AGHHHH God with the ages this is taking! I'm wrapping it up though I promise and THEN (if ppl aren't pissed off with me
cuz of how long it took me with this one) a SEQUEL! *cough* i'm an obsessive loser *cough*.
Jackfan2: Hee hee, thankee kindly! I like that line also, gotta give the lad some nice rant-y work :D
Zara: I'm getting there, i'm getting there! But you know the sequel anyway cuz I told you so :P.
Quiet-one145: well for a while I wasn't sure how I was going to get Jade out of it, hence long LONG wait for this part,
lol
Milady*Sparrow: You need to HOG TIE your prisoners! They can't get away then!! I love Rita, problem is I've put so
many characters in this (dumb me) I'm having a hard time making all of them any good. Oh well, tee tum...
Simply Sara: Keep the rum coming! It helps me concentrate... or otherwise.... *snigger*.
Robyn Lee: Thankies :) I shall endeavour to persevere ;)
evenstar: I know i'm sorry for the big waits, I suck mightily :(
~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Where is my strength, I need it, where is the warrior, the fighter, the pirate? I'm blind there's nothing and everything
out there in the emptiness waiting for me and I can't recognise it.
I'm completely.... alone...
Barbossa could be standing right beside me and I wouldn't even know it.
His breath... sifting through my hair...
Jade sharply span, tension rife within her body as she trembled with clenched nerves. Her breathing was a danger, harsh,
jagged slithers of noise that she wanted to cut off so she could not be heard. So she could disappear into the ground.
This was a waiting game that they had been dealt a far better hand in. She only had a few weeks before she was mute and
useless, unable to move. They had forever. There was no hope of reaching an exit, she did not even know where she was
to orientate herself towards one exit or another...
Realisation hit Jade like a punch to her stomach, forceably ripping air from her lungs. The great entrance to the
Minotaur tunnels through which they had entered, so well known by so many a pirate, was still open. Lost and blind as
Barbossa's crew may have been, they had eternity to find their way back there.
They had eternity, to escape.
And she knew full well they would not spend it idly.
Quietly stunned by the knowledge of this, she remained dazed and empty in the dark, more than aware of the futility of any
action she could attempt.
Futile.
A remnant smirk inched its way around her face.
But when had that ever stopped her?
Clenching her jaw on the new and dark determination that rose up from her guts, she stood up once more. To have given up
her life potentially to this vengeance for it all to go wrong, for it not to have worked after everything she had let be
sealed off along with the sunlight...
Jack, Rita, her crew. Friends and future friends she had not yet made.
That, she would not allow. They were to remain cursed, even if that were the last choice she ever made. Pressed tightly
to the wall, she inched along it, arms spread wide to encounter edges and turnings, her feet softly scraping, searching
around her for dips, steps, dropped weapons, possessions. Her foot skimmed something and she crouched low in the dark,
hands becoming eyes as she fumbled and detected. A skeleton, rags still covering the ice cold bones. Pulling a shinbone
from the mess, she tore the remaining rags and wrapped them around one end. Smiling to herself, she continued forward
once more...
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
A small cavern, disturbingly not that far from where Jade crept, was a throng of activity and frantic movement.
"GET OUT THERE YEH MAGGOTS!! FIND MORE WOOD!" Barbossa roared at them, passing back and forth in front of the
impressive fire they had created already. Blind as they were in this dark, they could not even find their way back to
the last cavern they had inhabited, near to the one exit they knew of. Whilst the crew were hesitant to venture out
into that dark now that most of them had found their way here after the initial beginnings of the fire had been lit, they
were even more unwilling to suffer Barbossa's fury. He seemed unable to still himself, pacing, spinning, fuming, eyes
hot with a manic violent anger. Death was all he had in his head, as it was now all that filled his skin. To have it
back, the touch, the taste, the texture, only for it to be taken again... and back into this deadened flesh torture, was
more than he would ever allow himself to suffer.
"We go out in teams and we find her! And she gets us back out of here!" he snarled as they scrambled away from him in
every direction, tending to the fire. Even still, more members of the crew were stumbling out of the dark and discovering
the rest of their crewmates. Even a fire as large as this did not seem to penetrate the dark further than the
circumference of the cavern.
He had killed her once. An accident, a movement of her foolishness that neither of them could take back. But it would
make killing her a second time, his bewitching little girl, so much easier...
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
"Who's hand is that...?"
"Wouldn't know Miss Elizabeth.... Ow!!"
"Sorry mate, was that your ankle?"
"I wish it was my ankle!!"
Will had momentarily managed to stop the determinedly rampaging Jack in order to remind him that there was no way they
could all go running off into that blackness and hope to find each other again, let alone Jade. Jack had reluctantly
agreed to them all being tied together, though Will knew he felt this impeded his progress. Holding the flaming branch
high above his head, Jack squinted in to the dark, scowling in annoyance and dragging the others behind him. "You're
gonna walk us right into a wall Sparrow, you don't know where yeh going!" said Rita caustically, her obsidian eyes
flashing left and right in the flickering shadows. "Well if you'd be so kind as to illuminate me on how I could find
a way in this black I'd be more than grateful." he responded in kind, never pausing to even glance back at her. He was
forced to however when she ground to a halt and the procession abruptly stopped. He let out a surprised yelp as she
grabbed him savagely by the back of his head and yanked him towards her "Yeh think you're the only one who cares here?
I want to find her as much as you do but scurryin' around here like lost rats will be less than helpful." She hissed,
releasing him just as sharply. Desperately trying to resurrect his dignity, Jack brushed himself down and coughed briskly
"Well, would you happen to have any ideas then Rita?" he replied, dripping sarcasm with an errant smirk on his face, eyes
narrowed with barely retained humour. "Well considerin' I have the map on me, wouldn't it be more sensible for me to be
leading?" she growled in annoyance as they continued onwards.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Betty frowned out at the shoreline that glowed hot against the virulent blue of the sea, searching in vain for movement,
for an indication. Margot and Cotton wandered over to join her. Betty gave a disgusted grunt before straightening and
pacing away from the edge of the Pearl. "This is ridiculous! We ain't seen hide nor hair of them for two days, and we're
still just sittin' here! What are we waiting for, the bodies to go floatin' past??" she snarled to no one in particular.
"Cap'n Quinn told us to wait for the signal, so we're waitin' for it. And watch yeh mouth, none of 'em are dead."
said Sally with a warning tone to her voice. "Well maybe they will be if we stick around here, yeh think of that?" Betty
spat back sharply. Both crews stirred quietly with indecision, a bristling charge of exchanged worried looks running
through them. "We'll serve no one any good waitin' around here!" continued Betty angrily, cheeks red with frustration.
When she received no response she span back to the edge of the ship, fuming, to watch the horizon for some vestiges of
hope that their crewmates were alive.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Jade grimaced out into the dark, trying valiantly to conjure up a mental image of the tunnels, looking for a signpost, a
prominent turning that she recalled from Rita's tattoo. The slowly swelling hurt of fear that she was quelling told her
that she had passed well out of the areas of the map that she had recalled. She was in the intricate net of turnings that
she had not had the chance to memorise. More out of absentmindedness, for a distraction, than to serve any purpose of
orientating herself, she scratched an arrow into the rock beside her every ten feet or so, showing where she had gone.
At least now she would know if she was going in circles...
The flames of her bone torch writhed agitatedly as a wind caught them and she halted, trying to sense from which direction
this new air encroached into the stale from. New air would suggest, through however convoluted a route, an exit.
Turning, she headed in the direction of this soft, barely perceptible breeze.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Not again, lost, not again. How hopeless was this? He couldn't just have a taste of her, a brief snatch of her presence
only for her to be gone again. She might as well have stayed dead if that was all he could have. It simply woke up
intensities he had always ignored into rabid, frantic wakefulness. Because he needed her. Comrade, ally, soul screaming
out instincts of what she meant even if the words for it didn't exist. He didn't want a balance, he didn't want a
sedative, he didn't want a restraint. Never be tied down. Freedom. But as an ally and as a friend and as everything
magnificent she was, she was his harmony. She flew just as wild and free, never holding him back, joining him in
everything. They were each others adrenaline rush that never allowed the other to stop. She ran beside him.
That wasn't something he could afford to lose.
Will slammed into Jack's back as he stopped moving, feeling the tension running rife through him. The frustration of
their escapade was beginning to get to all of them. Will tightened his hand around Elizabeth's as she let out a heated
gasp of exasperation and gave Anamaria an encouraging smile in the orange glow. Even now his own brain was still coming
to terms with what Jade had done for them, for all of them. She had remained in a sealed prison with her worst demons to
ensure that they escaped. All his past impressions of her, suspicions of her kidnapping of Elizabeth, worries about her
seemingly off-hand attitude to the repercussions of her plan. Now all seemed to turn to guilty soot in his mouth as he
thought of the lengths she had gone to to protect them. However dissolute a life she chose to lead she had a heart of
gold when it came to her friends, to Rita, to Jack...
"We need to think up a plan." said Elizabeth determinedly, looking from one dejected face to the next. "And to what
exact end would this legendary plan find us Missy?" enquired Jack drolly, his face utterly blank, not looking at any of
them, his thoughts completely internal. "Well we can't just stay here! And we can't just keep wandering around in the
dark!" she exclaimed further. There was a long silence and Syla finally looked at Rita expectantly "Well?" the old woman
said sharply, eyes needle-bright cores of persuasion. A mute communication darted between their two gazes as the others
looked on, unnerved. Rita nodded grimly "All right..." she murmured, almost to herself, resigned and quiet. Syla nodded
her approval, shooting a glance at Anamaria "You might want to step back." she cautioned, backing away from Rita herself.
A ring swiftly formed at a substantial distance as the others watched Rita warily, her frame drooping, tightened,
solidified and yet sinking like a tree too heavy with leaves. Every breath that slid out seemed strained, controlled,
focused and distilled down to one purpose behind her lidded eyes. Her lips moved in the most guttural of murmurings that
none of them could hear let alone decipher. Even Jack now turned and viewed what she was doing with some curiousity as
her hands tremulously rose, twitching like maimed animals, gripping together as her voice became louder, a dirge, a hiss,
a backbeat to the dance of her hands.
Her voice rose and filled the air like tangible fog, sparks of power practically emanating from her very speech before she
span sharply, eyes milk-white and huge, and smashed her clenched fists to the floor.
The others watched in fascinated disbelief as what appeared to be a hairline crack, glowing pale white, drudgingly snaked
its way from her hands, trickling away from them into the distance. Premeditated, cautious, like a little animal sniffing
out the right direction, it trailed off, Rita's sybellent whisper telling it its course.
She spared them each a weak smile as she shook visibly.
"Follow the trail."
cuz of how long it took me with this one) a SEQUEL! *cough* i'm an obsessive loser *cough*.
Jackfan2: Hee hee, thankee kindly! I like that line also, gotta give the lad some nice rant-y work :D
Zara: I'm getting there, i'm getting there! But you know the sequel anyway cuz I told you so :P.
Quiet-one145: well for a while I wasn't sure how I was going to get Jade out of it, hence long LONG wait for this part,
lol
Milady*Sparrow: You need to HOG TIE your prisoners! They can't get away then!! I love Rita, problem is I've put so
many characters in this (dumb me) I'm having a hard time making all of them any good. Oh well, tee tum...
Simply Sara: Keep the rum coming! It helps me concentrate... or otherwise.... *snigger*.
Robyn Lee: Thankies :) I shall endeavour to persevere ;)
evenstar: I know i'm sorry for the big waits, I suck mightily :(
~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Where is my strength, I need it, where is the warrior, the fighter, the pirate? I'm blind there's nothing and everything
out there in the emptiness waiting for me and I can't recognise it.
I'm completely.... alone...
Barbossa could be standing right beside me and I wouldn't even know it.
His breath... sifting through my hair...
Jade sharply span, tension rife within her body as she trembled with clenched nerves. Her breathing was a danger, harsh,
jagged slithers of noise that she wanted to cut off so she could not be heard. So she could disappear into the ground.
This was a waiting game that they had been dealt a far better hand in. She only had a few weeks before she was mute and
useless, unable to move. They had forever. There was no hope of reaching an exit, she did not even know where she was
to orientate herself towards one exit or another...
Realisation hit Jade like a punch to her stomach, forceably ripping air from her lungs. The great entrance to the
Minotaur tunnels through which they had entered, so well known by so many a pirate, was still open. Lost and blind as
Barbossa's crew may have been, they had eternity to find their way back there.
They had eternity, to escape.
And she knew full well they would not spend it idly.
Quietly stunned by the knowledge of this, she remained dazed and empty in the dark, more than aware of the futility of any
action she could attempt.
Futile.
A remnant smirk inched its way around her face.
But when had that ever stopped her?
Clenching her jaw on the new and dark determination that rose up from her guts, she stood up once more. To have given up
her life potentially to this vengeance for it all to go wrong, for it not to have worked after everything she had let be
sealed off along with the sunlight...
Jack, Rita, her crew. Friends and future friends she had not yet made.
That, she would not allow. They were to remain cursed, even if that were the last choice she ever made. Pressed tightly
to the wall, she inched along it, arms spread wide to encounter edges and turnings, her feet softly scraping, searching
around her for dips, steps, dropped weapons, possessions. Her foot skimmed something and she crouched low in the dark,
hands becoming eyes as she fumbled and detected. A skeleton, rags still covering the ice cold bones. Pulling a shinbone
from the mess, she tore the remaining rags and wrapped them around one end. Smiling to herself, she continued forward
once more...
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
A small cavern, disturbingly not that far from where Jade crept, was a throng of activity and frantic movement.
"GET OUT THERE YEH MAGGOTS!! FIND MORE WOOD!" Barbossa roared at them, passing back and forth in front of the
impressive fire they had created already. Blind as they were in this dark, they could not even find their way back to
the last cavern they had inhabited, near to the one exit they knew of. Whilst the crew were hesitant to venture out
into that dark now that most of them had found their way here after the initial beginnings of the fire had been lit, they
were even more unwilling to suffer Barbossa's fury. He seemed unable to still himself, pacing, spinning, fuming, eyes
hot with a manic violent anger. Death was all he had in his head, as it was now all that filled his skin. To have it
back, the touch, the taste, the texture, only for it to be taken again... and back into this deadened flesh torture, was
more than he would ever allow himself to suffer.
"We go out in teams and we find her! And she gets us back out of here!" he snarled as they scrambled away from him in
every direction, tending to the fire. Even still, more members of the crew were stumbling out of the dark and discovering
the rest of their crewmates. Even a fire as large as this did not seem to penetrate the dark further than the
circumference of the cavern.
He had killed her once. An accident, a movement of her foolishness that neither of them could take back. But it would
make killing her a second time, his bewitching little girl, so much easier...
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
"Who's hand is that...?"
"Wouldn't know Miss Elizabeth.... Ow!!"
"Sorry mate, was that your ankle?"
"I wish it was my ankle!!"
Will had momentarily managed to stop the determinedly rampaging Jack in order to remind him that there was no way they
could all go running off into that blackness and hope to find each other again, let alone Jade. Jack had reluctantly
agreed to them all being tied together, though Will knew he felt this impeded his progress. Holding the flaming branch
high above his head, Jack squinted in to the dark, scowling in annoyance and dragging the others behind him. "You're
gonna walk us right into a wall Sparrow, you don't know where yeh going!" said Rita caustically, her obsidian eyes
flashing left and right in the flickering shadows. "Well if you'd be so kind as to illuminate me on how I could find
a way in this black I'd be more than grateful." he responded in kind, never pausing to even glance back at her. He was
forced to however when she ground to a halt and the procession abruptly stopped. He let out a surprised yelp as she
grabbed him savagely by the back of his head and yanked him towards her "Yeh think you're the only one who cares here?
I want to find her as much as you do but scurryin' around here like lost rats will be less than helpful." She hissed,
releasing him just as sharply. Desperately trying to resurrect his dignity, Jack brushed himself down and coughed briskly
"Well, would you happen to have any ideas then Rita?" he replied, dripping sarcasm with an errant smirk on his face, eyes
narrowed with barely retained humour. "Well considerin' I have the map on me, wouldn't it be more sensible for me to be
leading?" she growled in annoyance as they continued onwards.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Betty frowned out at the shoreline that glowed hot against the virulent blue of the sea, searching in vain for movement,
for an indication. Margot and Cotton wandered over to join her. Betty gave a disgusted grunt before straightening and
pacing away from the edge of the Pearl. "This is ridiculous! We ain't seen hide nor hair of them for two days, and we're
still just sittin' here! What are we waiting for, the bodies to go floatin' past??" she snarled to no one in particular.
"Cap'n Quinn told us to wait for the signal, so we're waitin' for it. And watch yeh mouth, none of 'em are dead."
said Sally with a warning tone to her voice. "Well maybe they will be if we stick around here, yeh think of that?" Betty
spat back sharply. Both crews stirred quietly with indecision, a bristling charge of exchanged worried looks running
through them. "We'll serve no one any good waitin' around here!" continued Betty angrily, cheeks red with frustration.
When she received no response she span back to the edge of the ship, fuming, to watch the horizon for some vestiges of
hope that their crewmates were alive.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Jade grimaced out into the dark, trying valiantly to conjure up a mental image of the tunnels, looking for a signpost, a
prominent turning that she recalled from Rita's tattoo. The slowly swelling hurt of fear that she was quelling told her
that she had passed well out of the areas of the map that she had recalled. She was in the intricate net of turnings that
she had not had the chance to memorise. More out of absentmindedness, for a distraction, than to serve any purpose of
orientating herself, she scratched an arrow into the rock beside her every ten feet or so, showing where she had gone.
At least now she would know if she was going in circles...
The flames of her bone torch writhed agitatedly as a wind caught them and she halted, trying to sense from which direction
this new air encroached into the stale from. New air would suggest, through however convoluted a route, an exit.
Turning, she headed in the direction of this soft, barely perceptible breeze.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Not again, lost, not again. How hopeless was this? He couldn't just have a taste of her, a brief snatch of her presence
only for her to be gone again. She might as well have stayed dead if that was all he could have. It simply woke up
intensities he had always ignored into rabid, frantic wakefulness. Because he needed her. Comrade, ally, soul screaming
out instincts of what she meant even if the words for it didn't exist. He didn't want a balance, he didn't want a
sedative, he didn't want a restraint. Never be tied down. Freedom. But as an ally and as a friend and as everything
magnificent she was, she was his harmony. She flew just as wild and free, never holding him back, joining him in
everything. They were each others adrenaline rush that never allowed the other to stop. She ran beside him.
That wasn't something he could afford to lose.
Will slammed into Jack's back as he stopped moving, feeling the tension running rife through him. The frustration of
their escapade was beginning to get to all of them. Will tightened his hand around Elizabeth's as she let out a heated
gasp of exasperation and gave Anamaria an encouraging smile in the orange glow. Even now his own brain was still coming
to terms with what Jade had done for them, for all of them. She had remained in a sealed prison with her worst demons to
ensure that they escaped. All his past impressions of her, suspicions of her kidnapping of Elizabeth, worries about her
seemingly off-hand attitude to the repercussions of her plan. Now all seemed to turn to guilty soot in his mouth as he
thought of the lengths she had gone to to protect them. However dissolute a life she chose to lead she had a heart of
gold when it came to her friends, to Rita, to Jack...
"We need to think up a plan." said Elizabeth determinedly, looking from one dejected face to the next. "And to what
exact end would this legendary plan find us Missy?" enquired Jack drolly, his face utterly blank, not looking at any of
them, his thoughts completely internal. "Well we can't just stay here! And we can't just keep wandering around in the
dark!" she exclaimed further. There was a long silence and Syla finally looked at Rita expectantly "Well?" the old woman
said sharply, eyes needle-bright cores of persuasion. A mute communication darted between their two gazes as the others
looked on, unnerved. Rita nodded grimly "All right..." she murmured, almost to herself, resigned and quiet. Syla nodded
her approval, shooting a glance at Anamaria "You might want to step back." she cautioned, backing away from Rita herself.
A ring swiftly formed at a substantial distance as the others watched Rita warily, her frame drooping, tightened,
solidified and yet sinking like a tree too heavy with leaves. Every breath that slid out seemed strained, controlled,
focused and distilled down to one purpose behind her lidded eyes. Her lips moved in the most guttural of murmurings that
none of them could hear let alone decipher. Even Jack now turned and viewed what she was doing with some curiousity as
her hands tremulously rose, twitching like maimed animals, gripping together as her voice became louder, a dirge, a hiss,
a backbeat to the dance of her hands.
Her voice rose and filled the air like tangible fog, sparks of power practically emanating from her very speech before she
span sharply, eyes milk-white and huge, and smashed her clenched fists to the floor.
The others watched in fascinated disbelief as what appeared to be a hairline crack, glowing pale white, drudgingly snaked
its way from her hands, trickling away from them into the distance. Premeditated, cautious, like a little animal sniffing
out the right direction, it trailed off, Rita's sybellent whisper telling it its course.
She spared them each a weak smile as she shook visibly.
"Follow the trail."