I Dream of Disney (Volume II)

Commanding the CannonFire [Jack Sparrow x Reader x Cutler Beckett] Part II

Part II: The Hanging of Francois Lafitte

The breeze was northerly, bitterly cold and morbid. It may be a curious thing to describe wind as being morbid, but from the forlorn bellowing it made as it weaved through the susurrant crowds in the city square, slamming window-shutters and disturbing the starved seagulls that cawed hungrily from the sidelines, you will find that the description is quite appropriate. Though the storm that had been fated to devastate Barbados had faded, the skies had been reduced to a watery hue, opaque like the unappetising contents of an upturned porridge bowl. The sun was too frightened to shine - and all for good reason. 

There was a man standing at the gallows. Peculiar how the power of words could strip a menace - who had been brutally christened as the Devil of the Seas, the maker of a thousand widows or more - into something as simple as the title of "man". It made his innumerable crimes almost excusable. The power of words was of such an intricate and deft sort that, at that moment, the little girl's emotions were conflicted. 

(Y/n) looked for the hatred inside of herself. Looked for the callous expression of disgust and disapproval that so fittingly settled on the powdered features of her grandmother; the morbid excitement that glinted dangerously as daggers in her grandfather's pale eyes; nausea spiralling in the eyes of the ship captain whose name she had learned was Jack Sparrow; the aloof calculation glinting in Cutler Beckett's cold eyes, who did not look sombre as much as disinterested; or even the pride found on every line on Clintwood's round countenance. 

That was him. Standing on the gallows with his hands bound in rusted iron shackles. That was the villainous pirate that had done innumerable wretched, despicable deeds. (Y/n) should have hated him for what he was - a pirate - but she could not. There were no emotions for her to feel. She was numb. 

(Y/n) furrowed her brows and tried to look away from the horrendous sight, but soon found that she couldn't when her grandmother yanked her neck backwards and fixed her claws in her platted hair. 

"Look, my dear," Lydia Wayland commanded shrilly, "Is this not everything of which you have ever dreamed?" 

Whimpering, the girl shook her head passionately as she saw the dejected sight of the Frenchman stepping onto that long stage that was the gallows. The handsome features of the condemned man contorted with distaste, with harrowing fear, as the fatal length of rope brushed his forehead tenderly. The noose was waiting. The noose was patient. The noose was possessive. 

"I don't want to see any more of this cruelty," (Y/n) writhed in the ironclad grip of her grandmother," Please, grandmother! Let me go!" 

"Come now, Lydia," Lord Wayland relented, "You have made your point. There is no need to traumatise the child. She will be worthless to us if her mind is shattered." 

Lydia Wayland's blood-red lips pulled into a bestial snarl, yet she yanked her fingers from the girl's mottled hair and glared at her husband witheringly, "You wanted this punishment to be allotted. Now, as we stand here at the gallows, you want to let her remain with all of that protected innocence? For shame on you, old fool!" 

Lord Wayland growled his disapproval as the old woman in her eggplant robes swirled on her feet and looked into the faces of the three other men that jerked back from the venomous glare she provided them. 

"You," She hissed with a pale finger pointed at the three of them accusingly, "You will do what I ask. You are men." She paused to snarl at her husband, "Real men. Who will prove themselves? You, Governor Clintwood? Oh, I think not. All soft now that your wife's heavy with child. How about you, gentlemen?" 

Captain Beckett and Captain Sparrow looked uncomfortable as the tumultuous woman reached into her filigreed skirts and revealed a coin purse that she hastily emptied into the gnarled palm of her liver-spotted hands. Silver glinted gravely from between her gnarled fingers in that pallid morning light.