The Black Riddle

Ch 9. Poison

“Bella! You seen the Capt’n?” Annemarie hollered from the crow’s nest.

“Not since we left the tavern, why?” she staggered up to the deck and headed toward the cabin to put her purchases down.

“He’s not here and we’re supposed to set sail in ten minutes.”

“Okay, I’ll be there in a minute, I just need to put this stuff down.” Bella yelled back and opened the door to the cabin. She grinned at the sight that met her. Jack was lying on top of the covers fully dressed and completely asleep. She sighed. He was so cute. She set the heavy box down on top of Jacks maps and charts on the table. Bella had been lucky enough to find a potions master in Tortuga (Who would have thought?) and he had been kind enough to brew her all the potions and various healing balms she needed, so now she had almost every potion she could ever think she would need and a potions kit and a potload of ingredients so she could brew the rest herself. The Potions Master had not wanted payment from ‘the Pirate Queen’ so instead she had given him the recipes for every brewing she could think of that was made after 1700. Needless to say he was ecstatic when she left and vowed that she would never have to pay for anything in his shop ever.

Bella frowned and walked over to the bed to inspect her love a bit closer. Something about the way he slept did not seem right. She flipped the hat off his face only to reveal a sweat soaked brow and ashen skin.

“Shit” she whispered. He had seemed fine when she left, so what could it be? His breathing was shallow and he was cold all over. His shirt was already soaked through, al together; he did not look well. Bella felt a sneaking suspicion creep up her neck. Carefully she used her fingers to open Jack’s left eye and as she suspected, a silver lining around the black of his eyes. She sighed and stood up, the crew needed to know.

Annemarie and made her way down to the deck as Bella came back out.

“Jack is in his cabin.”

“Oh, well is he coming out or what?” Ragetti asked

“Uh, no.” how was she going to say this?

“What do you mean ‘no’” Annemarie pressed

“He’s been poisoned.” There, all done. “He’s unconscious for starters, high fever causing him to sweat even though he is freezing. Basically he is dehydrating.” Judging by the blank look on the crews’ faces she gathered that they hadn’t gotten much of what she had said.

“The poison itself cannot kill him, but the lack of water in his body will. It is keeping him asleep while the heat is doing the rest of the job; alas we need to get out on the sea to cooler winds. Now get going!” she barked. Everyone scramble to work but Gibbs.

“Is he going to be alright do ye think?”

“He’ll be fine, I just need to get to work on him.”

“The crew will expect you to be Capt’n now.” Bella nodded.

“If that’s the case, will you take the wheel until I’ve done what I can for Jack?”

“Aye Capt’n” he said and headed for the rig.

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The very first thing Bella observed after stripping Jack was that despite the sweat soaked state of his skin, it was dry and severely damaged by the sun. He also had a vast amount of scars that told the tale of untreated wounds. Bella shook her head and set to work. It seemed like the treatments she had chosen to make him look like a lord and king was going to save his life too.

She put a locking charm on the door and magically unpacked the contents of the box situated on the table, which was moved into a corner of the room. Jack was put in a full body-bind and levitated to the middle of the room. She deeply regretted doing this the magical way. She had looked forward to babying Jack until he was spoilt and pampered to his fingertips. At least this way she wouldn’t have to listen to or endure his complaints.

She needed to get him into tip-top shape fast so that his skin would absorb the water potions as fast as possible. At the moment, it was like armour created to endure anything the world could throw at it, and judging by the scars, it had.

She sighed and worked a deep scourgifying spell on him, he really wasn’t dirty at all, but living on a ship did leave a few bits that a simple quick bath could not remove. One of the largest pots held a vast amount of scrub cream with. The magical sea salt would pull most of the poison out of his skin, but it would do a bit of damage while at it. She accioed it and spelled it to do its job well. While the scrub cream did it’s magic, Bella snatched a bottle of detangle potion and removed the faded red bandana from his head. She cast another scourgifying spell and groaned in frustration as she watched the salt from the seawater disappear. Merlin knew how much she hated doing this. She gave a silent prayer to whatever God who was listening that Jack would still smell like the ocean when she was done, and not like some dandy doll.

She turned the bottle of detangle potion up side down and poured a liberal amount on each of the dreadlocks. The potions master said that it was supposed to be left in for an hour so she left it and moved on. A quick cleaning spell removed the kohl around his eyes, the dust from the streets of Tortuga and that adorable patch of dried seawater on his cheek. At last she zapped off the two braids in his beard.

“This party better be worth me going to hell for. I’m turning the sexiest pirate on the seas into a bloody wig!” she muttered as she cast a mild scrub charm and accioed a massive bowl of healing balm. Another scourgify to remove all the scrub cream and the poison that had surfaced. The healing balm would have to be applied manually because it was made purely of magic. It was of a rare quality and would have cost a fortune if the potions master had not been so kind.

She watches as stress lines faded from his face and a long thin scar on the side of his neck smoothed out into a faint pink line- how it would have looked if he had seen a healer in the first place. The general damage, both from life and the poison vanished and left his skin with a golden touch instead of the fried scarring of the sun. She had worked her way down his chest and back and noted that none of his battle scars had vanished, only re-healed. The two bullet scars above his heart shone line two moons on the tanned skin. She traced them with her fingers; so close, he had been so close.

When she had worked her way up his muscular legs she grinned as she spotted an unexpected scar.

“Looks like someone didn’t want you to reproduce Jackie.” She snickered. Casting a quick tempus she sighed. Grooming was tiring work she decided. It was just five minutes until the detangling potion was finished so she grabbed Jack’s hand and inspected his nails. They were completely flawless. Bella smiled and grabbed a bottle of rum and took a swag. She had always appreciated a man with nice strong hands. Setting the bottle down and grabbing a comb she got started on the biggest challenge so far; dreadlocks. Luckily for her, they had mostly fallen apart and so making it easy for her to fish the trinkets out, untangle the worst with her fingers and the smaller ones with the comb. It was time consuming work nonetheless and it took her nearly and hour to do. When she finally killed the last tangle she conjured a sharp scissor and cut off the dead, split and overly fizzy and sun bleached ends of his dark brown, nearly black long locks.

She fetched the bottle of olive oil and once again turned it up side down and let it’s content flow into the long dark hair. This time she had the presence of mind to place a bucket underneath his head. When the bottle was empty she lifted the bucket and soaked the rest of his hair in the oil. She squeeze as much as she could out of the slick strands and when she was finally sure of that she could not extract another drop she cast another scourgifying spell to clean out the oil.

Bella watched mesmerised as the lanky and oily locks curled up into loose and shiny dark curls with weak golden highlights from the sun. She sighed and shook her head. He was not going to hide those sexy curls ever again, and that was final.

She checked the healing balm and saw that it was now finally finished. Her fingers traced the tattoos on his chest and arms; they had all blackened to the deepest colour of ink and the edges had sharpened so they were no longer the faded and foggy blue they had been.

She accioed the water potion and carefully poured it onto his abs. a relieved and content sigh escaped her lips as she saw the blank liquid sink into Jack’s skin. Gently she levitated him back onto the bed and released the body-bind. She laid her hand in the middle of his chest and concentrated on the poison cursing through his veins. Hissing a simple ‘let go’ in parsel-tongue did the trick nicely. The small amount remaining poison ceased to affect him when the magic washed through him, but the effort left her completely exhausted. Immediately she felt his fever was close to normal and his breathing had stabilised.

Merlin she loved magic.

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A/N. i'm sooo sorry for double posting. tnx for telling me. hope you enjoyed this chapter, there's more to come if you are nice to me and review. just so you all know, any changes i make on jackie boy is not permanent, he'll get his lovely dreadlocks back i just have to change him a bit so that the plan they have will work- imagine a dreadlocked pirate at a royal ball- it wouldnt even work in a masquarade- he needs to blend in 'there'. but he'll be back to normal soon.