A/N: Okay, so some things are a little messed up now - the new chapter's actually Chapter 3 - Peas in a Pod. I had to fix the order the scenes are in, so that's why this is so messed up. And I also added some little things in some of the chapters - not much really, mainly the Meeting at Tortuga scene, and the Curiosity scene, but also the Finding Jack scene as well. If you want to, please read those scenes, and if you like it (or not), but reviewed for Chapter 3 already, please just review here! Please? Oh, by the way, if you like the new versions better, thank HoistTheColors, for all the tremendous help and useful reviews! Anyway, now, Chapter 7's the famous Curiosity scene, as promised! But it's been done so many times, I kind of feel that my version's the teensiest bit cliched by now. Oh, well. It's still a fun scene to read about!)
Curiosity
Aboard the Black Pearl, during Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest, when they are going to find the chest of Davy Jones
Elizabeth was depressed. In fact, she was beyond depressed. She couldn't imagine ever feeling more depressed, nor could she remember feeling as depressed before in her life. In the hassle and worry of the past few days she hadn't had any time to think about it, but now that she was on board the Pearl with a definite plan for saving Will, and she'd found a spare moment, it seemed as though her whole life had turned upside down.
Just three weeks ago, she had been getting ready for her wedding, preparing to be a blushing bride for the love of her life, Will Turner. And then, everything that could possibly go wrong had went wrong – raining on her wedding day, being unfairly imprisoned and punished for crimes, getting separated from Will, you name it.
The worst of it was, she wanted desperately to get married, to have her wedding night. She wanted to know what it was like, to be a married woman. But by looking at how complicated life had suddenly become, it could be weeks and weeks before she was finally to have her chance.
Her little talk with Jack from the day before had been weighing heavily on her mind. She had felt strangely eager to be…persuaded. She almost didn't care that it was Jack who would be doing the persuading, she just wanted to know what it was like. But because of Lord Cutler Beckett, it looked like persuasion was the last thing Elizabeth was likely to receive anytime soon.
And that thought, more than any other, depressed her as thoroughly as possible.
...
"My tremendous intuitive sense of the female creature informs me that you are troubled," Jack Sparrow sat down on the steps beside her, rum bottle in hand.
He'd seen her in that very same spot for the past hour, with that same, miserable expression on her face. He didn't even need his intuitive sense of the female creature to know that she was troubled, although it did come in handy other times.
The sun was blazing as fiercely as ever, and yet it seemed like the Black Pearl had its own personal cloud hanging above them. Frankly, Elizabeth's gloom was irritating Jack too much for him to simply continue ignoring it much longer.
Elizabeth looked at Jack for a second. He wasn't exactly the ideal listener, in Elizabeth's opinion, but there he was, asking, in his own peculiar fashion, what was wrong. "I thought I'd be married by now," Elizabeth quietly said, more to herself than to Jack. "I'm so ready to be married."
Incredulously, Jack stared at her for a second, then quickly smoothed out the expression of surprise on his face. He hadn't thought that would be the cause of all the moping. What did a free spirit like Elizabeth Swann want to do with being tied down by bonds of matrimony?
But instead of saying anything like that, Jack silently uncorked the rum bottle and offered it to her. Elizabeth looked at it for a second, then took a sip. She remembered how the liquid managed to make her forget all her problems, or at least, overcome them.
Jack had noticed how Elizabeth hadn't once mentioned being married to Will Turner. She had simply said she wanted to be married – and never specified to whom. She didn't want to be married, Jack realized. She wanted something else entirely. She wanted a new experience. She wanted love. She wanted fun. She wanted sex, he realized suddenly. And out of that observation, Jack got an idea that could possibly lead to something interesting, or at least, make Elizabeth forget that bad mood she was in.
"You know," Jack started, clearing his throat a little. "Lizzie," he added, and immediately liked the sound of the nickname, although he also noticed the resentful surprise on Elizabeth's face. Nobody had called her that since she was six.
"I am captain of a ship. And being captain of a ship, I could in fact, perform a marry-age…right here…right on this deck…right – now," Jack breathed the last word in Elizabeth's face, knowing she would understand what he meant, and she sighed in vexation.
Trust Jack Sparrow to interpret her words that way, and try to use it to his advantage. "No, thank you," Elizabeth curtly replied, and thrust the rum bottle back at Jack. No matter what impression she may have given off the day before during their talk of persuasion, she was not common enough to consent to such cheap antics. Plus, she loved Will.
Jack had known that would probably be her reaction – she was madly in love with Bootstrap Bill's boy, after all – but he still felt slightly hurt by her rejection. Somehow, the image his words conjured up – of Elizabeth in a white low-cut gown joining him at the helm of the Black Pearl as it sailed off towards unknown, kissing him passionately as the crew looked on and cheered – Jack cut off the thought right there. He looked down, and noticed goosebumps rising on his arms. Probably due to a sudden, completely unrelated, chilly breeze. They were quite common in the middle of the day in the Caribbean waters close to the equator, after all.
"Why not?" he asked her, following her across to the rails. "We are very much alike, you and I – I and you – us," he pointed out, liking the sound of that 'you and I' more than he should have.
The truth of what he was saying was too evident to Elizabeth for her liking, and she tried valiantly to prove him wrong. "Except for a sense of honor and decency and a moral center," she corrected him. "And personal hygiene," she added at the last minute, piling insult on injury even though right now she wasn't much cleaner than him. The long days at sea were taking their toll, and she was slowly and reluctantly getting used to it.
Jack sniffed himself, wondering whether it was really that bad. He considered the smell, and decided he'd been worse off. "Trifles," he replied nonchalantly, oddly pleased by Elizabeth's flustered demeanor.
He walked over to her slowly, until he was standing at her shoulder. "You will come over to my side, I know it," he said, smiling confidently.
The conviction in his voice slightly increased the doubt in Elizabeth's mind. Suddenly, a flash of memory – of snuggling into Jack's shoulder to ward off the cool ocean breeze as rum warmed her insides and a bonfire's flames cast shadows on a beach – came to the forefront of her brain, but she hurriedly pushed it away, focusing on the moment at hand. "You seem very certain," she replied, wishing her voice sounded as positive as his.
"One word, love: curiosity." The heat from Jack's body leaning in sent a shiver down her spine, but she convinced herself that it was merely caused by a breeze of some sort. Jack grinned at her, knowing he had her cornered by that word alone. Elizabeth was as curious as a cat. "You long for freedom. You long to do what you want to do because you want it. To act on a selfish impulse. You want to see what it's like. One day, you won't be able to resist," he smirked.
Elizabeth remembered (without blushing, quite a feat!) the compass of yesterday, and how it had pointed at Jack. But then, she remembered Norrington's derisive comments about how it was broken. Anxious to divert Jack's attention, she quickly asked, "Why doesn't your compass work?"
Taken aback by her sudden random question, Jack lost his train of thought. He looked away, trying to collect his thoughts from all the places they had gone – some places more diverting than others. "My compass works fine," he stiffly replied, but he knew he wasn't fooling her. The truth was, he did not know what ailed his compass - or rather, he did know, but was mystified by the reason. What he wanted most in the world was the heart of Davy Jones, right? Not anyone - or anything - else!
But Elizabeth had switched tactics at the speed of light, and now she had the upper hand in the conversation. "Because you and I are alike," Elizabeth admitted, without a trace of the flustered tone of before. "And there will come a moment when you have the chance to show it. To do the right thing." She tilted up her chin as she spoke the last words, emphasizing them, and Jack couldn't help but notice how soft and pink her lips looked.
"I love those moments," Jack retorted sarcastically. "I like to wave at them as they pass by," Jack demonstrated, taking the opportunity to retreat a couple of steps from Elizabeth and her lips.
"You'll have the chance to do something…something courageous," Elizabeth answered, ignoring Jack's remark, as she went to stand beside him on the rails. She was on the offense now, and wasn't about to give up just yet. "And when you do, you'll discover something. That you're a good man."
Jack looked at her face, all serious at the moment, and knew she believed it. But he wasn't a good man, now, was he? He was a bloody pirate, after all! "All evidence to the contrary," he reminded her grimly. He thought of Will, and guilt stabbed at his heart - an unfortunately common occurrence around her.
Elizabeth chuckled lightly. "Oh, I have faith in you," she replied lightly, sneaking a look at his expression. It wasn't nearly as humorous as she had anticipated, Elizabeth realized, a little disappointed – it was more like his face had carefully frozen into place at her words.
Jack was startled by how much he liked hearing somebody say that. Jack considered himself too unpredictable to trust completely, and as far as he knew, nobody had ever trusted him before – except maybe Mr. Gibbs, but he didn't count. So Elizabeth's words, so carelessly said, but with a ring of truth in them, made him feel…touched. And extremely guilty. But he tried to suppress the second emotion.
"Want to know why?" Elizabeth continued, her tone playful, all traces of despondency gone. She enjoyed these games, these little duels with words. Especially when she won.
"Do tell, dearie," he replied briskly, careful not to look at her or let any of his own curiosity seep through to his voice.
Elizabeth leaned close, and whispered huskily, in a copy of Jack's voice, "Curiosity." Jack stiffened automatically at the word. Not fair! He mentally protested. It was quite unfair of her to use his own weapon against him.
"You're going to want it," Elizabeth continued, and she felt a secret tingle in the pit of her stomach when she noticed how his gaze drifted over her pursed lips. "A chance to be admired, and gain the rewards that follow."
Well, all that sounded perfectly lovely to Jack, but truthfully, he was more distracted by Elizabeth's lips, so close to his face. Unless of course, the rewards were of the material kind, not the moral kind.
Elizabeth chuckled once, as she noticed how obviously torn his expression was, as she continued, "You won't be able to resist."
But as she spoke those words, she felt less as though she was talking about Jack, and more as though she was speaking of herself, as she noticed distractedly how his mouth opened just the slightest bit at her words.
"You're going to want to know what it tastes like," she said, and then smacked herself mentally for using the word 'tastes'. She had meant to say 'feels', but the other word just sort of slipped out when she saw that slight parting of Jack's lips at her words. Oh, well. She didn't suppose it mattered much anyway. It wasn't as though that little slip of tongue meant anything.
Jack drew even closer, and confessed, almost as though he was ashamed, "I do want to know what it tastes like." He wondered vaguely whether they were talking about what he thought they were talking about now.
Elizabeth realized what had just happened, and a small part of her – the part that still held on to all those morals ingrained into her at childhood – tried to backtrack. "But," she floundered, as Jack's hand came up to touch the side of her mouth and trace her jawline, "seeing as you're a good man, I know you would never put me in a position that would compromise my honor." But by the time she finished the sentence, she decided that honor wasn't that great of a thing among pirates anyway.
Well, they'd just have to see about that, wouldn't they?, Jack thought, as he leaned closer to Elizabeth's pale pink lips. But then, at the last second, he glanced up, and he saw the Black Spot grow darker and bigger on his hand. Shocked by its sudden appearance, he flinched back.
Looking back up at Jack, Elizabeth tried to smile as he drew back from her. They had been so close that she could feel his breath – as intoxicating as the rum he loved so much - mingle with hers. But he hadn't kissed her, like she had thought he would. He had been a good, honorable man. Elizabeth tried to be happy about that, and almost succeeded.
"I'm proud of you, Jack," she nodded, trying to keep her voice from trembling. Jack looked at Elizabeth, her lashes still half-lowered over her eyes, mouth still slightly pursed, and mentally cursed himself for drawing back at such a moment.
"Land ho!" Mr. Gibbs suddenly shouted, and Elizabeth strode off to see what was going on, trying to forget what had just happened, what they had so nearly done.
Jack had half a mind to go after her, to finish what they had started, but he noticed his clenched fist, and remembered the Black Spot. "I want my jar of dirt!" he muttered to himself, and walked off to find it, trying not to think about how close they had been.
(A/N: And that was how they almost kissed! So what did you think? Tell me in your reviews! Again, hint hint...Oh, the next chapter will either be when they are digging for the chest - and what Elizabeth thinks of them just suddenly starting to fight - or it will be when the Kraken attacks, and Elizabeth kills Jack. Coming up shortly! Review, please!)
