Title: 'Cause Islands Are a Girl's Best Friend
Author: Troll Princess
Fandom: Pirates/X-Men
Pairing: Jubilee/Elizabeth Swann, written for Round Six of The Pairing List That Ate Fandom
Summary: Let's just say that Elizabeth had ended up on that island with someone else. And then let's say there was femslash.
Disclaimer: "Dear Troll Princess' teacher, please excuse her from gym class, as she has borrowed my characters, mythology and universe for her own storytelling purposes. And also, because today is volleyball day and she's universally acknowledged to be absolute crap at it. Love and other indoor sports, the real owners of said characters."
Part Two
A little while later, as Elizabeth casually squinted up at the tops of the palm trees as if she'd spot a very small airport nestled in their fronds, she listened to Jubilee's sordid tale of battle and dimensional rifts and teammates who took their sweet time with badly needed rescues and gave the young woman with the spiky black hair her unbiased opinion on the matter.
"That," she said, kicking one of the palm trees in frustration, "is complete and utter nonsense."
Jubilee smirked as she watched Elizabeth get more and more agitated with every passing second. "Says the girl who just got shoved off the pirate ship into the ocean not an hour ago and yet now has completely dry Herbal Essences hair. Tug the other leg, chica, it plays Justin Timberlake."
Dragging her attention away from the neverending search for an emergency exit, Elizabeth whirled on Jubilee and snapped, "But you couldn't possibly be from another time! The absurdity of it --"
Her grin widening, Jubilee waved another one of her numerous snack foods -- one that Elizabeth had already tried and found quite enjoyable -- under the other girl's nose and asked, "Another Twinkie, oh queen and commander of all things logical?"
Elizabeth's jaw snapped shut, and after a brief moment of smug silence on Jubilee's part, Elizabeth snatched the Twinkie from Jubilee's grasp and let herself smile broadly, making Jubilee go all warm and fuzzy in places she'd rather not think about at the moment. "Don't mind if I do," she said, and peeled the wrapping away like an expert before shoving nearly the whole damn thing into her mouth. Jubilee giggled at that, and Elizabeth chewed and swallowed before giving Jubilee a dark look. "Let's make a pact, shall we? No more questions regarding your obvious mental distress or pastries of questionable origin from me --"
"And no more mentioning how many of my guy friends would kill small fuzzy animals to switch places with me right now?"
"Exactly," Elizabeth said.
She went back to searching the grounds of the island, and Jubilee trailed close behind, asking, "So what are we looking for, exactly?"
Elizabeth stepped up to a palm tree and rapped on the trunk, and Jubilee briefly wondered if the sudden introduction of Twinkie ingredients into Elizabeth's diet had driven the girl stark raving bonkers. "An acquaintance of mine ..." Elizabeth's voice trailed off for a moment as she allowed herself a groan of exasperation. "... if you even want to call him that, spent quite a bit of time alone on this island once. Perhaps he left something behind we can use."
Jubilee cocked an eyebrow. "Like what? A cell phone tower? An Internet connection? Stop me when I'm getting warm here."
Ignoring the strange girl's confusing references, Elizabeth only noticed Jubilee's mocking tone, which didn't help her slowly growing annoyance any. Turning towards the other girl, Elizabeth frowned and said, "I refuse to believe that that conniving scoundrel simply waved his hands in the air and found himself surrounded by ships willing to give him safe passage to the nearest port." Then, with a reluctant grimace, she added, "Then again, this is Jack Sparrow we're speaking of."
Elizabeth turned to continue searching the large patch of grass they'd wandered onto and the sudden forced lack of attention -- admittedly by someone who was starting to look less emotionally stable than most of the Summers family at this point -- made Jubilee snap, "Okay, you know what? You go ahead and search this entire spit of land for a rowboat or a helicopter or Waldo or whatever the hell you expect to find, and I'm just going to be over on the beach, waiting for the fabric of reality to rip open."
Elizabeth looked over her shoulder at Jubilee with an amused expression, and Jubilee winced.
"Damn, and I was trying to end on a smart note," she muttered, and turned on her heels to head back to her coat and her junk food.
And promptly tripped and fell face first onto the sand.
"Um, ow," she said, getting up slowly as she rubbed at the part of her face that had hit the sand.
"Jubilee!" Elizabeth forgot her annoyance and ran to Jubilee's side, inspecting the other girl's face with genuine concern. "Are you all right?"
"Oh, I'm fine," Jubilee said, wiggling her nose to test for breaks. "My nose is kinda pissed off right now, but I'm not afraid. I'm bigger than it is." She glanced down at the sand, which couldn't possibly be just sand considering how much slamming her face into it had hurt, and her dark blue eyes narrowed as she noticed something the both of them had previously missed. "Why is there a trapdoor in the sand?"
The pair of them stared down at the door. Then at each other. Then at the door.
A second later, they both dove for it.
Yanking it open, the two young women stared down into the musty darkness for a long, silent moment before Elizabeth climbed down the short ladder and let out an angry cry. "That lying ..." Her voice trailed off again as she disappeared into the shadows, and Jubilee thought she'd caught a return trip on the dimensional pothole Jubes was waiting for before Elizabeth reappeared at the bottom of the ladder, looking incredibly pissed and holding a bottle of amber-colored liquid in each hand. "This entire hole is filled with bloody rum. I'd wager any amount of money that Jack Sparrow spent his entire time on this island drunk out of his mind before he secured a ride with a crew of rumrunners."
Jubilee perked up as she reached for one of the bottles. Granted, she wasn't twenty-one yet, but then again, she wasn't even in the twenty-first century anymore. She was pretty sure legal drinking age became null and void right about the time that you did, and she was also pretty sure that if Wolvie or Gambit were here, they'd both suggest that the cure for realizing your age was suddenly in the negative digits was liquor, and lots of it. "Hey, that sounds like a plan," she said cheerfully, hoping that maybe a little rum would get Elizabeth to loosen the hell up. Jubilee waved for Elizabeth to hand her a bottle. "Give it here."
Reluctantly, Elizabeth passed her a bottle, but mostly so that she could climb out of the dark pit and back onto land. "We are not going to lie about the beach drinking rum until we get rescued," she declared as soon as she got to the top of the ladder.
"Says you," Jubilee muttered, yanking the cork from the bottle and taking a sniff that made her pull a nasty face. "I've got a pair of S'mores candy bars in my coat that say we've got a drunken bonfire party for two in our future."
"But Will could be --"
Finally having had enough, Jubilee rolled her eyes and said, "Look, if you're so gung ho to get off this stinkin' beach, then here --"
She raised her free hand skyward, and with the slightest bit of concentration, a blinding spray of fireworks shot upwards for a good thousand feet. She let it go for a good thirty seconds, figuring that if anyone was close enough to see that, thirty seconds was more than long enough. Then she lowered her hand, blew coolly against her fingertips, then gave Elizabeth a smug smile.
Elizabeth stared at her as if she'd suddenly declared herself queen of the squid people.
"If there's anybody within gawkin' distance," Jubilee said, "they couldn't possibly have missed that."
Taking a swig of the rum, Jubilee flashed her perkiest smile at the other girl before heading back to the beach, leaving Elizabeth to stare at her retreating back and wonder whether or not this adventure was going to soundly trump the whole undead pirate affair.
After spending far too long playing mental tug-of-war over the subject, Elizabeth shook off her confusion and trailed after Jubilee. Be she mad or not, Elizabeth couldn't possibly be expected not to go with Jubilee. After all, she did have the Twinkies.