Truly the new legends that would surely sprout up about this feat would not be able to do a man like him justice, Jack thought, sitting on a barrel, his head resting on his arms which were back against the door to his cabin. His cabin. It's what should have been following the East India Trading Company battle- a fine moment of nothing followed by rum and other self-indulgence in his cabin. The ship creaked, singing to him how fine it was to be back under his masterful hands.

Teague blanched at the sight of them returning with the Pearl, much to Jack's satisfaction, although two ships warranted splitting up the crew. Teague hadn't bothered to secure Gibbs. No one would dare deprive the man of his own reunion with the ship. But that had made the rest of the negotiation agonizingly long.


"I'm keeping Titus and Dalton," Teague said, sitting behind his desk in his cabin, forcing Jack to stand up on the other side of it.

"I'd love to feign disappointment, but it would make me feel too dirty."

"Very well. That's Gibbs for you and two for me. I expect you want me to keep Anamaria, to keep her off your back." Teague sat his head in his palm and chuckled. "Or, I suppose, off her back."

"Don't tell me you want her for yourself."

"The flesh wants what it wants, but I have no such designs on her," Teague sighed. "The rest can be dealt out, I take it?"

They could, but for one nagging thought that was proof that when one gets what one wants, it's only natural to want more.

"I do owe the King for her assistance," he said coolly. "Might as well take her to our destination in style."

Teague laughed, a knowing laugh that furrowed Jack's brow.

"She'll want to take her pets with her, hmm?" He certainly hadn't allowed Elizabeth to forget Cotton, Pintel, and Ragetti's actions directly affected her fate, going so far as to bark an order to her meant for them.

"Her knights," Jack found himself saying. Bloody hell, what are you doing, mate? Suffering them on your ship? She doesn't even like them as much as all that. It's not as if she wouldn't go without them...familiar faces she can trust... "I'm having a thought. You keep Cotton and that insolent bird and I'll take the other two. Five and five."

"Done." Teague stood and offered his hand. An accord then, Jack thought, shaking it, only for Teague to clutch his entire arm when he tried to break free. He pulled him closer to him, Jack instantly feeling like a child.

"You may be able to hide what you want from everyone else, but not your old man. I've been there, done that."

Jack gulped, disliking the cornered, undone feeling coming over him.

"Then like all things, I'll just have to do it better."


Yes, he'd wanted her on the ship, wanted the banter that could go on from sunup to sundown, wanted glimpses of her silhouetted against a sunrise, wanted every opportunity to see her in her element, for Lizzie never looked so confident or so comfortable than when she was at sea. It had taken the better part of a year after meeting her to...to fall in love with her, and then vow revenge, then avoid her, then form the most awkward of truces with her, and then try to forget her all over again in the span of just about three months. All the while not knowing how she felt.

She wanted him, sometimes, that much he knew. Elizabeth was far from immune when it came to exhibiting all the signs other women displayed when they wanted him. Pressed against her when she was still learning her crossbow, he could feel the heat rising in her, how she struggled to catch her breath. Each rise and fall of her chest made more and more of his restraint melt. Last night, taking back the Pearl with her clouded his judgment enough to tempt him to leap down from the helm, take her in his arms, and leave no inch of her unkissed, untouched. And he might have been able to get away with it.

If only she loved him.

Jack rose without a sound and crept into his cabin, the seas calm and everything mundane once more. Pulling out atlas after atlas, map after map, he busied himself with studying everything and nothing- the contours of distant lands he'd been to and some he had not, lakes and waterfalls, mountains and deserts. A knock at the door broke his concentration. Ignoring it, he read the foreign words gracing every stretch of land, each one already discovered and claimed...blast that incessant knocking, so courteous and insistent Jack knew who it was. Speak of the devil...

"Enter."

Elizabeth all but stumbled in, her face so white, her body trembling so intensely he wondered if she was really there.

"Lost?" he asked, affirming she was real. Specter-Lizzie would have never given him that look.

"I need to sit." She mouthed it, her voice shaking. He reached for a bottle of rum, knowing she would wave it away as he'd only ever seen her take a swig once. But she looked the part of someone who desperately needed a drink. That much was sure. Hunched over in the chair, he feared she'd collapse.

"I didn't know who else to tell," she said, her voice flat.

"Tell me." I'll fix it, love. Whatever it is. He ran his fingers down her hair until she locked eyes with him.

"I'm with child."


Sharing a basin, Elizabeth and Anamaria stripped down, sponges in hand, more blankets forming a curtain around them. Elizabeth could feel her skin prickle at the sensation of the cold water hitting her face and neck. The air nipped at her the way it might have had she been in a snowstorm when she lifted her arm to wash underneath it.

"A shame you'll be leaving," Anamaria said, applying the same diligent washing while fighting off shivers. "There won't be as many to talk to."

About to cheer her up with an overlooked correction, Elizabeth held her tongue. Titus and Dalton had little to say that wasn't a grunt, and Cotton...

"Captain Teague could probably spin a yarn or two."

"Charming," Anamaria snorted. "Although I could do with the silence."

"What's the matter?"

"It's another reason I followed Jack out here," she said. "I might not have mentioned it to you- Gabriel, my brother? He's recently married."

"Do you not like her?" Elizabeth asked.

"It's not that. She's actually very sweet, but...she's not used to the sea or to ships. And I'm used to it being just Gabe and me. We inherited the yard, and I'm sure I don't have to tell you how nauseating newlyweds are. 'I love you.' 'I love you more.' 'No, I love you more.'" She made a disgusted face and dipped her sponge back into the water before scrubbing her legs. "It was time to get away from it. I expect I'll like her much more once I'm back. They say absence makes the heart grow fonder."

Elizabeth nodded, lost in her own bust and waistline. It looked more like a stranger's than her regular figure.

"A little time apart might do you good," she said, distracted.

"Elizabeth? They're called breasts. You should be well acquainted with them by now," Anamaria laughed, waiting for Elizabeth to join her. "Are you all right?"

"It doesn't make sense," she sighed. "On the way to Singapore, I was positively gaunt. I wondered if I would make myself sick. Now...I know it's an easier voyage, but these?" She cupped the foreign breasts underneath her. "These weren't here before."

"You might have just not been giving them any attention."

"It's a subtle change," Elizabeth said, shaking her head. "But it's there." They paused in their washing, Anamaria studying her with a frown. She considered asking the other woman what she was thinking, retracting at the sight of her mouth scrunching and her cheeks suddenly blushing.

"Elizabeth, when...when was the last time you bled?" she whispered, keeping a hand on their makeshift curtain as if to keep a spy's ears at bay.

"Oh, I bl...there was a little after I was...after I was with Will," she whispered back. "But it wasn't much." The anxious face in front of her told her what decorum and privacy prevented being discussed aloud. Her hand flew down to her abdomen, the occasional dizzy spell, the appetite—everything beginning to become pieces of a puzzle she wasn't sure she could put together at the moment.

"You, you don't suppose you're..." Anamaria trailed off, tactfully hurrying to finish her wash and dress. Elizabeth threw her sponge back into the basin and dove to her clothes, fastening every button and smoothing every crease with extra speed. How could she have been so stupid? She knew how a baby was made. Her hand drifted back to her abdomen. Not knowing yet if it was safe to let in this new, fluttery feeling of sheer joy or if it would be more appropriate to burst into tears, her body concentrated on making small, circular caresses around where a bump would eventually emerge.

"Do you want to stay on this ship?" Anamaria asked. "I helped deliver two of my cousins."

"I need..." Blast it, what did she need? What did her baby need? "I need to tell Jack about it." She started to pull the blanket after making sure Anamaria was decent. "Anamaria, for now, don't tell anyone. Please?"

"Just between us." Anamaria nodded.


Jack remained still crouched in front of her, his hand still against the tips of her hair, but in his mind he paced about furiously in his cabin, thumping around with hundreds of thoughts flying about in the air and not one within his grasp.

"You're sure?"

"Yes. It all makes sense now." She'd taken on that calm, that calm one musters when the other person is about to fly off the handle, Jack thought. A mother's calm. Ha! He knew better. His own mother always appeared the very picture of calm when he knew her circumstances and volatile personality rendered her a churning tempest inside. All right, since you know it all now, he wanted to spit out, you tell me what you want to do. No, idiot, he corrected himself. You're the Captain.

"We can stop somewhere and settle you..."

"Good lord, Jack, you'd leave me in a strange place alone right now?" she snapped.

"No." He cursed his mind for shutting off. He needed to think, to send her out so he could think, to hold her so he could think. He finally began to pace, only to let his head fall back against the bulkhead. "I trust you have some way of notifying your husband," he said, eyes closed in thought. First things first.

"There's no need to be so cold," she said. "You're not the one carrying it."

His eyebrow arched at that. He hadn't meant to be cold.

"Then if you have no intention of making berth somewhere..." Poor choice of words, mate. "Then you do intend to continue on?" Jack paused, waiting for a fiery affirmative. "Bloody hell, Lizzie, you are the one carrying it. That rather trumps any plan I may throw out."

"So you don't know what to do either?"

You spent three days lying on a beach drinking rum?

"Can't say it's something that often crops up." Something about that split second of vulnerability, almost a child reaching out for guidance put his mind on full alert. "You have two choices as I see it and neither one is what you or I would call ideal. We can make ber...port, find a place to get you settled in, and I'll come back once Remo is safe. You've got my word on that. Or, you come along, we survey the situation when we arrive at our destination and go from there. Either you will be willing and able to assist or you won't, in which case you'll stay on the ship. Upon finishing said mission, we take you to the Cove and you can wait ten years to see the proud father's face."

Elizabeth stood, steadier than when she came in, and edged toward him. She stopped inches from him, so close, so tantalizingly close, he almost pushed his face forward to kiss her. Stay, he wanted to beg. Stay with me and I'll take care of you. Perhaps that's what she was searching for on him, he wondered.

"I'm staying."

"No going back."

"I know."

"You'll get weaker."

"I have a crossbow."

"You'll get fatter."

"Only in one place," she said, her eyes softening, although they still hadn't blinked. She shifted her weight onto her back leg, preparing to turn, but staying put as if taking her leave was a surrender of some kind. For a moment, Jack wondered if she was daring him to kiss her...and if he was daring her to do the same, for he hadn't moved either.

"Jack," she said, breaking away, obviously coming to the same revelation he did at the same time. "Not a word to anyone yet," she said on her way out. Not until the door closed could Jack exhale.


A/N: Not sure if I have to show with every chapter that I don't own POTC.