Another Non-Drabble: On the Shoals.

[honorat]

By Honorat
Rating: PG-13
Disclaimer: Takin’ what I can; givin’ nothing back.

Summary: Mr. Gibbs has an involuntary career change and an identity crisis. For the “First Day” Challenge at Black Pearl Sails. This one is an only child as far as I can tell. Though it may have a sequel coming up--Jack Sparrow has twenty-five chickens and a Plan.

Thanks to geek_mama_2 for the beta read.

* * * * *


He’d been Navy all his life. Well, all of it he cared to remember. Oh, he wasn’t one o’ them fancy career officers fightin’ for England, Harry, and St. George or whatever it was.

But it had been a job. All his days had arranged themselves around the bells that called the larboard watch. He’d always been larboard, never starboard. He felt like larboard belonged to him. It was routine. The pattern into which he fit.

Unlike some, the pressed men especially, he’d never really seriously considered desertin'. No matter how lousy the pay, how brutal the officers, how bad the grub. He’d taken the verbal abuse, even the physical abuse. Kinda felt like home, actually. Sometimes he’d even had decent officers. Those had been good times. He hadn’t minded knockin’ the hardtack on the table to shake out the weevils. After all, it was food and better’n starvin’.

Then there was always the sea. That bitch goddess with her siren smile and her claws that got so damn deep in a man’s soul that he couldn’t lose her for love nor money, though God knows he’d tried both. Couldn’t hear a wind whistle around the eaves on land without needin’ to know how the horizon would look and how the ship would be slidin’ down into the trough of a wave and what sails she’d carry and whether the captain would be tryin’ to outrace the storm or drivin’ into its teeth.

He was Navy—had that roll to his walk, the peculiar cant, the odds and ends of uniform. Even the smell—salt and tar and rum and black powder. People recognized it without his sayin’ a word.

So what was he now that the Royal Navy had discharged him? Spat him out on some godforsaken Caribbean dock—he didn’t even know which one. Drunk and disorderly. Insubordinate.

Well, he’d admit he had a fondness for rum, but so did most the men before the mast. And he didn’t suffer fools in wigs and gold braid any more gladly than the ones with oakum in their fingernails. But to take away a man’s livelihood for that? He’d rather have taken the floggin’. Add a new set of scars to the pattern on his back.

What was he now that he’d lost his anchor to windward? Cracked up on the shoals, that’s what. He didn’t even know if there was anything left to salvage.

His first day back as a civilian. He’d forgotten anything he’d ever known about bein’ a civilian.

Comments

[galadhir.livejournal.com]

Ah, lovely! I have a great fondness for Gibbs, and I love the way you've captured his voice here; a rough and tumble practical man with a surprising romantic side. Love 'Couldn’t hear a wind whistle around the eaves on land without needin’ to know how the horizon would look and how the ship would be slidin’ down into the trough of a wave' - that's the poetic side. But 'kinda felt like home' is so telling. And bits and pieces of uniform, and the smell!

Poor Gibbs, this really brings home the way there really wasn't anywhere else he could go. Gorgeous!

[honorat.livejournal.com]

Thank you. The rough sailor's love of the sea always captures my imagination. Gibbs is such an imaginative story-teller, I think of him as a creative person under all that dirt.

I have to ask myself what would make a man like Gibbs turn pirate. He pretty much had to have nowhere else to go--at least nowhere on the sea.

[geekmama.livejournal.com]

WhooHoo! The last bits work wonderfully that way!

So excellent. This is my favorite line...

Couldn’t hear a wind whistle around the eaves on land without needin’ to know how the horizon would look and how the ship would be slidin’ down into the trough of a wave and what sails she’d carry and whether the captain would be tryin’ to outrace the storm or drivin’ into its teeth.

I can just picture him, sitting there at his sister's house, maybe, his mind on the sea. Every evocative.

[honorat.livejournal.com]

Thank you. I'm glad you like the little changes. Yes, I imagine that Gibbs might have tried to get the sea out of his blood, but he's swallowed too much salt (Oh dear--a plot bunny just took off). And there's the Gibbs icon too. Yay!

[triskellion.livejournal.com]

What a lovely perspective. I have long wondered just how Gibbs managed to switch from Navy to Pirate. I had always leaned more toward his getting sick of the higher-ups, but a discharge really fits the situation well. He just seems the type to keep falling into things, including piracy in the search for the sea.

[honorat.livejournal.com]

Thank you for dropping by to comment. When I wrote the line about the pressed men, I thought that it was probably harder to get kicked out of the Navy than to get in! So the idea of Gibbs as a deserter did cross my mind. But this one wanted to be written.

For a man who worried about cursed pirates, Gibbs must have been a bit poleaxed to find himself one of them! :) But the sea doesn't care about puny little human institutions. If she owns you, you're hers.

[order_of_chaos]

That is so Gibbs. It's perfect. And you descrition of the sea is really really... guh.
And as soon as I try to pick a favorite line or few, I realise that they're all brilliant.

[honorat.livejournal.com]

So glad you liked it. I love Gibbs and the sea. Jack has an epic romance with the sea, and Gibbs has a comic one. But they're both sea-struck. Thank you for your kind words.

[shrieking-ell.livejournal.com]

Love this little bit of Gibbs here!

(I adore the Henry V quote in the beginning) and i do think that Gibbs really is the consummate old salt as you've captured both him and his obsession with the sea. And the ending is really poingant and fitting.

[honorat.livejournal.com]

Thank you. I'm happy when people recognize my allusions :) That play just seemed to have the ultimate in "laying it all on the line for one's country and king" rhetoric--which would be appropriate for someone like Norrington. But Mr. Gibbs? He's a salt of a different savour! Which is why, in the end, I think he can make that transition to pirate. The sea's got his loyalty--or at least owns his soul. That's what can't change. I'm glad you enjoyed this.

[elessil.livejournal.com]

Lovely work! I never really thought much about Gibbs I have to admit, but you portrayed his geting out of the Navy wonderfully.

[honorat.livejournal.com]

I'm glad to give you a little more insight into my dear Mr. Gibbs. Of course I'm afraid I love every single character in this movie. Something drastic must have happened to get Gibbs from where he is at the beginning of the movie to where he is with the pigs! Thank you for commenting.

[linaelyn.livejournal.com]

Wow and Yay and Ouch and *flails* with the Gibbs!Love.

I'm not at all coherent, tonight, but THANK YOU FOR WRITING THIS.

[honorat.livejournal.com]

Yay! Gibbs icon! I'm delighted you like my little back story for Mr. Gibbs. Leaving the Navy must have been a big change for him. And something momentous must have made him into a pirate. Thank you for commenting on this.

[sparky-darky.livejournal.com]

This fills n some gaps really well! What is it the writers say in their commentary? That there is no explanation for Gibbs appearing in the Navy, then re-appearing as a pirate. This starts to explain so well.

I love how you write Gibbs' perspective. Even though it isn't a first-person voice, you've still caught his speech patterns so well. There's some really nice phrases in here:
That bitch goddess with her siren smile and her claws that got so damn deep in a man’s soul that he couldn’t lose her for love nor money
You can really see how Gibbs and Jack would get on like a house on fire. This theme is such an interesting one in the dilemmas it presents the characters: Jack embraces this need for the sea, whereas Gibbs seems to have this world-weary acceptance that he's never going to break away from it.

Looking forward to seeing more of Gibbs (was that a hint? Of course not!)-- I've said it before, but he's so undervalued as a character, and that's so sad...

I do like how in your fics you don't let-up on the harshness of life in the wooden world; its just a whole other dimension to the world and explains a lot about the characters.

[honorat.livejournal.com]

Thank you. I'm glad you feel my bit of explanation is plausible. I've got designs on the "re-appearing as a pirate" part of the story eventually.

This was a bit of an odd point of view--sort of a blend of first and third person--as though my third person narrator is eavesdropping on Gibbs' thoughts.

I do think that Gibbs' need for the sea would be a major portion of what leads him to piracy. Yes, he and Jack would be worshipping at the same altar, as it were. But you're right that for Jack the sea is a lover while for Gibbs it is something he can't escape.

Gibbs is one of my favourites. I simply must figure out how he met Jack--before the twenty-five chickens part I mean.

The sea and the ships and the men who sailed them are an enigma of poetry and bitter reality. Beauty mixed with danger--the old meaning for "romance". Those fragile wooden hulls which men had to maintain at the cost of their bodies and lives because the ships were all that stood between their souls and a watery grave. The masters of those ships who had the power to be gods or devils or both to the men under them. The realities of life on an alien element where no food or drink was easily come by. The brutality of this century. All of it creates such a minor chord in the music of the breath-taking cycle of dawn and dusk, the every changing, multi-coloured light shimmering on water, the consummate artistry of the clouds, and the beauty of a ship under sail. Couldn't resist, mate! I know how Gibbs feels!

Thanks for the lovely feedback.