“Cursed Ambition” - PirateLock Short Fic
“A breath stirred in the Captain’s nose as he propped up his elbows on the cluttered desk and steepled his hands before his tightened lips. Coins clattered, instruments ground against the heavy oak top, and old parchment rustled as he nudged them out of the way with his elbows and assumed a thoughtful position. His nest of curly, raven-colored hair was swallowed by the darkness of the panorama of windows that stretched out behind him. The edges of the dark ringlets were kissed by the moon’s aura as the heavenly body tucked away into the corner of one of the window panels; subdued by the frosted glass as it rolled like a chalky marble in its bed of murky clouds.”
“Cursed Ambition”
A PirateLock one-shot by yours truly, timevstheworld
Freckled by an innumerable shimmer of stars, the inky sky spilled into the sea. The merchant ship sliced through the waving crests, the lapping tongues of waves flickering with white light cast from the half-moon as the ship charted through swells of oil-black water. Immersed in the golden glint of the scattered candles, the dim interior of the Captain’s quarters became filled with hushed voices.
“The curse attacks your most valuable or important feature,” a whispery voice uttered in a gruff undertone. There was no edge of warning or emotion to the speech, only a straightforward, informative note that hung in the speaker’s pale throat. His translucent, otherworldly form barely visible in the feeble glow of the cabin, the bloke ghosted across the floor, skimming over the boards without disturbing so much as a fleck of dust as the Captain surveyed him with slotted, silver eyes. “It varied throughout the crew,” the spirit continued as he floated into a seated position a palm’s width above a wooden chair, “but everyone – just as I am now – had their souls bound to the cursed loot so that they could not carry on to the afterlife. None of us can die.”
A breath stirred in the Captain’s nose as he propped up his elbows on the cluttered desk and steepled his hands before his tightened lips. Coins clattered, instruments ground against the heavy oak top, and old parchment rustled as he nudged them out of the way with his elbows and assumed a thoughtful position. His nest of curly, raven-colored hair was swallowed by the darkness of the panorama of windows that stretched out behind him. The edges of the dark ringlets were kissed by the moon’s aura as the heavenly body tucked away into the corner of one of the window panels; subdued by the frosted glass as it rolled like a chalky marble in its bed of murky clouds.
Without shifting from his prayer-like pose, the Captain tilted his eyes towards his ghostly attendant, their blue brilliance further conveying his contemplative state. “Provided that an afterlife does exist,” he remarked tartly. It provoked an unhappy glare and resounding sigh from the ghost. Rolling his stiff shoulders back beneath his cobalt, embroidered coat, the Captain straightened his posture before sinking back down into his Victorian desk chair with his knuckle pressed against his jaw. “Throughout my entire thirty years of life, the only proof I’ve witnessed of life after death is your miserable entrapment; which appears to only be you experiencing the world without being subject to the full brunt of emotion, tangibility, or mortality.”
As the spirit’s maw unhinged and appalled but incomprehensible stutters popped off his tongue, the Captain sunk into his mind to ponder the benefits of the ‘curse’ that this former pirate had. Continuing to gain knowledge and watch the evolution of the world without the limitations of human transience was desirable in his eyes. “That is not an entirely terrible punishment, John. Not by my standards.”
John spluttered once more, his arms snapping over his stout chest as his eyes dropped glare at the wavering shadows on the floor. Scowling, he traced his hollow, lifeless eyes back to the Captain’s unchanged, stoic visage. “Sherlock, you are the most stubborn git I have ever come across,” the cursed sailor spat out, prickled by annoyance.
“That’s Captain Holmes, to you,” Holmes corrected, nonchalantly waving his hand before tucking it back against his jaw, “Unless you’d rather I stop interacting with you, and leave you to wander restlessly once more.”
“I can tell a hollow threat when I see one,” John snipped back, and an amused smile creased the corners of his lips. Crossing his legs, the former pirate inclined on his cushion of air above the cabin chair.
Sherlock Holmes only saw the ghost of a collapsing, decaying corpse – not the sea-hardened, British Navy veteran that John Watson claimed to have been in life. Ambition grew from the seeds that the stories of the shipwrecked cargo vessels planted between Sherlock’s bones; feeding his blood with surges of adrenaline. Several times before, he had claimed traitorous English ships in their attempts to smuggle goods from England to America, and was able to make claim to a share of the pirated goods as a reward for his efforts. Even after being praised for combating pirates, Sherlock yearned to taste the mutinous thrill of unrestricted trade, orchestrating raids and plunders of unsuspecting vessels and sea ports, and the remarkable wealth, respect, and opportunities for adventure and puzzle-solving that he would secure.
His voice a whisper that echoed with a hollow hum about the interior of the cabin, John interrupted Sherlock’s fantasy of showers of gold, independence, glory, mental stimulation, and unending adventure; “Who are you, a trade ship Captain or Queen Victoria? How many times are you going to slip into that ‘mind palace’ of yours?”
Sherlock grumbled his answer, his voice riddled with crankiness, “Not many, if you insist on interrupting me incessantly.” His mood lifted quickly, however, and he lifted from his chair. Indifference replaced the ambition and exhaustion that muddled together unevenly within his ribs. His boots clacked against the wooden boards, silver buckles jangled, and the leather of his uniform creaked and whispered beneath his coat from the movement as he tread through the warm radiance of his many candles.
Nudging the stacks aside with the toe of his worn boot, Sherlock shifted papers and other piles of clutter, and stared at the large map he had pinned to the wall between a pair of bookshelves. The carved mahogany shelves were stocked with rows of atlases, old journals, scientific studies, and other documents that took Sherlock’s fancy.
A disapproving huff passed through John’s lips as he was ignored by Sherlock. He took to glaring at the filigree embroidery on the Captain’s long-tailed, lavish coat until he grew bored of being disregarded by the one living being that he was capable of interacting with. Slinking from his lofty seat, John scooped up the cracked skull on the edge of Sherlock’s desk into his palm. “You know what else I can tell?” he said as he floated to Sherlock’s left, his tattered strips of clothing trailing over his wisp-edged, amorphous legs. “I can tell when you are hiding secrets from me,” John finished, and glowered pointedly at the profile of Sherlock’s face; the bloke still engaged in the arrangement of pin marks on the map.
Holmes’ eyes tilted sideways, but his nose remained pointed towards the wall. As a tactic to earn more time to think, Sherlock questioned, “Can you, now?” At the edge of his vision, John lingered mid-air, washed a dull white as the wood of furniture and the cabin’s structure, along with the windows and the nightscape within their panes, showed through the veil of his dim body. It was times such as these when Sherlock briefly pondered what John had looked like in life. Creating an image that completely contrasted John’s current, cursed body, Sherlock imagined the sailor packed with muscle from his constant strain and the demands of work at sea, tanned to a fine copper from the sun, his hair a sandy tousle of blond, and his spirit fully alive with love for his work, the ocean, and his companions.
“Yes,” John confirmed as he notched the skull in the crook of his elbow, balancing the bone against his hip. The crescent of Sherlock’s face was painted by the candle and lantern flames, and the wintery blue of his irises sparked with the warmth of the light like chips of ice that had caught flame. In order to read the complicated bloke, John resorted to cues that did not exist in Sherlock’s expression, but the space he occupied. Lifting up the crooked-toothed, half-decomposed skull, John directed the hollow eyes towards the map’s markers. “You always mark off key sea ports, uncharted coasts, islands, and any other important locations,” John explained as he kept eye contact with Sherlock. He motioned with the skull towards the jagged line of ink that sketched the craggy contour of an ocean coast on the border of France and Spain. “So why haven’t you marked off where the cursed shipwreck is, even after all the interest you’ve shown in it lately?”
Replying with promptness, Sherlock swiveled so that he could look at John head-on, and hide part of the map behind his shoulder, “First of all, there are some things I would prefer to commit to memory than display for the entire world to see. As well, you never gave me specific co-ordinates.”
John spotted the flash of understanding as it swirled in the great sea of Sherlock’s eyes, and drew the skull back into his chest hastily. It was true that John danced around specifics for the sake of steering Sherlock away from the cursed ship wreckage, but in that moment he had unintentionally exposed the general location with the skull, and Sherlock’s mentioning of the matter only confirmed that his mistake was not overlooked.
“Sherlock,” John started, his voice heavy with warning, “I don’t want for you to make the same mistake that my Captain made. That I… along with the entire crew made.” John regarded Sherlock with a face wrought with worry and regret; his rueful memories working alongside his curse to haunt him all the more.
John’s words of warning hummed in Sherlock’s ears, but his coveting of the treasure and a pirate’s life – regardless of the curse – was a trumpeting chorus by comparison. “I am not your Captain, Watson. I am not like any other Captain on these seas, nor any poor sod trapped on land, and I do not plan on repeating the mistakes of those before me.” The stern-toned statement was interchangeable with his specific goal in seeking out the cursed treasure, and his broader aspiration to become a pirate.
“How can you not see the consequence of your mission?” John barked back, his hands clamping tightly around the skull. “Look at me!” Snarling and frantic, John indicated his lifeless body with a tense, bony hand. “Look at what my selfishness and obsession did!” For a moment of time that only Sherlock was aware of, his hand passed over the mangled gap that gaped like a tattered void in his chest. “Yes, you’re sociopathic and uncaring of consequences at times, but do you honestly want to suffer in this way?”
Intruding in Sherlock’s space, John had jutted his face forwards; his breath and body rancid with the smoky odor of carrion and muddy, wet flesh and bone. “John,” the Captain seethed, the frame of his mouth twitching. His teeth ground around the growing bitterness on his tongue and his nose burned from John’s deathly breath. Unexpectedly, and in a swift, single surge like a roaring tsunami, the pieces to a puzzle linked together in his brain. “Your heart,” Sherlock whispered. The atmosphere remodeled from the abrupt quiet, and the crackle of anger began to subside. Sherlock’s now mild gaze flickered to John’s perplexed, grey-blue eyes, and his entire countenance shifted to one of deduction instead of the defense of his haphazard goal.
A silence clung at the air, disturbed only by the muffled rush of the waves around the ship. “… What?” John questioned, and slowly began to cover the yawning wound on his breast with the skull. The ghost’s confusion stemmed from the sudden change in tone and the dropping of the argument. ‘Your heart’; John was completely aware of the truth that Sherlock had caught on to, but failed to make any comment due to his surprise.
“It was your greatest feature.” Sherlock pointed to where John was protecting the opening of his chest. “You said that the curse feeds off of your greatest feature, and yours was your heart.”
“Those weren’t my exact words…” John mumbled, his fingers moving to a nervous spread over the curve of the skull’s scalp as he clung to it defensively. Tipping his head, he creased his brows together and asked in a skeptical voice, “That took you an entire week of me haunting you to deduce? I’ve seen you solve cases that would have taken others months within hours, and I would think that my constant ramble about the curse, and the sodding hole in me would have made it through your head quicker than that.”
Sherlock waved a hand in dismissal and answered hurriedly in order to hide that he had failed to come to the conclusion for so long because he was not interested in or focused on the mysteries of John’s appearance. “I thought that it was torn from you another way, like your other wounds. Or, perhaps, that it was the fate of your corpse, therefore making you forever stuck with that appearance.”
“I don’t have a corpse. This is me,” John hissed through his teeth to bluntly correct Sherlock’s misconception. His throat hitched from the astonishment that radiated from Sherlock, and John’s visibility flickered like the dying candles around them as he warily hunched and turned his eyes away. John’s tongue poked out in a slow swipe across his lips, and he moved in gradual increments from Sherlock as he faded. “The curse… it consumes you, and all that you hold dear while leaving you helpless. It’s already beginning to take your mind and you haven’t even come into direct contact with its source yet,” he said faintly; everything about him weak from his failure to protect yet another person. Agony twisted where his heart had once been, and vicious ache pulsed in the rib-wrapped hollow.
In that same moment, a loud rap on the cabin door sounded before Sherlock could form a response. The two blokes stared heatedly at one another until Sherlock ripped himself from his statue-like stance and marched to the clamor at his door.
The door cracked open to reveal the worried, worn face of the ship’s Quartermaster. A lantern glowed orange in his clutches as cool night air carried the tang of sea salt into the cabin; tousling the documents strewn across Sherlock’s desk. Instead of greeting his second-in-command, Captain Holmes cocked a brow in question of the late-night intrusion.
The Quartermaster frowned at to the disheveled state of the Captain’s quarters, but swiftly recalled his true purpose there. “Ah, apologies for the intrusion, Holmes,” the Quartermaster stated formally as he wrung his knuckles over the rusty metal handle of his lantern, “The crew is… concerned about your late night chatter.”
Distress darkened the contour of the Quartermaster’s face, and his distraught brown eyes wavering nervously. After pointing out issues that proved to be touchy, the older sea-worn shipman had stared down the barrel of Holmes’ flintlock pistol enough times that he no longer felt security when acknowledging the Captain’s personal problems. With hesitance, he proceeded when Holmes’ only response was a critical and resolute glare. “We’re all used to your violin, of course, but what’s this about corpses and curses? You’ve been going on about it all for at least a week, and the blokes are beginning to believe that you’ve gone mad.”
Sherlock’s head tipped back and a soundless breath eased into his parted lips. His mind whirred with the speed of a train and the fluid grace of a ship: powerful and piercing and unyielding. Within the time frame of a heartbeat, he concluded that his crew had not only been paying close attention to him, but were eavesdropping as well. A revolution was imminent, but Sherlock knew that he had to spur it himself in his own interest and contain the adjustment, or else it would work against him to catastrophic ends.
“Of late, it has been easier to think aloud,” Sherlock explained with monotonous calm. He leisurely strode over to his desk; pacing before the black rectangles of window as his steely eyes swept over the bulky, ornate desk and the disorganized clutter it held.
Silent and watchful while perched on the edge of annoyance, John became a stiff sentinel in front of the map. The skull he had held was now set on the floor below his frosty boots, its jaw unhinged and agape in its lifeless tilt. If he had not abandoned the skull, the Quartermaster would have seen the head suspended in the air while John remained invisible.
The Quartermaster’s boots clopped against the wood as he entered; his footsteps as slow and cautious as his words to Holmes’ had been. Though his eyes wandered over the map, they passed directly over John. If he were to wander too close, his touch would pass through the cursed bloke in the same fashion. Sherlock was among one of the only living men that John Watson had encountered in his many cursed years that had the ability to see, sense, and hear him with perfect clarity.
Aware of his Quartermaster’s guarded behavior, Sherlock sunk into his chair – composed and dignified instead of continuing the cruel distance he expressed at the door – and cooled his stare to the best of his ability. “After the delivery of the firearms and other cargo set for England, I have an entirely new mission for this crew.” Sherlock relished how his Quartermaster leaned into his speech where he stood before the desk with sudden interest, his tense body easing instantly as curiosity sparked in his square face. The lantern was set down with a clank on the desk, tilted over the face of a book. “I will announce the details shortly before we arrive in the port.”
“Is there any news that I should bring the crew now, Captain?” the Quartermaster questioned, retaining his formality even though he looked like an excited child.
Sherlock tapped his fingertips together in thought. “None yet. As you’ve heard, I remain uncertain about certain issues involved, and would prefer to work through the unsolved matters before anything reaches their ears. You may disclose that another assignment will be taken up within the next few days; a week at most,” he announced.
Now edged with complete interest, the Quartermaster shuffled so close to the desk that his thighs crinkled the parchment that poked off of the edge. “Am I permitted a briefing on the matter?” he inquired. He had thought of mentioning that he would maintain anything told to him a complete secret, as he always did, but his worry and eavesdropping stole his recent credibility.
“Unfortunately,” Sherlock answered, planting his hands on the arms of his chair as he rose up. “My need to solve everything first still stands, even with you.” Disappointment radiated from the Quartermaster as Holmes made his way to the door. Defeated, he trotted in his Captain’s wake with his muscles loose and his lips pursed tightly. “However, soon enough, you will know,” Sherlock teased, his voice mingling with the creak of the door as he tugged it open; the salty ocean greeting them once more with its chilly spray of perfume.
After a brief exchange of farewells, the Quartermaster departed, but his emotion clung to Sherlock’s head. Nervousness, curiosity, and discontentment all provided Sherlock with new questions to answer, and new work to begin. In that moment, there was no vacancy for the cursed being that was bristling at the opposite end of the cabin. John’s presence had vanished from Sherlock’s memory during his brief meeting with his Quartermaster.
When Sherlock whirled around to return to his map, his heart palpitated, his mind sped, and his eyes opened wide from the shock of the location of the cursed, treasure-stocked shipwreck permeating through the hollow in John’s chest; a dark destination at the end of a bloodstained tunnel lined with torn veins and cracked yellow ribs.
A shallow breath shuddered in Sherlock’s throat as the sight challenged his stubborn conviction. With great effort, he tore his eyes from the gory hole, the wound torn wider and more rugged than before by the curse’s invisible claws, and met with John’s greyed, eerie eyes. John’s head shook, slow as the flow of a sail when tugged by the breeze. A sickening crack split the air as he caved the cranium of the skull into crackling splinters of bone with his ghostly boot.
Watson vanished the second that Sherlock blinked his bulging eyes, but the gruesome outline of his figure remained as vivid in Sherlock’s mind as the shattered skull that yawned brokenly at him from the floor; submerged in the orange and cobalt of the room’s conflicting light and shadow.
