Takes place after Elizabeth first saw the skeletal pirates and ran back into the cabin…

Elizabeth was still sitting on the floor with her arms clasped around her knees when the knock came half an hour later.

"Miss Turner?" She didn't answer. "It's the captain, miss. Meanin ye no harm. May I-"

"No harm?" she gasped before she could help herself. "But you-" the door opened and he came inside and she cowered even further against the wall.

"But I…?"

"But you said…" he didn't help her and finally she whispered, "You said I'm to be your… blood sacrifice."

"Aye – that I did," he agreed. "But y'know that that be when we reach the island. Until the ship makes port, miss, you're perfectly safe with me." He went to the table and pulled out her chair for her and stood behind it expectantly.

Elizabeth stared at him a moment longer. In the dark of the cabin, away from the moonlight and the horror of the ghost ship, he looked almost normal (for a pirate). So far he had been a reasonable man… perhaps between now and landfall she could change his mind and persuade him to let her live? Sitting still would do nothing to help, anyway. So she got shakily to her feet and crossed the cabin. She sat and he sat and she looked him straight in the eyes and asked, "So when we reach land… you're going to kill me right away?"

"Kill ye?" He sounded almost surprised. "Oh, I don't know… perhaps not. All we really need is to spill ourselves some of your blood. Don't suppose you'd offer it willingly?"

Her eyes narrowed. "I don't think so. Captain Barbossa, you attacked my city, forcibly kidnapped me, and intend to offer me as a human sacrifice to some heathen gods that plague you for your own misdeeds. If you think I'll in any way participate willingly, you can-"

"Then we'll just take what we want, and all you'll be havin to do is pray I don't cut too deep." She was lightheaded with fear it and it only got worse when he touched his chest and added: "You'd best be hopin I'm gentler with you than you were with me."

Her eyes went to the dark stain on his coat and she winced. "I'm sorry. I suppose that knife might have been uncalled for… But you were chasing me."

He laughed, and she heard nothing in it save genuine amusement. "Aye. Then I expect as a child ye left yourself a herd of dead playmates where'er you went."

"Playmates?" she echoed incredulously. "You weren't playing with me!"

"Wasn't I?"

She didn't argue. That meant she was at least considering the possibility that he might truly mean her no harm. If that was the case, then perhaps… "I have a proposition, miss," he said at last.

"What kind of proposition?" For all she knew her life was in immediate danger, yet she still had her head on straight enough to sound suspicious! How adorable.

"I could promise that you'd survive the trip to Isla de Muerta. I could even promise that I'd take ye home safe afterwards."

"And in return?"

He considered his words carefully so as not to offend, but he could see that the long silence was only ratcheting up her terror. "You're a very pretty girl," he began, to buy time to work out the phrasing of the rest.

But she had apparently heard enough. "How dare you! You think that just… just because I'm a maid… that I'm some kind of… that I have no, no morals? I would never compr-"

"Course not, miss." He leaned back in his chair. "I thought I explained to ye that I've no use for a wench these days."

She frowned but relaxed a little. "Then what does it matter if I'm pretty?"

"I don't know what will happen when we return the last of the gold. Perhaps nothing. Perhaps we'll be cured. Perhaps we'll die. In other words, miss, this may be the last of my time on earth," he explained, "and I want to enjoy it as best I can. Now the truth is, none of the pleasures of life remain to me… but I do miss them. So while it be positively painful for me to be puttin such a pretty girl in such an awkward position," he drawled, admitting sarcasm with a twitch of his lips in case the tone wasn't enough, "I'm willin to offer ye what safety I can… in return for this:" He rose from his chair and faced the window. "You must tell me a story. Be my eyes, my ears… my flesh. I want to know through ye, one last time, what I can no longer know for myself."

He waited, not looking at her, until she produced an answer. "I must be misunderstanding. You want me to actually… to recount to you the story of, of a, of some carnal transaction? Is that what you're asking me for?"

"That's what I'm askin."

He waited again, on pins and needles, braced for her to gasp That's disgusting or even to laugh at him. But she was silent for so long that his nerves finally snapped and he whipped around to face her. "Well?"

"Well, I… I…" she was staring down at her plate, hands in her lap. "Captain, I…" it was clearly an effort for her to look up at him. "I admit that your fate does call for compassion, and certainly do want to strike a deal to save my life. However, I… even if I were not mortally offended by your suggestion – and I assure you that I am… well, even then, I would have to say that I have no stories to share."

He passed completely over her perfunctory claims of moral outrage. "Nonsense – pretty thing like you? Sixteen, seventeen maybe? Surely you must have a lover."

"A lover? Hardly. He-" she bit her lip.

"He?" Barbossa slid back into his seat, swept his untouched plate out of the way and rested his forearm on the table. "Tell me," he said softly, leaning towards her just a little. "Tell me everything."

She was not willing to tell him much – her feelings for Will were a secret she had never shared and didn't think she could bear to even to save her life – but she decided to share what she could, in the hopes that it might satisfy him and save her life. "His name is Will," she began. "I… I met him years ago, when we were children."

"What's he look like?"

"Oh, always very proper. Always put together, dresses in sensible colors, hair always tied back. You know. Well," she amended with a little laugh, "You might not know. But take my word for it: always proper, very stiff. It's his eyes that draw me most; he has very soft, you know, chocolate eyes. Warm." She looked down and began poking food around her plate with her fork, finding it much easier to talk while she was fidgeting. "It feels somehow… intimate when I look into them. As if I shouldn't be doing it. I sometimes suspect everybody else sees it when I look at him, but…" She looked up then, and shrugged. "He never does."

"Mmm," Barbossa said noncommittally. She was so lost in her thoughts that she didn't register his relief when her chocolate eyes dropped away to the table again. "What's he feel like?"

She told herself that she was only talking about this to protect herself, but in fact she had been bursting to tell someone for ages now. Putting it in a diary – and frequently tearing it up and burning it afterwards – was simply not enough. "In fact I can partially answer that. I was caught out in a rainstorm about a year ago. I was out alone, I shouldn't have been. I ducked into a doorway to wait it out, and he was there, hiding in the same doorway. He made to leave but I said it was big enough for two people, I said…" she kept her eyes lowered and twisted her hands nervously as she confessed, laughing a little: "I said I was afraid of the thunder and I didn't want to be alone. I asked him if he'd please be my escort until the rain stopped." She bit her lip, feeling her cheeks warming up at the memory. "He stayed, the poor thing, totally against his will. I would, you know, I'd cringe against him every time the thunder crashed… he'd gotten wetter than I had and water dripped out of his hair every now and again down the neck of my dress, but I didn't mind… the water was positively freezing, perhaps that's only because I was feverish from being so near him, but in any case it made me shiver and I'd, sort of, you know… press against… him… harder."

She shook her head, still keeping her eyes resolutely on the tablecloth. "Will was terribly embarrassed, of course. He'd close his eyes and swallow and I could feel him trembling head to foot. I'd have given anything for him to put his arm around me and hold me to him, but of course it was a ridiculous hope and he never did…" She looked up and laughed a little regretfully. "Not the sort of story you were hoping for, was it?"

The pirate sat up straighter. "No, but I don't hear me complainin. Do you?"

"Well, I'm sorry there's nothing more scandalous in my history. So what did he feel like? I can say he felt very strong under all his clothes." The triviality of that made her laugh again. "So I know that men feel strong and hard and alive to a girl who's clinging to them. Very amazing to you, I'm sure. I'm sorry I haven't got anything more interesting to tell."

"Oh, don't worry – you will," he chuckled. The answer was wistful if anything, not at all ominous, and Elizabeth suddenly suspected that whether or not he felt a deal had been made, he wasn't about to kill her unnecessarily.

"Isn't it unbearable for you?" she asked, leaning towards him and very nearly reaching out to touch his hand.

"The curse?"

"No. This. Hearing about what… what you don't…"

He sat back. "Well… you didn't stop leanin on him… did you?"

"No, I… I suppose not. The worst is I know it'll never change, Captain. No matter how badly I want it, no matter what I do… well, I don't have to tell you."

"No," he agreed. "Ten years of want… I hardly understand m'self before. What was I thinkin? How could I use want for what I was feelin then? For anything?"

"Wanting is terrible," she whispered. "It eats at you…"

"Aye. If you'd care for advice from a pirate, miss, I'd suggest that first thing when you get home, you find this boy and you kiss him til he can't see straight and you order him to take ye behind some bushes and have ye at once. To blazes with whoever's parents stand in the way. If he has a wife already, you must kill her. Otherwise it'll be you that the wanting kills."

"Just take him?" Elizabeth asked with raised eyebrows. "Don't you think the curse was meant to teach you the opposite lesson?"

He got up suddenly from his chair and knelt behind hers. He put his head on her shoulder and reached around her waist and tried with all his might to conjure up the memory of what that sort of contact was supposed to feel like. "I don't think the curse be meant to make us wise, miss. I think it be meant to make us miserable." He breathed in long and deep and smelled nothing, and it had been so long that he could hardly recall what women's hair was supposed to smell like. "And I swear by all that's holy: it be a perfect success."

The End.

Yeesh. Short and dark. Please let me know what you think!