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Disney, as far as I know, doesn’t even know who Jack’s father is. I have my theories and they are not intended to infringe on Disney in any way.
Addendum: Disney decided Jack’s father was a pirate played by Keith Richards. Bully for them.
Mine makes for a better back story, rock star charisma aside.
Sins of the Father
A bare foot slid up Captain Jack Sparrow’s similarly naked ankle, teasing, up and down. Long, limber toes wriggled against his instep, then the hint of a nail scraped across the sole of his exposed foot, causing a shiver to ripple up through his limbs and body.
Jack smiled. Will was curled up behind him, leg thrown over his, top arm around Jack’s waist, lips touching the back of his neck. Will’s chest pressed against his back, and Will’s cock, not hard not soft, nestled against his arse. Too many clothes between them, but still an altogether agreeable manner in which to awake.
“Are you awake?” Quiver-inducing breathy whisper against his neck.
“Hmm, I’m not entirely sure. I suspect I may be having a really lovely dream,” Jack murmured.
Will chuckled against him. The bare foot pushed up Jack’s leg, toes stroked calf muscles. Most agreeable.
But then the foot was gone, and Will’s body moved away, not entirely away but enough to allow air between the two men, and that sweet hot mouth wasn’t against his neck anymore. “Shhh.” At least his hand still rested on Jack’s waist, long fingers wrapped around the curve of it, warm. The door clicked open.
“Ah, don’t they look sweet together,” Kay’s voice drifted across the cabin.
Rustle of clothes, a chair being pulled out, drag of the rum bottle across the tabletop, splash of rum in a tin cup. Jack didn’t know from hearing that it was rum hitting the bottom of the cup, but he could faintly smell it. Along with something lilac. Much more pleasant to concentrate on the scent of Will surrounding him, so he did that.
Kay pulled the blanket up over both Will and Jack and dropped two kisses, one on black dreadlocks and the other on chestnut curls. She patted Will’s shoulder and walked back to the table. “Ooh, this hand is sore. But that ointment Okonkwo made up is helping. Lovely man, he is. You know that woman with the boy, the one Jack was talking to, she’s his wife. She’s been over here five years, and it was sheer luck that they were both sold,” her shudder was audible, “to that bastard who owned the ship Norrington sank. It’s wonderful they’re together again.”
“I still can’t believe Norrie sank that ship with all those people on it,” Charlotte hissed.
Jack groaned inwardly. Oh god, not the harlot, please, he’d been having such a peaceful, not to mention pleasant, time of it.
“I think the man is unstable,” Kay proclaimed. “Something must be driving him to do these horrible things.”
Charlotte snickered. “Well, he hasn’t been to see me in a couple of years. Maybe he’s not getting enough…”
“Hush, don’t say that! It’s not proper.” Kay couldn’t contain a little snicker though.
It made Jack smile to himself.
“Oh, and that is?”
Jack just knew Charlotte was pointing at him. And Will. She could dislike him all she liked - goodness knows he disliked her - but if she dared say anything about Will…
“That is adorable,” Kay replied. “They’re in love, and even if Jack is a little…”
Go on, say it, I dare you …
“…older than Will. I don’t have any problem with it.”
Older. That he could handle.
“And as for the pirate part of it, you’re in love with a pirate yourself, Charlotte.”
“Yes, but my pirate’s different. She’s brave, and strong and loyal and passionate…”
As if Jack needed to hear the harlot singing the praises of bloody Anamaria.
“I’m well aware of what my sister is. And I believe Jack is all those things too.”
Good. He’d known it all along. Kay was on his side.
“Although I fear he may not be well. All this fainting, I’m worried. Something must be causing it.”
Clink of the mug hitting the table. “They were talking about the brand the first time. D’you think he might be squeamish about pain or blood?”
“No, I treated that wound on his shoulder, he never fainted once.”
Bloody right. Captain Jack Sparrow does not faint from pain.
“And then he mentioned his father being a right bastard,” Charlotte remembered.
“Is thinking of one’s awful father enough to make one faint?” Kay mused. “I don’t know. Do you feel faint when you think of yours?”
Charlotte barked out a harsh laugh. “I only feel angry. He was awful, that’s for sure. And he was harder on me than on the other children, because I wasn’t his legitimate daughter.”
Jack heaved a carefully quiet sigh. So she wasn’t his full sister. He didn’t think so. Still, it was a relief.
“That shouldn’t make any difference. Jacob has a different father than the rest of us, but we still consider him our brother.”
Damn that Kay for being so flexible. She was supposed to be on Jack’s side!
“But he at least looks like your brother. I didn’t look anything like the Earl. He’s got darker skin than me, and darker hair. Pitch black, thick and wild and untamed. Hardly a streak a grey in it, even though he was close to seventy when I left. This red hair and pale skin really set me apart, reminded him every day I wasn’t his.”
“Oh, some men can be cruel.”
“The Lady Dunharrow was always kind to me though, she was a lovely woman. Always ready with a comforting word. Never got angry. I don’t know how she put up with the old man.”
Jack’s mother was a saint. Taking in a child who wasn’t hers. His mother was wonderful.
“But he was a bully to me. Always yelling and shoving. And that wasn’t the half of it. When he discovered he wasn’t my real father…”
Wait a minute. He wasn’t her father? But that would mean Jack’s mother was her…
“Oh, but he was a cur, the Earl. He put my mother out on the street!”
On the street. His mother? When, where? He’d have to go back to England right away. He held his breath, waiting for the rest of the story.
“And you can imagine how hard it was for her to find work, once word got around what happened. It’s not like she had any skills, she was just a scullery maid.”
Jack was terribly confused.
“But he kept me there, even though he knew he wasn’t my real father, more out of spite than anything else. Kept on letting people think I was his daughter from the scullery maid. Kept me around so he’d have someone to take out all his frustrations on. He just got meaner and meaner…”
Aye, that was Jack’s father all right.
“It was like he was going through children the way he would go through hunting dogs. From the time I can remember, there was just me and a boy he’d sired with the upstairs maid. He’d burned all the portraits, removed every reminder of his legitimate children.”
So she’d never seen a picture of Jack. Good.
“And then one day, he was reminded of one, the oldest …”
Jack stiffened.
“… Jonathon. Word came that he had a run in with the West Indies Trading Company.”
Oh, no.
“But the Earl didn’t help. He flew into a rage, worse than ever before. Took it all out on me. The lady of the house helped me, gave me enough money to get away. I fear he would have killed me if I stayed.”
Jack knew the feeling. Something similar had befallen him.
“She gave me an address, in Paris. Turned out to be a brothel. I had no idea why the lady sent me there, but the madam was a lovely woman, very kind and helpful. Of course, she put me to work, but that’s what you’d expect.”
Except Jack hadn’t been sent to work in a brothel.
“A real beauty too, she was. Long black hair, almost black eyes, gorgeous high cheekbones. Alex was her name.”
Alex. His sister, Alex? She wasn’t more than fifteen when Jack left, when he was unable to take the abuse any longer. She’d become a madam?
“Things were very good for me there, but the madam got sick, and the doctors couldn’t help her. She closed the house, and gave me enough money for my passage to the Caribbean. Such a generous soul.”
Alex, his sister. Sick. Doctors couldn’t help. Jack felt a hot sting in his eyes.
“The change in weather did her the world of good. It was the rain, you see, and all the mildew and filth in Paris. Once we got out in the fresh air, here in the Caribbean, Alex was fit as a fiddle. But she’d lost her taste for the business, and sold it to Marina as soon as she could.”
Fit as a fiddle? Sold the business to Marina? What? Well then, where the devil was she?
“She got married to some high toned and fancy bloke from England. Went back there like a queen, she did. Never seen her happier. She was going to have a mansion in the countryside and be a lady. I was happy for her.”
So am I, thought Jack.
“Funny thing, eh? She had this little locket, and in it there were pictures. She showed me, before she left.”
Oh no, Jack thought. Again.
“Her and her brother. She said she missed him terribly. Pretty boy, lovely dark eyes like her, gorgeous black hair. That’s when she told me she was the Lady and the Earl’s daughter.”
Blast. He was found out.
“Looking at him, I could almost see what the Lady would have seen in the Earl when they got married, you know? So attractive.”
Now that made Jack smile, in spite of himself.
“But, I wonder though, if people are destined to grow up to be like their parents.”
“What do you mean?” Kay asked.
Yes, what do you mean?
Charlotte poured more rum into her cup. “Well, look at Will. His father was a pirate, and Will ended up living the pirate way. And Alex, her mother was a beauty as was she, and she’s a kind and generous soul just like her mother. And me, it turned out my real father was a pirate too, well, a highwayman actually. He swept my mother off her feet, even though she was working for the Earl and sleeping with him, at the same time. He didn’t stick around, of course. She kept him a secret. It wasn’t until my mum read about him being hanged that it came out he was my real father.”
Jack sighed. There must be a point to this somehow.
“And here I am, in love with a pirate! Just like my mum. So I worry about the son, Alex’s brother. Do you think he’s as violent and awful as his father? The only person the Earl of Dunharrow was never, ever mean to was his wife. And that, I believe, was only because the money was hers. I hate to think of how his son turned out…”
So did Jack.
“Nonsense, people decide what they’ll become. Franklin’s father was an awful, bigoted man. And look at Franklin, he’s wonderful. And Jacob’s father was a buccaneer, or so mum said, but Jacob joined the navy.”
Explain that, harlot!
“And now he’s a pirate.”
Not really.
“But a pirate with a good cause.”
Hear hear.
“And what about the other pirates?”
Yes, what about them? What did Kay really think of pirates?
“I think the other pirates, at least the ones on this ship, are just fine. Anyway, that's enough rum for us. We shouldn’t be dawdling here, dearie. There’s work to be done making supper for all these sailors, pirate or not. Leave those two be, they need more rest. And this is Jack’s cabin, after all.”
The door opened and closed.
Jack lay motionless, assimilating all this new information. Alex was well and married to some rich titled man. His mother was safe, presumably, and still wonderful. His father was still a bastard. No big surprise there. And his own identity seemed to be safe as well. No one had been smart enough to put two and two together, and come up with the disinherited heir to the Earl of Duncroft.
But what would Will think of him if he knew? And was he like his father? He knew he had a temper. He knew he could be heartless when he wanted. Was he cruel? Or would he turn cruel when he got older?
After all, he had left Alex alone. The only thing he’d ever felt guilty about. But things had turned out well for her in the end. Still, he’d left her there, a defenceless woman in the house of that brute. Perhaps that was a sign of how cruel Jack really could be.
Will’s arm snaked around his waist and soft lips brushed over the tip of his ear.
So soothing. Would Will be doing that if he knew who Jack really was? It wasn’t as if Jack had to tell him. He could just forget about it, ignore it, pretend he didn’t remember who his father was. One little secret. That’s all.
“Don’t be so vexed, Jack.” His breath along Jack’s ear was followed by a slick tongue, tracing intricate patterns for a few seconds before lips pressed a gentle kiss against his neck.
“I don’t think you’ve turned out like your father at all.”
Next: Chapter 43 Norrington's Fate
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