Disclaimer:  Not mine.  Gods, but that is an understatement.  One belongs to 1013; the rest belong to Disney.  (Yes, you read that right.)  Er.  I take no responsibility.  My muses gave me this particular beginning at midnight last night and it's not my fault.  Really.   Written for the Beginnings X-Files Lyric Wheel.  Well.  Technically.  Actually, I sat down and wrote so I could get some piece and quiet to sleep. 
Rated:  PG-13.  It's Gibbs, what can I say?

Drops

  Somewhere in the Caribbean, 16--

 
 
She was always a cursed ship, laddie.  Did you never hear how he got her?
 
Won her, says he.  Stole her, says I. 
 
A prize, says he.  A ship unlike any other, says I.  Crewed for a while by a crew of the damned.  Men so evil hell itself spat them back out.  Well.  That's the story.  Truth, now.  Truth is even stranger.  But we're not talking about the days when Barbosa captained The Black Pearl.  We're talking about Captain Jack Sparrow and his one true love.
 
No, lad, don't be an idiot.  ::hastily and quieter::  Don't say that where the redcoats can hear, hmm?  Idle talk and hollow promises can walk a man down His Majesty's plank.  ::louder again::  I meant the Pearl.  You never heard the real story of her, did you?
 
Well.  Happens it went like this.
 
Jack limped into Tortuga on a prize vessel -- The Far Seeker, seein's you asked -- that was a bit shot up, but at least still afloat, unlike his own dead beauty, The Halcyon, which were lyin' beneath the waves.  But he came in with his crew, his captives (and a fair enough ransom they brought, if they'd admit they paid not to swim with Davy Jones, which they wouldn't), and The Seeker.  And her cargo.  Now, this was late August, y'ken, after the stars fell as they do every year.  Yes, they fall in November, too.  Quit interrupting.  Or did you want to tell this?  Bad luck, interruptin' an old sailor's story....
 
Good.  Where was I?  The Seeker's cargo.  Mm.  Talking's thirsty work -- God, no, that's water.  Never mind.  The Seeker'd been to sea that August.  August, when the stars fall all around a man, and the sea seems even more treacherous than usual, and the winds less willing to fill a ship's sails.  Well.  A star fell onto The Seeker's deck, only this one didn't burn away, or turn to stone.  It turned to oil.  Black oil, dark as night, slick as lampblack, dangerous as a pirate's heart. 
 
Aye, it might just have looked like a large black pearl.  Who's telling this?  Well.  The passengers swore later that if it hadn't been for that fallen star, Captain Jack would never've taken Far Seeker.  Best not to bet against Jack Sparrow, says I.  Crazy, he was and is, but crazy like a fox.  Crazy enough to pick up the fallen star safely, unlike the crew of The Seeker.  Her captain was never let out alone again; his mate threw himself overboard. 
 
Say what you will, they lost to Halcyon, and if they shot her mast away and sank her, well, their story was that they didn't dare let Seeker be taken and the black devil let loose.  So they tell Captain Jack, and off he goes to see what they think is so valuable.  Picks it up, he does, with the thing quivering and shivering in his hand, and holds it up to the sun.  Black it is, jet black.  No shadows, no red or blue along it like a cat's fur or an Irishwoman's hair.  Black.  Black, and round, and shivering when Jack's not moving, nor the deck underfoot.
 
"That's interesting," Captain Jack says, and puts her in his pouch, gentle as you please.  Gets her as his share of the loot when Kinsale tries to pick her instead and screams and jumps overboard instead -- what?  Yes, he survived.  Bootstrap Bill went after him and brought him out, with no memory of picking it up and no taste to ever touch the pearl again.  Better'n Kinsale deserved, but that's another story. 
 
Cursed, the pirates said she was.  Mine, says Captain Jack.  His, she was.  His pearl.  His lucky token.  Got a good ransom, he did.  Paid the crew well in their shares and elected captain again.  Everyone wants a captain who's lucky, and the devil's own luck, they said the pearl was.
 
The ship's builder played a game of dare with Captain Jack Sparrow.  Another man would have left the pearl be.  Charles Hillman picked her, shuddered, and put her down.  Signed over the ship then and there, though His Majesty's Governor of the Antilles hung him for it later.  Treason, and theft from His Majesty, and aiding and abetting pirates.  He pulled the scaffold lever himself, old Hillman did.  But that's not important, is it?
 
Captain Jack Sparrow and his crew took that ship and sailed away with the finest ship built by the finest shipwright of ----'s Navy, and everyone knew Jack Sparrow had something... different on his side.  Dangerous, says they.  Mine, says he.  Evil, says they.  What do I need except my Black Pearl, says he?  And so she's been called ever since.  And if the captain runs his hands along her wheel or her rail like a man in love, well, Captain Jack Sparrow's crazy, aye.  Crazy like a fox.
 
 
 

~ ~ ~ finis ~ ~ ~

Comments, commentary, miscellanea:

 
Er, it makes a twisted kind of sense to me?  Other mileages may vary.  But well, it's a beginning.  Or two.  We don't know where or when all the Oil arrived, and I've never heard any canon for the source of the Black Pearl's name....  Might explain Jack's fascination with rum, too.
 

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