Another Day in a Life or Two

 

AnaMaria had died a rather noble death for a pirate. After leaving the Black Pearl to Captain her own ship, she had been killed while fighting to the end against the East India Trading Company and the Royal Marines. In the end, she had lost her crew and was losing the battle, leading the marines to the armoury, stabbed a hole to one of the crates containing gunpowder and finally drawing her flintlock to ignite the explosion big enough to take everything she loved, and hated, with her. 



When Will had sailed the Dutchman to take them to their eternities, AnaMaria had stomped her way to the helm immediately after boarding, gripped the wheel and inquired as to the bearings of the next port from the sailors who stood there gaping at her.



Since then, she had been a part of the crew of the Dutchman. After Will’s father had chosen to move on, she’d been the First Mate.  Decidedly an obvious choice for a maid of honour...

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“A marriage is meant to be permanent. It is designed to unite two people, who wish to live together, who wish to create a fortune future and a home together.”



“Before these witnesses here, I ask you, Jack Sparrow, do you take this man, William Turner, to be your lawfully wedded husband, and promise to have him and hold him, in sickness and in health?”



“Aye.” Jack said in a strong voice. 



The crew roared and catcalled clapping their hands. 



Jack turned slightly to give the crew a lecherous grin.



The clerk quirked his eyebrow and hesitation showed on her face. 

Jack leaned forward to whisper;  “Means ‘yes‘…go on.” He rolled his wrist in the air to create some life to the woman.



The clerk gathered from her confusion and continued.



“Before these witnesses here, I ask you, William Turner, do you take this man, Jack Sparrow, to be your lawfully wedded husband, and promise to have him and hold him, in sickness and in health?” 



Will couldn’t help himself and a snicker sounded off from him. Must be the nerves.



“Aye.” He looked at Jack and snickered again.



He looked up to the clerk and his blushing appearance was nigh but one of a schoolboy who had been caught putting a stud on the teachers chair, and still thought it was the best goddamn joke in the universe.



The crew was laughing, roaring, stomping their feet and whistling in the backround.



Jack bit his lower lip hard trying not to join in the apparent hysteria and not let out the snort that was building in his throat. Nerves.



The clerk shook her head slightly and saw it best to just continue.

“Now that you have both responded positively to the question asked, I pronounce you as spouses to each other as from this moment on.”



The clerk leaned slightly forward to refer to Jack. “Do you have rings to exchange?”



“Ah, yes.” 



He reached for his vest pocket and took out a small green box. “There’s one in your pocket too, luv.” He nodded to Will, who rolled his eyes at Jack. Of course there was, where else would it be.



Will reached to get the box out of his pocket and opened it, and what ever mania had still lingered in him, was swept away. 



A smooth, simple band made of what seemed to be platinum, was laying there on the padding. The ring was as chaste as Will himself, and he knew that there wouldn’t be anything more suitable for him to bind Jack to him with. 



Jack had opened his box too, and the ring laying there was stunning in it’s graceful, and yet sturdy beauty. It was a golden band that had circling swag engraved around it. And where the vines met, was a small black pearl planted there. 

It wasn’t anything glamorous, or lavish. It was different from any other jewellery Will had ever seen, and like his ring for Jack, this ring was perfect for its purpose.



The crew had fallen silent as the grave. This was not the time for bawdiness.



“You, Jack Sparrow. Take this ring from your husband, as a token of your marriage and his love.”



Will’s hands were shaking visibly, but he managed to go through the tasks of taking the ring off the box, taking Jack’s hand and slipping the ring on Jacks ring finger without dropping it. He stared at the hand in his, and even as it seemed a hint unfamiliar without the other rings on it, it was a hand he knew better than his own. And now it was his by the laws of man.



He lifted his eyes to meet Jack’s, and the face he met was filled with love. 

Will saw tears forming in the corners of Jack’s eyes, and the flash of realizing what this meant to the man, caused a deafening, inner scream as the rusty hinges of the door inside him wailed when the was rammed open. He had thought he understood before. He hadn’t.



Will was petrified. All the revelation and emotion tried to turn to an expression at once, turning the man in to living, breathing stone. 

“Jack…” Will whispered around the invisible hands that were strangling him. He was trying to apologize for what a fool he had been when he’d hurt his lover, meaning to chase him away. It was only now that Will could fully accept the fact that he was loved by this man with more than just his heart and his soul. Jack had tried to tell him, but he hadn’t listened. He had been too desperate to belong, to devote himself to Jack, to his duty, to this world, that he had been blind to the equal desperation that Jack held within him. In Will’s deepest being, Jack walked through the door and carefully shut it behind him.





The hands of time crept their bony fingers along Jack’s spine and made him break the moment he had wanted for forever.



“Shh, luv. My turn.” Jack stroke Will’s wrist gently and Will let go the death grip he had been clenching on Jack’s hand, almost stopping the circulation. 

Without another word, Jack nodded at the clerk as a sign to continue. 



The clerk swallowed a lump from her throat. She had never before witnessed a wedding where there were every kind of emotion in the air, thick enough to cut with a knife. 

There was definitely something strange about these people, more even then their names and their guests.





“You, William Turner. Take this ring from your husband, as a token of your marriage and his love.”



For Jack, time was once more warped. His time-space- continuum seemed to be composed of almost touchable nanoseconds, every one of them staying still for him to awe upon. Watching Will blink his eyes, breath, noticing a sheen of sweat formed on his forehead, were among the most fantastic things he’d ever seen. The man was so alive, so present and real, making everything else seem a confusing blur of fiction. Jack had never been this proud of himself. He belonged to Will, with everything he had, and Will was going to have him. 



With a movement that Jack thought was amazingly, immensely slow, he took the ring from the box, and for a hundred years he was sure that it was taking him too long to do this, that the sun had already gone down, that they had missed their cue and that Will was going to burst into flames or otherwise shrivel to a horrible death in front of his eyes for being on land.

He swallowed and took a breath to chase away the thought.



Jack held Will’s hand and put the ring on his finger, pressing it down firmly, feeling around it to make sure it was going to stay there, that this wasn’t just some incredibly beautiful fantasy and he was forced to wake up from it any moment now. He didn’t want to wake up, if that was the case. Of course he wanted to wake up, he wanted another day. No. Yes.



Then it was Will’s turn to offer a path out of the never-ending circles of mind as he tenderly brushed Jack’s cheek to sweep away a drop of moisture that had somehow found it’s way down from his eye.



Eyes focusing back to the realm everybody else were at, Jack made what sounded like a remarkable discovery. 



“William.”



For another heart beat Jack was lost.



Then he found the question he hadn’t answered before. It was time to answer it properly.



“I do understand. I‘ll never go.”



Looking at his husband, his hand in Will‘s, his hand in Jack‘s and then the same all the way around, Jack felt his heart swelling with unpronounceable joy. 



He felt time looping back to its track along with the gigantic peculiar feeling of something been just moved to its rightful place in the world. 

He remembered that feeling from the night when Will had come to the Black Pearl to join his crew, so very long time, yet so very few moments ago.



“Jack.” 



Will’s expressions had taken a certain course and was now showing, with a very gleaming set of eyes and a dangerously lop-sided grin, that there were better activities than standing here, in front of all these people. 



“Captain Sparrow, mind if we take this somewhere else?” 



The curve of his brow dictated what was to be done next and Jack obediently obliged.



“Aye, Captain Turner!” Jack pulled himself to attention and turned to the clerk, startling her from intently following their faces and their dialogue. 



“Look lively, wench!“



The command made the clerk actually jump.



“We have places to be, plundering to do, err…booty to collect!”



The woman only stared at Jack suspiciously, not exactly sure whether to call for help of just start running right now. 



Jack tried to keep a straight face and leaned towards the woman again, rolling his wrist, again.

“Means, ‘Please, continue, we’re in kind of a hurry.’” 



The polite tone of Jack made the woman kick start back to the business at hand. With these weirdoes these days, you better dance to their tune. You never know if it might save your life.



Keeping an eye on Jack, flicking his eyes on Will every now and then, just in case, she did what she was asked to do.



“As spouses, you are equal. Show your love, trust and respect to each other every day, and work together towards your joint prosperity.”



She felt a little more secure now that the men had again started staring in each others eyes with somewhat stupid grins on their faces.



“By the power vested in me by the authorities of this city, I now pronounce you married.”



Thanking her maker, the clerk folded the paper she had been cribbing from.

“You may now kiss.”



“Finally!”

Jack scooped Will on his arms and latched his lips on the slightly younger one’s as if he‘d only now had been given the permission to do so for the very first time. 



The crew burst into a howling, leering and cat-calling applause, some of them even hugging each other out of the sheer merriment.



Once Jack released Will, there was a book shoved between them.



The clerk was holding the book up along with a marriage agreement and a pen.

“You have to sign these. Then it’s over.”



Will took the book and the papers as Jack grabbed the pen. Jack was first to speak. Smiling, he winked at the nervous woman and if he had a hat, he would have tipped it.

“No, milady, it’s not over…”



With a small dignified bow, Will finished, 

“…It’s the beginning.”


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