AWE: Up is Down

[bringmethatnpc]

It's really, really... bleeding hot. His throat's parched, has been for days - weeks, seems like - and the energy to actually do anything is decidedly lacking.

Pintel tilts a bottle fatalistically before his eyes, wistfully imagining the swirl of water inside.

"No water," he says plaintively, half to Mister Gibbs, half just to himself. "Why is all but the rum gone?"

Comments

[pirate-gibbs.livejournal.com]

"Rum’s gone, too," Gibbs says in a voice resigned to fate. And perhaps the irony of coming all this way and still dying.

[try_corsets]

Elizabeth isn't thinking about water or rum, or even their plight, but fate is weighing heavily on her mind. Miserable, she sits on the port stairs to the quarterdeck and picks at a rough fingernail. It's easier to ignore everyone, easier to pull in her knees and hunch her back, pretending she doesn't feel as defeated as she knows she must look.

(I'm so proud of you, Elizabeth.)

Her father is dead, and she can't be bothered to think about anything else.

[turned_captain]

More then anything, anything at all, Will wants to go to her. To hold her as he had done the night before, and to some how ease her pain.

But there's nothing he can do to help her now, even if he thought she'd let him in. He remembers losing his mother, thinking he'd lost his father, and he can only give her time to mourn. Will's always been useless where there's nothing to do.

And there are more practical concerns now. Standing with Tia Dalma at the side of the deck, he looks out over a still, dead ocean, over which they have hardly moved for hours.

[touch-destiny.livejournal.com]

She is shaking her head, hands light and curled around the rail, her eyes sweeping the silent sea. There is not even a breath of air to play with her hems or toss her coiling hair, and she looks, for the first time, worried.

Her words are directed to the wide bowl of ocean and sky, but they are meant for the young man beside her.

"If we cannot escape these doldrums before night...I fear we will sail on trackless seas, doomed to roam the reach between worlds...forever."

Eternity is an idea they have become all too familiar with, this interminable voyage, but it is not an idea that comes easily to these men and women, and she is not without care or worry that they might, in the end, fail.

[politestpirate.livejournal.com]

Wellard glances sharply over toward Tia Dalma from where he is, leaning against the main mast.

He has already had his share of forever, trudging along the beach in the Locker. A quiet sigh, and Wellard rubs the bridge of his nose. For everyone to have come all this way-

There should be something that could be done.

[pirate-gibbs.livejournal.com]

Gibbs makes his way to the railing now. Endless seas, under endless skies.

"With no water, forever looks to be arriving a mite too soon." But given the choice between floating forever on these waters, and dying of thirst, he might actually opt for the second.

[bushel-o-apples.livejournal.com]

Up on the quarterdeck, Barbossa looks out over the infinite, flat expanse of sea. He's aware of eyes upon him, but he doesn't react to the glances.

He's aware that this is the weakest point of his plan, and that the fate of their expedition, and maybe the brotherhood of the Coast itself, hangs from a thread. The very untrustworthy thread of Jack's ability to make an escape, no matter what. He has provided the tools, and now it's up to Sparrow to actually find a way out of the Locker.

[turned_captain]

Will can't lend himself to dispair, or mulling over fate. Not while there's still breath left in his body to fight with. Frustrated, he pulls himself away from the morose group at the railing, and glares up at Barbossa, directing his anger at the man who led them there.

"Why doesn't he do something?"

[parley-pirate.livejournal.com]

Ragetti would lend a helpful comment, really he would, except that he's a little sidetracked by the fact that that bloody monkey still hasn't gotten an alternative hobby.

"Me eye!" he shouts frantically, chasing after the creature. Barbossa will kill him if he loses that! ...Present situation excepted. "Give it back!"

[pirate_jack]

Perched on his makeshift seat in the middle of the deck, Jack blithely ignores all of them, as well as everything else around him. His black-eyed gaze is fixed thoughtfully on the brightly-colored map lying spread out before him.

He cocks his head to the side, turning one of the map's circles and watching with interest as the words shift with the motion from 'SUNRISE SETS FLASH OF GREEN' to their new configuration.

"'Up is down,'" he reads out.

A beat.

"Well, that's just maddeningly unhelpful. Why are these things never clear?"

[pirate_jack]

"Clear as mud, Jackie."

The entirely-too-familiar voice is coming from close at hand.

From his shoulder, to be truly precise.

[pirate_jack]

Jack startles, visibly.

"What? Eh?"

[pirate_jack]

Beaded braids click softly as a miniature version of himself pushes them aside and steps out, looking up at Jack with a wicked smile.

"Stab the heart."

[pirate_jack]

He opens his mouth to answer -- well, himself, come right down to it -- and is forestalled by a second interruption.

"Don't stab the heart!"

This time, the small advisor is on his right shoulder.

[pirate_jack]

"Thought I'd left them all behind in the desert, luv?"

Jack looks around at the air in front of him, trying to catch sight of a glimpse of red hair, then sighs and addresses his companions.

"Come again?"

[pirate_jack]

"The Dutchman must have a captain," Jack explains to Jack.

[pirate_jack]

"... well that's even more than less than unhelpful."

Now he just sounds exasperated.

[pirate_jack]

Without warning, Jack bolts to his feet and points to his left, over the port bow.

"What’s that?"

He doesn't wait for an answer, but hastens across the deck to stare out across the water.

[pirate-gibbs.livejournal.com]

Gibbs shakes off the torpor of the unending day and jumps to attetnion, following the captain to the bow.

He doesn't see anything but sea.

[turned_captain]

Will is close behind Gibbs, also looking out over the featureless sea, and frowns.

Jack really did go crazy, didn't he?

[pirate_jack]

"What is that?"

Jack certainly seems fixated on something-- or maybe that's just his hair, which swings oddly for a second as he addresses someone invisible beside him.

"I don't know." He turns to the other side, all the while never looking away from the water.

"What do you think?"

[pirate-gibbs.livejournal.com]

"Where?" Gibbs still doesn't see anything.

No. He sees something. He sees Jack talking to himself. Or an invisble man. Neither possibility bodes well.

[pirate_jack]

"There!"

Jack startles at something and gasps in alarm.

"Eaaah!"

He spins about and runs across the deck again, this time hurrying to starboard to hang over the rail there.

[bushel-o-apples.livejournal.com]

Upon the deck, Jack's antics have got Barbossa's attention. He turns and walks down to the main deck.

Wasn't he fiddling with the charts...?

And so, he heads towards the charts, still spread where Jack left them.

[turned_captain]

Jack runs, and Will and Gibbs follow, this time joined by other crew members, even Tia Dalma herself.

And yet no one can see what Jack's looking at.