Title: Play Crack the Sky
Author: Inwe Elanesse
Email: jack_sparrow_luver@yahoo.ca
Rating: PG
Pairing: Jack/Norrington
Disclaimer: I am not affiliated with POTC or anyone involved with it in anyway.
Feedback: Please.
Warning: Character death!!!!
Summary: This is a songfic to the Brand New song called Play Crack the Sky. I don't usually do songfics, or condone them, but this song was crying for it!

Play Crack the Sky
by Inwe Elanesse

* * *

He was screaming over the sound of the wind and the waves. His men could barely hear him. His voice was becoming hoarse, but he didn't care. How could he care about something so trivial? There was no one out this far, no one to help, nothing that they could do. If this was the end, there would be no one to even send word back home.

"Commodore! The anchor!"

We sent out the SOS call.
It was a quarter past four in the morning,
when the storm broke our second anchor line.


He'd been heading somewhere. He was going to see Jack, finally, after a four-month trip, chasing the Black Pearl, with no intention of catching it, and other pirate vessels. James was looking forward to some quiet time off ship with the one he loved, but now he only hoped to make it through this storm with his skin in tact. Then he saw the rocks.

Four months at sea, four months of calm seas
only to be pounded in the shallows off the tip of Montauk Point.


The storm had caught them unawares. The Caribbean was known for its tricky weather. Often times it would be sunny one moment and the next you'd be running for cover from the rain. He'd heard of huge storms of high winds, rain, waves, and the damage they would do. He wouldn't have believed them, but for this.

They call them rogues; they travel fast and alone.
One hundred foot faces of God's good ocean gone wrong.


"Commodore!" Someone tried to get his attention, he turned his head, just in time for something to come barrelling at him, catching him in the head, knocking the ropes out of his hands. He skidded along the deck, head lolling back and forth with the ship under the vengeance of the waves.

*"James!" He looked up into dark brown eyes, peering into his. He was on a beach, sun on his face. Where was his ship?

"Jack, what—"

"Shhh." The pirate's lips touched his. "I love ya, Jamie."

How had he been swayed, convinced into the pirates bed? How had Jack seduced him when it was so clear that they were opposites? Complete opposites don't fall in love. They don't find romantic getaway spots on remote islands. They don't steal kisses in back alleys. A commodore of the navy was not supposed to fall in love with a pirate.

But he had.*

"Commodore!" Someone was shaking him. No, that was the ship. What—


What they call love is a risk,
'Cause you will always get hit out of nowhere by some wave and end up on your own.


"James!" It was Lieutenant Gillette. He helped his superior officer up, but his face was that of panic. "We've struck something. We're taking on a lot of water." He shook his head. There was no use....

The hole in the hull defied the crew's attempts to bail us out.
And flooded the engines and radio and half buried bow.


* "Have I ever told you, James, how gorgeous you look without the brocade?"

"You haven't."

"Maybe I should then."*

Your tongue is a rudder.
It steers the whole ship,
Sends your words past your lips or keeps them safe behind your teeth.

*"You don't need 'em, James! We don't need 'em!" He stormed away from the voice, but it followed. "All I want for us is t' not 'ave t' sneak around all the time! Can you not give me that?"

He spun around, glaring, seething. "Give up piracy and we'll talk."*

But the wrong words will strand you,
Come off course while you sleep,
Sweep your boat out to sea or dashed to bits on the reef.


So close to the lights, so close, they are. The rocks are in the way, though, it is too shallow here. But he can see the lights, and he shakes his head, trying to clear the fog. He couldn't tell if it was his mind or the atmosphere. He couldn't tell if the lights were close enough to reach. His head hurt.

The vessel groans, the ocean pressures its frame.
Off the port I see the lighthouse through the sleet and rain.


"James?"

He looked up at the lieutenant with teary, red eyes. "If I could just see him. Just once more."

And I wish for one more day to give my love and repay debts.


The light reached the horizon in the morning, Jack sighed with relief at finding his boat still mostly in tact, and an island nearby. They docked there.

This was their rendezvous point. This was where he'd agreed to meet James. If he had to make a guess, he would say the Pearl had drifted about thirty miles east of their intended destination. There were fewer rocks here though.

Jack wanted to sail closer, so he wouldn't have to walk across the island, but the closer he came, the sharper and more hidden were the rocks. He left his crew aboard and rowed the remaining way around.

But the morning finds our bodies washed up thirty miles west.


It was dark. The rain was pounding down harder than ever, and their boat was in pieces, scattered along the water. They sailed too close to the rocks. James clung to a piece of the mast. Why was it so cold?

They say that the captain stays fast with the ship through still and storm.
But this ain't the Dakota, and the water is cold.


His eyes were getting heavy. He'd stopped shivering. His grip was failing. It had not taken long.

We won't have to fight for long.
This is the end.


It was shallow here. Shallow enough that the bodies were stuck where they fell. He had to wade through the water to the shore, but his heart was too heavy to do it.

This story's old but it goes on and on until we disappear.

"Oh Jamie! James! Oh God!" He turned the limp blue figure over. His wig washed out into the water, his hat was gone, but he was unmistakable. "No, no, no, no." He bent and placed his lips to the cold blue ones, unmoving under his touch. All he tasted was salt.

Calm me and let me taste the salt you breathed while you were underneath.

Jack awakened in the dark of night from a nightmare. He was under the water, he was drowning, he tried to fight to the surface, but on the ocean bottom he saw the one face that could keep him under.

I am the one who haunts your dreams of mountains sunk below the sea.

"Don't ever leave me. I told you not to leave me! You said you wouldn't." Jack held the rum to his heart, clutched it like he would a teddy bear, or James. "I said I couldn't live without you."

I spoke the words but never gave a thought to what they all could mean.

Jack heard words in his mind, his own probably, but when he'd been drinking the rum....

I know that this is what you want.

He looked at the pistol in his hand. He said,

"A funeral keeps both of us apart."

"You know that you are not alone."

"I need you like water in my lungs."

Jack stood on the rail, holding onto a rope, leaning out past where it was safe. He pointed the gun.

This is the end.

* * *