste it." And, though it was unaccountably difficult, Barbossa turned and watched the two gold coins -- varnished red -- fall back into the chest.

That meant ... that meant ... curse this slowness, this ache! He pulled his coat open, and the cold of the cavern bit into his skin like a shark, like an Aztec god: all teeth and eagerness. There was a red blossom above the place his heart had been, and a ringing in his ears.

When he looked at Jack again, he could see the curse lifted. Jack was ablaze with life, burning with it, burning up; hot enough to melt every coin in that confounded...

Jack met his gaze. The ten years were all there in his eyes.

"I feel ... cold," Barbossa said. He wanted to go towards Jack, to warm himself on Jack, but the cold gripped him with its teeth and would not let go. He wanted to look away, but that would be a lie.

The darkness bore in, but the blaze was still there, just out of reach.

-end-