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In the beginning there was the sea. There was the sea, and there was Calypso, for she was the sea. Is the sea. She wasn’t always called Calypso, but she was older than language itself, so one might understand that she goes by and has gone by many names. Passed many by in favor of new ones. She is everything fierce about the sea, the winds that whip sails and the waves that rise high enough to swallow islands and the rains and the sleet and the lightning and the hail. She knows every creature that swims in her depths, knows every mangrove who’s roots she covers. Calypso is the ocean as the ocean is her. When the idea strikes her, she can be calm. But often it is only momentary. There is rarely a day when some sea or bay or piece of open ocean somewhere is not wrapped up in her vengeful embrace.
With roiling seas, death comes most cold. And so, there was Jones. He too went by many names. Whether or not it was actually Davy Jones, no one knew. Some said he was a Saint, some said higher up, biblical. It did not matter in the long run; if you died at sea, you were part of Davy Jones’ locker, same as the rest. The great equalizer: death. Where Calypso was the one to dash the sailors against her rocks, Jones was the one who was tasked with taking them to their fates. They moved in tandem with each other, a grim dance that many came away from with tales of fierce storms and men overboard. The ocean could swallow entire ships, entire towns, entire islands without another trace. Yes, they were dependent on one another, loved one another, but by purpose alone they could not complete each other.
There had to be calm days, with just enough breeze to lift sails and stir a sailor to the sea. So then, there was Jack. Younger, far younger than Calypso. A bit younger than Jones, though neither could really tell. Where Calypso was the soul and Jones was death, Jack was life, all the life that could be found atop the sea, afloat on constructions of wood. Wood that would sail for mile after miraculous mile and navigate its way across the vast ocean. He was everything that Jones was not. Whenever he sailed, he seemed to dance across the sea, every haul of the rope was graceful and full of vitality. He loved the sea; not in the way Jones did, but because of the challenge, the thrashing storms followed by beautiful, breezy days. When people started sailing, just for the love of it, the life of it, Jack came to be.
There was never only one Jack. There were many Jacks, who were born and grew old and died, but all looked nearly the same, and all remembered the lives of their past forms. Each sailed the sea, and many died by her hand, but only after they had passed to a new form, a new, small Jack who would grow up and realize that the voices in his head were his fathers before him.
And so this trio ruled the seas, each trying to outdo the other. The more sailors Jack brought to the waves, the taller Calypso made them, the more men Jones ferried. It was many, countless years before Jones grew angry at Calypso and the task she assigned to him, demanded a bigger seat at the table and was refused. He told the first brethren court, Jack’s court, how to bind Calypso and tame the seas. She was furious, rightfully so, and cursed Jones in revenge.
It was another many years before Jones fell and a young William Turner took his place. He was, indeed, young when it came to the immortals who ruled the sea. Brought to the sailor’s life by Jack in order to rescue his love, and Jack was smitten with the both of them. Jack had had all sorts of partners in the past, more than one person could count in their lifetime, and yet Will and Elizabeth were the ones who were impossible for him to leave. Impossible to look away from, to tear himself from. They had ingrained their lives into his in a way he hadn’t thought possible for a person to do. The two of them had gotten under Jack’s skin like a bone-deep tan from hauling rigging in the sun all day, and had gotten tangled in his hair like salt from the sea spray. Jack knew it was dangerous, to get so attached to people who had no choice but to leave him in the end; he tried to push them away, pushed Will to Jones, but that hadn’t worked. It had worked in quite the opposite way, in fact, and Will became practically immortal just like Jack.
Then, that left Elizabeth. Will and Jack now knew they would always have each other, but neither could bear to think of their third withering away before their eyes, no matter how much Elizabeth insisted she didn’t care. As long as she was with them, Elizabeth said, as long as they spent as much time as possible together, she would be fine.
Despite this, Jack went searching. He scoured London, nearly got him and Elizabeth thrown in jail for it. The run in with Angelica was a nasty surprise, but in the end, it got them where they needed to go. The knowledge that Blackbeard was looking for the Fountain as well was startling, but nonetheless, for two people with no ship and no crew to help them get where they were going, it proved useful.
In the end, Elizabeth got the tear, and Blackbeard’s years. Jack had considered trying to drink the other chalice, to try to give Elizabeth some of his plentiful life, but she had refused, hating the thought of what would happen to Jack if he had to give up his life.
Angelica was fortunate enough not to get cut on the sword her father died by, when she pulled it out of his chest. She was marooned, on the assurance from Jack that he knew a ship would be coming by any day, bound for the New World.
The water from the fountain didn’t exactly grant immortality, but it was a leap forward.
Often Will and Elizabeth would ask Jack about his life- the great, immortal, Jack Sparrow, making a determined name for himself as the greatest pirate in the Caribbean. Sometimes Jack would tell them stories from that many lifetimes he had lived, sometimes he’d say he didn’t remember specifics. Sometimes he would do his best to forget the fragility of their everlasting life, and lose himself in the murmur of Elizabeth’s voice and the rise and fall of Will’s chest, breath powering a heart that wasn’t even there.
There was the sea. With Calypso released, Jack began to see glimmers of her in Elizabeth- the ferocity, the untame-ability, the unruly hair. Where she was all the power of an ocean storm, she could also be calm breezes that made palm trees wave and scuttled clouds across the horizon. She could be an island for Jack, and for Will, what with all their sailing about. Elizabeth was the sea, but she tied them to land, figuratively and literally.
There was death as well. Will had come as close to dying as one could get without actually making the journey over. Or down, as the case may be. Once again the Dutchman ferried souls, helped them cross to the next life (or afterlife- Jack was never sure). Will was meant to be everything cold and unforgiving, like the waters that claimed so many sailors, but he was also warm and caring as much as, if not more than, Elizabeth, and Jack never tired of seeing Will light up at the sight of him.
There was always Jack. The eternal man who drank himself silly on rum at the drop of a hat and relished a good sword fight and loved to get a coin or two out of the ordeal (even though money didn’t matter much in the long run, he supposed). He loved the sea and flirted with death (whom he also loved dearly). He had stopped aging, a peculiar thing that had never happened before, but he held it with both hands and refused to let it go. Perhaps that meant this life, this incarnation of Jack, was to be eternal. Maybe not. He didn’t know. The only thing that was certain, was the lapping of the waves, the darkness of the deepest waters, and Jack’s ship, sailing with the tides to find his way back to his loves, time and time again.