A Pirate's Life

by Elspeth1

Will, trying to do a favor for Jack, unwittingly places himself in a vengeful Norrington's line of fire, and Elizabeth realizes that she may lose both of the men she loves.

15. In Which Our Heroes are Reunited and Nor...

DISCLAIMER: This story is based on characters and situations created and owned by Disney. No money is being made and no copyright or trademark infringement is intended. Come on, if it were mine, do you honestly think we would have gotten all the way through the movie without ever seeing Jack shirtless?
Posted By: Elspeth, AKA Elspethdixon
Ships: Will/Elizabeth, Jack/Elizabeth, eventual Jack/Will, eventual Norrington/OC. Probably a bit of unrequited Norrington/Elizabeth as well.
Warning: This story contains killing, stealing, lots of angst, an OC, and a non-evil Norrington. Sadly, it does not contain any hot, steamy sex scenes.

Chapter Fifteen: In Which Our Heroes are Reunited and Norrington is Greatly Vexed.

I know where I'm going

And I know who's going with me.

I know who I love,

But the devil knows who I'll marry.

            Until Elizabeth had appeared in front of his cell, Jack had honestly believed that he was going to die.  It was only now, as the two of them began to climb the stairs out of the depressingly familiar confines of Port Royal's jail, that the fact that he was not in fact going to be hung after all began to sink in.  The flood of relief that accompanied this realization was almost sickening, and for some reason, made his head hurt even more than it had a moment ago.  Or maybe that was the effort of climbing the jail's damnably steep stairs.  Or, more likely, the thought of telling Elizabeth about Will, which he was going to have to do any second now.

            No, he decided, suppressing a wince at the thought of the look that was going to appear on Elizabeth's face when he told her, that could wait for later.  For now was getting the rest of the way out of here, like the lady had so wisely pointed out.

            Elizabeth reached the top of the stairs a step ahead of him, and he reached out a hand to pull her back, slightly surprised when it met warm, bare flesh instead of a decently sleeve-covered arm.  Where had she gotten that dress, anyway?  It would have done Giselle, or Scarlette, or any of a dozen "ladies" he knew in Tortuga proud.  "Better let me go first, love," he said, sliding past her and out the door.  "Me bein' the one with the weapons an' all."

            Fortunately for his reputation, he didn't actually trip over the body sprawled out in the doorway.  Not really.  It was more like a stumble, and he caught himself on the wall before Elizabeth could catch it, so it didn't really count anyway.

            "Ooww," the body moaned, as the impact of Jack's foot jarred him out of his precarious balance against the wall.  "Oooh, Christ…"  He stirred, placing one palm flat against the ground and trying to push himself upright.

            Jack drew his foot back, paused for a moment to judge the angle, and kicked him in the head.  He went down like a sack of grain.  Wishing the nameless man had been the nasty, self-important little midshipman from Norrington's ship instead of some nameless Royal Marine was probably un-Christian of him, but then, no one had ever accused Jack of being a good Christian.

            "Sorry about that, mate," he told the once again unconscious guard, then added, to Elizabeth, "Let's be goin' before sleepin' beauty wakes up again, shall we?"  He unwrapped the sash from around his waist, giving the faded silk one last, regretful look—he'd always been rather fond of it, and at the moment, it was the only piece of clothing he had that was free of bloodstains—and passed it to her.  "You want to do the honours?"

            Elizabeth knelt down, and, without another word, began tying the guard's red-coated arms together, using an intricate series of knots some sailors would have been hard pressed to equal.  She finished the affair off with a carefully tied bow.  Jack almost regretted the fact that he wasn't going to have the opportunity to see Norrington's face when he found the man.

            "Very pretty," he commented, indicating the bow with the hand not holding his new cutlass.  He bent down, removed the man's purse from where it hung on a string about his neck—soldiers always seemed to keep their money in the same spot—and tucked it inside his own coat, then extended a hand to Elizabeth. "I'm sure the Commodore will appreciate it."

            Elizabeth smiled, lips curving up for a moment, and then the expression was gone and her face was serious again.  She ignored his offered hand and stood, brushing off her skirts, and picked up the iron bar lying in a corner of the doorway, giving it an experimental swish with her right hand the way Will used to test the balance of a sword before fighting.  She must have watched him fence too.  Come to think of it, she'd probably spent considerably more time watching him fence than Jack ever had.

            All of that kneeling and bending did interesting things to her tightly-corseted breasts—especially the bending part, because when she did that, a man could see all the way down—Jack firmly put an end to that line of thought.  He'd gotten her husband killed; he had no right to drool over her breasts.

            No matter how soft, and rounded, and… No.  Not drooling.  Absolutely not drooling.  Where the hell had she gotten that dress?

            "I doubt it," Elizabeth said, as she led the way toward the docks.  "But at least I've left a note apologizing to him."

            It took a moment for Jack to figure out that she was still talking about Norrington, but when he did, he very nearly laughed in spite of everything that had happened.  "You left him a note?" he repeated, amazed.  This was probably the most civilized jailbreak he had ever participated in.

            "No," she corrected absently, "I left my father a note.  But I told him to give Commodore Norrington my regards."

            Jack could only shake his head.  "You would make a very interestin' pirate, love," he said, not quite regretfully.  He quickened his pace a little, putting himself in front of her again.  He was the one with the cutlass, after all, though she seemed to be able to use that iron bar of hers fairly effectively, if that guard had been anything to go by.  "I assume you have some sort of plan to get me out of here," he said as the two of them reached the edge of the dock.  "Or are we improvisin'?"

            Elizabeth smiled proudly, and pointed to a small sloop moored near the end of the line of vessels.  "Your ship awaits, Captain."

            'Funny,' Jack thought, as he ran an assessing eye over her rigging, 'that's exactly where I left Anamaria's boat last time I came here.'

            Then Jack saw the figure standing on the sloop's gangplank, and his feet came to a dead halt.

            For one single, horrifying moment, he thought it was Bootstrap Bill standing there, back from the bottom of the ocean to avenge his son's death, or maybe come to collect Jack, sent by some impatient god who'd decided that he had cheated death one too many times.  Then his brain caught up with his eyes and informed him that the figure's hair was dark, not sun-bleached blond, that he didn't have Bill's scar, stretching up from his jawline through the corner of his right eyebrow, that the eyes that were staring into his own were brown, not blue.

            Will.  It was Will.

            The paralysis gripping his feet suddenly vanished, and Jack did something that he had never done before in his entire life, even when faced with a beautiful woman.  He flung himself forward, almost stumbling over his own boots in his haste, and threw himself at Will, hugging him hard.

            "Don't you ever do that to me again!" he hissed fiercely, some part of him still aware enough of the situation to choke what ought to have been a shout down to a normal volume.  "You idiot!  You stupid, brainless, clumsy, lubberly excuse for a pirate!"  He was babbling, he realised, but he couldn't seem to stop.  Will hadn't moved, hadn't said anything, but it was Will, because he was only a little bit taller than Jack and Bill had been a lot taller, not to mention broader through the shoulders, plus, he would have slapped Jack alongside the head with the flat of one hand and told him to 'shut it' by this point, which Will hadn't done, which meant it really was Will.  "I thought you were dead.  I thought you were dead," he repeated, more quietly, that first burst of something that wasn't quite anger wearing down.  Rational thought began creeping back in its wake, and a horrible suspicion flashed into his mind.

            "You aren't, right?"  He backed up a step, holding Will at arms' length and inspecting him for any signs of incipient skeleton-ness.  "You're not under a curse, are you?"

            Will, who up until now had simply been regarding him with a slightly shell-shocked expression, finally moved, tugging his left arm out of Jack's grip and placing one hand on Jack's shoulder, which, incidentally, got the cutlass Jack was still grasping in his right hand a little farther away from him.  "Jack," he said, slowly and with great patience, "what are you talking about?"

            "You went overboard!" Jack almost snarled.  "I saw it.  I thought you had drowned.  I thought I'd lost you along with my ship, and Elizabeth too, seein' as how she wasn't exactly goin' to appreciate you bein' dead."

            "Jack," Will repeated, with a noticeable amount of 'don't upset the crazy man' calmness in his tone, "I can swim."

            Oh.  Right.  Jack suddenly felt extremely stupid.  Will could swim.  Of course Will could swim.  He'd even seen the lad do it before, when the Interceptor had sunk.  "You can swim," he parroted, staring at Will, who stared back at him intently, brows drawn together.  Elizabeth had moved up behind him and was now staring at both of them, looking from Will, to Jack himself, and back again with an expression that was not quite shock on her face.  Clearly, she had no idea what was going on.  It was nice to know someone else shared that problem.

            "Yes," Will repeated, sounding slightly exasperated now.  "I can swim.  I can swim quite well.  Jack, how hard were you hit on the head?"

            As if summoned by Will's words, the dull pain in his skull began to throb again, taking vicious revenge for the fact that Jack had been ignoring it since leaving the jail.  It didn't like being ignored, and it didn't like all this walking around, and the steady ache was beginning to make him feel ill.  Still, his head no longer felt as if it were coming apart, and the world was no longer pitching and heaving around him like a storm tossed ship.  Well, the ground was moving up and down a bit, but dry land always did that.  Solid terra firma was evil, and couldn't be trusted.

            "This?" Jack waved a hand toward the bruises on his face—it necessitated letting go of Will, but sacrifices occasionally had to be made for the sake of expressing oneself.  "A small inconvenience, courtesy of his Commodoreness."  He felt a wide, foolish grin spread itself over his face.  "You're not dead," he said again, for what was probably the twelfth time.

            Will reached out and snagged Jack's hand in midair, forcibly moving it out of the way and peering at his face.  One callused finger prodded carefully at Jack's forehead, above and slightly to the left of his eyebrow.  Jack jerked his head back, breath hissing though his teeth.  "Ow!"

            "Sorry," Will apologized half-heartedly.  "Blacksmith's hands."

            Warm blacksmith's hands.  Alive blacksmith's hands.  Dead men's hands were cold.  Will's blacksmith's hand prodded at Jack's temple again, provoking another flare of pain in swollen, bruised flesh.  Jack used the hand Will didn't have a grip on to try and bat the offending fingers away, and Will took the hint.  He stopped his pain-inducing poking and let his hand drop, trailing his fingers down the side of Jack's face as he did so, fingertips brushing along cheekbone and jawline in something that wasn't quite a caress.  Jack raised an eyebrow—the right one, the left one wouldn't move.  Will's hands caressing him was something that belonged firmly in the realm of 'evil thoughts that are fun precisely because you know they are evil.'  It wasn't supposed to happen in real life.  Then again, there were times when real life and Jack's imagination got difficult to tell apart.

            Elizabeth's voice broke into his thoughts, impatient and edged with worry.  "Jack, Will's fine.  Will, Jack's fine.  Can we all please get on the boat and leave before someone finds us?"

            Brilliant suggestion!  Elizabeth was definitely developing a flare for this sort of thing.

            "Yes, let's do that.  Leavin' would be a very good idea.  I think we may've worn out our welcome in this lovely settlement."  He made a sweeping gesture toward the little sloop and Will obediently jumped aboard, his movements not quite as graceful as they usually were.  It must have been a long day for him as well.

Will then proceeded to help Elizabeth and Jack aboard.  Sort of.  Elizabeth got a graceful steadying grip on her extended hand, as if he were helping her down from a coach.  Jack got a solid grip around his wrist and a forceful yank.  It threw him off balance, and he stumbled when his feet hit the deck and went sprawling forward into Will.

Will was knocked back a step by the impact, but managed to keep the pair of them from landing on their arses on the deck.  He grabbed Jack by the shoulders to steady him, much the same way Jack had taken hold of him earlier, and Jack sagged into the grip, grateful for the support.  His head really did hurt, and there was a ringing noise in his ears.  Everything was going to be all right now; Elizabeth and Will were here and it was safe to relax, and Will was a good support to relax against.  He'd get about to untying the mooring ropes and casting off in a bit, when the buzzing in his head went away.

"Jack?"  Will was staring into his face, looking very concerned and cute.  Someone put a hand on his arm, offering more support.  Elizabeth.

"Jack?"

"M'fine."  He shook off the dizziness and stood up straighter.  "You get the sails, love.  I've got the helm."  Nobody moved.  Jack ran the sentence through his head again, and realized that he'd forgotten to specify which Turner he'd been talking to.  "Will, sails.  Elizabeth, moorings," he clarified.  Still, no motion.

He appealed to Elizabeth, the voice of reason.  "Go cast off, love.  I'm fine."

"Once we're out of the harbour," she told him, in a voice that sounded disconcertingly like Anamaria handing out an order, "you're going to lie down somewhere."  And then she took his cutlass and went to go and cut them loose from the dock.

Jack pushed off from Will and made the four strides across the deck to the sloop's wheel.  The wooden planks rocked comfortingly under his feet, giving him his balance back.  "If you can swim," he asked Will, as something suddenly occurred to him, "why did you say you couldn't an' leave me to go down into the shark infested water all by me onesies?"

"I didn't say I couldn't, I said I'd be stupid to admit to it if I could," the answer came back as Will followed Elizabeth's lead and set about casting off and raising sail, far more smoothly than he had done the first time he and Jack had sailed out of Port Royal.  Watching them, Jack felt an odd sort of pride.  They had the makings of good sailors, both of them.  Even Elizabeth, though those beautiful hands of hers were going to be reduced to blistered wrecks by the time they reached—he fished out his compass and checked; the needle pointed east by northeast—Tortuga.  Once he'd done the tricky part and set the course, they could hold it for him.

Jack turned his attention to steering the sloop out toward the mouth of the harbour, past the Palisadoes and the string of little cays that dotted the horizon.  He pushed the ache in his head to the back of his mind and concentrated on the wheel under his hands.  He was Captain Jack Sparrow.  He could go aloft half-dead with scurvy in a frozen gale, reef sail hung-over, and set a course blind drunk.  He could certainly pilot a little sloop out of Kingston Harbour.

Half an hour later, the green and white shoreline of Jamaica dwindling behind them, he gladly handed the wheel over to Will and retreated to the vessel's little cabin.  He threw his bloodstained and by this point irrevocably ruined coat over a chest, left his boots on the floor, and made straight for the slightly-too-small bunk.

There was only one bed, he noted fuzzily as he dropped down onto the straw-filled mattress.  Things could get interesting.

When Elizabeth came in a few minutes later to swap her dress for the 'borrowed' uniform, he never even noticed.  She threw a blanket over him, tenderly brushed a long piece of back hair out of his face, and went on deck to have a serious and potentially embarrassing discussion with Will.  About extra-marital affairs.  And interesting and jingly pirates.  And sharing.

It was time they decided exactly who had eloped with who.  She had a feeling Jack was going to be rather pleasantly surprised when he woke up.

^_~

            Commodore James Edward Norrington stared down at the empty jail cell before him and clamped down hard on the impulse to curse.  Gone.  The bastard was gone.  Again.

            Corporal Jenkins hovered nervously at his elbow, doing his best to make himself invisible, as he had been doing ever since Norrington and Gillette had found him trussed up like a Christmas goose on the doorstep.  He had every right to be nervous.  One man, one unarmed, injured man, behind a locked door, had gotten the drop on him.  Unless he could offer one hell of an excuse, Jenkins wouldn't be keeping his corporal's stripe for long.

            "And you say it was like this when you woke up?" Norrington asked evenly, holding onto calmness with his fingernails. 

            "Yes, sir," Jenkins said.  "Someone hit me over the head, an' then when I woke up later with a thumpin' great headache, the little blighter was gone.  They must've snuck up behind me while that strumpet was talkin' to me," he volunteered, hanging his head.  "Sorry, sir."

            "What 'strumpet'?" Norrington asked, suddenly filled with a terrible foreboding.  'Please,' he begged silently, 'don't let it be her.  Telling the Governor that Sparrow slipped though my fingers again is going to be bad enough without-'

            "Blonde girl" Jenkins elaborated.  "She wanted to see the prisoner.  Said she was his 'cousin'." He snorted.   "Only one sort of 'cousin' comes to visit a man in a jail cell."

            It was Elizabeth.  Of course it had been Elizabeth.  Norrington sighed, holding up a hand to halt the flow of Jenkin's continued apology.  He resisted the urge to rub at his temples and thus ease the headache he could feel coming on.

            "Lieutenant Gillette," he prompted.

            "Sir?" Gillette turned his attention from the cell door to look at Norrington.  "The hinges don't look as though they've been touched.  Someone must have unlocked it."  He gave the door a kick.  It didn't budge.  "They seem to have locked it again before they left."

            "Wonderful," Norrington snapped.  "How considerate of Mr. Sparrow.  I see he left the keys behind for us as well."  He pointed at the key ring hanging on one of the wall pegs, a wall peg that last night had been occupied by Sparrow's belt and pistol.  At least he had had the foresight to unload the weapon after removing it from the man, so that, wherever he was, he wasn't running around with a loaded gun.

            He had also confiscated the impressive assortment of wooden cartridges hanging from the man's belt.  There had been upwards of a dozen of them, which made Norrington wonder why Sparrow had only had one bullet the first time they had captured him.  He had been much better armed this time.

            He'd still had the same worthless compass, though.  It was gone too, along with a cutlass and Jenkins' purse.  Sparrow had money, a weapon, and an accomplice.  He was probably half-way to the Lesser Antilles by now, or well on his way to the Bahamas.

            "Go down to the docks and find out which boat has been stolen," Norrington ordered Gillette.  "If none are missing, mount a guard on all naval vessels immediately.  In fact, have someone go check them now to make sure Sparrow hasn't cut their cables apart."

            Gillette looked about to object for a moment, but then he, too, seemed to remember Sparrow's infuriating theft of the Interceptor, and the humiliating way he had disabled the Dauntless before abandoning it to them.  He went.

            Norrington, the pressure in his temples slowly developing into a full-blown headache, left as well, departing through the early morning streets to go and confess to Governor Swann.  Jenkins remained behind at the jail, miserably twisting Sparrow's silk sash—the sash they had found knotted about his arms, complete with decorative bow—through his hands.  Those members of the Marine detachment who hadn't gone with Gillette stayed with him.  They were probably going to mock the hapless corporal mercilessly.  It would serve him right.  Perhaps he would learn to keep his guard up in the future.

            As it turned out, Norrington did not have to go to the Governor's house.  Willoughby Swann met him halfway there, storming determinedly toward the fort with his wig on crooked and a slightly dishevelled and very upset-looking Mrs. Swann in tow.

            "Where," he snapped, thrusting a crumpled piece of paper in Norrington's face, "is my daughter?"

            Norrington straightened the paper out and read it, recognizing Elizabeth's looping, ornate script. 

'Father,

By the time you find this letter, I will be gone from Port Royal.  I know you will not agree with my actions, but I can only hope that you can find it within your heart to forgive me…'

It did not mention Sparrow by name, nor did it specifically mention Will Turner, but she managed to make it very clear that there were 'ties binding her' that were 'stronger than duty and filial affection.' She even included an apology to Mary Rose, as well as a request that the Governor give 'her regrets, and her regards' to Norrington.

Norrington crushed the note into a ball and resisted the urge to throw it into the mud at his feet.  "I'm sorry, Governor," he said heavily.  "She's already gone.  She broke Sparrow out of jail last night.  It's my fault," he continued.  "I should have known better than to leave only one man on guard.  I ought to have kept the shackles on him and chained him to the wall.  I meant restrain him securely after visiting the jail last night, but…" he trailed off.  What excuse could he offer?  'He looked pathetic and I felt sorry for him,' was not acceptable.  Nor was 'I meant to tell your daughter that her husband was dead, but wanted to wait until today because I was too much of a coward to wake her up in the middle of the night to do it.'  If he had kept his word, and gone directly from the jail to the Governor's house last night, instead of waiting to leave it until after the hanging, she might not have left.  The belief that Will was somewhere out there waiting for her was probably what had motivated Elizabeth to run off in the first place.

            Gillette came to his rescue, hurrying up to him to report on the state of the docks.  Unfortunately, the news he brought wasn't good.

            "Our ships are all fine, sir.  I had the men check the cables just like you said.  The rigging and mooring lines, too.  No one's tampered with them.  But Harry Kennedy's sloop is gone.  Someone untied it last night and sailed off with it.  There's nothing there now but an empty pier."

            Norrington probably should have been angry.  He was angry, a bit, but mostly he simply felt resigned.  A crushing weight of inevitability seemed to have descended upon him, as all of the details of Sparrow's escape began to lay themselves out before him.

            "That's the sloop we confiscated from the smuggler we caught last month, right?" he asked, already knowing the answer.  "Damn.  Sorry, Mrs. Swann."  He turned back to Gillette.  "I should think he would only need two or three people to take her out.  He might even be able to sail her single handedly.  We've lost him."

            "But surely you're going to look," Governor Swann protested.  "One little boat can't be that hard to catch."

            "It is precisely because it is only one little boat that it will be damn near impossible to catch.  Sorry, Mrs. Swann," he apologized again, absently.  She waved a hand, as if to tell him not to trouble himself over his language.  "A craft that size could fit into any of hundreds of inlets or coves our ships could never venture into.  It's why smugglers like Kennedy are so difficult to apprehend most of the time." 

            Mrs. Swann sighed.  She was staring down at her folded hands with the strangest expression on her face.  It looked almost like… guilt?

            "I'm afraid this is my fault," she admitted.  "I should have known she meant to do something like this, but she sounded so upset.  She told me that she loved him, that she had to see him one last time, and I, I couldn't say no."

            Norrington felt the heavy mantle of guilt settle over his shoulders.  So Elizabeth had run off to try and join Will Turner.

            "She thinks Mr. Turner is waiting for her somewhere out there," he said, feeling once again the familiar anger at the younger man.  Even dead, he was still managing to drag Elizabeth into trouble.  "But he was thrown overboard and drowned during the battle.  I didn't know about it until last night, after I left your house," he told the governor.  "I should have spoken to her then.  I planned to wait and tell her today, but perhaps if I hadn't…" he trailed off, looking away.  Once again, he had failed where Elizabeth was concerned, where his duties to the Navy and to the Governor were concerned.  And once again, it was Sparrow's fault.  He had felt something that was almost pity toward the man the previous night, watching him sag against the bars of his cell and relate the story of Turner's death in same the dead, empty voice Norrington had heard so many officers use when they spoke of lost comrades.  For the first time, it had occurred to him that the slippery little blackguard might have some amount of feeling for his ship and his men, just as an honest captain would have.  Now, he rather regretted that momentary lapse.  Mrs. Swann would not get to see justice done for her husband's murder this day, but would instead have to live with the knowledge that his killer still roamed free.  She deserved better.

            The lines in Governor Swann's face seemed to deepen at this new blow.  He had been rather fond of the young man, Norrington knew, in spite of his occasional acts of disrespect and eventual betrayal. 

            Mrs. Swann frowned, and shook her head.  "No, not Mr. Turner.  Him.  That pirate.  She said that she had already lost Mr. Turner, and she had to say good-bye to that Sparrow before she lost him as well."

            The sorrow on Governor Swann's face changed to a look of horror.  "Elizabeth and Jack Sparrow?" he stammered. 

            It made a disturbing and horrible amount of sense, particularly when one considered Elizabeth's life-long fascination with pirates.  He had had his suspicions regarding Sparrow's relationship with Elizabeth from the beginning, and now they were confirmed.  Norrington found himself regretting that he hadn't hit the man harder when he'd had the chance.  "She didn't merely help him escape," he said hollowly.  "She eloped with him."  He turned to Gillette, who had been listening to the entire conversation with obvious fascination.  "Get the Intrepid ready to sail," he ordered.  "She's the fastest.  We need to have her out of the harbour before the tide changes if we want to have even a chance of finding them."  Even as he spoke, however, he knew that the search would be unsuccessful.  Nothing involving 'Captain' Jack Sparrow ever went right.  The man was a curse, a plague, a millstone about the necks of decent sailors everywhere.  And now he was out there sailing into the sunrise with the newly widowed Elizabeth Turner, to live happily and immorally ever after.  Life was not fair.

            As Gillette left, Norrington turned to Mrs. Swann, meeting her eyes rather uncomfortably.  He had to look down to do it.  She was a tiny little thing, fragile, like a piece of expensive porcelain.  So very different from Elizabeth.  "Mrs. Swann," he began, "I cannot begin to tell you how sorry I am about all this.  I swore to bring Sparrow to justice for you, and now I fear I have gone back on my word."

            "It's all right, Commodore," she said, managing a faint smile.  "This is my fault, not yours.  You did the best any man could have done, and I owe you my thanks for it."

            And despite the morning's dire events, Norrington felt himself smiling back.  "No thanks are necessary," he told her.  He turned slightly to include the Governor in his next remark.  "I fear I must leave you both again.  I shall do my best to make this expedition more successful than the last, but I fear your daughter may be lost to you.  Still, I shall try to recover her." And Sparrow, he added to himself grimly.  Next time, he wasn't going to wait to get the verminous piece of scum back to Port Royal.  He was going to hang him from a yardarm the first chance he got and put a stop to his pillaging once and for all.  "Governor, Mrs. Swann."  He turned to go.

            Mrs. Swann put a hand out to stop him, laying it on his elbow for the briefest of moments before she let it drop.  "It's Mary Rose," she corrected softly, when he turned back.

            "James," he offered almost automatically.

            She smiled again, this one a little more confident than her last, and looked up at him through pale, sandy-coloured lashes.  "Good luck… James."

            Norrington walked through the muddy streets to the docks with a slightly lighter heart.  Elizabeth was gone, Sparrow was gone, and his ships probably weren't going to be able to catch them.  Still, there was always the future.

            Perhaps this morning hadn't been such a complete disaster after all.

cneter^_~

            It was odd, Anamaria mused, how sunsets just didn't seem as colourful as they used to.  Or maybe it was just that some of the thrill of watching them had faded, now that she had fewer friends to watch them with her.

            It truly was a beautiful sunset, the sun swollen and red like a giant ruby, surrounded by gold and carnelian clouds—a treasure galleon's worth of loot spread across the horizon.  Evenings like this, when a woman had a loyal crew around her, and a bottle of good rum near to hand, she should be content to stand on the deck of her newly repaired ship and watch the sunset.  Except that it wasn't really her crew, and rum just didn't taste as good when she didn't have to fight with Jack over the bottle, and the deck beneath her feet didn't belong to her.  Could never belong to her.

Her dream ship was a two-master, significantly smaller than the Black Pearl and with a much shallower draft, perfect for hugging coastlines and gliding in and out of narrow coves in the dead of night.  Smuggling was where the real money lay. This big, menacing frigate with her heavily armed gundeck and narrow, dark hull was not what she wanted.  Not at all.  For one thing, the wind wailed through the rigging at night like a widow mourning her dead husband.

"So anyways," Gibbs' voice continued behind her, "this miniature chinee woman is standin' in the doorway gabblin' at us in English all mixed up with some heathen language, and it turns out she won't let us in until I pay.  And so I'm tryin' to explain to her that we don't want to lay with-" he coughed, and Anamaria could almost see him remembering that she was there without even having to look back.  "That is, ah, visit with, any o' her girls.  We just want to come inside to hide fer a bit.  Remember," he added, "this whole time we got John Company's soldiers scourin' the streets fer their escaped prisoner, all of 'em angry at bein' made fools of and out fer blood."  Judging by the silence on deck, the crew was hanging on Gibbs' every word.  "So I tries to explain," he went on, "and I steps forward, and there she is in front of me, shakin' her finger in my face and sayin,' 'You no want girl?  Yes, yes, very good.  We have many fine boy, you want boy.' And then she points dead at Jack and says, bold as you please, 'You bring own boy, is extra."

There was a chorus of laughter, albeit laughter with a slightly hollow edge to it.  Someone made a strangled, choking sound, followed by a series of hysterical giggles.  Even Cotton was laughing, that odd raspy noise that was one of the only sounds he made.  Anamaria continued to stare at the sunset, watching a sloop sail gently into the harbour, its sail silhouetted against the sinking sun.  A ship like that, she mused.  Small and sneaky and free from ghosts.

"So," Twigg's voice burst out impatiently, "what did you do?"

"Well," Gibbs paused grandly for emphasis, "I'm all set to argue, but then Jack elbows me in the ribs and damns my eyes and tells me to pay her quick so's we can get off the street.  So I did.  Most expensive visit to a brothel I ever made."

"Arawk," Cotton's parrot commented.  "Any port in a storm."

"You got a point there, Cotton."

"Did you have to pay by the hour, or for the night?" McTaggert asked, sniggering slightly.

Anamaria didn't listen for Gibbs' answer.  She'd heard this story before, in a tavern in Bridgetown, and it just wasn't the same without Jack's constant interruptions, hand waving explanations, and attempts to act out the parts of Gibbs and the old Chinese woman, voices and all.  Instead, she watched the sloop continue on her path toward them.  She was coming about too slowly, her crew clearly inexperienced or short-handed, and her bow was pointed several degrees off of the course it should have been set on.

Funny, but one of the two sailors hauling the sloop's gaff sail about looked almost like a woman.  Either that, or a slightly built young man with very long hair.  Who just happened to be wearing a British Royal Marine's red coat, the brightly coloured garment vividly out of place in the small and distinctly non-navy sloop.

"Either I've gone daft, or that's Elizabeth Swann," Anamaria announced.

Gibbs, torn away from his slightly maudlin storytelling by her comment, appeared at the rail next to her.  "What?  Where?"

"There."  She pointed at the sloop, squinting against the glare from the setting sun to try and make out the little vessel's three crew members.  One man and the woman-who-could-not-possibly-be-Elizabeth-Swann trimming sail, and, at the wheel…

"Mère de Dieu," she breathed.  It wasn't possible.  It couldn't possibly be-

"I said come about!" the shout echoed across the water.  "That means pull harder!  Harder!  If you make me run into me own ship I'm feedin' both of you to the sharks, savvy?"

Anamaria was struck silent, shock robbing her of the ability to make a sound, but Gibbs spoke for both of them, cupping his hands around his mouth and bellowing, "Jack!  Jack Sparrow, you daft bastard!  Get over here and take your boat back!"

And then she was smiling, grinning so widely that it hurt her face and waving her hat frantically in the air while almost the entire crew clustered around her, pointing and shouting excitedly.  Beneath them, the Black Pearl seemed almost to bounce in the water as the sloop's bow wave rippled past where she rode at anchor.  Suddenly, she didn't seem dark and haunted anymore.

^_~

Bullets/cartridges:   Early eighteenth century pistols (and muskets) were single shot breech loaders (meaning that one loaded the gun by forcing the bullet down the barrel, similar to the way one would load a canon).  Soldiers or musketeers would often carry extra bullets around with them in wooden containers, complete with a single shot's worth of powder in each one—early cartridges. If you've ever seen someone dressed up as a seventeenth century soldier with bunches of little wooden cylinders hanging all over him, that what those were. Revolvers, which held multiple bullets and could be fired several times without reloading, were not invented until the nineteenth century.  So I'm not sure what the whole big deal about the "pistol with one bullet in it" was in the movie—unless what they meant was that Jack was given a loaded pistol but no ammunition for a second shot.  Or Disney screwed up and didn't realize that revolvers weren't around yet.

Lesser Antilles: The Antilles are the largest group of islands in the West Indies, extending from Cuba to Trinidad.  They are divided into two groups, the Greater Antilles or Leeward Isles (Cuba, Jamaica, and Haiti), and the Lesser Antilles or Windward Isles, a string of smaller islands east of Haiti and Puerto Rico, running from around the 18th parallel down toward the South American Coast.

Sloop:  A small, single-masted sailing vessel.  Sloops were both fast and highly manoeuvrable, with a shallow draft, and were often used by pirates or smugglers.  They were too small to carry many guns (a fully armed sloop usually only had about six or seven), but could often outrun or outmanoeuvre larger ships.

^_~

Thank you to all of my reviewers!

Honor & Seph: Thanks! Sorry, this isn't exactly "soon," is it?  This time I have midterms and Spring registration as an real excuse, I swear.

Erinya & Concrete Angel: Thanks!  Ah, the reason my J/E isn't just about sex is because I can't write sex scenes (plus, there's so much more to Jack than just his unimaginable sexiness).  The soldiers were pretty mean to him, weren't they—don't blame Norrington, though.  He did tell his men to stop beating Jack up.  The Jack hanging imagery… yeah.  Um, hanging's not pretty, and many fics/movies sort of downplay how extremely not pretty it is.

Shellie Rae & Kaitou Ann: Thanks!  I'm glad y'all like my versions of the characters ^_^.  And Mary Rose.  Y'all two may be the only people out there who like her (other than me).  Elizabeth is getting a little more aggressive, isn't she?  She's going to make a good pirate, now that she and Will have eloped with Jack.

Calendar: Thanks!  Nope, not surrounded.  That one was a misleading cliffhanger.

L'Morgan: Thanks!  Well, Jack's out of there now.  There's really not much eighteenth century medicine can do for a concussion (other than wait for it to go away), but once he woke up again, Lizzie and Will cleaned all the blood off him (feel free to imagine naked!Jack at this point) and threw his coat overboard.  He and Lizzie arrive in Tortuga both wearing Will's shirts.

i.c.k.: Thanks!  The confrontation with Mary Rose was actually a last minute addition, to give her a chance to have a couple of things explained to her (well, sort of).  The bit with Jack has been in my head for months.  As for Elizabeth's sailing skills or lack thereof, well, it's possible that she was exaggerating her ignorance in order to convince Will to let her go to the jail.

TwigCollins:  Thanks!  I'm glad you like the dialogue and historical references.  I work hard on the first, and the second just have a way of creeping in (my inner History major seizes the helm every once in a while).

WCSPegasus: Thanks!  I'm one of your fandom favourites? *squees in delight *  Yay!

Blank: Thanks!  Don't worry about not commenting before—any comment is a good comment.  ^_^ This is the first time I've ever written a story with a love triangle in it, let alone a threesome, and remembering to include all of the relationships was hard work. You liked the yellow fever conversation? *grins happily * That was one of my favourite bits to write.

^_~

This instalment of piratical melodrama was brought to you by St. Bernerd's mint chocolate chip ice cream, permetaform's picspam, the Star Mountain Internet Cafe, that little crinkle Orlando Bloom gets between his eyebrows when he frowns, and Keira Knightly's breasts.