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Disclaimer: Barbossa isn't mine, obviously. If he was, he'd still be around.
***
It had been years since Captain Barbossa had stood on the bow of his ship and closed his eyes to greet the cool spray of the sea on his skin. Even after the crew had been cursed, he'd done it for a while, if only to hang on to the hope of feeling it once again; his hopes had been dashed much sooner than he let on.
He had come to miss the taste and texture of apples the most, and always kept a bowl in his quarters, even if only to watch them slowly rot away to be replaced by new ones. The smell of rotting apples was quite sweet, he remembered, but he never experienced it, even when his quarters were filled with the scent. He was a cursed man, cursed to learn his apples are rotting not by the pungent odor, but by the rotten deflation and discoloration of the fruits falling apart in the bowl.
As much as he knew he'd not be able to taste it, Barbossa often found himself craving wine. He even found himself guzzling entire bottles of it, the liquid running over his unfeeling tongue and straight to his stomach or the floor, depending on his location in regards to the moon. The stain of wine, deep crimson like newly spilled blood, was not an uncommon one on the deck of the Pearl.
When Barbossa found himself locked in a duel of immortals with Jack Sparrow, seemingly back from the dead, he didn't remember the taste of wine, or the spray of the sea, or the texture of apples. He could barely feel the hilt of his sword in his hand, disagreeing with Sparrow's blade one strike after another until suddenly, the duel stopped, and Sparrow slit his palm and tossed his stolen coin to the whelp standing over the chest. His opportunity to feel again was close at hand, and as he pulled his pistol and aimed at the girl, a loud shot rang out in the cavern.
"Ten years you've carried that pistol and now you've wasted your shot," he said, smirking. But fate turned against him and suddenly, he could feel again. He could feel it spreading on his chest, he could feel... but he could not describe. He'd been without feeling for so long that all sense of description had left him, and he did not know for a moment whether it was hot or cold, painful or ticklish. What he was feeling now was an intoxication of the senses, something akin to sun-crackled desert mud tasting the first drops of a summer monsoon.
"I feel..." he started, and by themselves, those words were enough to make him smile. And then he remembered what it was that he could feel, and it saddened him to know he'd never feel the texture of an apple, or smell the sickly-sweet odor of wine, or feel the spray of the sea against his face. "...cold."
--The End--