Post-AX drabble

When Jack comes to consciousness, he's submerged in liquid.

Nothing unusual, not when this happens every single month like clockwork. He keeps his eyes closed -- through trial an error, he's found it easier, less likely for him to get physically ill if he blocks everything out. In a moment, he knows and his body tenses in anticipation, the tube forced down his throat will be forcibly removed and he'll be deposited onto the cold, sticky floor of the Tranquility, covered in blue and forcing back memories of his own death.

But several long seconds pass, and nothing happens, except for the continued feeling of floating. His forehead pulls together in confusion, and his eyes open in confusion, wondering what the bloody hell could possibly be going wrong now? He expects to see nothing but blue, and he's not disappointed. But this blue was less opaque, and it takes him three, two, one to realize he's not in a pod, and the salt he can taste on his tongue is the salt water of the ocean.

With a startled sound in the back of his throat, he forcibly flails his arms about, swimming his way to the surface, breaking through the waves with a gasp, filling his lungs entirely. Treading water, he's quick to scan his surroundings, seeing nothing around him but water, water, water, and a dingy that must be his. He makes his way over, pulling himself on board. But even as he lays, sprawled against the deck, his thoughts remain on the Tranquility.

It's happened before. Events have occurred and he's been "brought" back to his ship while still on the Tranquility and, at first, he thinks this is the same. And so he remains where he is, head against the wooden seat, legs sprawled out in all directions, eyes on his Jolly Roger flapping in the wind, waiting for whatever that's going to happen, to happen. For an attack, for a familiar face to sail past him, for the illusion to fade.

But nothing happens. Nothing but the passage of time. And as the sun slowly moves west in the sky, hours pass and Jack finally considers that he might actually be home. This still isn't new. He has returned home once before, to battle against Blackbeard. There was one key difference between then and now.

He can still remember everything.

There had to be half a years worth of experiences in the back of his mind, full of events happening, near deaths, brainwashing, and all the people he's met. He wonders how much time, if any passed while he was gone.

It takes him a considerable amount of time for him to pull his thoughts together. He was free, finally free. It's what they'd been working towards. The entire time they'd been held captive, tormented and placed from one bad situation to another, returning home was always their ultimate goal. And since he's home, he can only assume the others are, too.

So why does he feel so--off?

Eventually, he has to get up and go somewhere. He can't spend forever laying on a dingy in the middle of the ocean. He'll need provisions soon enough -- the ones he has are no longer going to replenish itself once he ran out.

And so he forces himself up, digging under the seat for the bottle of rum he'd stashed there several months a few hours ago. He drinks long and deep before taking out his compass. When it doesn't spin wildly, like it did every day he was on the Tranquility, it only cements the idea that he's well and truly home.

He rolls his shoulders as the compass focuses on a direction, feeling as though a weight had been placed onto him, but one that was drastically uneven. He reaches out and picks up the oars, beginning to row. He doesn't know where his compass is taking him, but he doesn't much care.

~*~*~*~*~
The sun sets quickly, and he's yet to reach land, but Jack's not overly concerned. He's spent many a night on the sea, this is no different. So long as a storm doesn't form during the night, he has little to worry about.

The stars twinkle in the sky, like they have every single night before this one, but he finds himself particularly attracted to them tonight. He's not sure when his gaze turned upwards, but he suddenly becomes aware of the passage of time when his neck begins to protest at such a drastic angle. He pushes all thoughts of discomfort away, and keeps his eyes on the stars.

It doesn't take long for his thoughts to become filled with Captain Kirk, the man who was not a captain of the seas, but of the stars. He'd be a navy man if he were born in Jack's time, he was certain of it, what with his clear distaste for Jack's disregard of the rules. Jack had become fond of him anyways, ever since he'd first arrived. It was hard for Jack to make friends -- lasting friends -- and Kirk had become high up on the list of people he checked for every month.

Jack raises his bottle of rum to the stars before taking a drink in Kirk's honor. It is, after all, the very least he can do, when Kirk won't be born until several very, very long years into the future.

"Here's to you, mate."

Jack falls asleep to the memory of what it had been like to be in the middle of those stars, when he'd had his face pressed up against the window as they were shuttled from the Tranquility to Strella, Kirk's obvious amusement ringing in his ears.

~*~*~*~*~
It hits him hard, when he finally pulls into port a few days later.

He has to remind himself that, just because the crew of the Tranquility hadn't minded that he was a pirate, doesn't mean things back home had changed. He's still a wanted man, in possession of a reputation known by most people, with a considerable bounty on his head, and tattoos that give him away quite easily.

As he disembarks, he pulls the cloth tied across his wrists up higher on his right forearm, hiding the tattoo of a sparrow at sunrise. He then brings up his left forearm, twisting around his shirt sleeve so that the numbers on his forearm are convincingly covered up. He walks briskly and purposely past the harbormaster in an attempt to avoid paying anything for his unimpressive little dingy and --

Jack stops mid-step.

He brings up his left arm to his face, ripping back his sleeve to find... nothing.

There are no numbers on his arm.

The scars he's had for years are still there, still red, still unhappy, but there is a distinct lack of the numbers 002 >> 137. Numbers he'd tried to scrub off when he'd first arrived, numbers that never came off, numbers he'd checked after every single jump, in case they had changed, but never did. Numbers that were ingrained into his skull, and had somehow become a part of him, and numbers that were the only reminder of what had happened --

Suddenly, his arm is grabbed, and Jack yanks his arm back as though he'd been burned. The throws a glare at the man standing in front of him, one full of anger and irritation, of loss and uncomprehension.

"What?!" He snaps.

"I said, it's one shilling to tie up your boat." The harbormaster informs him, looking quite irritated himself. But Jack can't even begin to muster up the ability to care and he snarls, thrusting a coin at the man, ignoring the demands of his name at his back, and disappears into town.

An hour or so later, Jack's walking out of a tattoo parlor, left forearm wrapped up and raw to the touch. He'd been overly specific to the point of frustration on the tattooist's part, but the lettering needed to be just right, as well as the placement on his arm and the spacing between the letters.

The Royal Navy will definitely have something to say about this, he thinks, but that's a worry for another time. For now, though, the panic that had previously seized him has slightly ebbed in his stomach simply with the knowledge that the numbers were there.

It shouldn't be too hard to convince himself that the numbers had always been there, and that the past six months were more than just a dream.

~*~*~*~*~
He finds himself in Europe with little memory of how he got there.

Jack doesn't travel to Europe often, not when the other Pirate Lords were less forgiving of trespassing than he was. So long as he doesn't stir up any trouble -- easier said than done, when you are Jack Sparrow -- he should probably be able to keep a low enough profile that Ammand won't ever know he was here.

This isn't his final destination, not with how his compass is still pointing to the sea, waiting for him to get back into his ship and sail off. But he's in the Netherlands, and for a long while Jack contents himself with sitting near the docks and watching the ships pull in and out.

Netherland, the person, had once described in great detail the future of shipping. However, the Dutch don't seem incredibly ahead of anyone else in that regard, despite the fact that he'd been half expecting it. He can't tell a Dutch ship from an English ship from a pirate ship.

Most of that technology was far off, years off, into the future. Jack wonders what, exactly, he's supposed to do with all the knowledge of motor-driven ships and electricity and refrigerators and communicators. Realistically, he'll be dead before any of those things will be invented. Especially now that the Fountain of Youth has been destroyed by the Spanish. It's a sobering thought.

He spends the next several days in the Netherlands, sitting in bars and listening to music -- real music, not the white noise that had been played on the Tranquility -- and engraving the culture into his memory. Before he leaves, he tracks down several cigarettes and puts them in a small box. They're nothing like the ones Netherland had been smoking on the ship, but it's the closest thing he's going to get.

He never smokes them. Instead, he keeps them close, tucking them into his belt between his gun and his sword, a solid reminder of something he refuses to forget.

~*~*~*~*~
He's not entirely surprised when his compass brings him to Russia.

As Jack stands outside of St. Petersburg, he focuses his gaze onto the town and tries to draw out the image of the man called Russia from the buildings in front of him. But, in the end, all he can see are homes and stores.

That evening, he ends up in a bar, drinking vodka instead of rum, and turning around every single time the doors open, hoping the man walking in will possess violet eyes and white hair, but with no luck. Since, he rationalizes to himself, out of all the people that had been present on the Tranquility, the only ones who would be alive would be the countries. They wouldn't have any recollection of the events, of course, seeing as they'd yet to be taken onto the Tranquility while he'd just left. However, that doesn't mean he couldn't see them, just once.

There was only one problem.

Russia, the country, was huge. He could spend the rest of his life walking through Russia and still never meet up with him again.

"How do you find one man in all of Russia?" He asks himself out loud.

"Depends on who yer tryin' to find." The man sitting next to him at the bar answers.

But Jack can only bark out a laugh because the man he's trying to find is, "Russia."

"Well," his fellow drunkard slowly draws out. "Yer lookin' in the right place."

Jack's only reply is laughter. Long, hard, deep, hysterical laughter. After which he proceeds to get soundly drunk, drunker than he's been in years, drunker than he should be, with a plentiful bounty on his head in the territory of another Pirate Lord.

He throws some money at someone whose face he instantly forgets in order to obtain a room for the night. He collapses on the bed, face down, burying his head into a pillow in order to block the view of the room around him. He hopes, completely drunk and unrealistically, that when he wakes, he'll be greeted to Russia outside his door, grin on his face, gun in hand, and the two of them will fight, side-by-side against the dangers of the Tranquility.

But when he wakes, the only thing he's greeted with is a hangover.

~*~*~*~*~
He has to leave Russia eventually. As Pirate Captain and Pirate Lord, he has duties to maintain, responsibilities to deal with, a ship to revive and a First Mate to track down.

That doesn't stop him from spending more time than he can really allow in St. Petersburg.

He gives the town a salute as he sails away, standing as high as he can on the mast, watching as the town slowly sinks down into the horizon.

~*~*~*~*~
He makes his way to Tortuga, because Tortuga has proven to be the only place he can successfully leave his past behind and move onto the present. He schmoozes his way into the company of Scarlett and Giselle, because they're familiar and he really needs something, or someone, to ground him into the here and now.

But when the two of them start squabbling as they always do, he finds he has no inclination to intervene. Instead, his mind travels to the ladies of the Tranquility, to Ariadne and to Wichita.

Ariadne, who possessed the job of a man, who sent him messages after dangerous events to make sure he was okay, who always made eye contact with him after jumps and smiled, because she was glad he was still there.

Wichita, who fought off zombies with him, who called him "Cap", who stocked rum in the shipwide bar, just for him, who had no problems joking and laughing with him, but also was on his side in regards to shipwide mutiny.

His attention turns back to Scarlett and Giselle, bickering over stockings and corsets and makeup, and it strikes him how small and unimportant such issues are, particularly when compared to the entire expansion of space, and acquaintances from a different time and place he can no longer meet.

He walks silently out of the room. Neither of them notice.

~*~*~*~*~
He eventually finds Mr. Gibbs, and they eventually get the Pearl back. He does his best to put the Tranquility behind him, to move forward, to jump into new adventures wholeheartedly.

He tries not to notice his crew whispering about him behind his back, but he can't help but overhear when they mention that he's acting ever so slightly strange and ever so slightly off.

He doesn't bother to correct them, not when the uneven weight hasn't lifted from his shoulders, the numbers 002 >> 137 still tattooed onto his arm, and a pack of Dutch cigarettes are tucked into his belt.

It's hard to let the past go and he tries, he honestly does, but he can't help but compare Mr. Gibbs' aversion for anything superstitious or dangerous with Russia's manic grin as they battled hell-hounds while deathly ill. And every time the word "mutiny" is brought up, he no longer thinks of Barbossa and a rumrunners island, but of Haymitch, and the two of them making tactical plans against Ward and Resnik while pretending to be old, stupid drunks.

And every time a fog rolls in, Jack stands at the bow of his ship, eyes closed, wondering when, or if, the fog will envelope him whole and despot him back onto a ship sailing the stars, full of futuristic technology, along with everyone he's ever come to call friend.