Hiiiii guyyyyyyys . . . So yeah. I AM SO SORRY! You can blame school, and exams, and damn stupid study! I know I left you on a cliffhanger, and I'm sorry for not updating sooner! I will try, but I need you to know now that even though it is the holidays, I'm not one of those people that updates every day. I honestly can't write that fast. I'm terribly prone to the horrific disease of Writer's Block. But reviews do help to cure that! So keep 'em coming! Haha, sorry again, but this is a fairly long chapter, so please, ENJOY!

Jack grinned as he took in his surroundings. As creepy and back-stabbing as Jones was, he knew how to bring things back from the dead alright. Even if the thing he'd brought back hadn't actually qualified as living in the first place. Which the Black Pearl had, in Jack's mind. Striding confidently across the deck towards the helm, he eyed the wheel with reverence. How his hands itched to take hold of it, to have complete control over the ship he was made for. Of course, he thought to himself, a crew could come in handy at some point. Tortuga it was then. Or better still, if the dead crew men were suddenly brought back to life. That's a tad creepy . . . must have been hanging around Jones for too long.

At long last, he stood before the gloriously black wheel of the Pearl, her entire being at his complete disposal. He gazed at the decks, imagining them full of crew men rushing about and tending to the jobs that needed to be tended to, before pushing away the complication of how he was going to actually get to Tortuga, and focusing his attention on the wheel again. Lifting a hand and relishing the time that he had, he reached out towards it, already imagining the roughness beneath his fingers, the feeling that he had waited to have for so long-

A blood-curdling scream shattered the moment.

Jack whirled towards the sound. It was a scream like he had never heard before, one filled with pain, horror, desperation, and beneath it all, a cold, single-minded fear. Without a second thought, he rushed towards the source of the sound, which seemed to be coming from the captain's cabin located just above the helm. Climbing the stairs hurriedly, he reached inside his overcoat for the key that Jones had handed him before disappearing under the sea. He had to jam it in the lock several times before it actually clicked in, and by that time, the screams had gotten under his skin. His hands shook at the thought of what he might find in the room, but before he could dwell over it too much, the key twisted in the lock and the door fell open.

At first, his eyes were darting around the room so wildly that he missed the creature lying on the floor next to the large four-poster bed. The blinds covering the main window made the room so dark that he could only see the outline of her, but he knew what she was immediately.

Most men would have either left the room as fast as they possibly could, or waited for the transformation to be complete so that they could have their way with the mermaid turned human. Jack, however, digressed that he was certainly not most men, and was therefore entitled to do something a little out of the ordinary. This being the case, he moved over to the window and pulled the blinds apart, allowed the sunlight to stream in and fall upon the creature before kneeling down beside her head and pulling it into his lap.

The beautiful face was twisted in pain, the mouth still open in that unbearably terrified scream. The scales that covered her chest were almost completely gone, ripping themselves further out of her skin by the second, and although this was undoubtedly one source of her pain, the main was obviously the grotesque lower half of her body.

Part tail and part legs, the writing mass of scales and exposed muscle and bone was so twisted and wrong that Jack felt sick. Bile rose up in his throat and he gagged, trying to keep the contents of his stomach down. By the time the nausea had subsided, the red human muscle was steadily being covered with skin the same colour as the rest of her body. The scales were almost all gone, and the main fin had divided into a pair of slender feet. Tiny ankles formed, followed by shapely calves, then knees, then thighs. The screaming reached a deafening crescendo, and in a slight moment of panic, Jack managed to force his eyes away before the transformation was complete.

Finally, there was silence.

Opening first one eye, then the other, Jack found his gaze not drawn the girl's chest like it was with most women, not drawn to the flat of her stomach or the area between her legs. Rather, his eyes focused upon her closed ones, and he found himself idly wondering if they were going to open any time soon.

As more and more time passed, it became clear that it wasn't going to happen. In fact, as his attention began to wander, he became acutely aware of how still she was in his arms. Alarmed, he lowered her head to the floor and pulled off first his waistcoat, then shirt, using the second item of clothing to cover the most crucial parts of her body. Kneeling beside her, he bent down so that his ear was over her mouth, and felt nothing.

Straightening again, he eased his hands into the space in between her breasts and began to pump down on her chest repeatedly, pausing with every thirty beats to meet her lips with his own and breath air into her lungs. This would be a lot more enjoyable if she was awake, he mused. A rhythm was built of him regulating his own breathing, listening for hers, on and on and on, until suddenly, her eyes flew open.

Stormy grey in colour, they met his dark brown ones immediately. He stopped pounding on her chest and sat back on his heels, breathing heavily from the effort of keeping her alive for so long. Her mouth opened, and she gasped for air, rolling on her side to cough up blood and salt water. Wracking sobs filled the room, and he looked away, knowing that there was nothing he could do to ease her pain. How the bloody hell does a mermaid of all things manage to get stuck in a shipwreck the very day it rises to the surface again? Mermaids can swim! At last, she stopped coughing, and he forced himself to stand up.

"You alright, love?" he muttered. No answer. Fair enough. "Gave me a scare, alright," he continued, walking over to the chest of drawers in the corner. "I've heard of mermaids transforming before, but I'll admit, I never thought it would be something like that." A whimper from the other side of the room made him drop his façade, and he moved back over to her. "You alright, love?" he said again. His shirt fell away from her torso, and he cleared his throat in embarrassment, but she clearly didn't notice as she lifted a trembling hand and pointed towards the bed. He followed the line of her finger, and jumped at what he saw.

Handcuffs. One locked around her wrist, the other around the bed post, trapping her with her arm twisted in such a way that she must have been lying on the bed at one stage before falling off in her pain. A string of swollen red sting marks curled around the same arm and over a collarbone, and a necklace of bruises garnished her throat. A thin cut ran along one of her cheeks, the skin beneath which was turning purple from inner bleeding. A lump formed in Jack's throat as he wordlessly fit the key that had opened the door of the cabin into the lock of the handcuffs. It was a perfect fit.

"Jones did this to you," he said in a hoarse voice. She nodded. He looked away. "I'm so sorr-" A fist connected hard with his jaw, knocking him backwards slightly. The girl tried to stand up, only to have her legs crumple beneath her and he leapt forwards, catching her on impulse. Forcing himself to look away from her naked body, he picked her up and placed her gently down on the bed, drawing the covers up to cover her before moving to stand a safe yard away. There was a pause.

"I don't think I deserved that," he said, grinning slightly despite his painful tone of voice.

She did not smile back, but managed to utter her first words since becoming human. "This is your fault." He opened his mouth to protest, but she cut across him before he could speak. "You're Jack Sparrow!" Again, he lifted a finger to correct her mistake, but she kept speaking. He frowned. "You're Jack Sparrow," she sobbed. A tear rolled down her cheek, and she lifted a finger to wipe it away delicately, raising it to eye level for examination. "What is this?" she whispered. More tears fell, and as Jack watched, his initial amusement at the question slowly faded as she tried to catch each teardrop. Finally, it became too much for him to bear, and he moved over to sit beside her on the bed, reaching forward and cupping her face, wiping away the tears with his thumbs before moving his hands away again and folding them in his lap.

"You're crying, love," he told her gently, meeting her desperate gaze with a small smile. "It's quite common with female humans. Happens when they get sad. Or angry. Or just super emotional, I think."

She looked puzzled. "Don't men cry?" she asked quietly.

Jack frowned, a little taken aback. "Only if they're really, really emotional." There was a pause. "But that doesn't happen to me, so no worries." He grinned, and this time received a half-smile in return, which lasted for about a second before she looked down and began crying again. "No, no, don't do that," Jack said, jumping up. "I don't actually know how to deal with crying girls very well, the first time was a special case." She didn't answer, but the sobs got louder, and he gritted his teeth, trying to stay reasonable. "What's the matter, darling?" he said over the crying. She choked out a couple of words, but he couldn't understand. "What was that?"

"It . . . hurts," she managed to gasp out, and at this, Jack stopped pretending to be indifferent, sitting back down on the bed beside her.

"What hurts?" he asked urgently. "Quickly now, we need to make sure you're okay. What hurts?"

Reaching forwards, the mermaid-turned-human grabbed a fistful of the blankets and pulled them away from her lower body, exposing herself from the waist down. Jack tried to stop his mouth from dropping open, but to no avail, something that the girl clearly didn't notice. She sat up, thankfully keeping her torso covered, and moved her hands down to her feet. Tentatively, she bent her toes backwards and forwards, ignoring how Jack had suddenly gone from cocky and open to awkward and shifty in the space of a second. Satisfied that her feet were completely normal, she moved her fingers up her calves, curiously prodding at the smooth skin. When she reached her knees, she rubbed at the prominent bone, as if wondering what it was doing there. Giving up on discovering any time soon, her hands moved swiftly up past the midpoint of her legs, moving around to her inner thighs, getting dangerously close to-

Leaping into action, Jack jumped up and yanked the covers back over her. She looked up at him in surprise, studying his flushed cheeks and bright eyes. "What hurts?" he asked again. His voice was dangerously low, so much that she shied away from him, like a horse from a snake. She shook her head slightly. "What's hurts?" he half-shouted at her.

Crying out in fear, she scrambled over to the other side of the bed, shaking. "Th-these things," she said quickly, gesturing towards the lower half over her body that she had just exposed so shamelessly to him. "They h-hurt, and I don't know w-what to do . . . I d-don't even know what they are, really . . ."

All at once, the anger rushed out of him, and he was left with a horrible feeling of guilty understanding. She's a bloody MERMAID, Jacky, she's never had a downstairs area before, of COURSE she doesn't know what it's for. She doesn't even know how to walk! Bugger. Bugger, bugger, bugger, bugger, bugger. How does one explain this? "Uh," he started, and cringed inwardly. Great start. He sighed and squeezed his eyes shut, pinching the bridge of his nose between his thumb and forefinger. "You'll have to bear with me, love. I've never done this before. But I apologise in advance for any other stupid mistakes that I make in the near or far future, savvy?"

She continued to look at him like he was a mad axe murderer.

He sighed again, and sat down on the bed for the third time, this time crossing his legs in front of him, almost blushing at what he was about to explain. "There's just . . . certain parts of the body that you can't show anyone else," he began, nervously clasping his hands together in front of him. "Legs-" he lifted up one of his own as a demonstration- "are usually fine, in my opinion, but most people wear long trousers-" again, he gestured to his own to show what he was talking about- "or dresses, if you're a girl. But, here-" He stopped, by this point looking awkward beyond belief. The fearful look in the girl's eyes had disappeared, replaced by one of curiosity. There was a pause.

Bugger, how do I say this?

"Where?" she said after a while. Still, the silence went on.

At last, Jack decided on the blunt approach. "Between your legs," he muttered, looking away. "Right up . . . where you're legs stop. No one is allowed to see that. It's . . . not proper. Same with your . . ." This time, he pointed towards her as an example. "Your chest. It has to be covered."

At this, she blushed, and rolled her eyes. "I know that. You'd have to be stupid not to know that."

He could only gape at her for a few moments, before he realised that he must highly resemble one of the fishies that she had been sharing a home with up till not-so-long-ago, and upon this realisation, snapped his mouth shut immediately. "Of course," he muttered. Yet another silence followed, and he spoke up again before it got too incredibly awkward. "Look," he said, meeting her wide-eyed gaze, "how about we just start over." He held out his hand for her to shake, and with a shy smile, she took it. "Captain Jack Sparrow," he emphasised. "And you are?"

"Everyone down there called me Coralena."

He wrinkled his nose. "That's a long name."

Gripping his hand is a surprisingly firm shake, the girl's smile broadened, her first real smile since he had set eyes on her. "But you can call me Lena."

Lena . . . that I can deal with.

Review Replies!

LadyAmazon: Haha, hope you liked the epicness of this one too!

kagomesdance: Wow, thanks so much!

LittleVampirate: Yes, that is what I was going for. Although jolly singing crabs ARE lots of fun. And no, as you can see from this chapter, he does not meet a dead fish. They are both very much alive. Haha, thanks! I was worried that I might have seemed a little OOC :/

Cara: Yes, he did disappear, sorry for the confusion. Yep, here he is at long last! Thanks for the review!

SaskiaWillow1201: I LOVE reviews, leave as many as you like! Hope you enjoyed the chapter!

BlooperLover: Here you go!

lilmissmessy: Sorry for the long wait! Exams are over now though, so YAY!

Guest: Thank you so much! Haha, I love cookies!

SORRY about the awkwardness in that chapter, it sort of just wrote itself, haha.

Review? Pretty please?

CJS xxx