Chancing Fate - Jack Sparrow x OC

Part 1 - Chapter 12

A stream of sunlight cut across Fort Charles, bright and warm in a way that felt wrong against the gallows beneath it. The square had filled long before the execution was set to begin, merchants, sailors, soldiers, and women in dresses finer than Caroline’s all gathered shoulder to shoulder waiting to watch a pirate hang while the steady drumming echoing through the fort only worsened the nausea twisting in her stomach. Each beat landed too hard inside her chest.

Everything felt unbearable in the daylight. The pale pink gown her father insisted she wear clung too tightly around her ribs, the stays beneath it making every breath feel shallow. The gloves against her hands felt suffocating. Even the heat of the sun against her skin seemed cruel somehow. Two weeks ago she would have stood amongst this crowd without a second thought. Pirates were criminals. Executions were justice. That had always been the expectation in Port Royal.

Now she could barely force herself to remain standing because this was not justice.

Jack Sparrow stood on the gallows because he saved Elizabeth. Because he saved her. Because every reckless thing he had done somehow kept ending with him saving someone else, and there was nothing she could do about it. Her father had ensured that.

Samuel Palmer stood rigidly beside her, hands clasped behind his back as though attending some ordinary public affair. Caroline could feel his attention shifting toward her every few moments without even looking. Since returning to Port Royal, she had barely spent a second unwatched. Unless escorted, she was not permitted outside the house. Conversations were monitored. Doors remained guarded. The moment he realized how attached she had become to Jack Sparrow, every inch of freedom she still possessed disappeared.

Jack Sparrow was dangerous. Manipulative. A parasite on civilized society.

It was a speech she had heard repeatedly since returning aboard the Dauntless. Several spots away, Elizabeth stood beside Governor Swann and Norrington beneath partial shade overlooking the square. Even from a distance Caroline could see the strain in her posture. Norrington stood perfectly composed beside her in full uniform while marines lined the area below the gallows.

Caroline could not stop looking toward the platform where Jack stood at the center with his hands bound behind him and the noose hanging beside him waiting to be placed. The sight of the rope made her stomach twist harder.

An official stepped forward, addressing the crowd loudly. “Jack Sparrow, be it known that you have been charged, tried and convicted.”

Despite everything, Caroline caught sight of Jack moving his mouth beneath his breath, likely correcting part of the statement to himself. The smallest smile pulled briefly at her mouth before disappearing again.

“For your willful commission of crimes against the crown. Said crimes being numerous in quantity and sinister in nature. The most aggrieved of which to be cited herewith: piracy, smuggling, impersonating an officer of the Spanish Royal Navy, impersonating a cleric of the Church of England, sailing under false colors, arson, kidnapping, looting, poaching, pilfering, depravity, degradation, and general lawlessness.”

The crowd murmured occasionally at various charges, but Caroline barely heard them. Instead she found herself thinking about all the stories behind those crimes. Somewhere within that ridiculous list were moments she would never hear now. More impossible escapes. More outrageous lies. More adventures that probably sounded unbelievable even when they were true.

Her chest tightened painfully as she curled her fingers tightly against her skirts, forcing herself to stay still. It was not supposed to end here.

“And for these crimes,” the official continued, “you have been sentenced on this day to be hung by the neck until dead. May God have mercy on your soul.”