drown the urge for permanence and certainty; crouch down and scrawl my name with yours in wet cement

[herotypical]

Who: lists_to_port & slaying
What: carpentry; catharsis; cutting a deal
When: october 17th; noon onwards
Where: house seven
Summary: buffy wants to build something for jilly's return. buffy also wants to borrow a boat.
Rating: clean enough to start but it's these two so don't be surprised if the rating climbs a couple hundred tags in.

Today looked just a little bit brighter. Not by much, granted. But enough to make a difference and enough to sweeten the sense of industry that was unfolding her backyard. The heat helped; the day was warmed than the ones before it and strangely warm for a late October afternoon. Buffy had quickly given in to summer's last hurrah and was hoarding her last chance to wear shorts before autumn established its firmer grip on the month and on the village. Misery and grief were very, very slowly opening up to allow silver linings and miniature blessings. And one such something was working just a few feet away from her. Not quite so silver, though, and she suspected his lip would curl if she referred to him as miniature anything. Buffy worked the plane across her chosen soon-to-be-planks of wood and she watched Jack Sparrow from the corner of her eye. Perhaps a tarnished, coated kind of silver that resisted polish like two too similar poles on a magnet. Blessing was a harder one to pin down. The word seemed as though it should be anathema to a rough-reptuationed pirate. But then again? In a number of ways, Buffy knew that Jack was less rough than she was.

The afternoon's project was a simple porch swing and it was a little bit of home improvement to impress Jilly with once she returned. And it was a way to keep busy while they waited for her while they waited out their grief. Keeping busy, she found, helped her focus. The work tricked her now and then into smiling when she hadn't intended to. Silly little mistakes would take place -- fumbling with a tool or trying very hard (without much success) to remember carpentry terms once taught to her by Xander Harris -- and somehow these mistakes weren't discouraging. They were comedic. They were okay. And Buffy knew that none of it would be possible had she been left at the house alone, this week.

So she worked diligently at Sparrow's side and took moments now and then to appreciate his work ethic before it inspired her to press forward with her own. And she soon had another plank smoothed and sanded. Buffy pushed it aside and sat back with her palms crushing into the grass that was just a little too long. It wasn't as though the place was crawling with lawn-mowers, after all.

"What colour, Jack?" She asked as she blew a fine stream of breath up and across her brow. Fluttering bangs and clearing her vision. "We should paint it. It should be painted. What colour?"

Comments

[all7seas]

"Mmhmm. His." Jack's first inclination was to pull away. Teague's addendum was a rather frightening document, all told. He wasn't sure what she would make of it.

Finally, though, he let her take it.

"I only made it up to the walking on hot coals bit," he informed her. That punishment was only four or so marks down the list, right after "sound thrashing," "being dangled from the crow's nest by one foot," and "eels"--not nearly as dire as things got further down.

[herotypical]

"...Seriously?"

She breathed her combined horror and dismay at the list but she wasn't quite horrified. Old books often held terrible, frightening things within their covers. There were some forms of demon-inflicted torture that Buffy could have done without the little woodcut engraving examples. This list, by comparison, was dire but not stomach-turning.

Although, she was frowning. "Did you? Walk on the coals?"

[all7seas]

"Just the one time." He tried to take back the list; it would have to be tucked back into the tome from whence it came.

[herotypical]

"I'm thinking that with a punishment like that? You only need the once."

Buffy kept the page out of his grasp for just a little bit longer -- tapping the next item on the list. "How close were you to this?"

[all7seas]

"You only need the once with the coals, Annie, to never come close to that at all."

[herotypical]

Hmm. She flattened the page back in its place -- drawing her thumb across the mention of hot coals. Law or guideline or code or whatever...she thought it a genuine sin for family to do that to family.

[all7seas]

Hot coals at fifteen had been the last time Jack had tried to capture his father's attention by messing with the Codex. Success at sea became the dream that replaced the childish mischief: proving himself upon the sea and the ships that he crewed the best way to become more fully Teague's son.

It had been a much better strategy than provoking a man who would not stand for mischief from his boy.

"Now he mostly just shoots people," Jack admitted, turning another page to hide that list. "But he shoots them with a great deal of conviction."

[herotypical]

"Not much better, if you ask me." She was murmuring.

[all7seas]

A small starfish began slinking off the damp page they'd opened to; Jack gently set it back in place. There was an anemone as well. It was a very squishy page: all of the ink was blurred here, obscured by inky starfish tracks.

"Teague's not a bad pirate, Annie. Without him the rogues would take over; they'd ruin the life for the rest of us. And the Brethren Court would be a shambles."

off to bed with me! goodnight!

[herotypical]

"There's a difference between being not a bad pirate and not being bad family." She pronounced this rather stiffly as she chased a twin starfish back onto the paper. Anxious, uncertain fingers but they treated the little creature with kindness.

night!

[all7seas]

He was silent at that. Bad family? Teague was the only close family Jack had left. There were aunts and uncles and a cousin or two, but they were hardly what he would call "close." And some of them were more fearsome than Teague himself.

Finally: "Fathers do right by their sons. Teague did raise me, Buffy. And raised me alone, at that. And he's wily and cunning and smart about things, and tried to teach me to be so as well." Earlier he had told her about the life-saving shot outside the Captain's Daughter, after all. "And in recent years he seems to be there right when I most have need of him. Mostly. Sometimes. Wasn't shot in the back, was I?"

And he never had been. Shot in the front? Yes. Twice in the chest at close range, once. Teague hadn't been there to stop that one.

"Wouldn't...wouldn't raise a child of my own in the way he did, but he could've rid himself of me completely. And he didn't."

And now, later in life, the two men had a strange kind of working friendship. The power imbalance was still there, of course, and Jack knew better than to cross his father, but much of the conflict between father and son had mellowed over the years--gone along with Jack's teen angst and rebellion and a certain overbearingness that had characterized Teague as a young Pirate Lord. Was it still uncomfortable? Often, yes---but even that was starting to dissipate as the years rolled on and they both did a better job at living with themselves.

[herotypical]

"Making his son walk over hot coals? There's nothing done right about that. That's cruel." It was a vaguely reach argument coming from a Slayer who once locked a group of unpowered girls in a crypt with a vampire just to teach them a lesson. But that was different, wasn't it? She certainly saw it as separate.

"I mean, sure. Don't get me wrong. I'm glad you weren't shot but..." But then Jack mentioned raising a child of his own and her mouth snapped shut. Her steeled gaze sank back down to the Codex and she turned a few more pages in a desperate search for a distraction.

[all7seas]

"Aye. Cruel. But that's always a matter of perspective, isn't it?"

He'd been called a cruel man before, by one of the cruelest who sailed the seas. Jack tried to still her hand.

"Have a care; we don't open it to page one hundred-twelve."

[herotypical]

"Just because something's a matter of perspective, it doesn't make it debatable. Some things are cruel in every perspective. Or they should be."

Her fingers freeze on the corner of the page. Buffy, at least, had a healthy consideration for the damage some books could do. "Why? What's on page on hundred and twelve?"

/finally lets this headcanon spill over. WATCH THE WRITERS SCREW ME LATER.

[all7seas]

Page one-hundred-twelve: the itemized list of charges brought against Jack Sparrow's mother by Jack Sparrow's father, as heard and judged aright by the Brethren Court in the autumn of sixteen hundred and eighty-nine.

That was the year she had forged ahead to the Amazon with her ghastly wild crew aboard the Terrier, hunting for fabled halls of gold.

"We don't open it to that page, Annie."

[herotypical]

"Cursed?" She guessed and looked up from the book to the pirate. Maybe cursed. Maybe not. But all Buffy really knew was that she would have to learn how to break into this book. Or perhaps talk to Jilly upon her return.

Jack Sparrow wasn't the only one with a bad case of the curiosities. Buffy wanted to know what was on page one hundred and twelve.

1/2

[all7seas]

"Nah, not cursed. Not..."

Captain Kairavi Prasad of the Terrier is this day sentenced to death for crimes deemed rogue and unsavory according to the Code of the Brethren; let no pirate give her shelter or aid, but by the strength of our Court her life shall be ended and so say all of us.

He knew it by heart, really, for all Jack protested against ever looking at page 112.

"So say all of us..."

2/2

[all7seas]

"I vote, Annie--I vote we go do something much more better! Outdoors, eh? Beautiful out! Sunny! Warm! Winter and frozenness will soon be upon us and I for one want to frolick in the open air!"

[herotypical]

Here was an impressively shrewd look from a woman who spent most of her conversational hours being just flippant enough to possibly come across as not shrewd at all. It wasn't a secret that she was clever and investigative -- it wasn't something she tried, intentionally, to hide. But she did make it rather easy to forget right up until moments like this where her eyes snapped tight to a target and she seemed to be re-measuring and re-evaluating.

There was something very interesting on that page and Buffy vowed right here and right now to find that something interesting out. Her vow was silent and only to herself and it might take a little while and some careful application of what Jack had already taught her in order to get what she wanted but she would get it, she decided.

But for now...? Well, her concern melted away and Buffy hopped down from her awkward kneeling position on the library chair.

"Frolicking it is, then. Ever play frisbee?"

[all7seas]

"No! Does it sting?"

And Jack shut and locked the book that represented so much of his personal history as well as the code, law, and lore of his kind.

[herotypical]

"Only when you're playing with me."

[all7seas]

"Right. Will I survive?" With a great deal of effort, Jack lifted the heavy book once more and staggered slightly under its weight, but only for a moment. It had to be replaced under the table, with several innocuous-looking items placed on top of it to keep it somewhat hidden.

[herotypical]

"Maybe. Depends on how quick of a study you are in the arts of ultimate frisbee."

Buffy was rather obliging at this point and helped by tossing a few smaller, clutter-inducing books on top of the larger one.

[all7seas]

"Sounds almost date-like, really." He looked at her and smiled as all that history was reduced to an ordinary-looking pile of books. "Shall we?"

[herotypical]

"There are...rules. Involved. You'll have to follow them. One of those rules is that you're not allowed to throw the frisbee at an unethically high height just so less-than-tall players can't even jump to reach it. It's pretty much the most important rule of the whole game and breaking it means instant losing."

Buffy chucked a final finishing touch of a book onto the heap and dragged Jack towards the exit.