Chapter: As It Plays


While he painted everyone else, no one was there to paint him, to make him remembered.

--Girl in Hyacinth Blue, Susan Vreeland


Sophia felt tears pricking at her eyes. Why did everything have to go wrong? Couldn't it all work so she could finally go home and forget? She knew she was childish to think such, but simply could not disguise the torment on her face as she contemplated the unfairness of the situation.

Bertie was looking at her strangely. She'd been staring at him for nearly a minute, her eyes completely stony and expressionless to hide her thoughts. Quite suddenly, she turned to Jack, who glanced at her as if she'd finally cracked and gone as insane as her cousin.

"His name is Bertie and he's my cousin. When we were visiting my family in Port Ayuda he was locked in a room on the top floor. He's completely and utterly insane and obsessed with finding the Fortunes. I think. . . I think if we were to get between him and his goal he would kill us all without a second thought." Sophia whispered this all very quickly.

Jack nodded carefully, and Sophia almost saw his mind working with an intelligence that few deemed him capable of. He was thinking, formulating a plan as Sophia knew only he could: in a fraction of a second. As if snapping from a trance, he finally sprung into action, striding over to Bertie and clapping him chummily on the shoulder. "Ah, well. I see you've found yerself a bit lost, eh, mate? How's this: I take you back t' me ship, and after I finish up some business in Tortuga we'll take you home, savvy? I don't know why'd you want t' stay in this cave. 'S bloody empty," Jack said, serenading Bertie with enough information to keep him busy while the Pearl's well-trained crew moved slowly to surround them. It was only then that Sophia noticed that the cave was empty. Where were the Fortunes?

Bertie did not reply, instead focusing his entire attention on Jack's hand at his shoulder, his eyes narrowed into mere slits. Jack, noticing this, removed his hand slowly, careful to brush off the other man's clothes briefly while doing so. Then Bertie started to laugh, a sound frightening in its recklessness.

"You are inconsequential. You know nothing, silly man. Do you know why I am here? Do you know what lies in this cave?" Bertie's cold eyes slid over to where Sophia stood. "Oh. . . of course you do."

It happened so quickly that Sophia could barely follow her cousin's movements. Bertie drew back his fist to punch Jack squarely in the face and rushed over to clasp Sophia within the iron vice of his arms. Before she could scream she felt the cold tip of his dagger at the hollow of her throat. Jack stumbled back, shaking his head free of the pain that shot through his nose and up to his head. Reaching up to dab at the blood that trickled from his nostrils, he roared, "Oy! There's no need for that, mate!"

But Jack's face swam before Sophia's distracted eyes, for at that moment Bertie had begun to whisper in her ear with a voice akin to that of an over-zealous priest attempting to convert a heretic. "You have been a very naughty girl, my pretty cousin. I knew you were trouble the moment you stepped into my prison-room in the dark. Leading pirates to the Fortunes? Tsk tsk, your mother would be ashamed. Mine would as well, for certain, but she's not in this story anymore. . ."

Sophia's eyes widened in horror. "Bertie. . . What have you done?"

"You left the door unlocked, Sophia." She could see him grin from the corner of her eye. "My family was sitting in the parlor. . . You have no idea the hatred. . . My father locked me up, did you know that? He locked me up for doing what they told me to. I was just following orders. Their blood looked so perfect on the floor. . ."

Sophia felt like vomiting. Adriano, Vera, Elizabeth. . . her family, all dead. This man was a monster, without conscience. How could he murder his family?

As if reading her thoughts, Bertie continued: "Oh no, they're not all dead, my dear. Elizabeth, you remember? My beautiful sister." He paused. "I needed a map."

Sophia's gaze, hazy with panic, followed the direction in which Bertie pointed to see a girl huddled at the base of a boulder, her once glamorous dress in rags, her hair in tangled ringlets.

"Elizabeth!" Sophia screamed, before her voice was muffled by Bertie's suffocating hand. That poor girl. . . Sophia stopped struggling when she felt a dull pain in her neck and a rivulet of blood trickle down between her breasts. Her vision whirled, and she thought she might faint.

Bertie finally focused on Jack, who'd been watching and listening to the transaction silently to gain as much knowledge as possible to use for his own profit, his mouth lifting into a sneer of contempt. "I have a new idea, Mr. Sparrow, is it? You leave and you get Mrs. Norrington back unharmed, save for this." Bertie touched a searing finger to the small wound at Sophia's neck and she started in surprise. "If you don't," he persisted, "she dies. How's that?"

Jack lifted a finger to his chin, stroking the twin plaits there as if in thought. He was slightly unnerved that this lunatic had known his name, but it appeared that he had had a very long time to study in his room and may have come across mention of the infamous captain of the Black Pearl at some point. He shook off these troubled thoughts effortlessly, instead focusing on the task at hand. This was going to be a difficult sequence of events. "Ah. . . There's only one problem with that: I don't care a bloody bit about yer cousin and I'd much prefer whatever's in this cave, 'ere. Why don't you jus' kill 'er? Take 'er off me 'ands?"

Sophia felt rage simmer within her veins like poison. Fueled by anger, she savagely bit the hand of her captor and broke free her power of speech. "You slimy, filthy, evil little man! How—"

Jack skillfully used this moment of distraction to lunge forward and slam his elbow into the side of Bertie's head. Sophia felt her cousin's hold on her loosen and slipped out of his arms. She watched through cloudy eyes, her knees shaking, as Jack unsheathed his sword and leveled it carefully, allowing the silver tip to dance at Bertie's throat. "Ah. . . Mr. Cuthburt, I believe we have a change of plan in order," Jack declared cheerfully, in a tone similar to that of a middle-aged woman noting that the weather was pleasant at tea.

It was suddenly as if the cave exploded. Absolute pandemonium. Men emerged from behind rocks, between cracks, and rushed towards Jack's crew, who met the onslaught expertly, blades flashing bands of reflected light against the stone walls of the cave.

The cunning snake had deceived them into believing he was alone! Sophia looked at Bertie with disgust written plainly on her features. Coward.

Jack spared only a fraction of his attention to notice this new development, but a second was all Bertie needed. He withdrew his sword and he and Jack were swiftly locked in a battle of conviction as well as skill, swords moving far to quickly to see.

Sophia stood, frozen. She watched the battle—for it was a battle, bloody and raw—unfold around her as if looking through a fine sheet of water. She felt helpless and stupid.

She did not know how to fight.

But Anamaria, wonderful, faithful Anamaria, took it upon herself to protect the only other female member of their little band. As a nameless man rushed towards Sophia with murder emanating clearly from his face, Anamaria let out an inhuman scream that frightened even Jack, caught in combat as he was, and stopped her opponent dead in his tracks. Then, looking more like a beautiful African warrior than a pirate, she did away with him with a quick slice of her sword.

"'Ere," she muttered, pressing a short-bladed dagger into Sophia's palm. "Don't jus' stand there like a bloody idiot." And then she went back to killing.

But Sophia could do nothing. She stood, clutching the weapon in her hand and watching everything but doing nothing. Nothing, until she saw the man rushing towards Jack's back, his sword ready to slice through the pirate's neck.

Sophia knew Jack would hear his running footsteps and he did, turning on his heel and abandoning his duel with Bertie to divide the other man's head cleanly from his body.

But Bertie took that opportunity to run.

Sophia felt a frightening anger that made her gut twist painfully and bile rise in her throat. Because of this man her uncle and aunt were dead and her cousin tortured. This man was a murderer and a rank with cowardice. Her legs were moving beneath her and she felt the leather hilt of the dagger in her hand. She stared at her cousins back with a concentration she did not know she possessed. She heard Anamaria calling her name but it was as if she were hearing the sound through a very long tunnel, faint and echoing. Raising the hand that held Anamaria's weapon, she sunk the blade into Bertie's back, between his ribs into his kidney. He fell like a stone to the hard ground.

Sophia sank to her knees and rolled her cousin over onto his injured back. She wanted to see his face. Before he could utter a word, she had the bloody blade against his neck, ready.

Bertie let out a forced chuckle that was every bit as demented as the raving Sophia had heard when she stepped into that dark room in her uncle's house. "Why, Sophia. I didn't think you had it in you."

Sophia braced her knee against his stomach, relishing in the grimace of pain that appeared on his face as she pressed his wound into the ground. "You killed them, you whoreson. You deserve to die."

He nodded, wholeheartedly agreeing with her with the confidence of a child. Sophia flicked her wrist, and a shallow gash appeared red at Bertie's jaw. Her cousin's eyes grew crazed as he finally revealed the insanity outwardly that Sophia knew had infected his brain. "Do it. I've accomplished my purpose. I've done what they want me to do." He paused, a wide grin spreading across his cracked lips as he listened to the demons in his head. "They want you to do it."

Sophia slit his throat.


The skirmish was over and Jack picked his way through bodies towards Sophia. He'd seen her kill her cousin, seen the horrible realization dawn on her face as she finally grasped what she had done. She now kneeled, sitting on her heels, beside Bertie's cold corpse, still holding the bloodstained dagger that had killed him. Jack squatted down and, placing a gentle hand at the small of her back, said her name, wondering if perhaps he would need to save her from her memories yet again. "Sophia?"

Sophia started at his touch, inhaling sharply as if it had hurt her. As she turned her face towards him he saw that she had been crying, the redness of her eyes and cheeks contrasting harshly with her pallor. Despite her obvious distress, he was glad to see that her eyes were not clouded and closed as they were when she was lost in her painful nightmares. In fact, it was quite the opposite; the gray of her irises was almost bright, her eyes incredibly lucid against the dark ambience of the cave. Then, opening her mouth, the pearl of a tear hanging at the corner of her lips, she heaved a great sigh. "I've never killed anyone before, Jack, but he deserved to die."

Sophia watched Jack nod, his eyes uncharacteristically sad. "I'm sorry, love. I should've done it so you didn't 'ave to."

She shook her head. "No, it was. . . right. I think it helped me," she whispered, turning her gaze back to look at the body of her cousin with his bloody throat. Then, quickly changing the subject, she continued. "Did we lose anyone?"

"Not one," came the reply. "Anamaria took down 'bout twenty o' 'em, though."

Sophia smiled wryly. "She saved my life."

"She's a good girl, she is."

Sophia nodded absently, her eyes wandering the cave and the aftermath of the chaos. Her eyes found the vision of a girl huddled against a rock, her head cradled against her knees. Sophia could hear her weeping. "Oh god. . ."

Sophia rose in a flurry of motion, leaving Jack to stare steadily after her. She sank down to her knees next to Elizabeth, gathering the girl close to her. Elizabeth's face was haggard, that of an old woman, and her eyes were brimming with terrible thoughts and memories. She was stiff at first in Sophia's arms, but then, recognizing that it was her cousin holding her, relaxed and sobbed bitterly against Sophia's shoulder, her tangled brown ringlets fanning out over her back.

Sophia murmured quiet things into her cousin's ear, her voice that of a mother's, low and comforting. But, despite her assurances, she froze when she heard Elizabeth's croaky tones. "I was raped. How can I go home? Everyone's dead! I will die. . . oh god, I will die, Sophia!"

Sophia's heart constricted. She knew how it felt to be violated by rough hands and even rougher men. "I was too, a long time ago. Life goes on, my dear. Life goes on, and you will live."


Sophia was preparing to leave and make the long trek back into town, with an arm around Elizabeth's shoulders for support, when Jack approached her. "Eh. . . You've forgotten somethin', love."

Sophia turned, curious. "What's that?"

Jack spread his arms wide, palms outstretched as if to indicate the largeness—and emptiness, for that matter—of the cave. Ah. . . It was then Sophia remembered why, in fact, they were here. What had Bertie done with the Fortunes?

Sophia opened her mouth to inquire what Jack actually wanted her to do about the missing riches, but she promptly silenced when she noticed Elizabeth staring at Jack intently, her dull eyes focused on his face. After several noiseless moments, the young woman spoke. "You're name is not Captain Haverling."

Jack shook his head, grinning widely. He wondered now, looking at this scared child who huddled in Sophia's shadow like a shy kitten, how he could have been so attracted to Elizabeth. She was beautiful, granted, even through the dirt that marred her face, but girlishly so, and it seemed that this experience had brought her down to earth, so to speak. She was no longer the catty seductress that she once was. She was a frightened and scarred fifteen-year-old girl.

Sophia smiled as Jack, still sporting his lop-sided grin despite the obvious distressed condition Elizabeth was in, swept up her cousin's hand for a kiss as if she was the queen of Britain and her beauty astounded him as it did only several days before in Port Ayuda. "Captain Jack Sparrow, at yer service, love," he declared. Elizabeth managed a small smile in response to his antics, and if she recognized his name she did not show it. Jack quickly got down to business. "Now, d'you think you could tell ol' Jack wha' yer brother did with the Fortunes of Ektibar?"

Sophia resisted a sigh. Of course.


As it turned out, Bertie had loaded everything in the cave onto two horse-drawn carts. Elizabeth, carefully taking slow steps as if it hurt her (it was perfectly likely that it did, Sophia noted, given what Elizabeth had endured), led them out of a secret side entrance where the wagons were hidden. Jack inspected it all meticulously, only to find —

"Papers! Bloody books! Wha' the bloody hell was this Ektibar fellow thinking!" Jack bellowed, throwing parchment and finely bound books everywhere. He was absolutely livid with anger. Sophia felt Elizabeth shrinking with fear beside her.

Sophia could not help but release a small, ironic smile. "And think of everything we've gone through to get here, Jack. . ." She murmured, not really sounding regretful at all. In fact, she was feeling quite wonderful. She felt as if a great burden had been lifted off her chest and she could now throw caution to the wind, she could actually live without fear of being kidnapped or tortured for the sake of riches. She didn't have to hide anymore. And, judging by her tiny, hopeful smile, Elizabeth was feeling the same.

While Jack kept grumbling on, Sophia bent down to pick up a scroll of parchment that Jack had abandoned on the ground, her eyes glancing over what was written there in messy—and original, she was sure—script curiously.

King Lear

Written by William Shakespeare

Act I, Scene I: King Lear's palace. Enter KENT, GLOUCESTER, and EDMUND

KENT

I thought the King had more affected the Duke of Albany than Cornwall.

GLOUCESTER

It did seem to us, but now. . .

And it went on, word after word of poetry. "Jack. . ." Sophia said cautiously, her hungry eyes roving over the page.

"What?" Jack snapped irritably with no intention of actually hearing what she had to say. Sophia picked up another piece of parchment.

I hereby bequeath ownership of the manor of the Thorwalds to Henry Thorwald, the sole heir. . .

"Jack. . ." She chose another, flipping open the cover of an unmarked book to read the inscription written inside.

On the day of our lord December 10, 1611, I, King James I, give this newly translated bible to Queen Anne, my wife, on the event of her birthday. . .

Sophia stared. She stared at this wealth of knowledge in history that Jack was throwing like garbage onto the ground. "Jack! These papers and books are very valuable."

Jack turned swiftly on his heel to stare at her, brow furrowed. "How so, Mrs. Norrington?"

Sophia ignored the playful use of her surname. "Shakespeare, deeds of ownership, historical relics. . . It's all here. This is worth more than a hundred trunks full of gold."

Jack snatched the papers off of the ground, his grin spreading as his eyes quickly scanned the pages. "Well. . . not all treasure is silver and gold, now is it?"


I feel excited; but do not want to be, for that is not right. I want that quiet rapture again. I want to feel the same powerful, nameless urge that I used to feel when I turned to my books. The breath of desire that then arose from the coloured backs of the books, shall fill me again, melt the heavy, dead lump of lead that lies somewhere in me and waken again the impatience of the future, the quick joy in the world of thought, it shall bring back again the lost eagerness of my youth. I sit and wait.

-- All Quiet on the Western Front, Erich Maria Remarque


A/N: Mmm. . . Only a couple more chapters to go. The tale of Sophia and Jack is almost finished! Until the end chapters should fly in because I'm really enjoying writing this section of the fic. The only reason this chapter took as long as it did was because when I was two-thirds of the way through writing I erased all of it and had to start all over.

I've given up and resigned to using the annoying line things. Bleh.

I just had to include the Fortunes consisting of written treasures (even if they are not at all accurate. . . haha. . . King Lear being found in a cave in the tropics. . . Shakespeare is going to rise from the grave just to murder me) instead of the usual sort and I hope it's not too redundant. Speaking of which: does anyone know how the bible we read today came about? If so the third little relic Sophia reads should mean something to you.

Elizabeth's back! Yay! She is not to be confused with Will's Elizabeth, however. Hmm. . . that is more than slightly befuddling, though. There is a reason they're named the same name, despite what you all may think, which is mainly because I very much dislike the Elizabeth of the movie (which might be the reason she's dead in my fic. . . hehe) and Sophia's cousin seemed fittingly evil to be her namesake. And I like to make you guys have to think.

I just made that up, actually. The real reason Elizabeth is named so is because I totally forgot that there was another Elizabeth in the story. Oops.

Next on the list: The upcoming chapter is one I've been waiting for. I already know exactly what's going to happen but you'll have to wait. Let's just say I know you all will be happy with the events of the soon to be Chapter 26, aptly named "Swimming and Reconciliation." There's a hint for you.

Well?