Jackunzel Drabbles (The Original)

Captain Jack (Part 2)

"I was an idiot to think you changed."

Jack looked at the ground, his insides felt like they were caving in on him. A void replaced his heart and he felt like everything was being sucked into it the more he stood before her. It wasn’t supposed to be like this. It was never supposed to be like this. He thought that everything had changed for the better, because he knew that she made him better.

He wanted to be better for her, to be the man she deserved.

Only he should’ve known that it could never happen.

Guilt ate at him, shame was the worst of it. It weighted down on his shoulders, sinking him into the ground and almost forcing him to his knees. He knew that he had to face her, that he had to look at her eyes at one point because he was better than this. He was feared and respected by men across the seas. He was revered by the people who knew of him and spoke about in every navy from here to Barbados. He had fought countless men, some twice his size and twice as armed. And yet he could not lift his eyes from his boots.

"You have nothing to say to me?" her voice was broken, laced with a sadness he didn’t understand but knew that the moment she walked away he would.

"What do you want me to say, princess?" his voice was hollow and rang in faux cockiness that he had perfected over the years. "I did what I had to do."

"No, Jack! You didnt have to do any of that! I thought…I thought you were better than that.."

He finally looked up at her. She was still dressed in the clothes he had gotten for her. The tight brown trousers, white men’s shirt held to her body by a pink bodice. She still wore her leather boots she had bought while in the southern isles, pieces of her hair still braided. She looked like a pirate. He almost laughed at the irony but decided against it. It was the wrong time and place for those thoughts.

He stood in his dark cell, his shackles clinked against the stone ground. he had been stripped of his weapons and coat and hat. He stood before her dirty and barren of the fine silks he had acquired over the years. His white loose shirt was stained with blood and mud, his trousers had tears from the fight and his leather boots were scuffed. One of his piercings had been ripped from his ear, leaving his white hair and neck stained with red.   

"You dont even know me, princess. I’m a bloody pirate. Stealing and pillaging it what I do." he countered, hard hallow blue eyes meeting green.

"But I did know you! I remember the little boy now, Jack. You saved me from Durem, you brought me back to my family. I could I think—"

"I was commissioned, Rapunzel. I was paid in gold and goods to bring you back to your prissy throne. Did you really think that was enough?" he said, his heart ached but he needed to get her away. He needed her to hate him so that he could stop the idea that there was a chance that she might be his.

She stepped back from the bars as he stepped toward her. Her eyes filled with tears, “Tell me why.” she said, her voice breaking.

Jack narrowed his eyes at her, his soul screamed at him but he schooled his features into a passive expression,

"In Tartarus, Pitch offered me a deal. I steal the golden flower for him and in return I get everything I ever wanted. It wasn’t a hard choice."

"But you knew that the golden flower was Corona’s source of light and healing. You knew how important it was to the kingdom, to my family. Did..Did I mean anything to you at all?" she looked so desperate, holding herself as if she was making sure she didn’t fall apart right in front of him.

"You’re a princess. I’m a pirate. You were a means to an end."

His words rang through his own ears and he wondered when he had become such a good liar. He watched as his long time friend and only love crumbled before him, tears fell down her cheeks.  She closed her eyes and looked away from him, turning her back on him. She looked so tiny in the darkness of the dungeons, so wrongfully full of light.