Just another slap
There he was.
Elizabeth held he breathe behind the tavern bar. She couldn't help but stare to the man across the room. He was sitting at a table away from the rest, men crowding around him asking him where he had been, if he was well. All the things she couldn't care less about.
Still, she couldn't believe her eyes. There was the man that started all of this! The man who caused her eventual role of single mother and pirate wench working at a damned bar every night. He was every reason she wish she could turn back time. Everything that went wrong could be blamed one him! Everyone who was killed, everyone who fell out of her life. She was fuming, and still staring at that man across the room; Captain Jack Sparrow.
After starring for another long moment, she turned her sights back to the dirty rag she was pushing around the tabletop of the bar. Against her own will, her mind raced in million different directions.
It hadn't been but a year since she saw him last. She remembered the failed attempt at a friendly goodbye. She remembered afterward, nodding and walking away. The thing was, she couldn't remember feeling so hurt in her entire life.
She had saved his soul from Davey Jones' locker after all. Well, after killing him herself that was. Never the matter, that was just the very beginning of a long list of things Jack had done her wrong. A list she thinks of now and again before prying for a blink of sleep or before tucking young William into bed. It is a list that burns fire into her veins and ignites a flame in her mind. She did not hate Jack before, but today was a far different story.
"Oi, a round of Rum for me table, wench!" called his voice making her jump bit. She half glanced up making sure he was talking to her. She looked back down to her rag after seeing his dark eyes to her.
"Aye, sir," she said masking her voice and continuing to cover her face.
"Why this night, why that man?" she asked herself inwardly.
"How's about a tale, Jackie?" questioned one of the men, a young man with dirty blonde hair, seated near him.
"A tale?" asked Jack with mock excitement before leaning in closer to the man, "I only tell the truth, son."
This caused a quiet laugh from Elizabeth and roar from the other men a Jack's table. She should know better than any man that Jack Sparrow could not keep a story straight if he was standing before God.
She searched blindly below the bar for a bottle and couple of glasses while keeping her ear on their conversation.
"Well then, tell us a true story than!"
"Yeah, but an entertainin' one still!" proclaimed his cronies leaning over the table, all their attention on the Captain.
"Hey, what's this I been hearin' about that grand battle?"
"Aye, that battle that involved ev'ry pirate lord?"
"And the King!" inquired all ends of the small round table.
"Alright, alright! One at a time." said Jack cutting in, "The battle. Yes! I was apart of the biggest, most violent, and suspenseful battle… of them all!" his voice ending in a dramatic whisper causing the younger men to lean in closer.
"Well then, tell us mor-"
"Silence!" cried Jack pointing a finger in the same blonde haired boy's face. "All in good time, son." He leaned back in his chair. "You said something about the king, yes?"
"Why of course," said a man as the others nodded.
Jack scratched his chin seeming to be lost in thought for a moment.
He made a small smirk as he was miles away, "His Nibs..." he said under his breathe.
Elizabeth glanced to him as she began pouring the rum.
"What was that, Captain?"
"Nothing!" exclaimed Jack, the boy's comment pulling him out of his memories. "I was just… You want to hear about her?"
The men looked to each other confused.
"Her?" asked the man to Jack' side.
"Yes. The Pirate King."
"She was a… woman?"
"A woman, aye. One that should not be trusted!"
The men looked to the bar as a loud crash of broken glass sounded. Elizabeth rushed to collect the broken pieces of glass from the rum bottle that just happened to slip out of her hand after Jack's last comment.
The old Captain's eyes lingered on her for a moment before flickering back to the men at his table.
"As I was saying, yes, the king was a woman. A skilled swordsman, well in a way, I guess. No matter which way you put it, she was no lady!"
Elizabeth got up from the floor with a loud gasp, a gasp that was a bit too loud. Before the men from the table turned to see what the odd wench was up to next, she quickly turned her back to them and made her way behind the bar.
Jack continued on unfazed, "She wasn't that hard to look at either, except for the fact that I've seen a wooden plank with more curves!"
"Excuse me?" she tried to say under her breath but failed horribly practically yelling her statement across the room. She swiftly ducked down behind the bar pretending to look for more rum as the whole tavern seemed to be staring at her.
"Could I be of assistance, Miss...?" asked the barkeep genuinely worried about her.
She hushed him placing her index finger over her lips to prevent him from saying her name. "No, just go!" she said muted.
"She was though, our leader and led us to a great victory she did. Of course, I was there by her side the entire battle. Poor dear. The rain was pouring like I've never seen in all me years. I thought she wouldn't make it." he said as if about to pull off shedding a tear.
"Lying bastard," whispered Elizabeth now fully listening to Jack's story from behind the bar.
"Did you know her personally, Sparrow?" asked one of the elder men that accompanied Jack.
"Ah, so that's the sort of story you want to hear, is it then?"
The man shrugged, "I get me inspiration from ye Jack, now tell us! How was she?"
Elizabeth's face want white as she grasped a bottle of rum with both hands.
"He wouldn't go so low, would he?" she wondered.
Jack laughed, "Ah yes, that was years ago."
"No!" whispered Elizabeth, "No, it was not years ago because it never bloody happened!"
"Are you sure you're alright?" asked the barkeep bending down to her. She hastily shoved him away by placing a hand over his mouth not wanting to miss a word of Jack's.
"The circumstances were awful to be certain. Barbossa was there forcing me to walk the plank, the same way the bastard had done before. And, there was poor poor Elizabeth saying one final goodbye to her pathetic William Turner. The whelp. He was too yellow to save her himself, that is why I was involved in the whole mess to begin with. Somehow he had roped Elizabeth, the innocent Governor's daughter mind you, into it as well! And there we were. Doomed to die on that dreadful spit of land."
"That does sound awful!" lamented the younger man.
"Well it was. But, we swam to land and waited there 'til the sun set and it was night. I made a fire and she began to sing this lovely child's song, it was really quite a scenic view. There this young woman was in my arms, "Jack," she said to me, "it must be really terrible for you to be trapped on this island."
Elizabeth frowned, how did he remember her words?
"I told her that it was terrible, but I was there with her, and we were there together."
"And…?" asked a hopeful boy.
Jack smirked wickedly as Elizabeth held her breathe, "She pleaded with me to show her what it was like. She was a virgin after all and I was a pirate. The pirate to her. She asked me desperately to do to her what she heard whispered between men and women behind locked doors. What she glimpsed at in books hidden from children's eyes. She wanted me to take her, there, beneath the stars."
"Oh please..." groaned Elizabeth as Jack must have had half the room's concentration.
"Will you be pouring that then?" asked the barkeep gesturing to the rum she ignored his question and focused on Jack as if he were standing before her.
"I denied her at first, she was only a girl after all! She even loved another man and was betrothed to a well-to-do commodore. How could I bed her with a clear conscience thinking of those men?"
"So, what did you do?" asked a voice.
"He bloody passed out!" exclaimed Elizabeth quietly still in hiding.
"I… I just couldn't say no to such a beautiful, delicate, rose. I'll tell ye, it shocks me the indecencies these privileged children are brought up to learn!" he said sounding like a proper politician. This made the men hoot with laughter, one even patting Jack on the shoulder.
"Never did I have a girl that pleaded for more the way she had. The talent that young woman possessed, you'd think she was getting pay for the favor! Come to think of it, I don't think I've come across a whore with less inhibition!"
As the crowd's jollity increased, Elizabeth grew redder in the face. "Lies!" she wished to cry to the tavern.
She shot up from behind the bar and quickly began pouring a tray of drinks.
"Was she really that good?" a boy said between gasps of laughter.
"Back then," began Jack wholeheartedly, "when I thought it would be my last go, I could have sworn; she was the best I ever had!"
Elizabeth sourly mocked the men's boorish laughter under her breathe as she poured the final glass.
"Alas, all good things must end, men. Before long it was sunrise and who would be there to wake us up, but the British Royal Navy."
"If only that governor father of hers knew what you'd done to his daughter, aye?" asked the elder man.
"Knew?" laughed Jack, "She told the old bastard! How do you think she became a pirate anyway?" he lied outright adding another shocking turn to the story. "She told him her place was with the rogue... just as I could have guessed."
She glanced to him then to catch his eyes looking to her, the brown, mischievous, orbs that never did seem to age. She took the tray in her hand and walked it over to the table.
"Well finally," said one of the men, "our rum is here!"
Elizabeth stood next to Jack starring down to him pursing her lips.
He smiled and glanced up to meet her dagger-like gaze.
"Well, well, well, if it isn't-"
She placed the drinks on the table before fiercely meeting her open palm with the side of his face with all the power her slim arm could muster.
"Enjoy your drink men," she said before turning on her heal and making her way off with a huff and her nose in the air.
Jack slumped to the side of his chair as he rubbed his cheek. He blinked a couple of times before actually processing what had just happened.
"Captain... What in the world was that?" asked the youngest of the group concerned.
Jack looked to Elizabeth as she smiled back to him beginning to push the old rag around the bar table again. He couldn't help but smirk as well, even if the smirk looked more painful than charming.
"Just another poor broken heart, in't that right Jackie?" asked one of the men as he sat up in his chair and took a swig from a mug on the tray.
"Aye," he said weakly.
Elizabeth felt proud as she stood behind the bar again. He deserved that years ago, he deserved worse actually. She could put the list of wrong he had done to her in the past now, couldn't she?
She rung out the dirty rag, dipped it into a bucket of water, and sloshed it about the table as she mentally praised herself.
"That's it then, the end of Captain Jack Sparrow. Never again will he cross my mind, enter my dreams, or saunter though my life! I slapped him! Yes! And he deserved it! That no good, son of a bit-"
"That hurt, Miss Turner."
Her head snapped up to see a melancholy Sparrow starring down to her. Getting over the initial shock, she grinned to him and the red mark on his cheek.
"Well you deserved it. Come on. That couldn't have been the first time Captain Jack Sparrow was slapped."
"No, but it hurts just the same every time, no matter how many I've received," he stated pointedly.
"Forgive me if I do not begin to cry for you."
She pretended to pay more attention to the rag in her hand as she continued her brisk clean of the table. His wary eye caught this and, in a gesture that would seem compassionate, he placed his hand on hers. She looked up to giving her nightly duties a rest.
"Should I buy you the drink… or do ye just want me coin?" he asked with a crooked smirk pulling at the corner of his mouth.
She tried to smile and even contemplated sighing a quiet "Oh, Jack", two ideas she quickly dismissed. Instead, she stood straighter and looked the Captain square in the eye.
"Just another poor broken heart then? Is that all I am?"
He frowned for an instant before shaking his head, "No."
"Then what?" she asked outraged before leaning in closer to him, "I'm sorry if I was the only woman to deny you, Captain."
Jack was speechless for a moment before coming to his senses and separating himself from her beautiful brown-eyed stare.
"Deny me? Love, you were the only woman to kill me!"
"That is in our past," she said quickly, "Now if you have nothing better to discuss with me, it seems your men are lonely at your table over there."
He sulked for a moment as she got back to her cleaning. Then, after a gaping silence, an idea seemed to come to his mind. His eyes flickered with a spark of light and his mischievous leer reappeared in an instant.
"Lizzy, what do ye say to the great Fountain of Youth?"
Eh, just an idea that was stuck in me head. I think Elizabeth is ooc. Oh well, I needed something to keep me occupied these last few days! Feedback, yes?
-JB