Disclaimer: All recognizable characters belong to Disney.

A/N: Branching out a bit here, trying my hand at something other than tried-and-true Sparrabeth, although I can't avoid it entirely. On another note: Barbossa is deliciously fun to write, isn't he? Something about his fervent lack of a conscience makes him very satisfying, especially when one is feeling vengeful…

Temptation
By Sinnamon Spider

Elizabeth stared, horror-struck, at the figure that clomped heavily down the rickety stairs of Tia Dalma's tiny shack. Tall and commanding, with a presence that charged the one room cabin with a tense electricity, he was the spectre that had haunted her nightmares for over a year.

Hector Barbossa stood before her.

Yellow teeth bared in that fearsome sneer she recalled only too well, he smirked arrogantly at the stunned group that was all that remained of the Black Pearl's crew. "So tell me, what's become of my ship?" he drawled, biting ferociously into a large green apple. Elizabeth watched with disgusted fascination as the juice ran unnoticed into his beard, and he cackled with delight at their apparent shock.

She hung back from the rest of the crew as they clustered around the pirate captain. Barbossa had dragged her into everything, she realized. Had he not been hunting for the medallion she had stolen from Will, she would have simply continued the life she had been living, her brief encounter with Jack Sparrow on the pier at Port Royal the only deviation from the course she had been quite content to lead.

She couldn't regret all that had happened since the night the Black Pearl had opened fire on Port Royal, but she found she was happy to pin the blame on the ruthless man that had died before her eyes and was now grinning a sinister grin at her from across the small room. Too many lives had been changed irrevocably, and not merely her own. James had been cuckolded and shamed and was, in all likelihood, dead. Will had been forced to abandon his livelihood to come after her, and had then been pressed into service at the vicious hands of Davy Jones. The Black Pearl had been dragged to the bottom of the ocean by the fearsome Kraken.

Jack Sparrow was dead, and the innocent girl Elizabeth with him.

It took a great burden from her weary shoulders to make Barbossa her scapegoat, and there was no doubt that he deserved it.

Lost in her musing, she failed to notice that the crew had begun to plan Jack's rescue, but Barbossa had broken away from the group. When she finally became aware of his presence, she inhaled harshly, staring at his grim features. His face was highlighted with moonlight that streamed through the windows of the shack, and she remembered what had happened to that face the last time she had seen it in the moon's silver glow.

"Miss Elizabeth," the pirate growled in his gritty voice, inclining his head with that same sinister grace he had shown her on the Pearl, all those months ago. "Ye seem to be very quiet this evening. Be ye too delighted t' see me t' speak?"

As usual, he sparked her irritation. "Hardly," she snapped in a tone she barely recognized. It was the haughty, self-assured voice of the girl Elizabeth; the smug, confident girl who had dared to challenge this feared pirate on his own ship and held her head against his tyranny. It was the voice of the girl that had left the last traces of herself on Jack Sparrow's lips, while the hard, cruel woman that replaced her fastened the shackle securely around his wrist.

"So, Jack Sparrow finally met his match, I heard," Barbossa continued conversationally. The satisfaction that was appallingly clear on his face was not merely joy at Jack's demise. She noted that he had not said that Jack had any choice in the matter of his death.

He knew.

She stared at him in horror once again, and he laughed ominously, his curiosity rewarded. This slip of a girl, the society-bred child he had duped so easily into his machinations, had bested the seemingly-indestructible Jack Sparrow. It appeared that she was worth a second glance.

"Don't ye worry, girl, I'll not be sharin' yer little secret with the others," he assured her. "Fact is, I owe ye me thanks. Jack was a thorn in me side that wouldn't die. I don't know how ye did it, but yer a better pirate than I am for th' doin' of it."

She gaped at him. Was he complimenting her? Then her outrage overwhelmed her confusion. "We're going to rescue him," she bit out. "That's the only reason we need you in the first place."

He shrugged easily. "We're only aimin' to retrieve Jack b'cause he's a Pirate Lord and died without bestowin' his rank on another." He winked floridly at her. "B'sides – now that I know how to go about killin' him, who's to say we won't send him right back to the Locker, you and I?"

He leaned in close and she turned her face away. His hot breath gusted across her neck. "Ye seem to be far more th'n y'appear, Miss Elizabeth. I'll be keepin' a close eye on ye."

She shivered violently as he retreated, throwing her a final predatory glance over his shoulder. She attributed her pounding heart and sweaty palms to fear; he was a pirate and a pitiless one at that, as she knew from experience.

But as she watched him lord over the crew, captain once again, she realized with a sick surge that Jack was not the only pirate with a terrible ability to capture her attention. She moved to wrap her hands around her arms as her tremors returned with a vengeance, but her right hand brushed against something on the table.

A lurid green apple with a vicious chunk torn from it stared blankly back at her.