Work Text:
Jack tucks a roll of fresh bandages into his pocket and makes his way back to Anne. The ship rocks lightly, the movement more pronounced now that he’s not hidden away in a room with Anne, where it seemed like the entire world outside didn’t exist.
He stumbles, bracing himself against the wall as the ship sways and everything spins. He's like some cabin boy who doesn't have his sea legs. He rubs exhaustion from his bleary eyes until his vision is clearer and starts off again, only to nearly run into Max, coming out of her cabin. He didn’t even hear her approach.
Max. His images of her are so tied to the brothel, to her weaving her way in and out of the chatter and chaos, that she seems completely out of place here, almost unreal. Here, the color and splendor of her dress are at odds with the dark wood of the ship, like a figure that’s been added to a painting and will never match its surroundings. Perhaps people think the same of Jack when they look at him.
Jack just stands in front of her, unsure of what to say. Their last conversion had turned into a screaming match before she shared this somewhat promising but possibly insane idea, and set them on their current course to Philadelphia. Jack has mainly tried to stay out of her way since then, running around giving orders to the men and tending to Anne.
Jack runs a hand over his face as the silence continues. Max is staring at him too, and Jack gets the feeling she wants something. They’re only a day out from Philadelphia now. If only he could have avoided her the entire way.
“Jack?” Max asks. Her eyes roam over him. “When was the last time you slept? Or ate something?”
Jack blinks in surprise. He hadn’t expected concern, of all things. More yelling, more insults, yes. But not questions about how he is. Questions he couldn’t come up with a solid answer to if he had an hour to think about it.
“That’s not important,” he says. He straightens up, giving her scrutinizing eyes nothing to look at. He might feel like a ragged sail held together with the thinnest of thread, but he can’t let anyone know it.
“Of course it is.”
“Why do you care?” He asks, but there’s no anger in it. He’s too tired to manage anger.
Max opens her mouth, but Jack cuts her off. She’s either going to argue with him or make him feel guilty, and he doesn’t have the energy to argue or the room in his aching heart for more guilt.
“It doesn’t matter,” Jack says. “I’m fine.”
Max crosses her arms over her chest. “Then answer the questions.”
Jack sighs. “I slept a little last night. I don’t need much.”
He’s been sleeping on the floor next to Anne’s hammock, though sleeping is a generous term. He fights sleep as long as he can before nodding off and waking in gasping bursts, his mind replaying every horrible moment of the fight, of Anne’s groans and wheezes of pain, of the blood that wouldn’t stop flowing. Then he rises to his feet to lean over the hammock and make sure she’s breathing. Then it’s back to the floor, where his racing mind and insistence on staying awake overpower the exhaustion wanting to drag him down, denying him sleep that he craves but fears at the same time. Sleep means dreams. Sleep means he’s not awake to watch over Anne, and if anything happened to her while he was asleep—if he were to wake to find her in worse shape, or to find that she was gone—he would never forgive himself.
“And the food?” Max demands. It’s strange how someone so small can seem so big when she asks a question.
“I’ve been taking my rations.”
Taking them, but not always eating them. There’s rum and a small supply of fresh water in Anne’s room, too precious for him to take more than a few sips of. Aside from needing the water to clean her wounds, he’s been holding both to her lips and trying to get her to drink as much as she can. He does the same with food, breaking off tiny pieces of hardtack and feeding them to her, taking care not to hit any of the cuts on her swollen lips. She won't eat anything else, so he’s given her his own portions of it too, trying anything to get her strength up. He’s eaten some strips of dried beef here and there, in between his duties above deck and taking care of Anne, but that's it.
Max sighs and opens the door to her room, motioning for him to follow. He does, and collapses into the chair she nudges him towards. She forces a plate into his hands. “You need to eat something.”
Jack looks down at the piled slices of dried beef and hardtack. “I’m fine,” he says, moving the plate to the tiny desk in front of him so Max can’t see it quiver in his shaking hands.
“Please eat.”
Jack does. He can’t see anything coming of continuing to argue with her. The food isn’t that good, but he can’t stop himself from devouring it. All the rules of decorum he strictly follows are gone as he chews mouthful after mouthful and chases it with rum, remembering how it feels to eat again. The room is silent, and Max is giving him this, he realizes. This moment of rest. This reprieve.
He finishes his food and slumps in the chair, rubbing at his aching neck. His sore limbs cry in relief of having a moment to sit down. A moment Max gave him, when she didn’t need to.
“Why are you helping me?” Jack asks. After the lies, after he nearly died, after Charles did die, why is Max doing this? Is she trying to atone for what she did, what she took from Jack and almost took from Anne?
Max stands still, unwavering, as she thinks. “I still care for Anne,” she says finally. “I may not have the right to after what I have done to her, but I do. And I care about you.”
Jack doesn’t answer. Anne is the one thing they still have in common, the one person they both care so much for. He didn’t expect Max to claim that she still cares for him too. He wonders if he can make the same claim. Truthfully, he hasn’t thought about her much in the past few weeks. He’s had so many people to hate as of late that Max had fallen a few pegs on that list.
“I want you to know,” Max continues, “that I too was misled in the situation with Rogers. The way things ended was not my intention.”
“I’m glad to know my almost-death and Charles' actual death wasn’t your intention,” Jack mutters. There's been too much loss lately. Charles, Teach. And Anne was almost on that list too.
“It was not,” Max says firmly. “I cannot pretend I did everything right in the situation, but I did not know you would be offered to the Spanish. The terms were changed without my knowing.”
Jack considers her words. Maybe Max didn’t purposely set out to screw them both over, to take him away from Anne and send him to his death. It had still happened, and she made a million other awful choices that hurt them both, but if she still cares about Anne, maybe she truly didn’t mean to hurt her by taking Jack from her like that.
Jack sighs. He drinks the last drop of rum, sets his empty cup down, and hauls himself to his feet, the movement a little steadier now.
“I—thank you,” he says awkwardly.
“She will be all right,” Max says, and maybe she can see the gaping holes in him he tried to hide.
Jack opens his mouth, but nothing comes out. He can’t talk about it. He just can’t. Not the fear, not Anne’s limp body in his arms, her struggling breaths so faint he could barely hear them.
“She is the toughest person I have ever met. She will be all right.” Max’s words ring with conviction so strong that Jack thinks he believes her. Anne has been through so much, and she can get through this too.
He gives a nod of thanks and pauses in the doorway. “Don’t give up hope about you and her,” he says softly. A kindness to repay Max for this kindness.
Max gives him a small smile, and Jack returns to Anne with a new hope in himself as well.