"It's Just Good Business."

Barbossa studied the other quietly, hands folded behind his back, expression neutral. He felt lain low, having come here. But desperate times called for desperate measures, and if he was anything; he was a survivor.

“Perhaps not. But then again, between you and I; has it ever reallybeen?” he asked quietly. Back towards the door, in the dark, he felt the presence of Mercer moving about, ready to attack should Barbossa attempt anything. But Hector hadn’t come here to murder Beckett. Not tonight, and likely, not for the foreseeable future. As at present, all of their futures were indeed very uncertain.

“Ye know very well what I could offer you, Lord Beckett. Information on the Brethern’s movements…and on Jones, as well as…other hard sought mysteries. But now I want to know what you can do for me. And threats of death, hanging…won’t be effective or necessary.”

“You are correct in that matter.”  Beckett remained, as far as the eye could see, nonplussed.  He was not delusional - and thus had not fooled himself for even a second that a pirate such as Hector Barbossa could be swayed by petty threats of harm or of death.  Such threats would not have worked on him either, as they depended entirely on the ability to exercise judgement as swiftly as the reaper himself, and although he had done so in the past, he did not have such leverage right now.  “I am not going to threaten death when it is not something I can promise - it would be dishonorable, would it not?”  The mockery, as always, was present in his tone, but only ever just.

Why would he threaten such a thing when he had something that was worth far more to offer?

“My proposition for you, Barbossa, involves something that I believe you have been wanting for quite some time now.”  He paused, giving those words a few seconds to sink in - perhaps he had figured it out already, perhaps not, it was always rather difficult to tell with pirates, unruly beings that they were.  “As you recall, Sparrow now Captains the Pearl - if he were to be disposed of as I am aiming to do, that ship would go to another Captain.”  He left it there, and waited for the dots to connect - it was a ship that Barbossa had roused a mutiny for once.  That surely was no small want.

There was indeed something Beckett had and Jack wanted. Something his former superior had taken from him once he’d found out that there was indeed more to the compass than Sparrow was willing to admit to anyone. Needless to say that the man had figured it’s importance and value - not so much in itself - but in what the magic item might possibly lead him to.

Therefore, it had not utterly come as a surprise to Jack that he had his men take the compass away from him before branding him and sending him down to the depths of the ocean with his treasured vessel. Sparrow found that he couldn’t blame him too much for it, cause what need for his compass did he have in his grave?

Unfortunately, however, Jack wasn’t entirely quite as dead as Beckett had surely wanted him to be. A deal with Jones had been required to rise from his grave along with his ship - now rechristened Black Pearl which was, as he figured - a name far more suitable for a beauty such as her. His only intention of returning to Beckett’s office now was to take back what he’s been his all long.

“The only reason for my return to the East India Trading Company is so to retrieve something of mine that’s currently in your possession.” He replied as he cocked his gun and reached his free hand out palm facing up so he’d return his item.

“Now, if you’d be so kind, mate. My compass.”

Beckett sighed, almost as if in disappointment, giving Jack just a flash of a wry smile.  He wouldn’t be so reckless, of course, as to hide the compass on his person during such a time at which there would no doubt be attempts made to get the said object back - and hence he’d taken precautions to have it hidden away.  Jack would never find it alone, not to mention that in just minutes there would be dozens of soldiers at his back.  Even if Beckett had been idiotic enough to carry the compass with him, Jack would not get far, no doubt.

Jack was reckless, of course, but he was also intelligent, far more than most people gave him credit for (which would usually end up being their fatal mistake).  

“You see, Jack,” he said, “I do believe we’ve found ourselves in a bit of a conundrum.  Even if I did want to give you the compass, that would be a little difficult, seeing as it is not on me at the time.”  The corners of his mouth twitched upwards, and it was tempting to let the smugness seep all the way through.  Ultimately, he wasn’t lying - and even if Jack didn’t believe him, it was’t as if that would make finding it any easier.

“You will comply and cease your pathetic attempts at resistance, or you will all be slaughtered without hesitation.  The choice remains yours.”

That was perhaps the most graceful way to navigate through it all, although he was lacking his signature impeccable composure.  Sighing heavily, he shifted, feeling Jack settle his weight over him like this was where he was meant to be.  It felt right.  It felt terrifyingly right.

All in all, he wasn’t lying - if he hadn’t enjoyed it he would have immediately left the room, and most likely thrown Sparrow out without any sort of ceremony whatsoever.  But he hadn’t done that, and here they both were - and therein laid the answer to Jack’s inquiry.

|| send me “i’ll shoot” to press a gun to my muse’s head .

“I don’t doubt that you want to.”  Beckett spoke with the practiced ease of one who only could have been in this situation before, time and time again - and while that was partially true it was also because he had long since lost his own fear of death, an answer that probably would have disappointed Jones had he ever asked him that age-old inquiry.  “And yet, Jack, you haven’t.”  

Jack wanted something that he had.  That was simply how this business went.  If he had nothing to offer, then he would have been dead long beforehand.  “Do quit your prefacing and tell me what you’ve come here for.”

|| If this was a meme I wasn’t able to find it whoops!

“It’s only a problem if you’re discovered.”  Beckett looked at Edrington - and the blood that was currently staining his neckcloth - pointedly.  “And you seem to be going out of your way to do just that.”  Perhaps it was some sort of strange savior complex, he mused - was Edrington trying to reveal himself to his own people out of some kind of guilt?  He’d always been the kinder of them, between him and Beckett - who would have seen immortality as a weapon, had it been him in the other’s place.

“I’m going to assume that your negligence of discretion was accidental.”

@lightsailing

|| GUIDE TO TROUBLED BIRDS SENTENCE STARTERS

Cutler raised a single arched eyebrow and fought the momentary urge to scoff - that would have been most unbecoming, not to mention terribly improper if he ever was to achieve his title.  As reliable of a ship as she was, the Pearl knew precious little about him, that was for sure.

“It was not my belief in God,” he drawled sarcastically, “that got me to where I am today.”  There was no God, no benevolent higher power - that had been made apparent to him years ago.

// Oh gosh, I could go on forever about this scene, so I’m going to be careful about keeping it brief here - this scene has literally haunted me since I was a child because it was just so wonderfully eerie and overall beautifully done.  And I came up with various reasonings and hypotheses about why Beckett froze when he had a ship that was terrifyingly powerful that ultimately came to what I implement into my portrayal now.  To put a very long story shortly, he dissociated.

I took his background information, given from The Price of Freedom, into account, because reading it truly showed me that Cutler is maybe made up of 90% spite and 10% cluelessness.  He doesn’t have any idea who he is, or what the fuck he wants from life or what he’s doing with the life he currently has.  He’s doing what he’s good at - calculating and shuffling numbers here and there and manipulating people by the hundreds, but that doesn’t necessarily mean that he likes it, which is a little paradoxical given that he literally ended up in this whole mess by deciding very firmly that he was going to do what he wanted, based off of his own will.  Cutler always wanted to be a Professor and placed that hand in hand with being well-traveled, which was why he sought out a job in the EITC in the first place. 

Which went horribly wrong because he ended up getting captured and tortured while on one of his missions and it all spiraled downwards from there.  When his father left him to die, the only thing he had left was the desire to survive, solely so that he could prove his father wrong - or that he could prove the general belief that he was nothing more than a disappointment wrong.  And so he started doing everything, just to prove that he could.  He climbed the ladder of power in the EITC faster than anyone thought was possible just to show them that he could, because for the better part of his life he’d been taught that he would never be anything more than a failure, and thus he dedicated his life to making himself indestructible when he really was anything but.

Beckett froze when against the Pearl and the Dutchman because up until then, everything had been going just as he intended it to.  He had taken care of every anomaly - he had played one pirate lord against the other and up until that point he had the seven seas themselves under his command.  Every weakness was seen to and yet with all of his thinking ahead, he had failed to prepare for what would happen if another actually did take Davy Jones’ place.  Beckett had failed to account for that possibility and because of that one oversight, his largest advantage was now directly against him.  He had given up everything - quite literally everything, and yet in the end it had amounted to nothing, because he had failed to see.

He froze because despite having thrown himself into a life he never would have wanted solely to prove the world wrong, he’d ended up proving them right after all.  He’d proven them all right.  

As for the dissociation bit, that’s also taken from the Price of Freedom - it’s shown to be his instinctive reaction to any major shock or loss or trauma all throughout his life.  In his own words, he “went away,” and given the background of his character, I’d say it’s not all that surprising that he froze.