Chancing Fate - Jack Sparrow x OC

Part 3 - Chapter 7

A/N: Updated

Lena's gaze drifted up toward the pale sky, following the same familiar path it had every morning for the past several days, trying to spot some small tell above them that proved the difference between the real world and the Locker. There never was one. Left drifting on the water, what else was there to do? The weather hardly changed despite the daylight passing, so little help was needed with the ship, and with no real direction, it scarcely mattered if they went off course. They didn't have one.

That just topped off everything else they no longer had, such as food and fresh water. Meals had quietly become smaller with each passing day while everyone pretended not to notice. Every morning began with another attempt to make sense of Sao Feng's chart before slowly giving way to the same unanswered questions, and every evening seemed to end around a deck of cards or another discussion that circled right back to the map. All this way just to die of hunger. What a way to go.

As her stomach protested once again, Lena's hand settled there for the briefest moment before she quietly let it fall away. Across from her, Jack remained bent over the chart, turning it another few degrees before pausing, only to rotate it again moments later. Every so often his attention lifted just long enough to wander across the deck before returning immediately to the same impossible puzzle spread across the table, his fingers idly tracing the edge of the parchment while he muttered beneath his breath.

Lena listened anyway, despite already knowing what he was likely to say. After nearly a week she'd heard the same handful of observations often enough that she could almost recite them herself.

"Up is down," Jack repeated for what felt like the millionth time as Lena rolled her eyes and tipped her head back toward the sky once more. "Well, that's just maddeningly unhelpful. Why are these things never clear?"

Ignoring his words, Lena turned her attention toward the crew working and standing around the deck.

"Come again?" Jack asked.

Confused by the sudden question, Lena looked back toward him, only to find his attention focused somewhere beyond his own shoulder instead. Her gaze followed his automatically, searching the empty stretch of deck behind him before returning to Jack.

"Well that's more than less than unhelpful," Jack continued, glancing between empty air and the map.

"Jack?" Lena called quietly, though his focus never wavered.

"I love the sea."

Lena watched him in silence. Jack had always talked his way through impossible problems, often carrying on entire conversations with himself before arriving at an answer, but this sounded different somehow. Thinking back to when they first found him, she remembered him insisting they were only another hallucination, and she couldn't help wondering whether some part of the Locker had followed him back after all.

"I prefer rum. Rum's good," Jack said after a thoughtful pause. "Once every ten years... Even longer given the deficit of rum..." Another pause lingered before his expression brightened. "Oh, I like that."

She waited for him to look up. He never did, continuing to turn the chart beneath his hands while the conversation carried on with someone only he appeared able to hear.

"Not sunset... sundown and rise," he murmured suddenly, the chart going still beneath his hands before he turned the center ship upside down once more. He stared at it for only a heartbeat before a grin slowly spread across his face, and Lena recognized it immediately. Whatever he had just seen, he'd found something.

He was already on his feet, catching her hand as he hurried past and pulling her after him. "Up," he said, as though that single word explained everything, before striding toward the side of the ship. "Oh! What's what?" he called, peering over the rail.