James stirred only once in his sleep within sleep. He opened his eyes to see a dark-haired woman in a black dress standing some distance away. She was blurred at the edges, like something seen through the heat of a fire. He couldn't tell if she was young or old, ugly or beautiful, friendly or hostile. He couldn't find it within himself to care.

He closed his eyes and drifted again.

In Port Royal, Elizabeth nursed the baby while she took her shift at James's side. Will was asleep in the next room, his soft snores audible through the open door. Watching Billy's contented face, she thought she saw a hint of movement on the bed and glanced up. But James looked the same.


She could see it , but only as a reflection of herself – features a bit more angular, body longer and leaner, eyes colder. She supposed she could toss it a gender too, for her own convenience. He made a distasteful face at the form she had chosen, but damn him if he thought she was going to talk to the open air.

"My dear...sister," he said with an amused twist on the word. "I won't call you by the name they have given you. We were not meant to have names."

Like Jack, he peppered his speech with dead ends and non-sequiturs in order to throw a listener off. When Jack did it, she found it endearing; with him she saw through the distraction and was not amused. "Whatever are you doing here?"

"Taking this one over," he said, gesturing to the man sprawled nearby. She recognized James, though she had only seen him from a distance, but her attention was elsewhere at the moment. "He will be the path to my ascension, restore my birthright – our birthright, I should say."

She quirked her eyebrows, an expression she had learned from Jack and suspected would be lost on him. "And it seems to be going so well."

Apparently he had a handle on sarcasm, for his face flushed darkly.

"I will have flesh," he said, voice still smooth and controlled. Of the two of them, her temper had always run hotter, but she had been through too much to let it rule her now. "This flesh."

She didn't bother to ask why, although frankly she was interested in knowing why he had gone for James instead of Jack. Afraid to enter her domain, perhaps, or too impatient to sneak past her defenses.

Instead she quietly replied, "No, you won't. You know as well as I that he has to be willing"

He snorted, casting disdainful eyes upon the man. "And rest assured, he will be. He is weak, mortal, human. He cannot last forever."

She saw the unease he was trying to hide beneath his cavalier facade. So it seemed James had been putting up an admirable struggle. Jack would be proud. "He does not fight for himself," she informed him. She knew he would not understand, but she wasn't speaking for his benefit. If there was any chance James could hear them now, he would take these words to heart. "He fights for love. His thoughts are with those who care for him."

"Love?" He spat on the ground. "A human construct. It matters not. And who is his love, anyhow? That man who leaves him every time they couple, and no wonder; it is a messy, ungainly act. The man to whom you chain yourself, a slave to his waters and whims."

She had to fight to keep from smiling. Oh, he really did know nothing, had learned not a whit in these years. "I am not his slave. And he is on his way now."

His lip curled in a snarl, marring an otherwise handsome face (a vanity, she would admit, as his face was the shadow of her own). "It's only a question of time. They all betray one another in the end."

"He is loyal," she said, thinking to James, This is our Jack, yours and mine, and barely swallowing her resentment. "For ten years he searched for me."

"Inconsequential amount of time," he scoffed. "The blink of an eye."

Now she did smile, enjoying the way his eyes burned hot with anger. "Not to them."

He lifted one finger for an exercise in point-making. "Ah, but would his faith stray if he knew how you fought him? If he knew that it was you put your forked tongue to the envious one's ear and whispered of mutiny?"

Despite her awareness that he was deliberately provoking her, the old shame and despair tinted her cheeks. There were many things she wished Jack could know about her, but that was not one of them. "It was the beginning. I didn't understand. When I was bound by the curse, I knew what suffering was and I saw how he would have cared for me, if I only I had not been so proud."

"So you stay, haunting a dead hunk of wood, for him, when you could wield such power – you and I together, think what we could do!"

And there it was, said plain. He must be truly frustrated; she'd thought it would be ages still before he revealed himself. If he thought her pause meant she was considering the option, so much the better. He didn't think as quickly when he got lazy.

"I have my own power, brother." She let her eyes drift away, as if she could not bring herself to look him in the eye.

It worked; his voice was back to distantly amused, less forced, less desperate. "And yet you can do nothing to help this man he loves." He locked his arms behind his back, circled her. She turned her head to follow how. "You were born of darkness. Being joined with the ship was meant to be temporary, a punishment. The confinement of the curse ought to have made you scream all the louder at being trapped."

"You cannot not understand what it means to be named," she snapped with all the force she really meant, before she could think better of it. Fortunately, he was already complacent in his former assurances.

"Do you hate me, then?" His laugh was pleasant and easy.

"No, I feel only pity for you," she said haughtily, tossing her head, the very picture of one trying to convince herself of the truth of her own words. And indeed they were true – this was the sort of wordplay she had always loved, to tell the greatest lie by telling a truth. " Hatred I'll leave to him." She allowed herself a moment of smug pride at what Jack would think to do if he knew how things really were, if he knew that she was being threatened.

"His will be the first blood I spill when this mind is broken."

Thus reminded, she grew sober as she looked at James. "We shall see."

If Jack could reach him, just for a moment...

But he didn't have the means, so it was up to her. The moment it became plausible, she would tell her truths to this man she really rather would have hated. Perhaps there would still be time for it later, if they all managed to get through this.