It was about six years after the whole mess with Jones and his ilk, after the figurative dust had settled (there was no dust involved, not really) when he swaggered back into her life.
Although later, she'd realize that he never swaggered anymore. Just walked like a normal man really.
His eyes were no longer lined with kohl, and his wild hair was tied back with the headscarf that used to adorn his forehead. His clothes were still dirty and he still smelt the same. The trinkets were there, but were not as numerous. His sword hung from his hip, a constant reminder that he was not just some scrawny, skinny man.
The hat was gone.
However, she saw none of this. All she knew was that he was there, at her door, and she groaned. Aloud.
"Not pleased to see me luv?" he grinned his rakish grin. His tone was still playful, though it held a foreign, somber note that she had also yet to notice.
"Why are you here?" She demanded unsmilingly. She was on her way to her job as the housekeeper of the new Governer's home. Not that he was that new – six years wasn't new. Behind her, she could hear her son hurrying to keep up with his mother.
"Can't a chap visit an old friend? Particularly one who tried to kill him?" his grin grew wider, if possible.
"Friends?" she barked harshly. She had no time for pleasantries. "I wouldn't call us that Jack,"
His mirth subsided as he studied her face. There were crows feet at the corner of her eyes. Her hair had more grays in it then he cared to really notice. Elizabeth Swann, or Turner as the case may be, was certainly not the girl he had last met.
"No, I wouldn't call us that at all," he replied softly.
Elizabeth stared at him for a few long moments. Finally she sighed and said in a gentler tone,
"I can't talk now Jack. I have an honest living to make, a son to raise,"
Jack nodded.
"I'll be back,"
Later, after she had shuffled back to her little house in town, after she had fed her son and put him to bed, she heard a knock at the door. Wearily, she dragged her tired body to answer it, a single candle lighting her way. Candles were too expensive to be lit up all around the small house.
"Hello," he said.
She said nothing, just looked over her shoulder to make sure her son was truly asleep before blowing out the candle, setting it down and stepping out of the house, shutting the door behind her. Elizabeth started walking in the direction of the high bluffs that overlooked the sea. Easily, he fell in step beside her.
"I expected you'd either be hung by now, killed by some new mythical sea creature, or at least sailing in some God-forsaken part of the ocean," she said, not looking at him.
"I expected the same of you," Jack replied. She looked pale in the moonlight; tired and delicate in a way that she never used to be.
"So did I," she said. "For me,"
"I take it life isn't all peaches since the last time I saw you," he asked.
Elizabeth took a deep breath and turned to him with a wide smile. A real one, Jack noted, that made her look as young as she had been the day he had pulled her from the bottom of the ocean, when she was wearing that silly corset. She had never needed much to look pretty, he idly reflected.
"It's not all bad. Jim's turning out to be such a wonderful little man…"
And she went on talking about her son, the way that parents do for a while. He just listened, saying nothing. Finally, they reached the bluff and she sat herself down on the soft grass.
"What about you? Where have you been?" she asked.
"Oh you know, hunting for the Fountain of Youth," he replied, settling down beside her. "Found it,"
She raised an eyebrow and asked.
"Did it work?"
"Only time will tell won't it?"
She laughed then.
"Why are you here?"
"I thought of you," he replied honestly, and stopped.
Her smile faded a little, and she turned her eyes to the empty horizon, as if seeking something. Or somebody. Jack did not have to ask to know whose direction she was looking in.
What seemed like hours later, she stood up slowly and offered her hand to him. He took it and hoisted himself up. Her hand felt dry in his.
"I should get back," she said, sounding almost reluctant.
They were silent as they walked back to her house.
Two nights later, he was back, to her infinite surprise. This time, he brought a bottle with him.
"Thought I'd show up with gifts this time," he said with his usual grin. "For old time's sake?"
She couldn't help smiling in response. This time, she let him in.
"That your little Jimmy?" he asked, looking at the child slumbering in the corner on a cot that didn't look like it'd fit two.
"Yes," she said softly, but proudly. "So hush,"
"Where are your cups?" he asked, lifting the bottle of rum again.
They drank quietly for a while, Elizabeth barely touching her's.
"You're a housekeeper. Why don't you stay at the house you keep?" he asked her after a while.
"I'm an attractive woman Jack. With a child and no husband in sight," she said and paused.
"The Governer would think that's excuse enough to touch me if I moved into his home,"
"And there's no other…"
"I could be a whore at the inn," she said, looking him in the eye.
"Well, seeing as you're looking at the owner of the inn…" Jack trailed off, not meeting her eyes. Not daring to.
Elizabeth looked shocked.
"Close your mouth, or flies will get in," Jack admonished at last, without having looked up once.
"I had some gold and I thought, 'Well then, that's something I've never done – own an inn,'"
"But you…"
"Yes, I know. Jack Sparrow…honest businessman," he cringed.
Elizabeth took a long sip of her rum.
"I need a wench for my tavern," Jack said, and added,
"Not a whore. Just some sweet thing for the patrons to look at while they get their food and drink. Unless you find that whoring suits you better,"
She was silent.
"And Jimmy can do little jobs, like stabling the horses. You'll both be paid,"
She remained quiet.
"The whoring bit was a joke luv," he said gently. He was fairly certain she already knew that; but he could never tell with this one.
Elizabeth looked up at him, and slowly, a grateful smile crossed her face. Jack ignored the fierce beating of his own heart as he studied her in the candlelight.
It was a few months later, late in the night when all the drinkers had retired for the night or returned home, when he began to speak quietly, wiping his cups with a rag.
"I was standing next to the fountain. The Fountain of Youth, savvy?"
She smiled, reminded of other times at his turn of phrase. Better times.
" The most beautiful thing I have ever seen in this whole blessed earth and I reach out to touch it, to taste it…"
Elizabeth said nothing, her smile fading as she wiped the tables. Jim had already been sent home to bed.
"And that's when I could suddenly see myself spending eternity sailing alone. All alone. It started looking a lot like Davy Jones' locker,"
She stopped moving.
"Except this time, no one's going to come rescue me, because everyone I know will be dead, gone and buried,"
The only sound was the squeaking of the cup as Jack cleaned the inside of it. It had been the same cup for the last ten minutes.
"That is to be Will's doom," she said at last.
She carried on wiping the table, but Jack put the rag and cup down walked over to her. She didn't stop her movements and she would not look at him; gently, he turned her around to face him.
"Do you blame me then, for lifting his hand, and stabbing Jones' heart?" he asked. "Do you think me a coward for not doing it myself?"
Elizabeth opened her mouth to say 'no', but nothing happened.
What she wished to say was that if he hadn't done what he did, Will would be dead, gone forever. That she would be a true widow in all the ways that counted.
She wished even more in that moment, to tell him that she didn't mind this half-life that she now had to live, free of her husband, yet not free of her wifely duties, and everything that it condemned her to. The toil, the loneliness, the slights meted out to her.
She wished a part of her did not hate Jack, for not simply letting Will die.
But life had taken too much, and there was no going back.
"I see," he said, smiling mirthlessly, although Elizabeth was sure he didn't. Not really.
He let her go and walked out of the inn, leaving her alone. After a moment, she sat down and wept.
She did not see him for two whole days. When he came back, he reeked of rum and smoke, but they both pretended he had never left.
Some afternoons, she'd catch herself smiling as she looked out a dusty window to see Jack and Jim sparring with sticks, as Jack taught her son swordplay.
She'd turn away quickly, and that night, she would always wash, scrubbing hard at her skin.
"It would have worked between us,"
"No, it wouldn't have," she said, without turning around. She was on her way out of the inn for the night, when his words had held her in place.
"It bloody well would have, and you bloody well know it," he growled, swigging from his bottle of rum. When he was in this mood, he was more dangerous than the man Elizabeth had once known, taking on phantoms and krakens. This man before her was terrifyingly familiar and yet a stranger all at once.
"You've ruined me for the sea Elizabeth Swann," he added.
"That's Elizabeth Turner,"
His eyes were shadowed.
"And you've ruined yourself," she said, walking out.
Later, shortly before dawn, Jack awoke from his drunken stupor to find the woman kissing him hard, and shrugging out of her dress.
"Not one word," she told him as she climbed on top of him.
So he said nothing, and took hold of her hips gently.
She came back the next night, and then the next.
He learnt to leave a light on.
Ten years and one day after the whole mess with Jones and his ilk, after the figurative dust had settled (there was no dust involved, not really), Elizabeth walked back into Jack's inn, her son left playing outside with other village children. It was early afternoon, the crowds nowhere to be seen.
"How's hubby?" Jack asked, finishing off what looked like a third bottle of rum.
"He's well,"
"Immortality treating him fine I assume?"
Elizabeth said nothing as she pulled on her apron. She felt his arms wrap possessively around her waist; his breath made her cringe.
"Has immortality made him a better man?" he whispered huskily, angrily.
"He's my husband,"
"What does that make me? Your fool?" he turned her around and gave her a bruising kiss. She pushed him away angrily.
He looked at her with unfathomable eyes. After a moment, he left the inn.
This time, she missed him with an intensity she did not realize was possible. Everywhere in the inn, she saw reminders of him, but he was nowhere.
By the fifth night, when she was convinced he had left for good and was indeed, halfway to China, he re-appeared at the doorway of the inn. He looked worse for the wear, but otherwise healthy.
Even sober.
She hurried to his side and threw her arms around him. Surprised by the gesture, he slowly wrapped his arms around her.
"I couldn't let him touch me. I couldn't," she whispered.
His arms tightened around her.
"I found a ship," he choked out.
She drew away and looked questioningly at him.
"I found a ship ready to stealing. But I thought of you. And I thought how much you'd have loved to sail. And I thought…" he said haltingly, not able to find the words for his heartache and his love all at once.
"Hush…" Elizabeth said. If she were a better woman, if she were her younger self, she might have stepped back. But she wasn't. Life had taken too much from her and sometimes, there was just no going back.
Sometimes. But once in a while, something happened to ease the pain, to help one move on again, scarred but whole.
Tenderly, she drew him into a kiss which he returned.
She didn't know if Will came back ten years later; she didn't look.
But somehow, when she remembered the anniversary days later with a start, she couldn't help but doubt that he had returned.
Then she was in the Inn, working beside Jack, her son working at the blacksmith's as an apprentice.
And she didn't think about Will for the rest of the day.
When night fell, Jack walked back with her, a step slower, a mite more tired. But it didn't matter.
They always made it home.