Disclaimer: I don't own Pirates or anything associated with it (though if whoever does own it--Disney, I guess--wants to get rid of it, I'm very willing to take it off his hands...). I'm not making any money off of this story (because if I were I would be in the Caribbean, not posting a fanfic about it).


Chapter 3, Second Chance, three bells into the second dog watch.

Captain slumped back against the hull with a heavy sigh. "I'm sorry, Elizabeth. I should have seen it coming."

Elizabeth sat down and hugged her knees to her breast. "It's not your fault." She paused, studying him. In the dim light, he seemed more familiar than ever, but she couldn't figure out why. "Captain, what did Corky mean when he said 'a woman is not to lie with her father'?"

Captain sighed. "He's talking about me. I'm your father-in-law, William Turner. I didn't think he knew..." He trailed off as Elizabeth's eyes widened immensely.

Of course! I should have known. Suddenly, though, it occurred to Elizabeth exactly why she shouldn't have known. "But--aren't you dead? Will told me you died on the Black Pearl when Barbossa--"

"You forget," Bill cut in, " that I was still under the curse when Barbossa tried to get rid of me. He had hoped to lift the curse before I had a chance to get away, but he didn't know he'd need my blood to do it." He laughed a little, reflectively. "What I wouldn't have given to see the look on his face when he realized what he'd done."

"But why didn't you tell me?" Elizabeth demanded. "Why didn't you want me to know?"

"You wouldn't have believed me. You thought I was dead. And I didn't want the crew to know, though they obviously found out anyway. Besides, I wanted your first impression of me--good or bad--to be made without the prejudice of knowing that I'm your father-in-law. It was selfish, I suppose, but it's done."

Elizabeth didn't exactly believe his reasons, but she decided not to press the matter. "Well, it doesn't really matter now. What are we going to do about this?" she asked, gesturing to the iron bars surrounding them.

Bootstrap shrugged. "Not a lot we can do, I'm afraid. We'll just have to wait and see what they think they're going to do with us."

"I wish there was a way to get out of this blasted cell," Elizabeth muttered, glaring at the bars.

"There's not. And what would we do once we got out? We're in the middle of an ocean, it's not like there's anywhere we can go."

"So, that's it then? We just sit here and wait for them to kill us, or maroon us, or worse?" Elizabeth said.

Shrugging, Bootstrap settled down on the floor and covered his eyes with his hat. "Pretty much." Since he looked like he wouldn't answer her even if she did say something, Elizabeth resigned herself to trying to get some sleep.


The next morning, Corky came down and woke them up rather rudely. Unlocking the door, he pulled a still-sleepy Elizabeth to her feet as two of the crew bound and gagged Bootstrap.

"Come along, kids," Corky drawled. "We're going to send you off on a little vacation."

They hauled their prisoners up to the deck and brought them over to a plank jutting out of the side of the ship. In the distance, a small island sat bathed in the Caribbean sun.

Elizabeth squinted at the island as Corky manhandled her up onto the plank. It couldn't be...

"All right, Mrs. Turner, let's see how well you can swim," Corky snarled. He pushed her to the edge of the plank, and Elizabeth looked down into the water. Not again, she moaned silently.

"Come on now, we haven't got all day," Corky said. "Are you going to jump or are we going to have to push you?"

Elizabeth glanced back at Bootstrap, who tried to shrug. Sighing, she looked back and whispered, "I'm sorry, Will." With that, she took a deep breath and jumped in.

She swam to shore to see a lush, but small grove of palm trees growing inland. Nervously, she walked over and dug in the ground a little way. The palm trees were just big enough...

Yes, there it was. The charred remains of an older palm tree jutted a few inches out of the ground, and under the sandy topsoil there was a layer of ashes. A few feet farther in she could see a large mound covered with small bushes and the like--exactly where the bonfire she had set five and a half years ago would have blazed. Elizabeth, to her surprise, burst out laughing.

"I don't see anything particularly funny about this," Bill said as he approached.

Turning to him, she explained, "This island. It's the same one Barbossa marooned Jack and me on, almost six years ago. What are the odds...?"

Bill glanced around, still not particularly amused. "Yes, well, as remarkably slim as those odds are, I don't see anything particularly funny about it. There's not even any rum here to ease the pain."

Elizabeth finally managed to stop laughing. "Yes, I know. But it's just... well, of all the places this adventure could have taken me, this is the last place I'd have expected to end up."

"I still don't see what's so funny about it."

"When you've been this far away from home for as long as I have been, you tend to look for anything to make you laugh," she explained hotly.

Bootstrap said nothing, just shook his head and started walking away.

"Where are you going?"

He turned to face her, walking backwards. "For a walk!"

Elizabeth sat down and gazed out to sea. "The island's not that big," she muttered, knowing he couldn't hear her. "You're wasting your time."


I am SO sorry that it took so long to update this! I got moved in up here just fine, and I was working on getting my internet connection to work, but on Saturday afternoon I had to go the ER because I was bleeding severely. I'll spare you the gory details, but I did lose 50% of my blood due to a condition that I have and didn't know about (again, I'll spare you the details). They had to give me two units of blood to keep me going and they didn't release me until Monday evening. And I didn't get hooked up to the internet until Wednesday night, and then I had to go and find this chapter on my computer because I wasn't sure I had transferred it from my parents' computer to mine and then I couldn't get my computer to let me log in and now is the first chance I've had to sit down and give you an update since. So I have a good excuse, but that doesn't make me feel any better for making you all wait.

Anyway, I'm on the mend now, and so I decided it was way past time to give you all an update! I hope you enjoy it, and I'd love to hear from you either way. Millions of thanks to all my reviewers so far--you keep me writing!

--JSK