bringmethatnpc | (no subject)

Deep in a bayou near the mouth of the Pantano River, a wooden shack sits among twisted vines, high roots, and still, stagnant water. Moonlight illuminates the scene, and the shack is lit from within by what seems like hundreds of candles. A single lantern at the entrance beckons all those who dare to step over the threshold.

Not long ago, only a few days or so, the shack and tangle of surrounding trees was the site of a wake for Captain Jack Sparrow.

The shack had been overflowing with pirates that night. Tia Dalma offered drinks to fight the chill and the sorrow, and the return of another dead pirate gave the crew hope where previously there had been none. Some of those pirates seemed to disappear that night. No one asked too many questions, however, as the shack is bigger than it appears on the outside and the unexpected is to be expected wherever Tia Dalma is found.

But now the missing parties are starting to return. Some are even accompanied by people who had not been there before.

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Later, Elizabeth might feel a twinge of guilt over what Bernard's own reaction might be. At the moment, however, she can think of only one thing.

"Will! Will was with you?" Another long, searching look over his shoulder, as if she can make her fiancé appear through sheer determination. "But he's not here."

Her forehead wrinkles in a frown.

"Inara knows. She's going to kill me later, but she knows. So does Bernard, just so's you're aware," Mal counters. "And I came because of my overdeveloped chivalry and general niceness, say xiexie."

To Elizabeth: "Will was the first person I set to find -- I don't know what happened. But he can't not show up."

Mal doesn't think the bar'd let him disappear like that completely.

'Dora reaches out to catch one of Mal's hands in hers, squeezing it for a moment. "Thanks," she murmurs. "And Will's got to be here somewhere. Only that was a bit weird, wasn't it? I've never seen the door do that before. So I s'pose anything's possible."

Deadpan, "Didn't think the lake'd go ocean-style on us all either, but o' course, this is Milliways we were just leavin' from, so that's enough of a reasoning I can really hope for."

Looking around to the room at large, "Anyone care to tell me where I'm at at the moment?"

"Tia Dalma's shack," Elizabeth answers automatically, missing most of what was said before. It doesn't occur to her that this is largely unhelpful.

Finally, she pulls her gaze back to Mal and Tonks, blinking a bit.

"The lake turned into a sea?"

"Shi a -- I didn't see the Pearl leave. Was a little distracted by the..."

Mal waves his hand in the general direction of Tonks.

"Magic. -Yness. Thing."

"Spell of doom?" she suggests. "But I do not think I had anything to do with the bloody lake turning into a bloody ocean. If I did, I oughta get a raise at the Ministry."

A sort of wild hope fills Elizabeth's eyes.

"The Pearl left." Not a question, no, because somehow it fits. Her smile, now that she remembers how to do so, is slow and satisfied. "To better answer your earlier question, this is where most of us were before Milliways. Just before, actually. Only a few days have passed."

"Nice to know we're somewhere..."

Mal finally starts to take in his surroundings beyond the people in front of him. Including the various objects and former-living things in jars.

Ew.

"...palatable."

"Kinda homey, actually," Tonks says thoughtfully, eyeing the jars with something like nostalgia.

Well. Witch.

Mal would be picturing Sunny playing with the jars filled with things Mal doesn't actually want to think about, if he didn't have better things to investigate.

"So. What's the plan?

"Is there a plan?"

Elizabeth eyes another dangling bottle, spinning slowly on its rope, with obvious distaste.

"It's mad, and I'd be careful what you touch, lest it try to curse or eat you."

The dusty crocodile suspended overhead gets a meaningful look.

"Barbossa has a plan," she mentions, and although she's happy someone does, it's not said with a great deal of hope.

"And that would be the bringing-Jack-back-from-the-dead plan, would it?"

Absentmindedly she adds a slim pocket to her skirt, stuffing her wand inside.

"Dare I ask what that entails?"

"It would," Elizabeth confirms. "There's something he's not telling me-"

And, oh, how that annoys her. She pauses, mouth tightening.

"-but first we travel to Singapore. He claims to have acquaintances who will aid us in our quest."

Mal eyes Barbossa.

For as much as Mal can tell, Barbossa is eyeing him back.

"[Fantastic]," he mumbles in Chinese, immediately afterward sliding a smile on his face.

"Time to kick this shindig off right."

"Point of fact, miss Swann, there are quite a few things I'm not telling anyone for now. All will be said in time. And 'in time' doesn't start until the whole of our happy-go-lucky bad is assembled back here. Or at least the important ones."

Barbossa shrugs as he steps closer into the area of light shed by the candles. The gleam in his eyes is, as ever, one of cunning, but to those who knew him there's something else. A deep spark of fire, a driving force that wasn't there before, in undeath.

"You said it, Captain Reynolds, and said it well."

"And I'm thinking that if you won't tell us yer plan, Barbossa, we at least tell the others the plans we have considered in terms of getting to the point when you actually tell us your plans." Gibbs is sitting in shadow, having listened to the strangers - though he knows much of Reynolds and is glad to have hin along. There is a tone of frustration in his voice, as if he's ready to mutiny against Barbossa but has reminded himself of their truce.

"And I am thinking, First Mate Gibbs, that once again you listen to the words you would like to be hearing from my mouth instead of those I have spoken. I will tell you the plan" He doesn't say 'his' plan, but 'the' plan. It involves the lot of them, after all. "when we are all gathered. Saves having to repeat ourselves a dozen times over, don't you think?"

He stands back, regarding Gibbs with a measuring, calculating look.

"Very well." All those months of inaction make a man inpatient. Gibbs would be the first to admit that.

So he'll wait but not particularly like it.