NIGHT FEVER
Disclaimer. Unfortunately I do not own anything to do with POTC. The concept, characters etc all belong to the great mouse. If I did own them Jack and Elizabeth would have been together (if I hadn't got to him first! Lol!)
Setting. 12 months after AWE. Will is at sea for 10 years as Captain of the Flying Dutchman. Only contact by letter via a scheme he worked out with Elizabeth during their 24 hrs together. Elizabeth is living alone in a cottage on the cliff tops a couple of miles out of Tortuga. There is no child from her 24 hrs with Will.
NIGHT FEVER
Chapter One
Elizabeth sighed deeply in frustration, residing herself to the fact that she would never be able to rehang the closet door by herself. Hands on hips, she glared at the offending object, and then kicked out at it with her foot.
"Owwww!" she cried, the door coming out of the exchange the victor. Ruefully, she rubbed her throbbing toes, while the door leaned against the outside closet and seemed to laugh at her. She stamped her foot in sheer frustration, immediately regretting the childish outburst ad pain radiated from her bruised toes.
"Damn!" she muttered under her breath. "What I wouldn't give sometimes for a man around this place!"
Casting a look of disgust at the door, she moved away and hobbled into her cottage. Removing her shoe, she surveyed her battered toes. Already turning blue, the nail had split and blood was everywhere. She hobbled to the range and set some water over the fire to heat. While waiting, she reflected on how much her life had changed over the past twelve months.
Since the end of their adventures with Captain Jack Sparrow, her somewhat rushed marriage to William Turner and the 24 hours they had spent together as man and wife, she had seen no-one. Not a soul apart from when she made the 2 mile journey into Tortuga for supplies. She was bored. Bored senseless and lonely.
She understood that Will, now tied to being Captain of the Flying Dutchman for all eternity, had a plausible reason for not seeing her. He could, after all, only spend one day on land every 10 years, a situation she had wholeheartedly believed that she could live with.
Reality was a whole world away though – literally! Will had an excuse. Jack, however did not! He knew that she was living near Tortuga. It wouldn't take much brain power to find her. She felt lost, alone and abandoned.
She kept in contact with Will through letters. As she saw it, if Will could find a way to contact her then what had happened to Jack?
He could come and go as he pleased with no restriction…so why had he not been to see her?
She recalled his smile, lazy, almost insolent. His smirk, his pout. Unconsciously, he seemed to invade her senses; his eyes, like dark liquid pools, endlessly deep and quick to show his inner emotions. With a shock, she realised that she missed him. His quirky ways, his laugh, even the way he had an unlimited capacity for rum.
Most of all, she missed his banter, the way their spats used to ebb and flow like the tide, the unseen tussle to gain the upper hand. The flirting. Yes, she admitted, she missed that most of all. The element of danger, the risk of goading him enough for his iron will to break so that he would kiss her as he had that day on The Pearl, when even though she was using him for her own ends, their kiss had shocked her to the depths of her being. Feelings she hadn't known existed until that perfect moment. Feelings she hadn't even admitted to having…until now.
So, she pondered…why hadn't she seen him? He had no excuse, not like Will.
She shook her head to clear her thoughts, and, sighing, got to her feet, beginning to feel rather annoyed with herself.
"Pull yourself together, Mrs Turner!" she told herself. "You've led men into battle…you are The Pirate King…you don't need anyone checking on you every five minutes."
She turned to the range and prepared to tend to her poor, battered toes.