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When Jack arrives, there is a distinct lack of grateful welcome - which, considering he is soaked through and has lost the Pearl once again in the effort to reach these unpleasantly familiar shores, is rather rude, in his opinion. He stumbles onto the beach, dripping and coughing the last of the briny contents of his lungs out onto the sands, eyes burning with the salt-sting. The rest of the crew follow, cursing and dragging whatever salvage they can muster from the wreckage of the ship that is currently busy sinking just offshore. It’s useless here, Jack knows; no amount of salt beef or even rum is helpful in the Locker, even for those who aren’t technically meant to be here. Still, he lets them carry on making themselves busy, and slips off without being noticed.
Squinting into the sun - an unnatural, pale sun with so much glare it feels like it may cook him alive like an ant under glass - Jack stares across the barren sand, which remains disconcertingly devoid of life.
The water drips from him in little pitter-patters and is absorbed instantly. He can already see his shirtsleeves steaming in the sun, though he can’t feel the warmth permeate his body. Meanderingly, he holds his palm up to the weird, heatless sky and wonders if that was how it had felt to be cursed for those ten years.
Oh, right -
“Hector?” he calls, uncertainly, remembering suddenly what he’s doing here. “Hector!”
There is no answer, not even the familiar scream of a gull. There’s no wind at all here, and worse, he can’t hear the ocean that he knows is right behind him. He glances back a couple of times to make sure it hasn’t just been disappearing when his back is turned. He can’t be sure it hasn’t.
Jack shudders and starts walking aimlessly across the beach, assuming that the Locker will take him where he needs to be eventually. These things seem to usually work out for him - and honestly, he doesn’t have much of a plan either way. He had used up all of the forethought he could muster to both get back here and convince the crew it was a good idea.
His lips feel chapped and his clothes are completely dry by the time he crests a sand dune and sees a dark, familiar shape on the shoreline below him, though he has no idea of how long he has actually been walking because the sun hasn't moved an inch above him. “Hector? Is that you?”
The figure lies sprawled carelessly on the beach near the water, and makes no sign of having heard Jack; so with vague irritation and slight concern he continues clumsily down the dune and slip-slides his way towards it.
“Hector!”
“Aye, I heard ye the first time.”
“I’m here to rescue you,” Jack announces, slightly deflated by the lack of immediate gratitude.
“From what, exactly?”
Hector lifts his head finally, glaring at Jack from under the brim of his hat with a mix of incredulity, annoyance, and well-hidden delight that Jack duly files away in the back of his mind to ponder over later.
“From - this! The Locker, all this blasted sand and sun, the- weird multiple versions of yourself -” He trails off. Hector doesn't look particularly as though he has been dealing with that situation. There's definitely only one of him. Jack narrows his eyes at him, just to be sure.
“Ah,” Hector says, languidly. He holds out his hand delicately as a small, scuttling crab arrives holding - a silver goblet of wine? “Thank you, Jack.”
“You’re welcome!”
“Nay,” Hector drawls, eyes twinkling as he takes the wine. “I named the crabs Jack.”
“Ah.” Of course he did.
“So ye mean to tell me,” he continues with breathtakingly annoying smugness, “That you came all the way here to get me back?”
“I suppose I did.” Jack grins; winningly, he hopes. “I may have broken the ship.”
“The Pearl?”
“Maybe.”
“And how, pray tell, do ye suppose we are going to get back without a ship?”
“I had hoped one would make itself known, as it were.”
“Just laying around in the Locker.”
“Now that you mention it, the Pearl sort of arrived with me that time I was here, didn’t she.”
“Aye.”
“Ah.”
Hector drains his goblet with a rather ostentatious slurp and gives it to another crab, who scuttles off dutifully- to fetch another, presumably. Jack grimaces at it as it nudges him out of the way, clicking its claws at him impatiently. “Ack. You seem to be having a much better time of it than I did, I suppose,” he says, grudgingly.
“Indeed. And I got me foot back.” Hector wiggles his toes gleefully; all ten of the grimy little buggers, Jack notes with slightly nauseous interest. “I suppose it ended up here by itself, after all. Reunited at last.”
“How wonderful,” Jack says faintly, staring at Hector’s oddly naked feet. “Do I take it that you do not, in fact, require rescue and would instead rather remain here in Davy Jones’ Locker for all eternity, sipping crab wine and dipping your newly re-acquired toes in the surf?”
He wonders briefly if it is still Davy Jones' Locker now that technically Will Turner is in charge, and decides that ‘Will Turner's Locker’ sounds frankly ridiculous and vaguely seedy.
“That depends on why you decided to come all the way here to get me.” Hector tips the brim of his hat back to better squint at Jack. “Is there some terrible disaster befallin’ pirate kind - or did ye just miss me, Jack?” His eyes are that same sea-storm blue Jack remembers, brilliant and familiar and full of amusement. Jack catches his breath and tries to remain objective.
“Absolutely not. To either.”
“In that case,” Hector shrugs, “I’ll be stayin’ here, free from the incessant noise of your presence.”
“My presence, as it would happen, is here. For the foreseeable future, by the looks of it, seeing as how I may have misplaced my ship.”
Hector groans, rolling his eyes with what looks a little like relish. He takes another goblet of wine from the crab, who has returned with a refill, and pushes himself up into a slightly less relaxed pose to drain it in one long, messy gulp. Wine dribbles down his chin into his beard, and Jack follows the blood-deep stain of it with hungry eyes.
“I should have guessed there’d be no respite from you. Can’t even let a man die in peace.”
“In my defence, I didn’t think you were going to actually die.”
“I like to keep you on your toes. So to speak.”
“Please could you stop making toe jokes. I’m not used to seeing your actual feet, sans boots as it were. It’s disconcerting.”
“Nay. Anyway, ye have yet to make a compelling argument as to why I should be grateful for your short-sighted and frankly quite ridiculous rescue attempt.”
Jack frowns, and drops down gracelessly onto the sand next to Hector. He looks about in case a passing crab decides to offer him some wine, or better yet, rum, but apparently that little luxury is afforded only to those who die nobly or some such nonsense. “All I got was one peanut,” he mutters.
“What?”
“Nothing.”
“Idiot.”
“Perhaps,” Jack agrees dully, staring at a speck of dark sand amongst the bleach-bone white. “I thought I had a plan. I thought you’d be pleased to see me.” He feels suddenly small and foolish, and the unfamiliarity of the emotion is unpleasant.
“Who says I’m not?” Hector shrugs.
“You seem perfectly content with your weird crab butlers and your relaxing beach getaway.”
“Aye, it’s pleasant enough, for sure,” Hector agrees. “But somewhat lacking in conversation. The crabs don’t talk too much.”
Jack huffs out a short, humourless laugh.”I thought you said I do talk too much.”
“Ye do.”
There’s no malice in his tone. Jack lifts his chin to meet those eyes again and feels his heartbeat stutter for a ridiculous moment. Hector smiles at him with almost affectionate exasperation, leaning back on his palms. “Jack.”
“Yes?” Gods, he has missed the way his name sounds in Hector’s throat, possessive and dark.
“Why did you come back for me. And spare me the lies, this time.”
Jack opens his mouth to lie, obviously, but is stalled by Hector's narrow-eyed scrutiny. Instead he grasps for the sand, running pale grains through his calloused palms while he tries to organise the words that want to spill from him into something less humiliating.
“I-” he starts, stops, swallows thickly - “that is to say, the crew missed you.”
“Ah, did they now,” Hector says with raised eyebrows. “The crew.”
“Oh yes. Missed you something terrible they did, told me themselves in so many words. Inconsolable, they all were.”
“Inconsolable, were they,” Hector echoes, dryly.
“Absolutely! Mr Cotton's parrot practically begged me to come and get you. Several other crewmates who I do not currently recall the names of also expressed deep regret at your loss. Ah! The monkey! -” he adds with desperate, sudden inspiration - “he sat on my shoulder.”
“Alright, that one is odd, I'll give ye,” Hector acknowledges with a little wave of his fingers. “Do continue.’
“I - that is, the crew - thought it best if we attempted a rescue immediately, given that they missed you so terribly.”
“I see.”
Jack grins brightly. “There! So you see, here we are.” He spreads his hands. “And now let's go.”
“Nay.”
“What do you mean nay?”
“I said no lies, Jack. I'll be staying here and having a nap, if ye feel like telling an old man the truth. I be tired of these games.” Hector fixes Jack with a look that is weary and disappointed and amused all at once. “We've been at this for far too many years for you to get all shy now, lad.”
“It used to be easier,” Jack mutters, dropping his eyes to the silent tide inexorably creeping towards them. “When we were younger. Before the world caught us up in it.”
“Aye, that be true.”
“You're really not going to come with me unless I do this, are you.”
“That be true also. Make your choice.”
Jack sits in loud silence for a long while, digging his fingers into the sand with aggressive tension while Hector appears to fall asleep with the brim of his hat tilted back and the sun on his face. The sea creeps closer. A crab drops off another goblet of wine at Hector's side and furiously attacks Jack's fingers when he attempts to swipe it until he is forced to admit defeat and leave it sat there, tantalisingly close. He sucks on his bruised fingers and glares at the crab, who has refused to leave the wine and is clacking its pincers at him warningly.
“I don't even like wine,” he lies to the angry crustacean. “He can keep it.” Nevertheless, the crab remains staunchly crouched. “Fine. Be like that.”
After what may be the longest Jack has ever managed silence - possibly over ten minutes- he flops back onto the sand and stares blankly at the heatless sun for a painful second before twisting his head towards Hector.
“You win.”
Hector’s hand reaches delicately out to grasp his wine, pausing to caress the crab on its shell with a murmured, “Good boy Jack,” that human Jack feels is a rather personal attack on the tenuous self control he is clinging to. He barely lifts his head to drink, eyes still closed, and says nothing more. The crab takes the empty goblet and scurries off with a final warning clack at Jack.
“I -” and he huffs out a breath that feels as though it collapses his ribs in on themselves, leaving him drowning for air on dry land. “I missed you.”
There is a certain, quickly dismissed tension that crosses Hector's face, but no mocking laughter, and so Jack continues.
“It wasn't right nor proper, losing you like that. For sure, you did the noble thing, got to be a hero, saved your daughter and the rest of us sorry lot. She's fine, by the by. Married that whelp. I walked her down the aisle for you, for my sins.”
Hector’s face twitches with something soft and approving before he schools it back to careful neutrality.
“Anyway, where was I - oh yes. So it was all well and good, as it were, but then you were gone again and what about -” he cannot believe the words are about to come out of his mouth, and he spends a few moments silently opening and closing it like a fish while he works up the ability. “- us. Me, specifically. Because -” his chest is painful, his heart pounding like a trapped bird against the cage of his ribs, and he feels vaguely sick. “I had you again, and it was good, wasn't it? We were good again, as much as we ever get, and I thought maybe this time -”
Hector shifts minutely without comment, his arm pressing against Jack's with solid, reassuring weight, and Jack gulps in sticky air and pushes on to the humiliating conclusion like a runaway carriage unable to stop. “I thought we could be like we were. Have a last grand hurrah before we get too old to bother with plunder and bloodshed, be proper pirates together again, like the good old times.”
He knows that isn't everything, not enough; that what he is saying is not a lie but that it won't satisfy Hector, and so with agonised desperation he opens up the ruin of his heart and pries out the truth like a pearl from an oyster, handing it bloody and wretched to Hector for the first time in decades.
“Because I love you. Still. Never stopped, as point of fact. Even after -” he doesn't say the word mutiny because they've beaten that weary path hundreds of times before now, fighting and clawing at each other about it both on deck and in bed.
“- everything. I never stopped. I don't know why I stopped saying it. It's not like we ever stopped doing the rest of it. You're the tide, Hector. The wind in my damned sails, the vast depth of the ocean under me - everything. Always have been.”
He falls silent, emptied out and tired in a way that feels almost good for once. Brushing sand from his palms, he sits up and squints over at Hector, waiting for a reaction with trepidation and a creeping prickle of anxiety at the back of his neck.
There is a long stretch of time where Jack wonders if Hector has in fact fallen asleep, the rise and fall of his chest even and measured.
Then, like a wreck groaning its way up from the depths, Hector rises. He brushes his hat off with careful nonchalance, placing it back onto his head with a flourish, and finally cocks his head to look at Jack, eyes storm-dark and unreadable.
“Aye, that'll about do it.”
Jack flounders for a response that isn't just fuck you, but before he can manage one, Hector reaches over and lifts Jack's chin with his finger to close his mouth. His thumb grazes over Jack's chin, his bottom lip, careful and tender, and Jack's eyes fall half-closed at the familiar touch.
“Be quiet for once in your thrice-cursed life, Jack,” Hector says almost affectionately. Jack obeys despite himself. There is a struggle on Hector’s face that takes a long moment to pass, brows furrowing at Jack in almost comical consternation.
“It's always been you, Jack,” he says finally. “Always. Everything. You’re the star I followed home every time, the only true North I know. Every cursed inch of me yearns for you even when we're already touching.”
“But you- the-”
“It's in me nature, lad. Ye know that more than me. Didn't mean naught by it.” He pauses. “I may somewhat regret certain of me actions at that juncture.”
“Is that an apology?”
“Nay. Now, let's get out of this ridiculous place. I be grateful it weren't torture or whatever nonsense ye be squawking about, but I do tire of it.”
“We don't have a ship,” Jack reminds him with a half- apologetic shrug, allowing himself to be pulled to his feet. “Unless the crew have managed to rebuild her from the wreckage, but considering their collective intelligence level I highly doubt that-”
Hector smiles cryptically.
Suddenly, there is a dull, shifting roar behind Jack that is rapidly getting louder, the sand underneath his feet shuddering and shifting in rivulets towards the sea. The noise of it all after such oppressive silence takes his breath from him.
Jack turns just in time to see the Pearl come crashing over a sand dune on a wave of crabs, her masts giving him an accusatory creak as she passes him with almost palpable smugness. She slides in a dignified whoosh of air into a valley of sand and turns, waiting, on the chariot of crustaceans that roil and clack underneath her. Jack squints at her with his jaw slack, and the Pearl settles herself with a groan that sounds like a sigh.
“That's the Black Pearl!” he says, somewhat redundantly.
“Nothing gets past ye, does it.”
“You knew!”
“Aye. I saw her come in - must have been when ye sank her - like a mirage in the desert way over yonder.” Hector points somewhere back in the direction Jack had come. “I couldn't be sure you were with her, mind. Didn’t know if you’d be that stupid.”
“You could have said!”
“What, an’ missed that reaction? I thought ye knew me, Jack.”
Jack grins like an idiot, grabbing Hector's shoulders. “I could kiss you.”
“You can wait until we're out of this Locker, thank ye,” Hector grumbles with a ridiculous, pleased little half-smile.
“Come on then, chop chop. No time to waste.”
-
The crew of the Pearl have long given up on actually being useful by the time the sands shift and the ground beneath them shakes, and have set about draining the reserves of rum with enthusiasm. They look up in varying degrees of drunken terror, only to be greeted by the sight of the top sails of the Pearl cresting a dune with dramatic flair directly in front of the sun. Silhouetted against the light stand two figures, side by side at the bow, the theatrical entrance of Jack's dreams. Obligingly, the crabs steer the Pearl true, sliding her into the ocean with barely a splash in front of the cheering pirates.
“Do you know, I rather enjoyed that,” Jack admits to Hector, leaning in closer to him. “Despite the crabs.”
“I thought ye would.”
They stand together at the helm as the men start boarding the ship and getting her ready to sail.
“So, it was you who walked Carina down the aisle then?” Hector sounds relieved.
“Aye. Our dear mutual annoyance Will was very much put out by it, I gather.”
“Hmm - wait. Why was Will Turner there, of all people?”
Jack grins in delight. He doesn’t know how Hector has managed to willfully ignore this little tidbit of information regarding Henry’s parentage, but he cannot wait to ruin his day about it.
“Oh mate, you're going to love this.”
“I rather fear I'm not, from your tone. Now move - I'm Captain of the starboard side, if ye recall.”
“I came all the way here to rescue you!”
“I don't see how that be relevant. Move.”
“Bloody pirate,” Jack mutters as he slides across to port. “Would you like to give the orders to set sail as well while you're at it?”
“Why thank ye, Jack,” Hector says with mock-solicitousness. “Weigh anchor, you useless pack of curs!”
“Aye, weigh anchor!” Jack echoes, louder.
There is a confused chorus of Aye Cap'n....Cap'ns... from the crew, but they get to it readily enough.
Jack takes the wheel. Hector takes the wheel. They fight about it silently for a long moment while Gibbs watches in weary exasperation and decides to turn to drink again.
Finally they settle for one hand on the wheel each, stoically refraining from commentary.
Jack gives Hector a surreptitious sidelong glance and catches him doing the same back from under the brim of his hat. The grin they share is full of relief and promise, and Jack feels stupid and drunk and ridiculous despite being stone cold sober for the first time in living memory.
“Back to the land of the living then, old man?” he asks, and Hector barks out a rusty laugh.
“Aye. By my reckoning, there be a few more years left in me yet, lad. Ye’ve seen to that.”
“Just try not to do anything stupid.”
“I can't promise you that, Jack. Where'd be the fun in it?”
The Pearl seems to shift under their feet with a groan that suggests politely that they can leave her out of it if they are intending to come back here again.
Hector and Jack caress the wheel reassuringly in almost identical, unconscious motions, and finally, the Pearl sets off for home’s horizon.