A Quibble: Unequal Shares

[honorat]

By Honorat
Rating: G
Disclaimer: If any of you as much as thinks the word “profit,” I’ll have your guts for garters.

Summary: Jack gives Mr. Cotton a gift. A Quadruple drabble. This is a companion piece to Answered Prayer which insisted on being written.

Thank you, geek_mama_2 for the beta read.

* * * * *

Jack has seen him in the dim, guttering candlelight as the plaintive songs of minstrels waft on rum-redolent air. Sometimes his eyes glisten with unshed tears. Sometimes his hands clench into knotted fists. Other times his lips curve in that wondrous childlike joy and his fingers tap. And there are times he rises abruptly and leaves the tavern, and they do not see him until the Pearl is about to depart.

So when they discover the violin in a passenger’s cabin, Captain Sparrow does not add it to the swag in the holds, for sale in the next port. Instead, when he joins Mr. Cotton at the helm that evening, eager as always for the moment he will be completely in communion with his ship, Jack spares a moment to hold out the worn, black case.

He watches, a small smile chasing itself across his lips, as the man raises bewildered eyes to his captain. Not equal shares this time. Life has already dealt this man an impossibly unequal share. This is a gift.

With a flourish, Jack flips open the latches and raises the lid.

The instrument glows in the last light as though fire burns at its heart. Reverently his silent crewman runs sea-roughened fingertips over the ebony neck. When he looks up again, some of that fire has lit in his faded blue eyes. Mr. Cotton reaches out a hand to touch his captain’s arm, and Jack feels the weight of the man’s parrot settle on his shoulder.

As Mr. Cotton lifts the case from Jack’s hands, the parrot shifts its claws, a brooding, approving presence beside Jack’s ear. He hears its heavy beak clacking as it preens along the string of beads dangling in his hair, one at a time. For once, he does not swat the animal away. They will observe the truce.

That night, as the darkness slips her arms around the Black Pearl, the captain catches the faint strains of music floating back from the bow. Longing and loss, loneliness and love. The pent up songs of years of silence.

Jack holds his Pearl a little closer, remembering.

For the first time, he hears Mr. Cotton’s voice.

Comments

[classics-lover.livejournal.com]

This is just such a sweet story! It really communicates the sorrow of enforced silence (something unbearable to contemplate for someone as verbiose as myself;-)) and the joy to be found in the making of music. Lovely - just lovely.

[honorat.livejournal.com]

Yes, after the painful prequel, I apparently had to write something to get out the taste! I do think that Cotton's loss of language would be a terrible and frustrating tragedy. Especially since your average pirate could not read and write. So, while he might have developed some method of signing for basic communication--or in this case Parrot cryptograms--he'd have a hard time communicating feelings or complex ideas. So I thought music would be another language for him. So glad you liked this and thank you for commenting.