Disclaimer: Knock knock. Who's there? Donna Sue. Donna Sue who? Donna sue me; I'm broke. (Laugh or it's off the plank with you!)

Chapter 16: Two Rescues, Neither Happy

Gwen had really gone and done it this time. She'd heard warnings all her life, some teasing and some quite serious, that her rash actions and occasional lack of good logic would get her into trouble. And now she was drowning in trouble. Far too literally.

Gwen thought she might have heard a shout go up as she felt herself swept overboard and into the heaving sea, but she couldn't be sure. She tried desperately to stay afloat, think of a solution to her dilemma, and hope for help. Staying afloat proved difficult due to her already poor swimming abilities, not to mentionthe waves tossing her and plunging her underwater again every time she regained the surface. Thinking of a solution was right out since she was rather preoccupied with trying to successfully perform the first feat of simply staying alive. But hoping for help was suddenly the most desparate thought in her mind…

She caught a glimpse of the Pearl as she broke the surface again, struggling for air, and nearly lost her breath again when she spied, in that brief second, a familiar form diving from the half-deck.

Jack.

Jack surfaced quickly, fighting furiously against the pitching sea. He peered into the gloom, trying to spot Gwen again. Suddenly she appeared, battling for another lungful of air at the crest of a wave quite some distance from him. He struck out towards her, diving below to try to avoid the worst of the crashing waves.

How long it took him to finally reach her Jack couldn't even estimate. But later he would guess it had taken him about as long as it takes a barmaid to bring out a third drink. The first drink never counts toward anything, and the second can be dismissed as a drink taken socially. But the third, when it finally arrives after an impatient wait, always promises to bring drunkenness, and as many more drinks as is necessary to get there.

Jack felt like he was drunk. There was that slight haze of the surreal hovering about him, the same kind of sensation that usually meant to a drunk man that he wouldn't remember any of this the next morning. After an eternity, wedged into a few minutes of swimming, Jack found himself struggling back toward the Black Pearl with Gwen in tow. She was coughing and spluttering, but trying to help him by paddling along as much as she could. It took every muscle and sinew in Jack's body and all his willpower to keep stroking toward the ship. Every new wave seemed to take them even farther away rather than closer, and the more he swam the more exhausted he became.

If he could just make it to the Pearl, this particular bad dream would be over. He would wake up with a nasty hangover, and Gwen would bring him a glass of water and smile as she scolded him for getting so drunk. And if it wasn't a dream, well… then there would be no glass of water or smile, and he'd have to make it back to the Pearl, try to save his ship from the storm, possibly still fight or outwit Norrington, find the Turners' kid and Murphy, thwart Murphy's plans (whatever they were), keep him from finding out about Gwen, try to keep Gwen from doing anything stupid even though she was mad at him, and hope the Romans didn't get upset with all the interference and kill him outright before he could save Gwen from them as well.

But the line that was thrown to them when they finally neared the Pearl was very real. The faces of the men hauling them back aboard were very real. The tossing sea was very real. Despite the successful rescue, Jack scowled. It wasn't a dream. Damn.

"What did you say?" Gwen clung to the rope with all her remaining strength as the men aboard pulled them toward the ship, still fighting against the sea and sheets of cold rain blasting them. Jack was behind her, his arms wrapped around her body just under hers, his hands below hers on the rescue-line.

"Damn," Jack repeated, yellingso he could be heard about the rush as they were pulled out of the water.

"Damn what?" she asked in a shout over her shoulder. She closed her mouth just in time to avoid swallowing more seawater as another huge wave crashed against the side of the Pearl, rocking the ship dangerously to one side and dashing Gwen and Jack against her hull.

But the answer to Gwen's question didn't come. In a fraction of a second, the arms were gone from around her. Gwen couldn't feel his weight pressing against her back. His hands no longer grasped the line below hers. Jack was gone.

"No," Gwen protested automatically, uselessly. She twisted about, straining to peer into the churning sea, looking for him, but she couldn't spot his form anywhere. "Jack!"

Their load made suddenly lighter, the men hauled Gwen the rest of the way up to the half-deck in a trice. Before anyone could phrase the question about the suddenly missing captain, Gwen said in a rush, "We lost Jack! Look for him! Throw him a line! Do something!"

Her words weren't needed to incite them to action. But all they really could do was rush to the rail and peer out into the waves. Gwen stood with them, searching the waters for anything remotely Jack-shaped for a long moment, until it suddenly occurred to her that she was the cause for all of this mess. Perhaps if she just reversed the process…

Gwen closed her eyes, sealing off the distraction of the current situation. Instead of the storm-tossed nightmare, she fiercely imagined a sea as smooth as Jack's-- well, she imagined a much calmer sea. She fervently wished the clouds away, and silently asked the winds to cease. When at long last, after several long minutes of concentration, she finally opened her eyes again, it was a very different scene that greeted her eyes.

The sun had risen fully while the storm had been raging and could now lend its shine to them around the broken, defeated clouds that were slowly limping away to the corners of the sky. The sea was still choppy, but in the space of a few minutes, the waves had miraculously fallen from churning terror to merely rough swells. The cold bite had left the wind, and it was once again balmy and peaceable.

"Do you see Jack now?" she heard herself asking immediately.

No answer was forthcoming from any of the crew. She turned and found that nearly all of them had taken at least a few steps away from her. She stood alone at the port rail. Some of her closer friends among them, like Ben and Serge, looked as though they wanted to say something, but didn't know what to say. Uncertainly, Gwen opened her mouth to speak, but couldn't find anything to say to them either.

"I think I sees 'im," came a voice from the poop deck.

Grateful for the distraction and for the news, Gwen hurried to Gibbs' side at the helm. He was looking at her just as oddly, she noted, but at least he wasn't staring at her like many of the others. She would worry about them, and all the other repercussions of her little weather-playing, later.

Gwen looked where Gibbs pointed, and her jaw dropped. Even at this distance, she could just make out Jack's dreadlocks, all right. That was clearly his hair, attached to what was clearly his body, a body that was being disentangled from a net by men in uniform, standing on the deck of what was clearly the Dauntless. Clearly, she really had gone and done it.

The Dauntless was moving away.

It wasn't Gwen who was paying for what she had done, for trying to use a gift she knew nothing about using, without thinking. It was Jack, who had plunged after her to save her, even after she'd yelled at him because she had thought she knew better than he did how to deal with her "gift" and the related problems.

Yet it was Jack who was in Norrington's hands now.