pirate_gibbs | Christmas on the Pearl

Christmas on the Pearl

The Captain's quarters are set. The large desk has been cleared of Jack's personal goods. The rest of the room is neat and orderly, as it tends to be (much to Gibbs' constant surprise). Whatever chairs can be found belowdecks have been dragged up by the first mate, creating a cozy feel.

The desk and the larger chests are covered with oilcloth, which serve as crude tablecloths. The ship's hodgepodge of dishes, cups and silverware, plundered from many ports and ships, sit near a selection of traditional holiday treats, from ham to mincepie. At the center of the desk, there is a crystal decanter with a gold nameplate saying "Captain Jack Sparrow", filled with red wine, surrounded by matching glasses.

And there is a small, sparsely decorated tree in a corner near the hammock.

It's Christmas on the Black Pearl. Welcome.

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"I assure you," and it's very dry, "that things were run very well with a woman at the helm."

Alanna quirks an eyebrow, every inch the proud knight. But Gibbs will be Gibbs, and she soon smiles.

"I had to convince him to take on the job. But yes, we still work closely together. I only stepped down because I'm needed at home. Tortall's crops failed last year, and things have been uneasy ever since."

Laughing, she pokes him in the arm and nods.

"Aye, though you lot hold a special place in my heart, I'm honor-bound to treat you as I would any patron. But as long as you don't try to kill anybody, I don't see it being a problem."

"I don't think anyone has mentioned Barbossa," she explains. "I've told him the rest."

She frowns.

"He laughed."

"You know better than that, Alanna. A good pirate never had to resort to killin'. Indeed, a truly good pirate never has to resort using violence. A man like Jack, all he has to do is just say his name." In theory.

"But I'll watch myself."

Gibbs shakes his head. "This doesn't bode well."

She eyed the image curiously, then nodded "That looks so much friendlier than the one I have" she noted. Was that relief in her tone?

Yes, probably.

"Do you know anyone who needs a sword? It's...shiny...but creepy."

Rachel tilted her head slightly at the stiff, reserved tone, but her grin didn't waver in the least. "Rachel Grey" she offered in kind, as much definition in the tone as name.

"And I'm not surprised we haven't met, I seem to be good at missing people. I'm sorry." she actually seemed to mean those words.

"He didn't really have anything else on his mind" she offered softly, yes, in answer to things unspoken. "The Pearl was free of the lake for a little while, and he thought it a good way to repay..." she shrugged. Not that she'd meant to intrude, she was simply quick to defend friends.

Then she tilted her head, bird-like in her curiosity "Barbossa?" she asked, certain there was a story in there somewhere.

Did she hear his thoughts? No, that cannot be. And anyone who could hear thougts would no doubt be driven to distraction by Jack's. Besides, Gibbs has more imoprtant matters to address.

"The captain has never told you of Barbossa? It's quite a tale, and one that I would have guessed...but's there's never any tellin'w ith Jack.

"Barbossa was the traitor who turned the crew of the Pearl against Jack and took his ship, more than a decade ago. Before I ever knew him."

No, Gibbs simply thought loud, no reading needed? And jack...was only distracting when one was inflexible..."Nope, he never came up" she admitted, sliding close enough to be in polite listening range and leaning against the wall comfortably.

"Mutiny?" she asked simply. She knew that term at least. "Did he get it back before or after you teamed up with him?"

"Mutiny. Which Jack says is the worst sin a man can commit." Gibss has no idea why, having never read Dante. "They left Jack on a desert island to die, and went after the treasure of Isla del Muerte without him.

"For ten years, he schemed to get his ship back, and when the moment arrived, I was the first man he recruited.

"But there was more to it than that. For Barbossa, in betraying his captain, sealed his own fate and that of the treacherous louts in that crew. They were cursed!"

"There are worse out there I think" she noted after a moment. "Sins I mean. I've seen them" there was the hint of blood on the tongue, thick and warm as she said that, but it faded quickly.

"Did Jack have them cursed?" it was a valid question after all "And that's why he plotted for ten years or was it an outside force?"

"No, though if Jack could have cursed them, he would have. The cruse was on the Aztec gold. On a treasure stolen from Montezuma by the Spanish, and cursed by the Aztecs. When Barbossa and his men began spending the treasure, they were doomed to walk the earth as little more than the undead, seeming whole until the light of the moon shone down on them, when their hideous skeletal forms were seen by all!" Gibbs represses a smal shudder at his memory of the monsters.

"In a way, Barbossa did Jack a favor by sparing him the curse. But Jack was still without a ship, and under Barbossa's inhuamn command the Pearl cut a swath of violence and plunder across the Caribbean for many a year."

"Skeletons..." Rachel mused, gaze distant as she rolled that idea over in her mind. "Undead tend to burn well, or you could grind them to dust..."

She did snap her attention back to the present though, and offer a flickering smile "I once met a shaman who could curse objects...but it took a lot out of him to do so. It must have taken a whole people to curse the gold enough to effect an entire crew." she reached out a hand to squeeze his shoulder gently, offered comfort in response to the implied horrors of the tale.

"So they became nightmares, and Jack recruited you...what then? You went after them?"

"A whole people apparently did inflict this curse. The Spanish were as treacherous as Barbossa, as they always have been." You can take the sailor out of the Royal Navy, but you can't take the hatred of Spain, Bourbons and the Catholic Church out of Gibbs. "Indeed, his very name says heis one of them.

"Jack had a plan. He knew that to lift the curse, Barbossa needed the blood of every man who had used the gold. But one man was lost to Davey Jones' lokcer." More literally than even Jack had suspected. "Jack, however, knew where the son of that man could be found. And he schemed to strike a false deal with Barbossa, where he would lift the curse, and then kill Barbossa, no longer made undead and quite vulnerable to the one bullet in Jack's gun." And as Gibbs tells the tale, he realizes that - like everything Jack touches - what sems simple had become highly complicated.

She listened intently now, not to the words themselves it seemed, but the hatred behind them. " I don't know much about the Spanish" or the English really, though more the latter than the former. Rachel...simply wasn't good with history. "But I think I pity them"

That stated, she slowly felt her way through the tangle of the rest of the tale. "Jack found bait" she simplified "That could lift the curse, then shot Barbossa when the curse lifted. Sounds almost like something some of my past leaders would have cooked up." Rachel wasn't so much for complex plans.

"And the happy little details left out were: you and the living crew...and the rest of the undead crew in the mean time. That couldn't have been fun."

"Jack was always good at finding ways to make things work." When you don't understand a Captain Jack Sparrow plan, just go along. "And in the end, the curse was lifted, the Pearl was ours, and Jack had here back in his command." Let's skip over taking the ship and leaving Jack to hang, Gibbs can't even bring himself to think.

"But before that happened...yes, we did face Barbossa's undead crew, and they bested us. It was to our great luck that undead or not, most of them were piss poor sailors, and worse pirates. And that the Royal Navy took the brunt of the battle."

"I'm glad to hear it," Alanna says with a grin, patting him on the back. "It's certainly not something we should trouble ourselves with this evening, I imagine. I'm only sad that I can't drink rum with the rest of you. I don't suppose you have anything else?"

She casts a hopeful eye toward the food area.

"I have one of those myself," she remarks, shaking her hand until the image disappears. "I can't think of anybody offhand, but you can leave it with me if you wish. It wouldn't be the first disturbing sword I've mastered."

Her brows knit together in a frown as she remembers Roger's sword.

"It doesn't, does it?"

Tone dry, Elizabeth narrows her eyes and looks away, watching the shoreline.

"Did Jack say to invite me or was that you?" Elizabeth asks lightly.

Taken aback by the apology, Elizabeth smiles slightly and laughs as if she isn't sure what to say.

"A friend of Jack's?"

Raven, of late, has been most used to talking with Jack Sparrow while--

Well, while being much smaller and more of the female persuasion.

But sometimes he can be almost polite, and so it is that the gangly figure in the blue jeans and black coat is likely familiar.

And tall.

And male.

And hungry.

Hopefully he is also good company.

She shrugged slightly, careful not to dislodge Alanna's arm though "It's not magical or anything, was just in a pretty evil place full of evil people." she remarked.

"And it's lighter than it should be" she added after a moment.

The slightest bit of Jack's madness, or perhaps it was amusement, leaked into her smile "Yep." the careful, reserved manner still doesn't elude Rachel though.

"You?" she asked softly.

"He reminds me of a person the team once knew. Had an uncanny ability for luck..." she chuckled. That was as much key to any of Jack's plans, it seemed, as proper planning.

"Well, I'm guessing it's not easy to find a real crew that will follow someone into mutiny and a curse" she noted. "Did they come back after being defeated? Is that why the Pearl's here?"

"There's water. And I think that perhaps the Captain has some wine." Gibbs leads the way to the food...

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