the Dalaverse

My mood improved over the day, so I wrote this rather silly Elizabeth&Pintel&Ragetti ficlet. Ampersand! Though if you are looking for a new OT3, I will not turn you away. Post-DMC.



Paying Court to the Piper


When they’d first boarded the Black Pearl all over again, with Sparrow back as captain and everything turned on its end, Ragetti fretted in an undertone that Sparrow’d have them over the side quick as blinking (he then blinked on reflex, and winced as the monkey-chewed wooden eye scratched his lids). Pintel hissed that they’d best make themselves useful, then, and try to keep from doing anything to remind the good captain that they’d gleefully participated in his fall and tried to prevent his recovery from it. Ragetti nodded, simpered at Mr. Gibbs, and offered to refill his flask.

As it turned out, the captain barely took notice of them, so distracted was he by thoughts of Davy Jones and the kraken that would soon haunt all their nights. Pintel and Ragetti were distracted too, and mainly set themselves up against whomever wielded a blade at them at any given moment without picking a side. It became so natural that swinging their swords at the smug chit wasn’t incongruous with saving her from the kraken’s greedy grasp.

When Sparrow was gone, it seemed wise to honor him in view of his mates, and Ragetti confessed to Pintel that he’d have liked Jack better than Barbossa anyway if Jack’d had a better nose for gold. Of course they never dared venture such an opinion in the presence of the new old captain, who threatened the lash but liked to keep them close because it irritated Turner.

Turner didn’t trust them, and neither did Gibbs given half a minute to think on it. It was a tricky dance, feigning loyalty to both the currently dead captain and the previously dead one, made only slightly easier by Barbossa’s obligation to Tia Dalma for the gift of his life. He had to fetch Sparrow back by blood oath, it was true, but he was none too happy about it behind closed cabin doors, and it was to his old shipmates he vented his complaints. This kept them from mixing with the crew overmuch, even on nights such as this when the kraken seemed a distant memory and Sparrow’s madness a fond one. While the rum flowed freely and one of the new men fiddled a lively tune, Pintel and Ragetti were belowdecks sunk in gloom.

“Jes’ one drink?” Ragetti suggested, thin shoulders hunched.

Pintel scowled at him, scuffing the deck with his boot. “Nay, I’m tired o’ th’ looks we get from Turner, when we done nothin’ but scrape an’ bow to him an’ his strumpet when the cap’n ain’t looking.” If the tide turned back to Jack Sparrow’s favor, he wanted no voice claiming they’d shirked their duty to the true captain.

“Bugger,” came a fierce voice from the hatch, and said strumpet tumbled down with a decided lack of grace – though she managed to hold onto the bottle in her hand.

“Miss Elizabeth!” Ragetti, whom Pintel strongly suspected had made a pet of the lass for true and not for appearances’ sake, shuffled over to help her to her feet. Pintel rolled his eyes and followed, taking her left arm. She was easy enough to lift, skinny thing that she was, but she swayed in their grasp once she was upright.

Squinting at them from beneath her crooked tricorn, she looked disarmingly like Jack Sparrow at his most inebriated. “Thank you, gentlemen,” she said, making so sure to enunciate clearly that it would’ve been more convincing had she slurred her speech. “I am grateful, as always, to have your assistance.”

“Wot’s yer trouble, then?” Pintel forced himself to ask, guiding her to sit on an ancient, heavy sea-trunk. “Cap’n getting’ out o’ hand?”

Elizabeth shook her head, misery writ in her watery brown eyes. “No, he’s the same sorry swordfish – ha!” She covered her mouth as a small hiccupy laugh escaped. “Same sorry – same sworry swordfish.”

“’E is!” Ragetti said, shaking his fist. “A swordfish, ain’t that ‘zactly wot ‘e is, Pintel?”

“Aye, a swordfish,” Pintel agreed with half his attention, the other half being fixed on the slow, inevitable downturn of the girl’s mouth. He took a step back, leaving Ragetti to prop up her unsteady form. Ragetti glanced at him with confusion, then with alarm as Elizabeth’s eyes screwed shut and she let out a soft wail.

Ragetti took quick pains to join him, staring at Elizabeth slumped over her knees. “Oh,” she cried, breath hitching in her throat, “I have done a foul thing, so foul that he’ll never speak to me again, even if we do get Jack back.”

“Now, now, miss,” said Pintel, holding up his hands in supplication to stop her weeping. “’Twas only this mornin’ I heard ‘Mr. Turner ask ye for th’ butter.”

“Aye, but ‘e ain’t hardly gone near ‘er all these days, an’ not once kissed ‘is own bride-t’-be,” Ragetti said in a stage whisper, which only made Elizabeth cry harder.

“I’m a trollop! I’m a – a lying, pirating, rum-swigging trollop! It should be me in the kraken’s belly, not Jack!”

“That’s rubbish,” Pintel protested, though he didn’t disagree on any particular point. Elizabeth hugged her bottle to her chest, her stuttering breaths making hollow music across its mouth. Pintel closed his eyes, every sob like a sharp nail digging into his skin. He felt Ragetti nudge him and shook his head, mute. Though he’d had more dealings with women than his companion, whores weren’t generally prone to tears – at least not the ones he liked to frequent.

So it was Ragetti who crept closer, tentatively reaching out to touch her arm. “Miss Eliz’beth – don’t weep, now – ‘twill all turn out aright in th’ end…”

“How?” Elizabeth demanded thickly, the tip of her nose turned red.

Ragetti’s mouth opened, but he was out of ideas. Pintel hmmmed a moment before snapping his fingers. “Why, b’cause ‘e’s Cap’n Jack Sparrow, o’ course,” he said, trying to put as much conviction into his voice as he could. Wide-eyed, Ragetti nodded along. “An’ you’re Miss Elizabeth Swann, th’ governor’s daughter what demanded t’ be heard under th’ code, an’ tricked Barbossa hisself, an’ made yer own way t’ Tortuga in search o’ your two lads.”

“An’ your Will – William Turner th’ Second – ‘e’s a pirate an’ a good man, so he oughter do right by all involved,” said Ragetti earnestly. Considering how that had turned out for old Sparrow, Pintel had his doubts, but he kept them to himself.

Even as Elizabeth was looking more and more soothed, she was looking more and more queasy. “I just – want Will to understand,” she protested as the two of them led her wobbly-legged self over to her sail-screened bunk.

“’E will, ne’er fear,” Pintel assured her, levering her into the hammock by main strength. Ragetti kept her from falling over the other side. Thankfully, the pained expression on her face eased once she was horizontal.

Before they could pull away, Elizabeth seized both their sleeves. “Thank you,” she murmured, eyelids fluttering already. “You’re…not so bad as all that, really…”

Ragetti flushed with the praise and tugged his forelock. Pintel rolled his eyes once again, and snagged the bottle from the crook of her elbow. He’d be glad once they got Sparrow back and the three of them could tie up their little mess. Mayhap Sparrow would kill her for leaving him to die, or Turner would do for him out of jealousy, or Barbossa would emerge victorious and leave them all three marooned somewhere. In any case, he’d not have to deal with the whinging and the pining and the melancholy looks.

“I do hope it all turns out in th’ end,” Ragetti whispered. “I like ‘appy endings.”