Another one of my SB efforts. This one is post AWE. Will is out of the picture. And she is heartbroken all the same. Read and review!

Disclaimer: Don't own POTC, or any of the characters.

Time immemorial.

At least it felt that way.

It felt as ancient as the earth under her, as old as the sky, and maybe even as old as time itself.

Perhaps it was...long ago, before pirates and before laws, before anything that actually mattered, maybe their souls had been fated to intertwine...not that she was sure she believed in fate, because if she did, then it was fated for him to sail away from her and never look back.

A normal day in her normal life as a normal member of high society, wearing a normal dress and a normal necklace...perfectly ordinary. It had even been complete with an ordinary proposal from an ordinary commodore who wanted a fine woman to hang on his arm.

Though, she supposed she ought to thank said commodore for making that proposal. She held up an imaginary bottle of rum and toasted the air.

"Thank you, James, for giving me that extra push of frustration that had been culminating all day long because of the heat and the damned corset...causing me to faint and plunge into the harbor. Had it not been for your extravagant ceremony, I would have never had a reason to wear said corset, and I would never of almost died."

She smiled for a moment, because as fate would have it, the most unexpected show of heroics from the most unexpected man had her plucked off the ocean floor...the same hands had ripped off her corset and sent her spluttering sea water all across the dock.

"Thank you painful corset for giving me a near death and rescue experience at the beautiful hands of Captain Jack Sparrow."

Finishing her toast, she shook her head at the memory. There had always been a sneaking suspicion that her wet shift had been see-through...and he had most certainly stolen a look or two, the scoundrel. Never mind that the very thought excited her...just like it had excited her when he had stolen a glance down the front of her shift on the island...the scenery has greatly improved, indeed.

"I'm not entirely sure I've had enough rum to allow that kind of talk…"

Translated, in her dazzled freedom-drunk mind, to 'I'm not entirely sure that I can control myself around you if you continue to say such things to me, because you're here in just a shirt and breeches…'

It wasn't to protect herself from him because she didn't want him...it was because she did.

He most certainly wanted her...but at the time she had herself convinced it was because he was a shameless womanizer who tried to seduce every semi-attractive woman with two legs and two arms.

At the time, yes…at the time...because shortly after that, she'd found herself aboard the Pearl again with its illustrious captain, and his penetrating gaze as words of curiosity and freedom floated out of his mouth into her ears...she had suddenly not been sure what he felt towards her.

Of course, she couldn't bring herself to find out…"Hi, Jack, could you please tell me whether you are in love with me because I have been really dying to know, and I can't stop lying awake in my cabin burning with desire for you, and if I don't get some kind of relief, I will go spare...so for God's sake, even if you aren't, end my misery."

But no, she had never once asked him what it was between them...instead she had betrayed him, and looking back, the trepidation of his possible rejection would have been a welcome alternative to his revulsion of her after what she had done.

"Once is quite enough."

He'd said it as a joke, with a smile on his face, but it had cut through her like a heated knife in butter, and all of their memories they shared were washed away, grains of sand going along with the tide. Gone, diminished, as though they were strangers once again.

The only problem was, she had made the mistake of leaving her heart with him, as though she'd been the one to carve it out and put it in a box.

And he'd left her on this silly island with the silly title that he had bestowed upon her with a maddening stroke of whatever it was that had ailed him that day...Pirate King, king of nothing but heartbreak and knowing that the one person that could cure it would never want to see her again.

Fate had apparently failed.

Stretching out on the sand, listening to the waves hit the shore and watching the sky slowly turn from blue to purple to stars, she let herself fall asleep.

Inhaling deeply, she detected the scent of dust, old wood, the ocean that was only a small trip from her front door, the faint aroma of the Cove, and...the glaringly absent scent of him.

It played over and over in her mind...once is quite enough.

Had she expected him to kiss her?

In the moment, yes.

A split second decision with a myriad of motivation. She was about to walk away from him, he was about to sail away from her...they had so many unspoken words between them...unfulfilled desire, questions, answers that were dangled just out of reach…

...and in that moment, her mind had been reduced to the only solution that she could understand...a kiss.

That a kiss, like that out of a fairy tale, could alleviate all of the pain, all of the confusion, could mend the broken threads...create new ones…it had been folly.

Because, never in the space of the five seconds it took to decide that she wanted him to declare that she was not to depart from his ship, that she was to sail away with him, that under no circumstances was he going to allow her to...never had she expected to be rejected.

And it was the greatest oversight she had ever committed, because she should have seen it.

How much colder he had been towards her, more...guarded...treating her like a tolerated acquaintance...not that she knew the name for what he had treated her as before…

A friend might be overreaching.

But now, he merely tolerated her.

And she wondered if he knew how much it hurt.

Or if he even cared.

Why should he?

The answer...the one that she had told him over and over again, only for him to just nod and smile at her before turning back to a crew member or a chart or the wheel or anything else besides her...was that she was sorry.

Not like she was sorry about accidentally bumping into someone, not like she was sorry about telling a little white lie...no.

It was the kind of sorry that made your entire past the past of someone else, someone more worthy of it, and your entire future pointless. The kind of sorry that reached into your soul and wrapped itself around every thought, every desire, every regret...made them all pale in comparison to the unforgiving crushing weight of how sorry she was.

The kind of sorry that made her want to run into the waves and lose herself in the frothy sea foam like some kind of heartsick mermaid.

But sorry can only go so far. It couldn't take anything back. It couldn't reach into the fabric of time and unshackle his wrist, or unsay the words she had said...or backtrack her steps as she left him there to his fate. It couldn't do any of that.

There was nothing else she could do.

Sorry was all she had.

The only other desperation she could have tried...and she nearly had...were three simple words...three words that she had no hope of him saying back, not even then, before.

Heaving a great sigh at the circles her mind was going in, she dropped her head on the wooden table, feeling the weight of the air, her roof, the sky, everything above her as though she had just plunged to the bottom of the ocean.

Also…

"Thank you, Will, for being understanding...for allowing me to go my own way...for allowing me to love a man that will never return the sentiment…"

Thumping her fist on the table, she wondered why he had to be so good, and her so vile.

Now she was going to waste away the days, months, years, in this house...being the king that he had made her...without him.

Goddammit.

She felt like she had bugs in her fingers, pushing her to act, to do something...but...what?

You could call him...sound the pirate call...send a messenger...sail to him...threaten to throw herself off the highest roof in the Cove…

Then, realizing she was fixated on the cupboard just to the right of her front door...there was an inkwell in there collecting dust, and a few sheets of paper.

Write to him.

Rising from the chair, she crossed the room, snatched the paper, ink, and quill out of the cupboard, and was back sitting down on the edge of five seconds passing.

Take a deep breath, collect yourself, think.

What does a person write to the man that most probably hates them...that they are in love with to a painful degree...without sounding like a pathetic lunatic?

Just write.

Captain Sparrow,

Hello. Hola, como estas? (Ana has been teaching me some Spanish.) She has been around quite often, actually, and we talk for hours about everything. I think I might be actually fit to captain a ship now, instead of pretending. She taught me all about sailing...what to do in a dreadful storm, how the sails work, even a little about naval combat.

She has also been teaching me about pirates...what I didn't already know, anyway. I have spent some time studying the Codex...I mean, it isn't like I have much to do around here besides rallying unruly pirates and scolding children. I am starting to rethink having one of my own, to be honest. Nasty little monsters.

I remember one night Ana and I were supervising a handful of them while they were playing hide and seek or some such thing...and I asked her what you were like as a child.

"You think these children are a mess. Jack was like a bad omen, popping up everywhere he wasn't supposed to, and getting into absolutely everything."

I asked her what exactly had changed. Then...I realized…

You've been failing at popping in places where you're wanted, as well. Double offence, that is.

I don't...know if I have any right to say this, or if I am being terribly bold in assuming...oh, bugger it.

I miss you, dammit. It's been six months, and I have been sitting in this house alone since you sailed away from me.

Since you refused to kiss me.

In case you didn't already figure it out, Will and I parted ways. We had become...too different...we wanted different things, I wanted a different person...it was for the best on all accounts.

I don't know why you did it, entirely, maybe it was out of distaste, or...but I haven't been able to stop thinking about it since you left...why didn't you want to kiss me?

It...hurt.

I don't think I was prepared for how much, actually. Because it didn't feel like just a rejection of a kiss...it felt like a rejection forever. That look in your eyes, like you couldn't wait to get away from me…

And here I am writing all of this pretending I don't know why...of course I know why, but I just...I just wish that...that I could do the impossible.

That I could take it back. That I could unravel time until we are sitting back at the campfire while you tell me about the Pearl and freedom, I wish we could go back to arguing about burning the rum...or...I wish I hadn't hurt you.

I wish that with every day, every minute...I was so stupid...so careless...and losing you was the biggest mistake I have ever or will ever make.

I wish I had told you that...that I loved you when I had the chance, instead of in a silly letter that you are only going to read halfway before tossing it into the ocean.

I wish I had told you I loved you instead of leaving you to die like a coward.

But I was angry. I was...scared, I was confused...I have no excuse, I know, for what I did, and I deserve no forgiveness, let alone anything else...but I just want you to know how much it tortured me...the entire journey to the Locker...all I could think about was how I had taken your freedom away...how deeply I had hurt you...I am just so bloody sorry.

All of the things I should be angry at you for...they seem like nothing now, and I would gladly forget about all of them if you would just consider standing next to me again without acting like you're being forced to…

Please understand that there is nothing I wouldn't do, nothing I wouldn't say...to have you back, even as a friend.

But I also understand if that isn't something you're willing to give me, and as hard as it may be, I will accept it.

The only important thing is you. Whatever affect my actions had on me are immaterial. You didn't deserve to be hurt like that...and I am shameful of being the one that caused it.

But I...do. Love you. Have ever since the bloody heroic rescue that you so graciously accosted me with. You hauled me out of the ocean and cut my corset off like a knight in shining armor straight out of a fantasy story.

You are one of the greatest pirates to ever sail...you are an admirable captain...a great strategist...excellent with words…

But I don't love you for any of those reasons.

You...let me be free. And you let me see you, for however brief the window of opportunity was. The real man, not the pirate, not the captain, not the legend...just Jack.

And that man is more precious than anything in my life. You are more precious than anything in my life. My freedom. You also seem to have taken half of my heart with you to wherever it is you've gone off to. Not that there was much left for you to take at that point. You had been chiseling away at it every time you laughed, smiled, told me a story, touched me…

I fear I may spend the rest of my days a virgin.

Because nothing I said has any power to change your mind, and I couldn't fathom allowing anyone else to have me.

The cruelest punishment is to be undeserving of that which you love.

And I am.

I wish you good fortune and fair weather, Captain Sparrow, and I yearn for the day that I may see you on the horizon again, however long it takes.

With all the love in half of my heart,

Elizabeth