The door to the cabin cabin swung open, slamming against one of the chests inside of the cabin and making the whole deck quiver. For a moment each member of the crew from young lad to veteran stopped to await their Captain and experienced the consequences of his vile mood but then, when the woman appeared, they stiffened.
"You really are a slimy bilge rat!" Nicolette did not stop, nor did she slow. The words were called out over her shoulder to an invisible figure still hiding in the shadows as she rounded the stairs and quickly ascended, going towards the helm.
Gibbs, who was holding the Pearl steady on that previously delightful morning froze when she appeared near him, fighting to keep his eyes on the horizon. It was as if she was Medusa and he was afraid to be turned into stone, he never once even glanced her way.
Below them, a half dressed Jack finally stumbled out of the cabin, shouting blindly at the empty main deck and tucking the ends of his shirt into his breeches. "At least I'm not a wound up, pompous strumpet!" Opening his eyes, he did a double take at the half a dozen men watching him before snarling and quickly glancing around for her. He caught a glance of her boot and scowled, skipping to follow her up to his, HIS, helm.
Nic was awaiting him, arms crossed tightly over her chest and one foot tapping out a quick, irritating rhythm. When he came into view, she scoffed. "Me! Ha! You are..." There were no words for what he was. How on earth had she forgot this part of his vile personality? The part which made her skin itch and crawl with how irritated he made her, the part which genuinely made her want to kill him, oh how she would love to kill him. "I'm not the one who knows the entire population of whores in each port across this wretched world!"
Jack suddenly stopped and stilled apart from the ever present gentle sway which made his look like his bones were melting. The anger melted from his eyes and in its place rose amusement. Why is gods name was he now grinning at her?
"Jealous love?"
That did it. It was confirmed, Jack Sparrow was a mule, a drunken stubborn dirty mule.
Nic tapped for a moment, perhaps two, and then finally snapped. With quick steps she crossed the deck to stand toe to toe with Jack - smirk suddenly gone. "What is wrong with you!"
She rose a hand, reeling it back to slap him but when it came to release it she couldn't. She was too mad and slapping him would not be enough. The mere thought of cocking her pistol was more satisfying than a stupid slap.
So, in the most chilling and womanly way possibly, she regretfully stomped her foot, huffed and stormed off back to the cabin.
Jack was still visibly wincing when the whole ship practically shook with the force with what she closed the door.
The woman...that woman...
When all was silent, Jack risked peeping an eye open. He had heard her go but one could never be too sure.
As he sighed in relief, Gibbs looked towards his younger Captain with a queer curiosity. "Trouble Captain?"
"No!" Jack snapped, standing straight to attention. It was not until Gibbs smirked that he tried to relax his frame and practise the art of nonchalant. "No, but how about we make land with a bit of haste eh?"
"Aye Captain." Gibbs nodded eagerly as Jack jabbed a thumb back towards the spot of land they were nearing. Tortuga. God knows if there was one place for them both to let off some steam it was Tortuga...
He turned away from Gibbs fully then and stared at the shaded slither which may bring him mercy. Perhaps he could escape to see a woman who wouldn't bite his head off...surely there was a tavern on that island which Nikki had zero chance of walking into? Or perhaps just a dark corner, but what was the point.
He hadn't a clue what had got into her, one moment they were discussing duties and odd bits they needed to ensure got done while they were docked and then...boom. She had exploded, quite literally. There were very few items in the cabin which were sturdy enough to withstand her newly found testing mood and now some of the more delicate items were shattered across the floor.
What had he said? Was it something he had done? He couldn't recall having done something wrong, he had simply stated that she would not be able to do the task at hand without him...or something like that.
"Stupid no good..." The mumbles came thick and fast as he chewed on his thumb, his mouth a straight line. "No good..well I'll have a lovely evening and she is not invited, What say she to that-"
"Run out the gangplank!"
"We won't be staying longer than a day gentlemen, be prepared to set sail at dawn."
All too soon the girl would emerge from the cabin and he would have to tolerate the walk into the town with her biting at him about whatever it was she was mad at. It would take a good few tankards of rum until she would disperse into the night because he failed to acknowledge her and then he would feel bad and spend the rest of the evening with a sour smelling woman on his knee as he surveyed the room for any trace of her. He would put a bet on it, a solid gold bet. She was vexing, repelling and leaving. Wait...
"Wh-Hey! Where are you going?"
As he had been caught in thought, the Pearl had docked, the gangplank had been rolled out and Nicolette had reemerged with a small sack hanging from her hand. Jack started down the steps but she didn't stop, she didn't even glance back but he knew she'd heard him by the obnoxious way she held her chin up "Nic!..Barker! Eh!" Random crew members jumped to escape getting into her way as she sped up but Jack was quicker and just as she was about to step a first foot off the ship, he jumped into her path. "Where do you think your going?"
She tried to step past, in fact she tried to dodge Jack six or seven times before she finally give up. Nic met his eyes and he tried to avoid the hurt which was now swarming them...surely he had not done anything that bad?
"I'm leaving." Her tongue lapped at her bottom lip, her jaw tense. "See you Jack."
"What!" His shock allowed her to jump around him, leading to him having to chase her heels down the plank to the pier. "Why would that be, luv?"
She turned, and Jack finally wished he could recall exactly what he did or said as Nic looked shocked as to why he should even be asking the question. And as she approached she pulled her pistol from her belt with her free hand and jabbed it into his chest. "Because one, you are the most self centred, bile sucking Captain I have ever sailed under. Two! You have no respect for me, at all, so I am going to go find myself a ship and hire a crew who do. And three..." Nic paused, her lips pursed together and quivering. "...you are an awful lover."
She had been nervous but when she saw Jack pull back offended, she became smug. That was until he tried to turn it back on her.
"Is that right? Well-" Before he could go on, she turned on her heel and sauntered away with a deep sway of her hips. He watched her for a while and then called out; "Well you're not welcome back!"
He didn't see the fault in her smile and he missed the minuscule way her pace slowed, just for a second, when she had considered turning back. Then she remembered how he had laughed at the idea of her being in command. "Fine by me!"
Even Barbossa had trusted her as First Mate, had shown her how to take charge and lead the men whether that be on a raid, a task ashore or aboard an enemy vessel. Jack did not even see her fit enough to do the supply log alone.
From behind her she heard his final words call out.
"Good luck getting a ship, or a crew for that matter!"
But she was gone...almost at the opposite end of the pier and about to turn a corner into the streets of shacks and market stalls. If she had glanced back, Nicolette may have just caught a moment of Jack following her before he stopped himself, wriggling his nose in agitation, and turned back towards the Pearl.
"He'll come find me, he won't be able to resist."
"She'll be back by noon, she won't be able to resist."
---
The next morning, with a headache which rivalled the most serious of concussions and a stomach with its own tide, Nicolette stumbled down the pier of Tortuga's docks. One hand cradled her pounding brain and her other extended outward to steady her. The sash around her waist was tied into such a weak knot it was falling down to her hips, her corset was barely fastened and her hat was on back to front.
What had she been thinking, getting involved with those men's games? She was drunk within the first hour of leaving the Pearl and then she carried on drinking into the night. How had she even managed to buy a room? How had she managed to climb the stairs to said room?
She had expected Jack or a member of the crew to find her and retrieve her at some point throughout the afternoon or evening. Yet they never came. She had been forced to fend for herself; something she was capable of doing, it was the self control part she lacked skill in.
It wasn't until her eyes met the end of the pier that she looked up, but where she expected to find a gangplank leading to black sails and ebony decking...she found nothing. Fresh ocean air and views of the Caribbean seas, that's all there was. No ship, no crew, no Jack. "Wh-" She spun around on the spot, half expecting to find herself having wandered down the wrong pier, but no she was in the right place and she had the exact same view of the island that she had when first walking onto it yesterday morning...
As the realisation dawned on her, Nicolette found her jaw impossible to control as it dropped open and she turned her head again to look back at the blue skies and open ocean. They had left...without her. HE had left her.
Anger soon clouded the sinisterly mismatched eyes and her lips pursed, fighting with agitation as her tongue ran over her teeth and her breaths deepened. "Sparrow." She sighed, at the point of almost panting now.
With narrowed eyes, she spun in her heel and stormed over to a small group of sailors a little further up the pier. One was fixing a net, another sharpening a cutlass, another staring lamely out to sea.
Her sea...the one she should be navigating across right now!
"Hey! Any of you seen a ship, black sails, over dramatic wart for a captain?" The men looked up seeming startled for a moment until they saw it was a woman heading their way. They looked at Nic, then at each other, and then one looked back at her.
"Aye, left this morning. Not to long after dawn."
So he had basically ran from her, he hadn't even waited to see if she had been bluffing...which she hadn't been. It was just that a night in Tortuga was long enough to bring clarity to ones mind, at least enough clarity to tell make Nicolette aware that Jack was better company that the inhabitants of the town.
She would have of course made him suffer for his ignorance yesterday, made him beg a little for her forgiveness, pine at her bedside for a little. But she wasn't going to leave the Pearl...not really. Well maybe really, but only for a little bit. Perhaps she had just not expected him to up and leave her so easily...or so eagerly.
"We have a nice cosy cabin here for you if you need a place to rest your head?" One of the men, the one which sat upon a barrel with the majority of his teeth missing, brought her out of her daydreaming and she instantly fought a gag.
The other men chuckled, at least until they saw her mean scowl, where they silenced. "No, thank you. I'd rather sleep with the sharks."
----
Meanwhile, somewhere amongst the waves of the Atlantic, a man stood at the helm of his ship pouting and for the first time in a long while it wasn't over his ship. The sun was shining, the sea was calm and their path was open for as far as the eye could see. No Navy, no Barbossa, no bloody hurricane, just freedom.
So why was he feeling so bloody damn awful?
Jack had felt quite smug when they'd first cast off, but then as the reality of the situation sunk in and the lack of visible reaction from a certain someone made it all very...anticlimactic. When she hadn't shown her face all evening he supposed she was already back on the ship, apart from those dizzy moments in the Faithful when a spot of brown hair or the right coloured corset had him greeting a stranger. And then when he had returned to his cabin, well after the sun had set, and seen her still missing he had decided that Miss Barker would get her wish.
At first he was just going to go around the bay for a few hours to tease her, to make her wish she hadn't been so stupid and have her running back to the Pearl like a lost little girl. Then, he had just kept sailing as the anger crept in of her absence and ignored the heading supplied by his compass which kept turning right back to the dock.
Before he knew it they were in open waters and the choice of turning back existed no more.
"'Tis her own fault, bloody wench..." Jack had took to mumbling under his breath an awful lot this particular morning, his grip on the Pearl going from vice like to limp with each syllable. "I'm going to get my own ship and crew Jack, well you bloody can now!" He hushed himself, silencing the high pitched impression he was carrying out and darting his eyes around at any nearby crewmen who may have heard.
He thought he'd got away with it until...
"Captain!"
Jack screeched, quite femininely may it be known, and swung to the left to see Gibbs only a foot or so away. How had he missed him?
"Captain?" The First Mate tried again, frowning.
"Yes...what is it?"
"Well Captain, a few of the men are wondering if..." Jack caught the hesitation in Gibb's tone and narrowed his eyes. "If leaving the lass was such a good idea, given the circumstance and all."
The statement seemed to fix Jack, or at least fixed his hunched stance and pouting lip. He stood with his back straight and looked out over the course ahead of then, selecting a point in the horizon.
"It's what the girl wished for Master Gibbs. Can't tie her to the Pearl if she no longer wishes to be here." Though he had thought she had quite liked it at the time, what with not being riddled with a curse and free on the open water able to breathe, able to drink, able to live. For the second time he had allowed her achieve her dream and for the second time she had left it...hadn't she?
The thought of her standing there on the empty ended pier brought a little amusement for a second each time the image crossed his mind. However, it soon melted leaving Jack with a very peculiar feeling in his gut, a one he couldn't recall recently having. Although he had thrown back quite a number of bottles of rum the previous night...
"It's just - well Captain we appear to be heading in a circle."
There was a pause, during which both men stared at each other, both equally as confused.
"No we aren't." Jack shook his head, forcing a grin.
"...Actually Captain...we...are." Gibbs gapped and took a step closer to Jack, removing his own compass from his belt. "See we were heading east, and now we have rounded back to south west..." Just like he said, Jack looked down and saw that they were, in fact, heading south west, back towards the island.
"Ah..." Jack grunted affirming, although his face spoke directly as it was creased with wonder. "Yes, I know." His expression didn't change as he stepped back and removed himself from the helm, stepping around Gibbs. "Take the helm Mr Gibbs, I'm needed below."
The First Mate took up the task seamlessly but relied on another word from Jack. When he didn't get it as usual, he was forced to call out before he could disappear. "A-Aye Captain...and what be the heading?"
Jack stopped still on the brim of the stairs, hesitantly taking out his compass. He already knew where it would be going to, so instead of waiting he simply pointed into the direction he knew to be generally western.
"Erm...I'd say....that way." He looked ahead just to make sure they were clear and then gave a final smile towards Gibbs. "Yes, definitely that way."
And then he retired to his cabin, grabbing a bottle of rum and planning to drink more until that wrenching feeling left him.