The Black Pearl's faint lamps replaced the stars in this world, a brief flicker here and there allowing her to see her hands clenching her knees. Darkness cloaked everything else, and silence drowned out the water mindlessly washing against the hull. Elizabeth could mark the hour by the shuffling behind her, a crewman's heavy boots pounding on each stair up to the helm. None of them spoke a word to her, and she didn't care to glance back to see whose turn it was to guide the ship through this abyss.
The tearful, lullaby-like tune from the voodoo woman's locket accompanied the footsteps this time, the light steps of Tia Dalma breaking away to tiptoe across the deck to sit near the bowsprit.
Elizabeth's fingers slid up her temples into her scalp. Her father, so pleasant and warm in life, reduced to a somber, addled, otherworldly specter in that lonely boat. And she had just stood there, shaking that ridiculous line at him, knowing now it must have looked like a toddler offering his father a toy hammer to build a house. Of course, they had all stood there, too, each one now knowing what she had done. It was a wonder they had rushed to her to keep her on the ship at all. Of everyone there, only she had broken her fiancé's trust. Only she had kept a reprehensible truth to herself. Only she had used a man's lo…feelings…passion for living against him.
Her lips tingled in the dark, even though no wind had dried them. A backward fairy tale—a kiss encasing her in a never-ending nightmare rather than awakening her.
"I'm so proud of you," her father had said, gazing up at her from that boat as if she'd changed history. Pride in her? She let her head fall into her lap. More like ignorance. The ones who avoided her now knew the truth.
The tune on the other end of the Pearl stopped, but instead of hearing the locket clasp shut, Elizabeth listened to Tia Dalma wind it up and let it play again, a muffled gulp following what sounded something like a sniffle.
"She must not leave the ship." Elizabeth had not heard the words at the time, her senses focused on that small boat, one of many, drifting farther and farther out of her sight and into oblivion. She stood, her back and legs stiff from sitting so long, and ambled back past the helm and main cabin. The fastest ship in the Caribbean trudged at a laughable pace in this limbo, she assured herself, picking up a coil of rope and wrapping it around her waist. The boats, too, although their dreamlike pace might have just been how she remembered it.
"No. Enough of that thinking," she mouthed to herself, brushing hardened strands of stray hair out of her face. Undoing one man's death had clearly not been enough, but two would, and this time, it was not her fault. She would be able to collapse into the embrace of someone who wanted her, someone who could turn a blind eye to all her wickedness and love her anyway.
Hoisting herself up onto the railing, she inhaled. The smooth dark water contained no bodies now, not that she could see, but it did appear cold. Silly thing to worry about now, she snorted to herself. The soles of her worn boots shuffled against the railing, one hand holding onto the netting above, the other cleaving onto the rope across her middle. They'll see. They'll all see, was her last thought before she held her breath and plunged into the void.
Batting her eyelashes, Elizabeth adjusted until she could tell up from down and kick towards the surface. The rope held, she felt, grateful for the slight pressure against her waist. Cold, the murky water gave way for her arms and legs just like the water of the real world.
Breathing in just as her nose and mouth broke the surface, she heard the splashing. Tilting her face to look behind her, she squinted in the darkness, the Pearl's lamps allowing her to see movement. It would have to be ignored. Her father was in the other direction, doomed to wander this place, a ghost with no one to haunt.
She jolted and gasped at fingers clutching her shoulder. Treading water, she turned to see several men in tattered, drenched rags surrounding her. Rebuffing the one touching her, she sped up her kicking to swim away, but they engulfed her. Another one took hold of her arm, swinging her around until she was close enough to see his face.
Her scream spat out droplets of seawater at the sight—charred skin, some of it flaking off like tree bark, led up to pale, virgin skin where hair had once protected it. Crust almost closed over both his eyes, still, dilated eyes that saw her and saw through her. His neck and beginnings of his chest resembled piles of ash, so much so she couldn't tell where the flesh ended and the clothing began.
They wheezed at her, groaning muted cackles. Another one, bloated with his eyes bulged out, eyelids peeled away, sank underneath the water and tugged on her. The others, one by one, floated beneath her. Elizabeth reached for the ship, but could only struggle to keep her head up, the corpses weighing her down, dead hands gripping her shirt and limbs. Screaming escalated to frantic shrieks as she bobbed around, feeling the tops of heads around her ankles and between her legs. One surfaced and pulled on her hair, his skin stretched tight over his face like a drum, exposing the skull behind it. No lips, no eyebrows, just an emaciated carcass dragging her down with him.
Just as her head sank back into the dank water, there came a pull. It felt like a punch in the gut, the rope taut against her waist. She echoed their raspy sounds, mouth open as wide as it would go, searching for air. The rope pulled her higher, her back hitting the hull of the ship.
Elizabeth scraped her nails into the Pearl's hull, gasping and watching her assailants sink back into the water, floating on behind the ship in the same direction as her father, already forgetting her. With trembling arms, she took hold of her rope with both hands, letting its coarseness brush against her cheek. Each tug stole her breath, but brought her closer to the deck. At last she toppled over onto the familiar planks of ebony wood, dry, warm, real.
"She all right?" someone called down from the helm. It took her an eternity of lying on her back, eyes wide, to recognize Pintel's voice.
The hands around her now were also dry and warm and real, she exhaled, helplessly gawking up at Jack. We have to stop meeting like this, she thought, the corner of her lip almost twitching into an almost smile. The only differences now were that Gibbs was kneeling over her, wiping her hair off her nose and that Jack's hands should have been wringing her neck rather than tentatively holding a cursed medallion.
"All right, lass?" Gibbs asked her, his hands burrowing under her shoulder blades to prop her up. Jack stood without touching her, arms crossed, face unreadable.
"F-fine," she said through chattering teeth. She peered back down at the water.
"Wouldn't worry your head about them anymore," Gibbs continued, throwing a blanket over her. "Ye might say you've been through enough for one night…eh, Jack?"
Jack still bore into her, regretting assisting in saving her life again, she concluded. Mustering whatever dignity might still be a part of her, she straightened her back and muttered a thank you to Gibbs before plodding into the galley.
The song from the locket still played in the distance, too far for her to make out Tia Dalma's figure.
She fell back into one of the bench-like seats in the galley and was just bringing her feet up when the door burst open.
"You're welcome."
She withdrew from Jack's voice, huddling into herself, fighting against the instinct to run to him when she heard it.
"Thank you," she whispered.
"Oh. Two expressions of gratitude of the countless times gratitude was warranted." He still stood, but rested his back against the bulkhead, arms at his side instead of folded in front of him. "It's a lost cause, saving someone who didn't want to be saved."
"I…"
"Your father. Not you."
Holding her knees to her chest, she laid her head on them. "Can you look me in the eye and tell me there was never someone you wouldn't have done the same thing for?"
"No."
"Then you're in no position to gloat," she snapped, fighting back tears. "Thank you, Jack." She could tell without looking directly at him his stance relaxed even more, to the point he seemed deflated, at a loss. He'd probably rehearsed a vengeful monologue to deliver to her, Lord knew he had had enough time to memorize one, and then plot out every single detail that would go into her death. "You could have left me there," she said, thankful there was still a part of her that decided against the word "should." "'Revenge at first though sweet, bitter ere long back on itself recoils'?"
"Seems fate took my revenge for me."
"What did they want?" she asked, her voice beginning to quiver, unaccustomed to associating Jack with conciseness. Many words from Jack spun themselves into tapestries of humorous epics, conniving con games, and soul-stirring banter. Few words…
"Pirate."
"You were alive; they weren't," he said.
"Like a moth to a flame." She nodded, needing no further explanation.
"You do have that way about you, love."
It was the endearment, one she thought she'd never hear again, that hooked her eyes up to him, pondering and treasuring a small, vulnerable smile on his lips.
"Now then," Jack said, stepping into the galley with his usual swagger. "Isolation coupled with the deathly stench of the dead requires one remedy and one remedy alone for the death-defying to remain as such. At any rate, it is cause for a celebration as I did not have to proverbly pull your teeth to get a thank you from you." He lifted the seat next to her and produced a full bottle. Popping the cork and taking a swig, he extended it out to her.
Wordlessly, she angled it and sipped what little drifted to the rim.
"I've saved your life before too, you remember."
"Aye, Lizzie, but when you're the one doing the rescuing, there is an astonishingly low amount of rum to behold." He gestured to the bottle as if it corroborated his statement and drank. Braving rejection and ridicule, she slid a little closer to him, her nerves steadied. Life couldn't be the same way it was before, not after all she had done, but maybe it could be tolerable. She shoved the thought into the back of her mind while she debated pointing out only a good man would save her and then keep her company.
"You've had more of an ordeal than I have," she said, unsatisfied with the lack of subtlety. "I'm sure you're tired."
He seemed unaware of the fact he was nodding in response to her, the back of his head tapping the bulkhead. "Last time I slept on the Pearl with Barbossa on board, I was marooned the next day."
She smiled and sighed, blocking out the mournful tune of the locket still playing with thoughts of survival, thoughts of living.
A/N: Happy Halloween, Florencia! This one-shot was for you, based on one of the prompts/requests you gave me for a Halloween one-shot. I hope it was to your liking. The quote Elizabeth says is from Paradise Lost and many of the ideas and themes in this story were inspired by the movie Poltergeist. The quote in the summary is from Shakespeare. I do not own POTC, but wish I did. Please leave a review and tell me what you think.