A/N: Thank you so much to all the reviewers who've kept faith in this story, in spite of a new POTC movie being released which kind of refutes this one! I am aiming to finish this one because it is such a work in the making and has bridged three stories and I believe almost 300k words total! I hope that people are still interested in this and I invite you to tell me that you would like to see this finished! I had figured that after the movie came out, no one would read (let alone review) this but I was thankfully wrong! I would cite each of you lovely reviewers but then I'd never get to posting this tonight! Just know that I appreciate you and need you to push me along because I want this to be drawn to a satisfying close!
After several tension-filled minutes of utter silence, the smelling salts the doctor held under her nose caused Kitty Morgan to stir. She blinked her eyes, head swimming, her face looking much like a wax doll.
"Open your mouth, dear," the doctor told her. "This milk will help soak up that mercury you drank," he explained to her.
As she lie partially reclined, the doctor made her drink an entire quart of milk, a task that made her utterly miserable.
"If you don't drink all that he gives you, darling, something bad might happen," Julia coaxed. Cutler and Julia stood above the girl, watching the colour slowly return to her face as she continued to gulp down the milk the doctor provided. The three watched her carefully as she was thankfully able to retain consciousness.
"The worst may be behind her," the doctor said, putting a hand to Kitty's forehead, "but you must have her drink as much milk as she can possibly withstand. After that time we can only pray that the mercury she ingested has been soaked up by the milk and hasn't entered her bloodstream."
"Oh, God, Cutler; my baby," Julia said, eyes wide as she looked to her brother.
"She is very lucky that she was attended to quickly," the doctor added, patting Julia's back. "Do you know where she acquired the mercury?"
"She acquired it from a barometer in her father's office," Beckett explained.
"How much did she ingest?"
"Only a few drops, she said, but the barometer was almost completely emptied of mercury. I don't know where the rest could've gone, because there was nothing on the floor."
"That's odd. Do any of your other children go into that room, Mrs. Morgan?"
"No," she replied quickly. "My husband does not allow them entrance to his office. He has been the only person in that room since we moved into the estate."
The doctor wished for Kitty to sit in a more upright position, so he lifted her off the table to place onto a chair. In the process, however, he found several shiny metallic globs on his fingers that had rubbed off from her clothes.
"Did you wipe your hands off on your upper back, Kitty?" the doctor asked her kindly, to which she replied with a headshake. He turned to Beckett. "You carried her in from the estate, did you not?"
"Yes, I did," Beckett replied, feeling extreme discomfort. Evidently, he had gotten some mercury on his hands when handling the Dead Man's Chest, and had then carried the child in his arms without wiping his hands off first. In an attempt to hide whatever guilt would surely appear on his face, he made an attempt to smile.
"Did you have mercury on your hands?"
Beckett received the question with an air of indifference, focusing his gaze on the child to avoid meeting Julia's eyes. It was as if he was attempting to avoid the direct question by ignoring it. All the while Julia gaped at him, realizing the implications of the doctor's words. Could her own brother have poisoned Kitty?
Suddenly Beckett sighed. Slowly he raised his gaze so that it gradually met his sister's gaze. Once they were making eye contact, he set his jaw in a sort of grimace and swallowed rather loudly.
"Yes I did," he answered the doctor, keeping his eyes on Julia the entire time. Her face went from fearful and anxious to ever-increasing intensities of fury.
"And how did you come by this mercury, may I ask?" Julia raged, realizing her brother looked as guilty as hell—an extraordinarily rare occurrence, at that.
"There were drops of mercury on the handles of the Dead Man's Chest," Beckett muttered carefully.
"What?" Julia squawked, glaring daggers at him. "What are you saying—"
"I found the Dead Man's Chest in your husband's office, and I took it down from the armoire. There were drops of mercury on the shelf it sat on, as well as on its handles—"
"What are you talking about? Why in God's name would there be…" She paused dramatically to collect herself. "You're lying, aren't you," she snarled at her brother. "Can you not tell the truth for once in your worthless—"
"Julia," he cut in. "It's true. You can see for yourself upon your return to the house."
"But why—" she began, staring off into the distance, face contorted into an uneasy expression. "You're implying my husband is trying to poison me then!" Julia turned to the doctor, who was all but being ignored at this point. "He wanted me to shake the chest about during his absence today, to harm that poor Captain Jones!" she remarked with ire.
"I don't know about that," Beckett replied, feeling uneasy. He didn't bother to correct her misstatement about Jones. Best she not realize how much I know on the matter, he mused. Now, her own husband trying to kill her? There didn't seem to be enough on the handle for that sort of thing, but I suppose it would be rather difficult to discov—
"What were you doing holding it?" Julia spat, interrupting her brother's train of thought. "I trusted you not to go into the room, let alone not to go anywhere near the—"
"And I betrayed your trust," he replied matter-of-factly, not skipping a beat. "There is something I must do, and in order to do so, I had to betray your trust. I am sorry for disappointing you."
"What the bloody hell can you possibly need to do, may I ask?" she spat, moving towards him. He made no effort to distance himself from her.
"The woman I told you about," he began, feeling leery around the doctor who pretended to ignore them by attending to Kitty as they argued. "In order to get her back, I have to retrieve—"
"Retrieve what?"
"If you hadn't interrupted, you would have known by now," he snapped, obviously irritated. As a way to further annoy her for interrupting him, he followed his remark with silence.
"Finish what you were saying," she fumed. "You have to retrieve what."
Beckett's eyes focused off in the distance. If he admitted this to her, there was a very strong chance he would not be able to leave the doctor's home with the heart, perhaps not even with his life. There didn't seem to be another option, however.
"I have to retrieve the heart," he said calmly and collectedly. It shocked him how smoothly the words came out.
"Ha!" she spat. "Rather difficult without a key, I must say. You must take me for a fool!"
All of a sudden Beckett squatted down, shoving several of his fingers down the side of his boot. As he stood back up, he held the key for Julia to see.
"As if I could believe that is the key to the Dead Man's Chest!" Julia spat with a cruel laugh. "Where could you have acquired such a valuable item? You were the lowest of the low on the Intrepid, hardly the individual to have first choice of the treasure!"
Beckett sighed, shaking his head. Was it so hard to believe that he was capable of acquiring a simple key?
"Believe what you want," he stated, hesitant to shut her up once and for all by showing her the heart.
"Well, I rather think that you tried to poison Kitty… After all, you had mercury on your ha—" she ventured, knowing this was not the truth but attempting to get a rise out of him. Predictably, she was interrupted by Beckett, whose face had turned a rather interesting shade of red by this point.
"I may have been a rotten brother to you, but I would never try to poison your child. How dare you accuse me of such a hideous act," he replied, suddenly aware of the pulse beating in his neck. "Kitty was leaving the room as I attempted to enter."
"Is this true, Kitty?" Julia asked her daughter, keeping her eyes on Beckett all the while.
"What's true?" Kitty asked, looking a bit dazed, but well within the range of consciousness.
"That you were leaving the office as Beckett tried to enter."
"Yes, Mum, it is," she said, dropping her head in shame. "I went into Father's office just as Father left the house. When I heard Uncle Cutler turning the doorknob, I got scared and thought it was you, so I started to sneak out of the room. I drank the silvery stuff by myself. You're wrong about Uncle."
Beckett stared at Julia as her look of utter rage faded to that of acceptance. However, after she turned away from her daughter, it seemed as if her glare of fury had never left.
"So you volunteered to guard the door for me in order to get at the chest," she stated simply.
"Yes," Beckett replied curtly.
"You essentially used me then to get at what you wanted."
There was a silence that passed in which Beckett considered the consequences. Whatever happened to him now was a trifle compared to what he'd been through: two sets of lashings, near-rape, near-freezing, near-drowning, near-hangings, near murder by countless individuals, and a gunshot wound to prove that fact.
"Yes," he stated, letting his eyes fall to the ground. He could see with his peripheral vision that her face was quite red now.
"I think you deserve a good hard slap," she spat. "Do you agree?"
A slight pause, as Beckett felt her eyes burning a hole into him. He took a deep breath.
"Yes." He made no move, instead standing perfectly still with hands clasped quite regally behind him.
The slap landed suddenly on Beckett's cheek, a slap so forceful and with such an intense stinging sensation that it caused his eyes to water as he stumbled sideways, arms shooting out to his sides to regain his balance. Julia had certainly put her entire weight behind the blow, that he could tell.
"Don't hurt him!" Kitty exclaimed weakly from her seat at the table. "He didn't do anything wrong!"
"Yes I did, Kitty," Beckett stated glumly, looking at her with eyes glassy from the involuntary tears that had welled up from his sister's slap. He raised a hand to his cheek, rubbing the hot flesh. "I took advantage of your sister and I lied to her. All the negative things you've heard about me are true."
"So, you said you saw mercury on the handles of the Dead Man's Chest?" the doctor interrupted. "And that there was barely any mercury left in the admiral's barometer?"
"Yes," Beckett answered, wondering why the doctor was asking such questions at such a time.
"I recall the fact that the formal admiral died shortly after handling the Dead Man's Chest."
"And?" Beckett stated impatiently. The doctor ignored him, turning to Julia Morgan.
"Mrs. Morgan, I don't believe that the former admiral died of a heart attack as your husband said."
"What are you talking about?" she suddenly blurted, confused at the sudden change of subject.
"I think your husband may have poisoned the admiral by coating the handles of the Dead Man's Chest with mercury," he explained. "Acute mercury poisoning can cause a heart attack, which coincidentally was the final ruling on the admiral's cause of death."
"Oh my God," Julia exclaimed, feeling faint. "It can't be."
"The Admiral had his successors in mind, and unfortunately, Ma'am, Thomas Morgan was not one of them. I always thought it odd that he would pass his position onto Mr. Morgan, and right before he died, at that—no offense intended, of course."
"But for my husband to murder him?" she cried, the pitch of her voice quite high.
"Once this evidence is brought to light, Mrs. Morgan, your husband will be assured a fair trial, and—"
Julia turned away from the doctor, gripping her hair in utter fear.
"We're ruined!" she wailed as she paced about. "How could Thomas have done such an evil thing? Oh, God help us…."
Beckett sensed that she could collapse at any time and placed a hand on her back to steady her. Rather than accept the help, however, she hissed at him and jerked away from him. Sighing quietly, he used the rejected hand to wipe his eyes, and made a move towards her.
"There's always Hampton House, Julia," Cutler said reassuringly. "I won't be remaining in England for long, and I—"
"I want to see it," she suddenly blurted, turning to face him fully.
"See what," he replied blandly.
"The heart."
"Oh. That," Beckett stammered, struggling for words.
"How exactly is it going to help win her back?" she asked him.
"That's rather easy to answer," he replied, feigning confidence. "I'll have power. Influence. Much more becoming than a battered reputation and a lowly status, I should think." He ended his explanation with a naughty little smirk.
"Ha! A battered reputation and lowly status! Something you have now assuredly granted to my husband and our family now, thank you very much—"
"Wait—I wasn't implying that… Julia, you must believe me… I didn't—"
The doctor took his turn speaking, essentially interrupting Beckett.
"That was my doing, Mrs. Morgan," he told her. "Your brother hasn't been in England for years. How would he have known what had happened?"
Julia rolled her eyes, taking a deep breath as she struggled to contain her anger in front of her brother, her child, and the doctor.
"Let me see it," she insisted, moving towards Beckett. "I won't try to take it from you."
"Alright," he hissed irritably. He stepped further away from the doctor as he fished in his coat for the beating organ. Within moments, he had removed the item from its hiding place and held the rapidly beating heart in the palm of his hand. She stared at it with utter disgust.
"My husband has ruined our family and our reputation over that stupid insignificant—"
"It's certainly not insignificant, Julia," Beckett explained, tucking the heart back into his coat. The doctor eyed him suspiciously as he checked Kitty's pulse.
"How is she?" Beckett asked the doctor.
"Her pulse is normal. It seems as if the milk was administered soon enough to soak up the mercury before it could poison her. She is very fortunate."
"If it weren't for Uncle trying to get in the room, I would've drunk the rest, I think. I heard him turning the doorknob but didn't know the door was locked." She turned to Beckett with a big, albeit tired, smile. "You saved my life, Uncle Cutler."
Beckett's face flushed red but he said nothing. Julia could only gape at him and at her daughter, unsure of what she should do next. Turning in the direction of the admiral's estate, she stared off into the distance, imagining the scenario if she demanded the heart back from her brother. Savior or not, her brother had stolen this important item from her family. Of course, once the murder charges were brought up against her husband, they'd lose control of the Dead Man's Chest anyway….
Without warning, Julia felt someone's arms around her back. She opened her eyes to find herself face-to-face with Cutler, the remainder of the tears conjured from her slap still glistening in his tired eyes, and whose mouth was drawn into a tight-lipped line of discomfort.
"I'm sorry for betraying your trust, Julia," he mumbled, voice breaking. "I have been an absolutely dreadful brother and have not deserved your hospitality."
Instinctively, she returned the hug, feeling him shift in her arms. He was obviously not accustomed to this sort of exchange.
"Hospitality," she murmured. "If you could call slapping you silly 'hospitality.'"
"It's not as if I didn't deserve them at the time," he replied. "What I mean to say is that I am terribly sorry for all that I've put you through," he continued, speaking in a low voice. "I hope that you can find it in your heart to someday forgive me for the countless transgressions I have committed against you."
"I never thought I'd see the day when you'd apologize to me," she said, feeling her eyes water. "But it's no use, really."
Suddenly he pulled back, releasing his arms from around her back and looking at her with a confused expression.
"What do you mean," he replied, his voice thick. Julia looked at him from the very short distance between them. Hurt and shame could be seen in his eyes, certainly the first time Julia had seen those two emotions there at the same time.
"I've already forgiven you, Cutler."
The man most noticing of Joana's presence lay dead on the dock by some unknown killer. Most of the Royal Navy men on the deck ignored the downed man, continuing to fire upon the Dutchman. Unfortunately, one of the men noticing the fallen man, though he was surrounded by a thick crowd of people, was Admiral Morgan, who froze in place, scanning the docks with narrowed eyes. The shot certainly did not come from the Flying Dutchman. For the time being, no one on the Dutchman was even visible and no cannons were being fired. It was then that Morgan noticed Joana, standing on the deck, unintentionally cornered by the men on the dock.
Jack Sparrow frowned as he reloaded the musket and aimed again. Sadly, Admiral Morgan was again hidden from being a target. This time Jack shot the next-closest man to Joana.
Admiral Morgan watched the second man fall away from the direction of the nearby ship the Sallie Mae, with the Black Pearl off in the distance. The shot had to have originated from that direction, because the momentum had caused the man to crumble sideways. He gathered a living shield around him as he scanned the nearby ships and dock.
Joana Sparrow was alarmed at the fact that she had even been noticed. She had figured the riled-up crowd would be too busy loading their weapons and dreading retribution from the infamous ship to notice a woman disembarking. Now she had at least a dozen men who noticed her, two of whom had mysteriously fallen down dead in the process. She dared not look around her, lest she divulge the location of her temporary savior.
"Get down, you filthy half-wits!" the captain of the Intrepid shouted at his pirate prisoners. Gunfire exploded all around them as they made their way off the Sallie Mae.
"Ye've no use fer us in killin' us," Barbossa spat at the men who marched behind him, feeling the occasional poke of a bayonet into his back. "Yer bayonets hold no concern fer me, knowin' as I be worth far more alive."
"That's what you think," the captain of the Intrepid said in reply, shoving the Royal Navy man who held a bayonet to the tall pirate's back. This caused the sharp tip of the bayonet to jab into the shoulderblade of Barbossa, who winced and shot the man an evil glare.
I hope Jack has been caught an' jailed, Barbossa mused, spitting onto the dock. If I see 'im in there, I'm not hesitatin' to kill 'im fer all the misery he's put me through as of late. After the Intrepid had begun to noticeably sink in the sea, he and Gibbs had been transported to the deck of the ship, freshly bound as they struggled to ascend the ladders to the deck. All the while the ship had lurched and groaned, filling quickly with cold seawater. A single longboat was launched which contained every member on board the ship (minus Jack and Ayla, of course), and he had to stomach watching the boy Peter Longfellow being seasick almost continually as the small boat was tossed about in the choppy waters of the English Channel. He and Gibbs were soaked to the bone and had to deal with a leak on their end of the longboat, which kept their feet waterlogged and numb with cold. As usual, all his misery was Jack Sparrow's fault. It wasn't until the Sallie Mae happened upon them that they were rescued from their longboat, and finally Barbossa and Gibbs were able to retain some sense of dryness and civilization and not feel like drowned rats in a pail.
Mr. Gibbs, meanwhile, took it upon himself to look at his surroundings as he left the merchant ship Sallie Mae. It was now fully daybreak and there came a loud series of gunfire from the other side of the Sallie Mae, a scene blocked by the hulk of the merchant ship. Nothing Gibbs did would allow him to see past the form of the merchant ship to view the disturbance. In the other direction, he saw tethered to the dock the Black Pearl. I wonder if Jack made it off the ship, he mused, largely ignoring the rather rude shoves he was getting from the Royal Navy men leading him down the gangplank.
As the Royal Navy men and their captives walked across the dock, Gibbs and Barbossa were able to see the source of the violence. The Flying Dutchman was being fired upon by townsfolk and Royal Navy men on foot, but the ship was making no attempt to return fire. The battle would have been over in moments had the Flying Dutchman fired her triple guns at the crowd.
Suddenly, a musket ball whizzed over their heads, burying itself in the back of the Royal Navy soldier nearest Joana and causing the man to shriek in pain and fall backwards dramatically. Though Barbossa was restrained, his head turned towards what he presumed to be the source of the shot. As he'd expected, he saw the remnants of smoke rising from, oddly enough, a gun-port at deck level on the Black Pearl. He felt his captor shove him as he continued to stare unabated towards the dissipating smoke. A face was now peering out of the gun-port, a face with kohl-lined eyes and a scraggly goatee. Jack Sparrow. He knew that vengeance was nigh and turned to his captor.
"The man ye really want is in the Pearl," he muttered in a low growl, watching as the man looked confused. "A certain Cap'n Jack Sparrow."
"You're pulling my leg," the man replied, clearly disbelieving as he glanced towards the quietly floating ship.
"He just fired out of the Pearl," Barbossa explained, seeing that Gibbs was now aware of his explanation. "I saw his face fer just enough time to know it be him."
"You pirates are all allies," the Royal Navy man replied. "Backstabbing each other is not what allies do, even pirate allies."
Barbossa rolled his eyes, shaking his head as he did so. It was no wonder that Jack Sparrow always managed to escape, what being surrounded by imbeciles.
"The man stole me ship countless times and left me fer dead when he escaped yer bonnie Intrepid. He has no loyalty to me, and I've no loyalty to him. I'd kill Sparrow now if I had a loaded musket. I hate the man more than yer entire company put together an' if you don' sneak up on him an' capture him, it be yer own fault. Don' say I didn' warn ye."
"You're trying to distract me, aren't you?" the man replied. "That won't work, pirate! A man like Jack Sparrow is not going to bed down in some moored ship while Royal Navy swarm the docks all around him!"
Suddenly another musket ball blasted from the Pearl, bringing a Royal Navy man to his knees as he cried out in agony. This was not lost on the Royal Navy man who'd heard Barbossa's little tale, and he allowed for Barbossa to turn him towards the small plume of smoke emanating from a gun-port on the deck of the Pearl. A flurry of dreadlocks and shiny gold beads appeared in the gun-port and quickly disappeared. Barbossa smiled then, his rotten teeth out on display.
"That enough proof fer ye?"
A/N: Please review, even if you have the slightest interest in my finishing this story! I couldn't have come this far without you all, and I especially need you now that POTC stories have moved towards POTC4 prequels/sequels/etc and no longer involve Beckett/Will/Elizabeth!