A/N: Thanks again to all who read and review. It's very appreciated!

He stared at her in stunned disbelief. What was she doing here? She belonged to his old life – that other man's life – which meant that she certainly had no place on Tortuga. He'd come here, all those years ago, for precisely that reason – so he could be as far rid of any reminders of what he'd lost as possible. And yet here she stood before him, the most excruciating reminder of all. His disbelief was replaced, quickly and readily, by anger.

But he'd asked her a question, after all, and so she answered. "I'm… I'm here on personal business," she said, and he felt his ire percolate deeper at her evasive answer. But once again, she spoke before he had the chance.

"What on earth are you doing here? Besides… ah… taking your pleasure, that is?" Her pointed reference to the whore, who was by now regarding James with an exasperated look (no doubt believing that Elizabeth was his wife, having caught him in flagrante), broke through his trance, and he rose angrily to his feet.

"And since when have you given a good goddamn about my pleasure?" he shot back, noticing out of the corner of his eye that the whore, shaking her head in disgust, had abandoned his side to try her fortunes with another tavern patron. "Don't you dare presume to judge me, Miss Swann."

Taken aback by his tone, Elizabeth's eyes flashed in indignation. "I wasn't – oh, forget it! I just… I can't imagine seeing you here, in a place like this," she finished in a quieter tone.

"I could say the same for you. And you never did answer my question," he drawled, taking a swig of the bottle – God, he'd need another of these before the night was through, he could tell already. Wasn't he supposed to be celebrating?

"I told you, it's personal."

"Personal." He regarded her, truly regarded her, for the first time since she'd appeared rather magically before him just moments ago. She was dressed, he noticed now, oddly, in a man's shirt and coat and breeches, and her hair tied up in a queue and hidden under a hat. So she didn't wish for anyone to know she was a woman. Certainly not an unwise choice on Tortuga, but it implied –

"Are you alone, Miss Swann? Tortuga is no place for a solitary woman." He cast his eyes around the tavern; none of the other men seemed to be paying any heed to their conversation.

"I can manage just fine on my own, thank you very much," she said primly, placing a hand at her hip, where James could see a sword resting beneath the hem of her overcoat. He could not suppress a smirk – he'd had no idea how these past three years had treated her, but he was reasonably sure that, regardless of her bravado, her swordsmanship skills were not sufficient to hold off a band of heated, lusty pirates should the need arise.

He told himself, later, that it was chivalry (what little of it he still possessed) that inspired him to take her arm and escort her somewhere more private, out of the ruckus of the crowded tavern and back to a small table in the corner of the quieter Mermaid's Tail. He told himself that it had nothing to do with the fact that his rented room was a mere two score of steps from the downstairs tavern. But then again, he told himself many things these days, most of them untrue.

"Crusty," he said cheerfully, swaggering up to the bar and slapping down a pile of coins. "I told you I was good for it, didn't I? And now how about a drink each for me and the lady?"

Crusty set down the mug he was polishing (James idly wondered if it was the same mug he'd been polishing this morning) and, giving James a skeptical glance, scooped the coins into the meaty palm of his hand.

"That's a lady?"

"Just get us some rum, Crusty."

Crusty dropped the coins in his pouch and turned to the wall of bottles behind the bar. "Suppose I shouldn't be askin' how you came into coin all of a sudden?" he said, selecting two bottles and setting them on the bar in front of James, who snatched them up gratefully.

"I thought the cardinal rule of Tortuga was to never ask how a man came into coin?" James retorted, lifting one of the bottles in a mock salute as he returned to the table in the corner to join Elizabeth. Crusty, ever unfazed, merely shook his head and resumed polishing the hopelessly filthy mug.

"Oh, Mr. Norrington, I don't – I don't think a whole bottle of this is a good idea," Elizabeth said hesitantly when he placed her bottle in front of her. Taking a long pull on his own, he regarded her with a bemused raise of his eyebrows.

"'Mr. Norrington'? What happened to 'James'?" he said, unable to keep the sharp edge from his mirthful tone.

"Fine, James," she replied crossly. "I don't think I should drink a whole bottle of rum. What are we doing here, anyway?"

"We're talking," he said simply. "And drink up. You could stand to loosen up a bit." He grinned around the bottle as he took another drink, watching the indignation play across her face at his last remark. Reluctantly, she took a small sip, which she bravely managed to swallow without incident, though she made a horrid face as the liquor coursed down her throat.

"Oh, it's not that bad," James chided. "You want some truly vile stuff, you should go to the Laughing Wench. Their rum is the Devil's own creation." He took another long pull from his own bottle before setting it down on the table and leaning in, his gaze meeting hers intently. "So, are you going to tell me what 'personal' business brings you to the arsehole of the world?"

She frowned at him. "When did you become so vulgar, Mr. Norring – James? Drinking rum from a bottle, swearing in front of a lady? Honestly, you've changed."

He regarded her with a wild incredulity before barking out a mirthless laugh and taking a swig from his bottle. "Only realizing that now, are you?" he taunted. "Tell me, what was your first clue? The rum? The whore? The fact that I'm exiled on this bleeding shithole of an island? Tell me how much I've changed from the man who was so dreadfully dull you just could not bear the thought of marrying him."

She recoiled as if slapped. "I never – James, I – I never thought – " she spluttered, and he felt his ire mounting, fuelled by the rum, her stammering incoherence, and his own traitorous thoughts.

"Do not lie to me," he grated. "I saw the way you looked at me all those years ago. As if you'd rather run to the ends of the earth and live in rags than tolerate another moment of my presence." A vicious smile tugged at the corners of his mouth.

"Well, it looks as though you got your wish. So tell me, Miss Swann. How is life as a pirate? Is it everything you'd dreamed of and more? The adventure, the excitement? The romance?"

His last words were pointed, and she flushed hotly under his withering glare. "You wanted to know why I'm here?" she spat. "Fine. I'm looking for Will."

His brows shot up nearly to his hairline in surprise. "Mr. Turner? You mean to say you've lost him?"

"I haven't lost him!" she shrilled. "It's just that – he was looking for something – something to do with his father, he said, and he said it might take some time, but it's been nearly a year, and I just –"

He knew, at that moment, that he should feel pity for her. A woman, alone, searching for the man she loved, who might well be dead. It was very tragic, really.

"A year? My dear," he said mockingly, "unless he traveled to the South China Sea in search of… whatever it is he's looking for… I cannot imagine his voyage could have taken so long. Perhaps you are holding on to false hope."

It was cruel, he knew. Once, that would have mattered to him. But the longer he looked at her, the more he felt the ire within him twisting and turning, a savage beast feeding on his resentment of the memories she stirred.

"He's not dead!" she cried out, tears springing to her eyes. "How could you say such a thing?"

"I said no such thing," he replied. "Perhaps he lives. But perhaps he has decided to pursue… other shores, if you will."

When she slapped him, he welcomed the blow, rejoicing that he'd cajoled such a rise out of her.

"You bastard!" she hissed. "How dare you?"

"How dare I, indeed," he said indifferently, taking a long, leisurely pull on his bottle, resolutely ignoring the stinging of his cheek. "But the fact remains that you seem to have misplaced your – is he your fiancé, still? Or have you married him yet? No matter, you seem to have misplaced your lover," he said this last word with a curl of his lip, "and now you have journeyed, all alone, to the most godforsaken place known to man in search of him. So tell me, Miss Swann," he said, his voice low, "what this says about Mr. Turner's devotion to you?"

"Don't you dare question Will's love for me! Why are you being so cruel?" Her eyes, moist with unshed tears, regarded him as she would a stranger. Maybe he was.

"I prefer the term 'brutally honest,'" he said, taking another drink. "What was your plan, if I may ask? Did you think you would just meander from tavern to tavern, hoping you'd stumble across Mr. Turner along the way? Perhaps discover him in a similar position as you discovered me?" He was being cruel now, deliberately, and he couldn't consciously say why.

Her hand lashed out again to slap his face, but as it did so he reached up and snagged her wrist in an iron grip, pulling her roughly towards him until her face was inches from his. Her lips were red and inviting and he longed to close the distance between them and taste her.

"Go to hell," she seethed, eyes blazing. "What happened to you, James?"

He pulled back abruptly, releasing her wrist. "Miss Swann, the world is cruel," he said. "The sooner you learn that, the sooner you'll let go of your childish fantasies."

"Childish fantasies?" she repeated. "Do you mean love?" She fixed her gaze on his, as if trying to see into him, see the man he used to be somewhere inside. "You loved me once, you know."

"I was a fool once," he said coldly. "I won't make the same mistake again."

She shook her head firmly. "No, I don't believe that," she said, and he cocked a curious eyebrow at her abrupt change in tone. "You were always a good man, James. I think you still are. Whatever happened to you, whatever caused you this much pain, I'm sorry."

The savage beast inside him, the howling creature that gorged on a steady diet of hatred and bile, at last broke free. The dam burst open, three years of buried resentments and repressed animosities spilling out of him in a flood.

"You know exactly what happened to me!" He bit out each word as though spitting something distasteful from his mouth. "Or have you forgotten how you used and manipulated me, promising your affections in return for my assistance – my aid in rescuing the man you truly loved? How you led me, blind and unaware of the horrors in store, into an ambush? How you neglected to share with me the rather pertinent detail of the curse that rendered the pirates immortal? Good men died that day, Miss Swann! Men under my command, men for whom I was responsible, dead because I could not deny my fiancée," and it was this word he imbued with the most bitterness of all, "her pleas for help!"

She stared at him, wide-eyed, but he pressed on relentlessly. "And I shall not soon forget your gratitude, oh no. Humiliating me in front of the entire town, absconding with pirates – pirates! – yet still, I felt moved by your appeals for mercy, and so I set them free! I abandoned my duty, I forgot myself, forgot my place, and I lost everything. I lost my ship. I lost my crew. I lost my career and I lost my life, all because of you, and you dare to offer me your sympathy?" His voice had steadily risen with each word so that now he was fair shouting, and he leaned in, pressing his face close to hers, and yet again he felt the overwhelming urge to taste those sweet lips, to seize and crush them between his own.

"So yes, my words were cruel, I admit. I have treated you as you have treated me. And I will welcome your hatred in return." His voice was quiet once more, thrumming with a dangerous heat. "I will welcome your contempt. But I will never welcome your pity."

She had remained silent throughout his tirade, taking the hurricane-force strength of his rage full-on and without flinching, and he grudgingly admitted that he respected her for it. The beast within him was not sated; it still howled in rage, howled for vengeance, howled for James to stop waiting and just take her now, press her against him, make her to feel all that he'd felt in these last miserable years. But he held it at bay, though he did not retreat from the proximity he'd closed with her.

When she spoke, her voice was quiet but strong. "James… whether or not you believe me, whether or not you want to hear me speak the words, please know that I truly am sorry. I never meant to hurt you or betray you, not for a moment. That was never my intention."

There was a sincerity to her words, and if so much hadn't happened, it might have been enough. She moved a hand slowly, tremulously, towards his face, waiting for his inevitable rebuff; when it did not come, she placed her palm gently on his cheek, where she'd slapped him earlier. His breath hitched in his throat as she traced a delicate path down the line of his stubbly jaw with her fingers, and he lifted his hand and placed it atop hers, his callused fingertips stroking patterns along the back of her hand. Her tongue flitted out unconsciously, to wet her lips, and he felt a too-familiar stirring in his blood, his longing to rake his teeth across her soft mouth growing more and more unbearable.

"Elizabeth," he whispered, judging it time to abandon formality. "Are you aware of the power you have? Do you have any idea what you can do? You pluck at the strings of men's hearts like a mandolin, and in your wake only the echo remains." And finally the longing grew too great, and he leaned in and kissed her.

He'd imagined this moment so many times, in his other life; what it would be like to really and truly kiss Elizabeth Swann, to move his lips sinuously against hers, to flick his tongue against her mouth until she admitted him inside, to explore the depths of her and taste all her secrets. He felt none of the light, soaring happiness he once imagined he would at the occasion; the well was too poisoned for that now. But as she responded to the kiss and opened her mouth to his plundering tongue, he wondered if perhaps the bitter taste of regret wasn't just as delectable.

He pulled her over to him and onto his lap as the kiss deepened, his hands reaching up to tangle in her hair before remembering that it was confined and hidden away under the ridiculous man's hat she wore. Her clothes were maddening, and his own were feeling increasingly constricting, and he was dimly aware of Crusty at the bar, still polishing away and studiously ignoring the bawdy carrying-on in the corner. James had few compunctions about engaging in lusty teasing with whores in the view of others, but with Elizabeth, it felt wrong somehow, vulgar. And so he broke the kiss and moved his mouth across her jaw to tease at the shell of her ear.

"Come," he whispered, lifting her off his lap as he stood. "Not here."

"James, I…" she whispered, pressed against his chest. He could see the indecision in her eyes; her desire was plain in her swollen lips and smouldering gaze and hooded eyes, but there was something else too – guilt, though whether for him or for Will Turner he could not say.

But whatever fleeting shame she might have been feeling passed her by, because she seized his arms in her grip and leaned in close, her body stretched out against his, and pressed her lips to his neck, and he was undone. With a growl, he crushed her to him, half-leading and half-pulling her to the narrow stairs at the far end of the bar, up towards his room.

There was another recurring fantasy from his other life, which had been the natural extension of the first – imagining what it would be like to at last take Elizabeth to his bed. Would she be bold and passionate? Shy and nervous? Would she be vocal in her pleasure, begging him for more? Would she find him appealing, attractive, desirable as a mate? Such fantasies had helped him endure long, hard months at sea in arduous conditions until he could return to Port Royal and perhaps, one day, discover the answer to his perpetual musings.

The man he used to be certainly never would've imagined that he would discover her like this, sprawled out on a small rickety bed in a cramped, dingy room above a tavern on Tortuga. It was strange undressing her in her men's clothing, but simple – a shirt and breeches were far less complicated than dresses and stays and all that nonsense, after all. His own clothing soon joined the pile of discarded garments, and as he climbed atop the bed and captured her lips in a ravenous kiss, he set about exploring her undiscovered country with rough, quick hands.

All her reservations seemed to be, for the moment at least, forgotten, and she gasped and writhed against him, her hands frenzied in their own exploration of him, and he was reminded of what it was to be touched by a woman who did not have to be paid for her affections. He noted her hiss of pleasure as he captured the peak of her right breast in his mouth and wondered if Will Turner had ever been able to draw such reactions from her. Thinking of Turner brought him a perverse enjoyment, and he smiled against the soft flesh of her belly as he kissed his way down the plane of her body, eager to claim yet more territory away from the damnable blacksmith.

Perhaps even more than he bargained for: he realized, when he curled his fingers into her heat and elicited a sharp gasp of surprise, that she was still a virgin. Resting his face against the inside of her thigh, he panted raggedly, his desire aching and keen, but unsure how to proceed. He didn't think he'd ever bedded a virgin – certainly, there were none on Tortuga, and even before, the women who allowed themselves to be seduced by sailors were usually not blushing innocents. He began to laugh, his shoulders shaking quietly with mirth, at the absurdity of it all. He'd imagined this moment many times before, certainly, but it had always been romantic and sweet, taking place on a soft luxurious bed covered in rose petals and perfume, not in his squalid tiny tavern room in Tortuga.

"James?" Her voice was hesitant above him. "Is… something wrong?"

He could not resist placing a soft kiss to her center, which elicited a squeal of pleasure from her. "You've never done this before," he stated matter-of-factly.

"No," she admitted after a pause. "Will and I – we're not married – well, we were meant to be, several times, but things just kept interrupting, and we always thought we'd wait, but then he left to go look for whatever it is he's looking for and I've been waiting still – " She fell abruptly silent, perhaps fearing she was babbling (which, in truth, she was).

"More the fool Turner, then," James said smoothly, drawing himself up the length of her body until he was level with her gaze. Leaning over her, resting on his forearms, he nuzzled the side of her neck.

"I want you to," she blurted out suddenly, and he stilled at once.

"I want you to," she repeated, more calmly this time, and he rose again to regard her. Her expression was firm, her eyes locked on his. He saw no love there, but nor did he see any doubt; and there was desire in spades, and that was enough for him.

He was gentle, or as gentle as he could be considering how long he'd been aching to slip inside her heat. But she did not cry out, and only squeezed his shoulders in a vise grip for several moments before she relaxed and thrashed her hips impatiently, urging him to move, and then he needed no further encouragement. It was not the slow, sweet lovemaking he'd always imagined with her, but then again, that future had died when she'd abandoned him and disappeared with her pirate blacksmith. Now, all they had was this – rough, desperate, and frantic, driven by a complicated melange of desire, bitterness, regret, and spite. The beast in him howled in triumph as he thrust wildly into her, and the man he'd become felt a vicious surge of glee as he took from her what Will Turner never could.

She came to her release with a series of shuddering gasps and sighs, and he followed shortly after, spilling his seed deep inside her with a growl. Collapsing next to her on the bed, James slipped an arm around her and pulled her close. It was perhaps too intimate a gesture given the nature of their relationship, but he was thoroughly enjoying having a woman in his bed who had chosen to be there for reasons that had nothing to do with coin.

She snuggled up against him as she fell into a soft slumber, but he lay awake, savouring the closest thing to solace he'd felt in a very long time. He knew the spell would be broken tomorrow; she would leave, off to find Will Turner, and he would return to his rudderless, purposeless existence, drowning his sorrows in rum. But at that moment, all the rest of it could be forgotten; if only for one night.