There were benefits to pure, stark absurdity. With one notable exception, each development of Elizabeth Swann's life thus far had been utterly banal, predictable to the extreme. A lifetime of meeting the stifling expectations before her—study under the best tutors, dress according to fashion half a world away, meet the correct man, marry that man, sit, stay, pose—dulled her mind. There had been one brief flash of unanticipated that had come in the form of a half-drowned boy, a mystery, and a lure to the unknown, to whispers of freedom, that Elizabeth clung to throughout all of the average, awful moments. She clung to them whenever she saw that boy—now grown and familiar but exotic to her still. Seeing Will Turner helped maintain her sanity in the beautiful cage she was trapped within but seeing the walking corpse of Barbossa striding towards her, grin splitting his rotting cheeks, ripped the rest of that veneer off with a brutality that left her breathless.
Breathless, but invigorated.
The unknown had always called to Elizabeth. Tales of pirates and adventure and lawlessness were attractive to her because they all lacked the structure that had defined her every waking moment. Will Turner's mere existence had provided an avenue of fantasy, a daydream that she could visit whenever their paths met, but now she was on a real pirate ship. She'd stolen Will's name as her own, inspired by that childish dream. It had been a ploy to disguise her connection to her father, a hope of making herself a less valuable hostage as she negotiated for Port Royal's safety, but it had backfired so perfectly.
She was surrounded by pirates—worse than that, cursed pirates—and it was awful and terrifying, but she was awake.
Absurdity enlivened her senses, her dreams of grandeur. It also left a bitter taste in her mouth as hysterical laughter bubbled up and over in her throat, escaping her and wracking her frame until she was nearly sobbing with the weight of the strange reality she'd been dragged into. It was a queer sort of laughter, one that left her head light and airy and left the world feeling slightly hilarious in its strangeness. It was only when the laughter died down that Elizabeth realized that she was alone once more, left in the captain's quarters with the now-cool feast and the knife she'd plunged into Barbossa's chest. Even the sight of that knife—still shining ruby in the moonlight—brought a delirious sort of smile to her lips instead of making her cringe away, and she took a moment to pause.
The smile widened, tugging her lips as Elizabeth Swann truly realized the position that she had found herself in. Staring at the knife she'd bloodied in the chest of a pirate captain—a vicious man who had made his living terrorizing and plundering the seas, who kept a crew as vicious as he was without reprisal or rebuttal—Elizabeth realized that she felt remarkably safe. Out of everyone aboard the Black Pearl, hers was the only life that was precious.
She reached for the knife now, twisting it in her hand and letting her thumb drag along its ruby gleam. The blood—unnaturally cool and already becoming tacky to the touch—came off the silver easy, sticking to her skin. She'd bled a pirate and she was alive. The act had been foolish—Barbossa himself had been right to question what her next step would have been, had he died in her attack—but it was a choice that she had made freely, without thought for punishment or expectation. In her time as Elizabeth Swann, she rarely made any real choices.
Elizabeth Turner could make decisions for herself. She could be brave, be reckless and free, without the repercussions that Elizabeth Swann was always beholden to. She tightened her hold on the knife, slipping it into her sleeve as she clambered to her feet. There was noise outside—though perhaps it had gotten quieter since the theatrics of her assault on the captain fell away from the crew's mind—and Elizabeth let that harden her resolve.
Her feet were steady on the floorboards as they carried her towards the doors. Steadying than they ought to have been after years staring out at the sea from behind panes of glass, but perhaps freedom ran in her blood as well, and not just in Will Turner's. There were no window facing onto the deck that she could spy from the doors, but her feet were steady. She could do this.
The crew of the Black Pearl had returned to work after Barbossa had shoved her back into the captain's quarters. Hardly an eye was turned her way when she took her first measured step out of the false safety of the cabin and that absurd laughter threatened to bubble up again as she realized that the crew of the Black Pearl was exactly that: a crew. The sailors that she could spy were attending to duties any breathing sailor would be responsible for; their skeletal bodies didn't earn them the rest their hanged compatriots might receive. No, as she watched lines were secured, sails adjusted, decks swabbed. It was normal if not for the fact that she was the only one aboard the ship whose heart still beat.
Banal was her bread and butter. Elizabeth lived and breathed boring every day. She could live through this now, allowing the absurdity of her surroundings keep her awake and alert as she progressed through her first long-awaited adventure. That's what this was, after all, if she let her thoughts wander too far.
There were stairs leading to the upper deck. She had sheltered under them what felt like hours ago, hiding desperately from the monsters that had appeared before her in the moonlight. The monkey had been terrifying then, but another moment of thought transformed that fear into curiosity and wonder. Elizabeth's thoughts wandered as she slowly climbed the stairs, realizing belatedly that she was unexpected.
Barbossa's ghastly visage was facing her—and, yes, it was terrifying but it was also ludicrous so don't laugh don't laugh don't laugh—and Elizabeth found herself searching for words. The helmsman, who was still far less articulated and fleshy than many of the other crew members that she'd spied, was either unable or unwilling to interject in the coming confrontation and valiantly focused his eyes forward. Elizabeth envied him for a brief moment and, while her courage didn't lapse, but her wits certainly had for the first words to escape her were:
"What about your monkey?"
There was still noise. There was still the lap of the waves breaking against the hull of the ship, the calls of the crew as the men talked amongst themselves and shouted and worked. There was still the ripple of canvas as wind caught in the sails, but everything seemed to fall silent between the scant yards separating Barbossa and his captive.
"Beggin' yer pardon?" Elizabeth wasn't sure if she was relieved or nervous that Barbossa managed to break the silence while she scrambled for words. Relief won out though, especially when she was successful yet again at keeping the laughter down.
"The blood repaid," she managed to say, voice nearly as steady as her feet. "You said that blood needed to be repaid for the curse to be lifted. Does that include your… companion?"
There was another moment of taut, awful silence before Barbossa laughed. It was an awful sound, more akin to a rasping bark than any happy sound Elizabeth had heard before, but it was booming and true and, despite her education telling her otherwise, she felt her shoulders relax. She wasn't in any more danger now than she'd been ten minutes ago, after all.
Barbossa raised a hand—towards her Elizabeth's heart feared for a moment—and then the monkey leapt from the rigging and onto his arm, still clinging onto the Aztec medallion she'd stolen from Will all those years ago.
"Jack," Barbossa said and Elizabeth realized it was in introduction. The monkey—Jack—turned to face her, cocking his head as his eyes stared at her. Those eyes, unnaturally wide by the decay around his eye sockets, were unblinking for a long moment until he suddenly jerked her head to the other side, evidently uninterested in her. "We've all repaid our blood, includin' Jack."
"Everyone but Will Turner's," Elizabeth corrected, mind working to adapt. She forced her mind back to those quiet days at the end of the crossing—the quiet, lonely, wonderful days she'd spent nursing Will back to health and fishing for answers. Will hadn't been able to tell her much—that or he'd been unwilling. If he'd known his father was a pirate, it would have been foolish to tell her much of anything. Still, his quiet words to her that day had felt like truth, so Elizabeth felt little grief in wearing them like armor. "What ever happened to him? I never found out."
"Ah, that's not so happy a tale." If Elizabeth hadn't been searching for it, she might have missed Barbossa's hesitation before answering, but it had been there. There was no hesitation in his voice as he continued, stepping and narrowing the gap between them to a mere few feet. Proximity didn't slow Elizabeth's now-racing thoughts, however. If anything, it gave them new urgency. "Shouldn't you be hiding away, now?"
"Believing in ghost stories doesn't require that I fear them."
"Is that it? Find a bit of courage hidden under the stairs?" There was mocking in his voice, Elizabeth knew, but she had found her courage somewhere between here and Port Royal. It felt slightly petulant to square her shoulders, but it was natural as breathing to stare the pirate captain down, ghastly visage or no.
"You could do any number of cruel things to me. I believe that you're capable of that. But hiding won't better my situation. A knife certainly didn't help me. I'd be inclined to think that we might be at an impasse that will ultimately end with you killing me, but you invited me to dinner."
"For my pleasure alone, I assure ya. There's little pleasure left for the likes of us, but there's still a taste of it in seeing it with my own eyes. Every man likes to watch a woman, even after his heart stops beating. And I'd remind ye, the invitation to dine was extended before your trick with the knife."
"I have something you need," Elizabeth said plainly. The blood of Will Turner. He needs it, desperately, and she could direct them in the correct direction. She doesn't think she really would—Will had been a staple in her life as the daydream, the hope, and she'd really like to imagine that he go on to live his own adventures even if she never returns to Port Royal—but she understood the weight of that particular bargaining chip. "And you have something I want."
Freedom. It wasn't exactly the freedom that Elizabeth wanted, of course. She'd prefer an existence where she could still eat and breath and feel the sun on her face. She'd sleep easier knowing that her skin would still wax pale in the moonlight, but freedom was much less negotiable to easy rest. She'd spent too much of her lifetime caged. Even this kidnapping—and she needed to be brutally honest with herself that she was stolen away from where she was loved—had made her feel in ways that she never had before.
"Oh? And what might that be? We're but a humble ship, though the dress does look much better with warm flesh to fill it." There was a leer there, a challenge for her to rise to the bait, but Elizabeth began to wonder if that was simply how Barbossa spoke.
It was so tempting to give voice to it, to say that all she wanted was the agency to determine the course of her own life, but there were still too many pieces of the chessboard to make so large a move. Adventure didn't absolve logic.
Barbossa had invited her to a dinner he couldn't eat. It could be that he truly wanted to just watch her eat—enjoy the things he couldn't—but Elizabeth fiercely hoped he also craved conversation. Conversation was all she could willingly offer, and it might net her some answers if she could bait her captor with the right questions.
"At this moment? An apple."
Barbossa's face fell ever so slightly, falling into a frown as Elizabeth gathered all her resolve and turned away. Heartbeat ringing loudly in her hearts—and oh wasn't it in time with waves against the hull—she retreated down the steps and back into the captain's quarters.
With her back turned to the door, it was easy to hide the relieved smile that tugged at her lips when the doors opened behind her.
Freedom. In this new, absurd world Elizabeth had found herself in, she could almost taste it.
Posted 4.26.22, 4:15
This was intended as a one-shot but I just might expand on it. I love whenever Elizabeth is portrayed as the badass Pirate King she is, and I haven't seen many stories where she gets that badass jump start early. Also I just love the idea of an unreasonably feral Elizabeth being unleashed upon an unsuspecting Barbossa. He tried so hard to be scary to her when they have that interaction in the captain's quarters about the curse but it has become almost endearing upon rewatch for me. He's so tired of the existence he's been leading, and has this tragic monologue and yes, he is looking to use Elizabeth as the avenue for the change, but he still doesn't want her to come to any harm because of it. Like, this brutal pirate captain that literally lashed an undead man to a cannon and sunk him to the bottom of the ocean didn't raise a hand to Elizabeth after she STABBED him. Yeah, he acts mean and scary once they're out in the open, but he knows very well that he leads a crew of mutineers. He can't afford to be viewed as soft.
Enter: Elizabeth Swann who is caught oscillating between 'how the hell do I keep myself in a position where I'm more valuable alive and unharmed' and 'oh my god I can do whatever I want for the first time ever.' She's keenly aware of her mortality, but she's also in this bizarre state of grace that will allow her quite a bit of slack if she's careful on how she applies it. If she recognizes Barbossa's incredible sad dad energy (because that is his vibe when separated from the crew) and can manipulate that? It'd be beautiful. If Barbossa breaks the curse and is able to actually enjoy life, and is able to realize that he might have a protégé desperate for the very same thing?
It might just throw a wrench in Jack's plans to get back the Pearl.
I don't typically write A/Ns, so please let me know in the reviews if this is something you'd like to see be explored!