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Five bells. Two-thirty in the morning.
Jack glanced one, final time at the bed where the moonlight just barely reached its three occupants. Cuddled up as they were, they were a tangled mess of limbs—a mess that had taken him an agonizingly long time to disentangle himself from. Fitzy, surprisingly, had proven to be his biggest obstacle: The former nobleman had not only been using Jack's left bicep as a pillow, but his arms had also been wrapped around his midsection.
The sight filled his chest with a dull, painful ache; he badly wanted to crawl back into that cramped pile and go back to sleep. To wake up with them in the morning, his front pressed against one of their backs or his head resting atop one of their chests. To simply lay there in sleepy bliss while muttering good mornings to the others before it came time to force themselves to rise and greet the day…
Swallowing a bit harder than normal, he forced himself to look away. Silent as he could manage, he crept out of the cabin. It'd be better this way, he told himself, just as he did the other times he slipped away. A scoundrel like him didn't deserve one of them, let alone all three. Not when he only ever brought trials and tribulations into their lives.
Especially now that he had the Black Pearl back in his command. There was a debt he needed to find his way out of and he couldn't risk those three becoming part of that imbroglio.
As he stepped out onto the deck, he was greeted by the sight of the deckhands on mizzen watch hauling on the lines as they tacked the sails. Squinting through the night, he could see his own men working to do the same. It almost looked as if the two crews were moving in perfect unison, though he knew it was merely a trick of the light—or lack thereof, in this case.
Sticking to areas of heavier shadow, he skulked across the deck, towards the starboard gangway. He had come over earlier in the day in one of the Pearl's jolly boats, which was now moored alongside the large frigate. Setting his hand on the bulwark, he turned around and gave a quick glance over at the deckhands.
No one seemed to notice him—good. He preferred stealthy exits. They meant less guilt and less guilt meant not as horrible of a hangover the next day. Or so he told himself.
He was just about to step down onto the embarkation ladder when a voice startled him.
"You forgot something?" Looking to his left, he found Mary stepping out of the long shadow cast by the mainmast. She was wrapped up in her dressing gown and, against her chest, she held a small, leather-bound book.
His brows furrowed in confusion and he started to quickly pat himself down; he could have sworn he put the thing in one of his pockets. Evidently not. But what was more concerning was how she had managed to not only sneak up on him, but how she hadn't managed to wake the other two when she left the bed.
As he had done so many times before, he forced a playfully sheepish smile onto his lips, the expression looking as genuine as they came. "Thank you, Mary, love," he said, reaching for the book. "I would be a poor captain indeed if I were t' forget my personal log."
His fingers had just brushed against the corner of the book when she took a step back, taking it out of his reach once more. "Ye don't have t' go, Jack," she said. Her voice was soft, barely audible over the grunting and cursing of the nearby deckhands. "You can stay. You should stay."
The ache in his chest grew more intense and began to travel down to his stomach. He fought the urge to swallow hard, instead maintaining the mask of casualness he wore so well. "Too much o' a good thing, love," he said, nonchalantly gesturing at the Lady of the Lake. "It'd be a shame t' let myself become acclimated to such a feeling and thus lose my appreciation for it."
She held his gaze for a moment before looking down at the book, thumbs running over the worn leather cover. A silence fell between the two as she turned it over in her hands and opened it only to thumb through a dozen or so pages. He stiffened somewhat as the lack of written words and the abundance of drawings betrayed the fact that this was no captain's log, but a sketchbook.
While some drawings were of the ships, others were silly little doodles based on his ridiculous—and occasionally rum-fueled—daydreams. But, more often than not, the pages were filled with drawings of the three of them. Depictions of Mary's beautiful joy as she laughed. Fitzy looking annoyingly handsome as he sword fought. Emil experiencing a rare moment of peace on the bowsprit.
Each one a testament to how much he truly cared for them.
"We love you, you know," she finally said, closing the book and lifting her head once more. Her cheeks, now wet with tears, glistened in the moonlight and he felt guilt turn his stomach into a lead weight. This was exactly why he preferred to leave in the dead of night, when the others were asleep. "We always have. We always will."
Against his better judgment, he allowed himself to remove the domino of ease and relaxation and, stepping forward, he leaned over to press his forehead to hers. "I know, love," he whispered. "I know." It was neither a confirmation nor a denial that he felt the same, but they both knew better. The contents of the sketchbook had all but proven it.
Mary shifted and, the next thing he knew, she was slipping the sketchbook beneath his shirt, where it would be safest from the sea's spray. Before he could stand upright, though, her hands clasped his face and he found himself staring down into the amber pools that were her eyes. Sadness and determination mingled on her face.
For just a second, he contemplated staying.
"Ye had best come back to us, Jack Sparrow," she said, voice firm, despite its slight waver. She ran her thumbs over his cheeks, the caress soft and loving. Everything about this woman was soft and loving and good. Further proof he didn't deserve her. Didn't deserve this. "Do ye understand me? Come back t' us. We love ye, Jack, and that's not goin' to change, no matter what happens. We will wait for ye, no matter how long it takes. Just…come back to us. Savvy?"
A lump had risen into his throat while she spoke, but, as he nodded, he forced it back down with a hard swallow. Regardless, he feared that if he were to try to speak, all that would come out would be a strained, garbled mess. So, instead of speaking, he merely tilted his head forward and pressed a gentle kiss against her lips.
It was not just a silent assurance he had understood the gravity of her words, but it was also an unspoken promise. A promise that he would return one day.
And, hopefully, he'd have the courage to stay.