Off the Map - A Pirates of the Caribbean AU

Jack isn't even sure how many months he was with the tribe who had adopted him. The mermaid bite was deep and he was injured enough to be taken in. His long hair, hairless chest, and dark skin made him look enough like them to be accepted even with his... eccentricities. They took him in and accepted him and Jack was happy to take their kindness, food, shelter, and the gold they put in his food after noticing it in his teeth. He went through a lot with them and all of it in search of waters that would grant him immortality. Instead, he found a spring that smelled of dead fish and a broken man who claimed it gave him everlasting life. A man, gone mad after losing generation after generation of his children to age. Worshiped as an ancient god but miserable and unable to care for himself; the old Spaniard's sunken chest rasped and toenails scrapped against the rocks as he paced and told Jack his story, forgetting the pirate was even there through most of it, but going on and on. He'd stopped eating. Stopped drinking water. Tried to die over and over. None of the others drank the waters. They knew. And then it finally died when he slaughtered them all. Slaughtered them like Jack's tribe was being at that moment, he'd cackled, and watched as the pirate ran off in a futile attempt to save them.

Jack returned to the tribal camp to find a war zone of fire and death. He had no weapons. He took a sword off one of the dead Spanish and fought, but when it was over most of the combatants were dead. The girl, Anaba --who carried Jack's unborn child inside her-- stood unspeaking in the middle of it.Her family was gone. Even her baby sister. Anaba was silent for the rest of the night as she and Jack sat and kept watch for more soldiers coming. Jack helped with the burial rights for the slain natives, carrying all the bodies to the sacred land. Then Anaba asked him to take her away on a ship to another land without her people. She couldn't bear to look at them anymore and she never looked at Jack after that night. She only saw her sister, Kimi, the sweet six-year-old that whispered secrets in Jack's ear and explained to the tribe that she and Jack would marry when she was of age. Anaba never looked back as she walked away from him, carrying their child in her belly. He took her in a small, stolen longboat and left her on a sparsely populated island off the coast where white men would take longer to spread.
With nothing left to him there, he pretended to be a lost Spanish merchant sailor to be put on the first ship out of the godforsaken colonies --the cursed new world.

While the Spanish may have been suspicious of him , the Dutch pirates who raided the Spanish galleon on it's return home seemed far more sure of what to make of Jack. It was upsetting. He had planned to ingratiate himself to the Dutch as a fellow pirate, as difficult as that can be, and parlay his way into safe passage to Tortuga. Before he could even speak, however, the sailors --who seemed thrilled to see him-- gathered around him petting his hair and telling each other that they'd found another one. They took him captive and dragged him onto their ship.

It would likely have helped if Jack spoke much Dutch, but his skills in that language lean mostly towards indecent proposals and obscenities. He rather wishes they hadn't been using words he understood. They kept talking about skin and held up the animal skin trousers he had been keeping as a memento of his tribe. They took them away and locked them up, for whatever reason. As he stood on deck, tied and confused, the sailors tugged and played with his hair --noting that 'this one has reigns!'-- and pulled at his beard having some negotiations over that. Ones which incited a great deal of laughter. They debated over him and congratulated the sailor who had captured him. 'He's different than Zeehond,'one pirate noted,'but he could be pretty if you shaved him.' Jack tried to argue, but he was hushed and a hand went over his mouth. 'This one is part bear, I think!' one man said, and they all laughed again. 'The biggest haul gets first go at the new one. The second best gets Zeehond!'said another, and they all cheered and hooted wildly. The take would be split by rank on board, but now they had a way to reward whoever hauled the most to the ship on his own. Jack was shown around to the crew, laughed about, and groped. He was knocked unconscious when he refused to stop fighting and be sweet like 'the other one', and then tossed into a cell in the brig while the crew set sail and counted up the haul. He wishes they spoke more English. Surely there's a mistake here.

It's a while before he starts to come to in his cell. He's a bit bruised and missing some of his effects, but mostly in tact. The brig is damp and dark as the depths of hell. It smells wretched. Ah, the familiar ambiance of imprisonment. There's some sound echoing in the hold. Perhaps he's not alone? Or perhaps this ship has more rats than most.

"Hello.. Do I have company, eh?"