**Author's note: I never expected the story to come this far, and I know for certain I have one more, and perhaps even two, chapters ahead of me. This has been such a wonderful ride for me, and I hope you all continue to enjoy reading it! Another short chapter, as it were, but there are reasons for everything.**
She was blessed with a dreamless sleep, a sleep borne of shock and guilt as surely as from exhaustion. When she finally awoke in the last dregs of dawn, Amelia found herself alone. Though during her stay she'd only awakened to find Jack by her side once, she longed for that now.
A chill running its course down her spine, Amelia pulled the blankets tighter around her in vain. They did nothing to warm her.
She'd spent nights as a teenaged girl praying and plotting for the very thing that she'd accomplished the day before, to kill her brother, to give him the things he'd given her in one walloping, well-deserved dose. Amelia had dreamed countless ways of ridding herself of the large, hurtful hands, the frequently-hurled insults, the visiting friends with traveling hands. But it had always been just a dream, just an idea.
She climbed out of the cot she'd been placed in, placing one foot in front of another to take her out of the small room. Night chill had set upon the ship, making the boards creak and pop with their changing temperature, and every noise had Amelia's head whipping around, seeking trouble.
After what seemed like ages, after dozens of imagined dangers and phantoms crowding her head, Amelia made it to the quarter deck as though one sleepwalking, heading toward one particular goal.
~~~
"Pick two men and send them to the Larksong. Tell them it's an extended leave." Jack addressed Gibbs without looking at him, his eyes cast straight ahead as he leaned heavily on the wheel.
Gibbs narrowed his eyes, noting the slightly swollen flesh under all the kohl, the telltale bags that spoke of unrest. "Aye," he said, suddenly wishing for the captain's talkative nature, the never-ending gab. "D'ye mind if I ask what they be doin' on the Larksong?"
Finally Jack turned to him, mouth pursed as he tried to control the temper that wanted to lash out, the anger that had been simmering in him for long hours. Shaking it off with a large sigh, he lowered his head and looked up at Gibbs through thick lashes. "We're fulfilling a promise we made to a lady, Gibbs. 'Tis a day of note, no doubt, that I will actually have admitted to making a promise, much less keeping it." He turned again and cast his eyes to the sea. "I won't hear any differently on this, savvy?"
With a grunt instead of a response, Gibbs made his way below.
"What are you going to do with it?" She spoke from his left, and when he turned he saw her twisting her hands together, twining the fingers in a complicated tangle that mirrored her nerves.
"With what, love?" He forced himself to look away from her, to look careless. Shadows had appeared in her face where there had been none before, and he was afraid to look any further for fear the fire had been extinguished at last.
No need to rush that particular discovery, he figured.
"With the ship," Amelia said insistently, feeling stronger just for having seen him. She placed her left hand on the wheel beside his, painfully aware that he inched his fingers away from hers. "The Larksong."
To tell or not to tell. Jack reached up a hand and rubbed his eyes, smudging kohl into the already-stained creases of his fingers. Finally he took his hand away from his face and settled it on one of the trinkets in his hair, his fingers rolling around the familiar object comfortingly.
"'Tis your ship, love, I've no right to do anything with it," he said evasively.
"As though that's stopped you before," she retorted, marveling at his avoidance. All she'd wanted, all she'd needed was this moment. There was nothing else she needed, and nothing else that would squash the paranoid helplessness that was coursing through her.
She needed comfort, and all she was getting was captaining. So she fixed her eyes on the side of his face, tracing her eyes over the tanned skin, the high cheekbones, the concave cheeks, knowing he would feel her gaze and turn whether he wanted to or not.
A man's vanity was an easy button to push.
He turned to her as she was staring at his mouth, his eyebrows raised. "Well, love, find anything you like?"
"Plenty," she said, shaking her head. "Jack, please. Answer me. What are you going to do with the ship? With my ship?"
One of the crewmen dropped a bucket on the deck behind her, and Jack felt sick as he saw her start and jerk her head around, searching for the source of the sound.
"You'll do whatever you want with it, I suppose, as that's what people do with their possessions when they've been given free reign," he said casually. "I've sent a few men over to prepare things for ye, to make sure things are sound on 'er." Like an afterthought, he added, "I wouldn't send ye out on a busted wreck."
So intent was he on keeping himself in check that he didn't notice her fingers tighten on the wheel, the way it was no longer a handrest but a support. "S-send me out?" The volume was gone from her voice, and her eyes searched his frantically, but he was looking away again.
"Aye. A pirate ship's not a place for the likes of ye, Amelia. Told ye that from day one, I did, and if you failed to listen, I can hardly be blamed for that, as 'tis sure as the sun rises and sets I told you that and plenty more." He tugged at the braids of his beard and chuffed out something that would have been classified as a chuckle, had it not been so sardonic. "The one thing ye can't accuse Captain Jack Sparrow of is under-informin' ye."
"No," she said, her voice curiously distant. "Maybe for other things, but never for that."
He looked at her then, the hurt evident in his eyes, but it was her turn to ignore him.
"You wish for me to leave." She stated it, turning slightly so she wouldn't have to look at him, the knuckles of her hand turning white with their grip on the wheel.
"Aye, love, thought I made that perfectly clear." Seeing the slump of her shoulders, he covered her hand with his. "Listen," he implored, his voice breaking over the two syllables, wavering between Jack and the boy long gone. "'Tisn't the place for you, what with what's just happened. "Tisn't good for you, love, you need somewhere to… heal. Somewhere to forget about all this nonsense."
She flexed her fingers under his, releasing the smooth wood she'd been gripping and sliding her hand out from under his. Though he couldn't see her face, a peculiar, glittering smile split the pretty features in two.
"Nonsense, eh?" Keeping her back mostly to him, she nodded her head, the dark, flyaway hair whipping around her face. "Aye. Nonsense 'tis, indeed."
She began to walk away, then paused only steps from him. She debated not facing him, but turned and looked him square in the eye, fire burning as surely as it ever had, the events of the day before paling in comparison with the betrayal, the abandonment she knew she was being faced with now. "Say good-bye, Captain. I'll ready my things, and I'll not wish to see you when I'm done with that. If it's off yer bloody boat yer wantin' me, then it's off I'll be, since it seems ye know best for me, as ye've professed from the moment ye caught me up in the street."
But even as he parted his dry lips to say good-bye, she'd walked away.
