Both ships were going to the same place, but the pirates unanimously voted to sail with Gilette rather than Davy. Jack waved goodbye to his old shipmates and promised he would see what he could do about rescuing them. ("Jack, look at them," Will hissed quietly, "They're all more mollusk than man by now - there's no need to get their hopes up." Jack just shrugged and answered, "Well, I said I'd see what I could do. And I am seeing what I can do: nothing. What's wrong with that, eh?"). Then, Dutchman in tow, the borrowed Navy ship headed off in the direction Norrington had taken the Pearl.
The next morning - the first morning after her taste of the Fountain of Youth - Elizabeth woke up feeling a little different. The laugh lines around her eyes had disappeared. Her face looked softer and her cheekbones less prominent. And she suspected that if she put on her corset, it would feel looser on the waist and snugger up top than it had been in years.
Will - who couldn't keep his hands off her - had also changed. His face had smoothed out, his body slimmed and firmed a little. Not so much that people would recognize the supernatural, maybe... but enough that Elizabeth couldn't keep her hands off him either.
They kept each other busy enough to miss the fiasco outside.
Jack had dragged a big mirror up on deck and propped it against a crate to watch himself in. He figured himself to be about thirty - not as young as he'd hoped to go, perhaps, but certainly nothing to sneeze at. With a tan and a smile he could probably pass for twenty-five. Not bad at all.
While he was busy admiring himself, Barbossa swaggered up beside him, hand on his hilt. "We look good, Jack."
"Yeh." Jack gazed at their reflections for a moment, enjoying the cameraderie he was about to destroy, then put his arm aound his partner's shoulders and said, "We look perfect together."
Barbossa stiffened. "T-" He shoved Jack away and turned to face him. "Don't start with me, Jack Sparrow, I've warned ye I won't tolerate-"
"Oh no no!" Jack protested quickly, "Of course I didn't mean together together, you know, I just meant, you know," he gestured frantically back and forth between them, "Together." An idea hit and his smile turned severely wicked. "I meant ordinary together, not together like your tattoo together."
"Rrrrrr." Growling deep in his throat like a wild animal, Barbossa brought his hands to his buttons. "Forgot about that. Well, if I open me shirt, Jack, and the mark's not vanished... I already wheedled some of the switchin potion out of Tia. We'll drink up and I'll cut the thing straight out of you." He handed a tiny bottle to Jack and clutched the other one in his hand before touching his last button.
While he took one deep breath to steady himself, Jack got impatient and jerked the shirt back off his shoulders for him.
There was a loud gasp - which belonged to neither captain. They looked sideways, startled, and discovered half the crew watching with mouths wide open.
Barbossa realized suddenly that he had been caught in a pretty compromising position - half naked, his shirt tangled around his hands behind him, Jack practically hugging him...
... And, from the squinting looks his shoulder was getting, probably with one very damning tattoo.
With a string of very creative swear words he tried to fight his hands free of his sleeves so he could kill someone, but Jack thought fast: he uncorked the little bottle of potion, held it up in a quarter-second salute, and gulped it down.
"Best hurry, mate, if you want this stuff to work," he advised.
Barbossa tore his arm free and brought his own bottle to his face. Berserk rages were nothing new to him, but this one was such a doozie that he actually bit the neck off the tiny glass bottle instead of uncorking it. He spat the chunk of glass, cork and blood and all, onto the floor and then gulped down the awful poison Tia had given him.
For a few minutes he knew nothing but the bewildering agony of a body switch, and when he returned to himself the first thing he saw was his body struggling to put its shirt back on.
Jack's in there. He dove in for the kill but Jack held him off easily. "Ah-ah. Remember who you're bein, Jack," Jack growled to him. "Crew's watching. You really want them to see you get decked by Jack Sparrow?"
He managed to stand still. "S'right," Jack continued, carefully slipping into the sing-songy rhythm everybody would recognize as Barbossaspeak. "In faaact, I bet you even think they oughta see somethin o'this nature. Aye?" Jack smacked him a good one and then pointed to the ground. "Sit."
His head was spinning. "What?"
"Sit down." Jack stared at him until he obeyed. "Good. I'll be back." He was going to hunt up some rum and a clean knife to cut the heart from his arm, but he figured it would be fun to let Barbossa sweat for a bit.
"J- arr... Listen here, mate." Barbossa knew he wasn't at all carrying off a decent Jack Sparrow impression but he was so upset he hardly cared. "You show anyone that mark... you say anythin to anyone..."
Jack spun on his heel and popped up his eyebrows. "Guess you'll just have to trust me, eh?"
"I mean it."
"So do I." Jack winked at him and turned to shove his way through the crowd with typical Barbossa roughness.
Barbossa sat and stewed for a moment, then reached for his knife. If his heart tattoo was any indication, IDIOT probably hadn't vanished... but there was still another whole thigh to carve up.
When they reached the place Norrington had brought the Pearl for repairs, they dropped anchor at a very great distance from the little harbor and discussed what came next.
"I'll go ashore and fetch Willie," Will volunteered right away. He had already tied back his hair and was looking around for a hat. "You stay here, keep guns on Gilette and his friends just in case, and use this ship to be sure nobody tries to steal the Pearl until we're all aboard it. She looks great again, Captains. Congratulations."
Jack (he had his own body back; this time the little sip had only switched them a day and a half) was hopping around excitedly as he watched his ship in the spyglass, but Barbossa looked troubled. "No," he said at last. "I don't trust the peacock and I predict some problems in retrievin hostages from him."
"So?" Will gave him a Look. "You think I can't handle it?"
"I think ye could handle yourself fine if he plays fair, Will... but what if he decides to leverage ye with the boy? You'd cut off your own arm - or sell out the rest of us - to protect him." They all considered their options for a bit, and then Barbossa decided, "Far as Norrington knows, I don't have that problem. So it'll be me goes, instead of you."
"Besides," Elizabeth said suddenly, "I'll have my hands full with Annie... making sure she doesn't try to hex us or something... and so somebody else has to be here to watch Jack. Jack would do for the Pearl what Will would do for our son. If it becomes necessary to fire on her..."
"It won't," Jack said grimly, "Believe me."
"Elizabeth has a point," Will agreed. "Well, rest assured that I'll do whatever needs to be done - regardless of what Jack says. Captain... about Willie..." Barbossa rolled his eyes and Will smiled sheepishly. "I guess it's not necessary, is it," he realized.
Half a dozen pirates piled into a rowboat with Barbossa and headed for shore. So as not to be seen coming up to the pier in the most predictable fashion directly into whatever guns Norrington decided to have trained on them, they landed the boat at sandy beach half a mile from the harbor.
In the process of disembarking and pulling the rowboat ashore where the waves wouldn't get her, Barbossa got himself quite soaked and grumpy. He was loathe to show up for a parlay looking like a pauper who'd been spit out by a hurricaine, but on the other hand he had just gotten a new lease on life and he wasn't particularly eager to risk it by trying to fight weighed down by twenty pounds of waterlogged pirate gear.
He fought free of his boots and coat and laid them out in the sand to dry. The hat was a dilemma - it hadn't gotten wet and he did love it, but on the other hand, was it really appropriate to wear a hat without a coat?
In the end he decided to wear his hat because it covered up his grey hair, which seemed to be the only part of him not to benefit from Tia Dalma's witchery and now clashed bizarrely with the rest of his appearance.
He checked that his powder was dry, popped his sword out an inch to be sure it handn't gotten crusty in the day or so since he'd used it last, and beckoned for his men to get moving.
Norrington's men were tramping up and down the pier loading the Pearl up when the pirates arrived. They were slaving away in the hot sun carrying crates and barrels and sacks, and - best of all - using a crane to lift a huge load of boxes which each read RUM - 6 BOTTLES.
They were working so hard that Barbossa almost hated to disturb them... but he thought it unlikely that Norrington was concerning himself with the comfort of a pirate crew. Far more likely, he thought, the peacock is readying the Pearl because he means to steal her.
The hell would he see his ship captained by a man who wore a wig! He headed down towards the harbor and, when he was still a safe distance away from the scurrying soldiers, fired a gun into the air.
Instantly a cry of "Pirates!" went up, and Norrington's men dropped what they were carrying to form ranks and draw weapons. Barbossa's men followed suit, and he waited with a white rag raised until Norrington arrived. "Ye did well with that," Barbossa acknowledged, nodding towards the ship. "Now, where be the boy?"
There was silence while Norrington looked him contemptuously up and down, and he strongly regretted having abandoned his coat and shoes. Not that his escort looked any worse than the soldiers - Norrington had had his men go barefoot on the slippery docks and most of them had stripped down to their undershirts in the heat - but still. Dressed in the height of pirate fashion you felt on equal ground with a dolled-up peacock, but when you stood around in bloody rags while he looked ready to have his portrait painted...
Barbossa felt it didn't bode well.
And it didn't get better when Norrington drew himself up and said, "I'm having second thoughts about handing him over to you."
Barbossa kept his eyes on Norrington's and barked, "Willie. Get over here."
The ranks parted to let the boy through, but Norrington grabbed his shoulder. Willie didn't much care - there was only one person whose permission mattered here. "May I come home now, Captain?" he called. When he got a slow nod, he shook free of Norrington and crossed the divide to stand at Barbossa's shoulder.
"So, was it to your liking?" the captain asked, still watching Norrington. "Bein worked like a slave and beaten every day?"
"Not quite every day, sir."
Barbossa shot him a quick smile at that, then announced, "We'll be leavin now," and gestured for his men to head towards the Pearl.
Norrington shouted "Not one more step!" and a number of guns cocked.
The pirates seemed a little hesitant to push their luck further, so Barbossa dismissed them. "Then go back - get our boat and don't forget me boots. I'll hold the soldiers here a minute, and I'll take us back our Pearl." They all turned and ran off the way they had come.
Barbossa, for his part, dipped Norrington a mocking half-bow farewell, then walked right past the soldiers and down towards the dock.
They turned to keep their guns on him. "Stop - or we'll shoot," Norrington warned.
Barbossa could sense Willie half a step behind him. "I suppose I might shoot a child in the back," he called over his shoulder. "But ye will not."
"Captain," Willie hissed at him as they kept going, "You told me never to bet on somebody else's good nature..."
Barbossa chuckled. "I'm not bettin on nothin," he explained. "If I'm wrong, it's you who takes the bullet."
Willie made an outraged sputtering noise but didn't dodge out of the way. They kept walking and were nearly to the pier when the first shot rang out.
At the unmistakable CRACK, Barbossa whirled around in horror, gasping "No" but nobody heard it because of the racket of all the rest of the soldiers firing as well.
TBC.
Leave me love. Or hate.