Hello again! Are you ready for another chapter? Well, here it is. I feel like I owe you a warning, though: it contains William Turner ;)
Also, this chapter contains lines from the movie, but no copyright infringement is intended. Credit to the original writers.
Enjoy.
Previously:
"Let's find this chest, shall we?" Jack said handing Elizabeth the compass.
She looked at it as if it was a poisonous spider. Only then he realised the conundrum he was facing himself: he could not decide where he wanted it to point to for her.
EPOV
Everything was such a mess. Not only was Jack cross with her, as it turned out, with a reason (she still could not believe she had hit him so hard!) but now she had a feeling that things were spiralling out of control very quickly, the danger she had purposely forgotten about before closing in and threatening to render any chance of sharing a peaceful moment of so much needed conversation with Jack less and less likely.
True, the reality of her situation had not changed much from what she had seen it for in the morning – she was still very much in trouble, having irreversibly complicated and possibly ruined at least one of the few important relationships in her life, facing the frightening prospect of revealing her betrayal to Will – but Jack's role in all that did not look like she had imagined it back then. Other than him using that one, unacceptable word, that is – which she was still mad at him about. She could cautiously assume, though, that it might have had something to do with the fact that he had most likely assumed she had callously rejected him along with his offering, since he had no way of knowing she had misread his intentions at the moment. She felt embarrassed when she realised that, from where he stood, it looked like she had done the exact same thing she had thought he had done to her, the thing that been precisely what had made her lose her cool – that she had planned on ignoring him. And even though she was convinced that Jack had much thicker skin when it came to dealing with disgruntled lovers, he had not deserved that from her. He had been trying, she could see as much.
The morning had only gone from bad to worse since then. For a moment there, she had considered chasing after Jack right away, but then lost her nerve, when she had realised that she still had not known what she wanted to tell him. Then, when she had been finally ready to face the world, she had run into a judgy James Norrington, who just had to remind her that Jack had not been the only one she had been unfair too.
I thought you were better than this, Elizabeth.
What right did he have to say that to her? As much as she appreciated James, he had never seen her for who she was. That was part of the problem.
And then – then – Jack was putting that damned compass into her hand and it made her terrified when she realised that she had no idea where it would point, but the risk was very high that it would not be helpful at all.
So she closed her eyes and focused. She remembered Jack's words when he had first given it to her at the docks, searching for a way out of her pesky situation.
The phrasing, she remembered. Phrasing was important. Jack had played with words quite a bit when he had manipulated the device laying on her palm into giving him the course he needed.
So, what did she need?
She needed to keep both Jack and Will safe. Preferably herself, too. Will was trapped on the Flying Dutchman, the cursed ship which Captain's heart Jack seemed to be rather desperate to get hold on.
So, what did she want? She wanted to catch a break. She wanted time to think, without the doom of imminent death looming over her. For that… she needed the chest.
She wanted the chest.
She clicked the small box in her hand open and only then opened her eyes to look down at it. She sighed with relief. It appeared that her little trick worked. She couldn't help but feel proud of herself. That is, until she glanced at Jack, whose face was frozen in a peculiar expression. Elizabeth felt her shoulders sag with defeat. This was simply not fair. She did her best, but somehow she still managed to let him down again.
"Well?" she snapped. "What now? Are we going to just stand here and waste our time?"
"Walk around until you find a spot where it turns in circles," Jack instructed sobering up. "Then you," he said turning to James and gesturing with his hand, "dig."
Having said that, he rather nonchalantly sat himself on a sandy hill, assuming a lotus position, as if he did not have a care in the world. He even closed his eyes. Elizabeth exchanged looks with James, who only shrugged and so she decided to follow the orders. Once James was already occupied with digging, she hesitantly walked toward Jack and sat on the dune next to him.
"So," she spoke, "what kind of burning need did you have that warranted making a deal with Davy Jones?"
Jack cracked one eye open and shot her a startled glance.
"How do ye know about Jones?" he asked suspiciously.
"I read," she quipped.
She had been way too engrossed in reading all about the pirate lore not to come across the legend of the Captain of the Flying Dutchman and she thought that she knew Jack well enough to doubt his aim was to challenge the Ferryman of Death just for the sake of it. Something was telling her that Jack Sparrow was once again neck deep in trouble.
Jack pursed his lips.
"I thought we weren't talking," he grumbled.
Elizabeth frowned.
"You were rude," she reminded him.
"Ye were rude first," he shot back.
She stopped herself from rolling her eyes at the childish remark and swallowed her reply, also because he was kind of right, even if she was tempted to sai that she had not been that rude.
"Stop avoiding the question," she said instead.
Jack chewed on his lip as if he was deciding whether he wanted to answer at all.
"I needed the boat," he admitted reluctantly.
"A boat?! You came to Davy Jones for a boat?"
"Not a boat. The boat," Jack said glancing meaningfully at the sea.
Elizabeth followed his gaze and saw the Pearl swinging quietly on the waves in the distance.
"You got her from him?" she asked surprised.
Jack bristled.
"No. She was always mine. I just needed him to haul her back from the depth."
"Jack," she said, both horrified and fascinated by the story, "please, tell me you didn't sell your soul for a ship."
He glanced sideways and her heart sank.
"It was years ago," he blurted defensively, waving his hands. "I didn't even think I'd live for as long as I did."
An awful suspicion sprouted in her mind. This time, he did not stop her when she took his hand and unwrapped the cloth from around, her heartbeat quickening both from anticipation and the simple fact that she was touching him again. Her body seemed hyper-aware of his presence.
She looked down and winced at the sight. It looked painful and worst of all, she knew what it meant. He was a marked man.
A year ago, she would have not believed in such things as black spots, selling souls, captains with supernatural powers and sea monsters. But that was before her time on the Black Pearl with Barbossa's cursed crew.
"You sailed with this?" she asked, feeling a little light-headed. "Jack!
She was pretty sure it had not been there the night before, but she could tell from his reaction that its appearance had not been a surprise for him, either.
Jack's nose twitched.
"I took precautions," he said, curling his fist to hide the mark from the view.
"Precautions?"
What kind of precautions could be taken?
Jack jutted his chin toward the jar of dirt. Elizabeth just stared at him incredulously. Before she could comment, though, they both turned their heads when they heard a thud as James's shovel hit something and Jack quickly jumped to his feet to inspect the discovery, Elizabeth hot on his heels. The box they were uncovering quickly took shape of a sea-chest, with a padlock that was broken easily enough with a shovel, but inside it, they found another chest, a smaller and much more ornate one, with a complicated locking mechanism. It was buried in pieces of yellowed paper. Elizabeth picked one of them and realised it was a letter. She filed the fact away for later, but her attention was redirected to something that felt more important at the moment when the men lowered their heads, seemingly listening to something. Elizabeth followed their lead and was startled when she heard a soft, but quit distinct thumping sound.
The heart, she thought amazed.
"It's real," James said, sounding surprised. "You actually were telling the truth."
The latter seemed to shock him even more than the fact that there was a living heart in the box. Jack shot him an annoyed glance.
"I do that quite a lot, yet people are always surprised," he grumbled.
Elizabeth almost smiled at that, but then a new voice cut in, making her heart jump to her throat.
"Not without reason."
She looked up and her brain froze when she saw the person standing only a few feet away from them on the beach.
"Will," she whispered, but her lips felt numb.
She was not ready. She was not...
She did not know what to do, so she simply stared at him for a few seconds. She glanced from one man to another and felt a sense of hysteria bubble in her at the irony of the twist of fate that had brought that particular trio of men to gather together around her, as if in some strange dream. She did not know if she should laugh or cry.
Then, guilt hit her with a renewed force and she quickly scrambled to her feet. All the blood rushing away and then back to her head made her dizzy and her vision blurred for a second or two.
"You're all right!" she exclaimed, asking herself if her voice had just climbed unnaturally high or if that was just her impression. "Thank God!"
She rushed toward her… former fiancé but then stopped uncertain just before she could reach him. She could almost feel Jack's eyes boring holes in the back of her scull. She felt a smidgen of panic when Will closed the remaining distance and swiftly dipped his head to kiss her. Her muscles tensed involuntarily, but Will didn't seem to notice that she went stiff in his arms, or he thought she was simply acting bashful because they had company. Meanwhile, she was too caught up in her internal conflict to move either way, her double betrayal making her head spin. She was not even sure anymore who it was she was supposed to feel guilty toward.
"How did you get here?" Jack's voice cut into her tumultuous thoughts like a whiplash.
She looked at him anxiously, belatedly realising the disaster this meeting was heading toward. She tried to predict what he was going to do, but she found herself drawing a blank. All she knew was that the moment he would tell Will, Will would reach for his sword.
"Sea turtles, mate," Will said sarcastically. "A pair of them, strapped to my feet."
Elizabeth kept looking at Jack, afraid of his reply. But then she watched him incredulously, when he schooled his face into a fake cheerful expression and simply said:
"Not so easy, is it?"
Wait a minute… He was not going to say anything? Was he going to pretend nothing happened?
Her stomach felt strangely weightless.
"But I do owe you thanks, Jack," Will continued.
"You do?" Jack asked looking at him quizzically, if a little suspiciously.
"After you tricked me onto that ship to square your debt with Jones..."
"What?" this time she said it out loud, as she felt strange sense of betrayal she probably had no right to experience washing over her.
"What?" Jack repeated, but he was fooling no-one.
"...I was reunited with my father."
"Oh, well... you're welcome, then."
She glared at Jack.
"Everything you said to me… every word was a lie!" she exclaimed, her voice breaking with emotion.
What else was a lie? Could one even ever know with Jack Sparrow?
Jack glanced at her and for the first time, a flicker of alarm briefly passed over his features.
"Not everything," he disagreed vehemently. "Just the part about William." And then he shrugged, as if in a weak apology. "Time and tide, love," he added.
Will, who ignored the exchange entirely, let go of Elizabeth and produced something from under his shirt. Jack's eyes focused sharply on the small object.
"I always knew you could make it back, mate," he said.
The key, Elizabeth suddenly understood. Had Jack sent Will for the key to the chest?
Tricked, more likely – her common sense supplied.
Will strode across the beach with a single-minded objective. Elizabeth watched as he kneeled in front of the chest.
"I'm going to kill Jones," he said confidently.
But he did not get a chance to make good on his promise.
"Can't let ye do that, William," Jack said.
And then he moved faster than one drew a breath, sending a shiver down Elizabeth's spine when she saw a strange glint in his eye. She had not predicted that he would be the first one to draw a sword. Yet, undeniably, there was a blade at Will's bare throat and Jack looked every bit like he meant the threat.