Disclaimer: Jack, Elizabeth, William Turners I, II and III and all other original PotC characters do NOT belong to me. All of their offspring and other original characters, as well as the storyline and plot, are (c) Lady Asvin - me.

-

Elizabeth Swann Turner caught her daughter gazing at her reflection again. The hand-held mirror quivered in the girl's had as she struggled to make sense of what she saw. Elizabeth sighed.

"Madeleine, love, what's all this about?" The girl of nearly fourteen slammed the mirror down furiously, rattling the reflective glass in its frame. Elizabeth took her daughter's hands; Madeleine turned, fixing her mother with fierce, crackling eyes. His eyes, mused Elizabeth.

"Come now," she told her daughter. "Tell me what ails you." The girl sat, head bowed, and shook her head of glossy chestnut waves. She sighed.

"Mum," she began heatedly, "every day I look into the mirror and see someone I don't know. I'm nothing like Will or Jackson, or even Annie or Della. I am definitely nothing like father. I see someone else, mum." Stopping her passionate speech, Madeleine again matched her mother's gaze with frustration and unrestrained curiosity. Elizabeth reached for a brush to tame her daughter's wild locks.

"Look at me, mum," said the girl. She held out a hand, and Elizabeth was forced to choke back a sob that rose in her throat. Madeleine's skin shone a beautiful, deep tan. Compared to her brothers and sisters, Madeleine was dark as a gypsy – a freak.

"You are a child of the sea," said Elizabeth softly. She slowly pulled the brush through her daughter's hair, taming it methodically until the girl whirled around. The brush flew across the room and into a wooden bedpost. Madeleine's face was furious.

"And just what does that mean, mum? That answers nothing!" she screamed bitterly. "What does that mean?" She stormed away; Elizabeth heard her take the stairs at a run and slam the kitchen door. She was left alone to straighten her thoughts.

-

Jack Sparrow – Captain Jack Sparrow, to be precise – was walking down a side road in Port Royal when a small and rather unusually fast someone crashed headlong into his chest.

"Oomph," said the human projectile, the sound rising from deep within the folds of a cloak.

"Watch the goods," said Jack lightly. "Though there's not much you could possibly damage." The little person squared its shoulders indignantly and looked up, causing the hood of the cloak to fall back. Dark waves tumbled down about the girl's face, and she raised a stubborn chin. Fixing him with eyes as dark as his own, she took a breath.

"I'll have you know, sir, that my mother was the governor's daughter. Having been so, she is quite influential and could damage far more than you'd possibly care to lose." Surprised, Jack leaned down to meet the girl's eyes.

"Yer name, love?" he asked, unused to her frank formality. The girl seemed taken aback by the question, but stuck her chin out belligerently.

"Madeleine Turner, if you please." Jack stifled a bark of bitter laughter. To the locker with it all, he thought morosely. Nigh on fifteen years since I've set foot on this damned island and the whelp is still producing children. And then, as an afterthought, so much for being a eunuch.

Madeleine used the chance while the stranger was preoccupied to sidestep him and run to the cove. It was where she spent her spare time, watching the ships come in and out of the port, wishing she were free to go with them. The walls of the cove sparkled with accumulated salt deposits and the debris that washed up from the docks. As she felt herself begin to let go of the morning's quarrel, Madeleine began to sing a song her mother often hummed around the house. Devils and black sheep, really bad eggs… drink up, me hearties, yo ho.

-

Still tense from her episode with Madeleine, Elizabeth made her way across Port Royal in search of a butter crock. Despite seeing several in shop windows on Urding Street, not far from her home, Elizabeth was convinced she'd seen a cheaper one in the Spanish widow's shop by the docks. Thus, she made the hour walk with a purpose – and a purse hidden in her bodice.

She walked into the store and browsed for a moment, locating the crocks in a shelf near the back corner. Holding one up to the light, she was distracted for a moment by the door opening and the sight of a familiar hat. She shook her head; impossible. She almost smiled at her lapse and resumed her scrutiny of the crock; a figure swaggered by in the row next to hers, examining a set of shackles. As she looked up, so did he; meeting his gaze, she was struck senseless. Oh my God… The man smiled, his deep brown eyes crackling between the webs of wrinkles at their corners.

"Lizzie." His deep baritone voice made her remember that night, almost fifteen years ago, when she'd finally given in and consummated her marriage…

To piracy.

-

Hot.

It was hot.

But not uncomfortably so. Indeed, Jack thought, not hot enough. He stared at the girl under him… the woman under him. Married, she was, with two children, but of course it wasn't the first time he'd lured a lamb away from her shepherd. But this one was different. Promised herself to a blacksmith, one she'd once lovingly called a pirate, and here she was, moaning Jack's name and begging him to take her and be done with it… Her hair, golden brown waves, scattered over the shabby pillows. She was panting, eyes glazed over with wanton pleasure. Beautiful, she was, and he'd known it for a time; peas in a pod. Yes. The ship rocked and swayed, and Jack thrust and pulled in accommodation with the perilous waves. There was a storm over the harbor, but no amount of howling wind could erase from his ears the sounds of this woman – his woman – moaning his name and whimpering as her nails left patterned pathways down his back.

"Let me go," she cried, bucking harder. "Please!" she begged him, but he was having none of it. Instead, Jack teased her to the very brink of collapse, then stopped abruptly, tracing gentle hands down her neck and following the curve of her collarbone and breasts, down to her hips and thighs. "Please," she whispered one more time, and he complied, thrusting himself into her roughly. She opened her mouth in a soundless cry as she was thrown from the heights like the devil out of heaven. Both spent, Jack leaned over and gave her a lingering kiss, moving from her lips to her abdomen. The woman's brows knit together, her forehead and cheeks shining with sweat.

"Promise me," he'd said then, quite seriously. "Promise me if there's a child, you'll tell me." Her face relaxed.

"If you will come back to me, love, I promise."

I promise, she'd said.

Pirates never make promises, though.

It all went downhill from there.

-

Nine months later it was a harried and hassled Will Turner riding for the doctor, calling his sons and praying to the good Lord that his wife and child would make it through. The midwife ordered the men outside; the doctor grumbled and griped, but complied. Will paced nervously, waiting as the screams from inside his chambers reached a deafening crescendo… waiting as the silence finally took over…

A baby's wails broke the dead quiet, and Will ran into his chambers. There, a tearful Elizabeth and a red-faced infant greeted him. He picked up the child, eyes watering.

"It's a girl," said Elizabeth tiredly, her voice interrupting his thoughts. "I'm naming her Madeleine… Madeleine Pearl. Sp- Turner," she amended hurriedly. The slip went unnoticed by Will, who was too pleased with his first daughter to really give a whit what her name was. Elizabeth smiled and reached for the infant, settling her in place to suckle. There now, Captain Sparrow, she thought as she watched the girl's tiny pink lips acquire a rhythm and begin to suckle greedily. She is all yours.

Miles away in a seedy tavern in Tortuga, Jack Sparrow suddenly dropped his tankard of ale and stood up, pushing off a comely serving girl who'd somehow managed to drape herself over him. Gibbs eyed his captain curiously as the irritated girl with tinted hair re-laced her bodice and made a rude gesture in his general direction.

"Cap'n?" Sweeping his hat onto his head, the pirate nodded once to his first mate.

"If it's all the same t'you mate," he said roughly, "I'm headin' back to the Pearl." Walking quickly out of the tavern, Jack could not pinpoint the reason for his sudden reluctance to join in bawdy company and his usual rum-soaking.

It is as though, he thought, a part of me is somewhere else.

Contemplating this idea, he walked back to his ship and began to aimlessly regard his compass. He expected it to swing wildly, as had been the scenario lately, but instead watched it spin in a circle once and then point, firmly, at himself. He closed it, left it on the table, and sat on the side opposite where he had been. He opened the compass experimentally.

The arrow spun once and then pointed, again, directly at him.

What the devil?

Jack shook his head. It's the rum, he thought, and shuffled around until his head found the blessed pillow.

-

A shadow before her snapped Elizabeth out of her reverie. Jack had moved directly in front of her, trapping her in the corner with a butter crock in her hands.

"Fifteen years," he murmured. The sound of his voice was enough to send a thrill through Elizabeth's spine, warming her in long-unused places. "Fifteen years, and not even a 'Hello, Jack' from me bonny murderess?" Elizabeth fought to pull herself together, calling on the steel she'd had once, when she'd been another girl in another time, out at sea. She almost regretted any moment of intimacy she'd ever shared with this pirate, each one making it all the more impossible to look him in the eye.

Almost.

Politeness never faltering, Elizabeth replaced the butter crock, pulled up a corner of her grim mouth in a mockery of a smile and curtsied.

"How do you do, Captain Sparrow?" she asked, attempting to edge her way out of the corner. Jack moved into her direct path and tilted her head up forcefully with a gentle hand.

"Jack," he said in a low voice.

"Jack," she repeated unwillingly, and with that single correction, her walls broke down. She did not even have a chance to catch her breath before she was pulled into a searing embrace. Fifteen years of repressed passion and forgotten familiarity poured into gentle hands and tight arms, and Elizabeth released a long sigh of contentment. It depends on the day…

Her husband's voice wormed its way into her head and Elizabeth released another sigh, this one of frustration. She broke the embrace, but a lingering hand on the curve of her hips turned her mouth into a little o. She tilted her head up to the pirate's, a smile curving her lips as they came within range of his.

"I'm going home, if you please," she purred, far too seductively for a married woman with children. Jack moved aside automatically as she floated serenely out the door of the shop. Reaching into his pockets, he muttered and shook his head.

"Now, where's that damned compass?"