AN: Not my characters, belong to disney, yadda yadda yadda.... Written in five minutes, so excuse the crappiness. This is my first J/E fic, so I'm still trying to get their voices right. Hence the absence of dialogue ;)
She doesn't know the truth about Jack and probably never will; he is an enigma, warm and gentle to her but always slightly distant. The sea and freedom are the only things they have in common and that is enough for her. At night, after he falls asleep with his head in her lap she traces the scars on his chest, the only truth there is between them, and wonders why she even stays.
She never tells him these things because she's scared he'd understand too well, and she's not quite sure she can handle that. Instead she fills her days with menial tasks, cooking meals for the crew, repairing torn sails, scrubbing the deck until her hands bleed. Every so often she goes and sits with him, listens to him hum half-forgotten songs under his breath. He calls her his sea maiden and she laughs, content with her role in his life. Sometimes they don't speak for hours, just lean together and listen the waves lap at the hull of the Black Pearl, the sound of freedom and love and hate and everything that matters all in one hiss of sea spray.
Some nights she wakes up crying at all the things that could have been and he is always there to comfort her, soothing her with tales of the sea and places he's been and the ships he's sacked. Rarely he has nightmares, and she says nothing, just holds him until he stops shaking, and afterwards they fall asleep curled together in the too small bed.
Her life is built on the wreckage of other's hopes and dreams, the call of the sea stretching to the horizon, and the comfort of a man who will never truly love her, but it is enough.