Disclaimer: It makes me sick of heart to say it (again!) but Jack Sparrow does not belong to me. He belongs to the talented and beautiful Johnny Depp, who created a character whose eccentricity, magnetism and pure brilliance far exceeds that of any I could come up with on my own. Leah Kerr, however, is all mine, seeing as many of her characteristics originally belonged to myself and a couple of my closest friends.

A/N #1: Yes, Leah is a substitute teacher for the San Diego School District. She also swears a lot, and occasionally partakes of recreational drugs. Rest assured she would never use such language in front of her students, nor would she go to work under the influence. *grins*

A/N #2: The lovely Eledhwen suggested that I remove all references to the movie from this tale, and that it would stand alone. I think she may be right, and that it would definitely work just as well. I'm still trying to decide what I want to do, though, so I tried to write this chapter without any references to the film at all. What do the rest of you guys think? Should I make it slightly AU, no PotC, or leave it as is?

A/N #3: On reading over this chapter...I hope Jack's still in character. Eh. Let me know if there are any spots where he slips.

Notes to my dear reviewers will follow at the end of the chapter.







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III. Lost Time





Captain Jack Sparrow really wasn't *that* much taller than me. Only half a foot or so. But I could no longer discount him as a figment, much as I wanted to, right then. There was nothing imaginary about how he had cornered me, thoroughly invading my personal space, standing so close that I could feel heat radiating off him and smell the stale rum on his breath. Nothing imaginary about the menace evident in every tense line of his body, the long arm blocking my escape. And there was certainly nothing imaginary about the nasty-looking sword and what I did not doubt was a fully-serviceable pistol at his belt. I cursed myself for forgetting that, even for a moment.

He had said that he didn't intend to harm me. But though I may have been imagining the gleam of insanity I thought I saw in his kohl-lined eyes, I wasn't about to trust him any farther than I could drop-kick him. Which, although Adriana had insisted on teaching me several of her favorite self-defense moves over the years, probably wasn't very far at all.

I felt the knobs of the stove pressing into my back, and groped behind me for the only weapon close to hand. I kept my knives in a drawer on the other side of the kitchen. But the teapot was still half-full of near-boiling water.

"I'll tell you everything I know...what little there is," I said tightly, as my fingers curled around the handle of the kettle. "But first you're going to have to back off. Now."

He laughed at me. I'd thought the gold teeth were a fairly silly fashion disaster, before. But combined with that mad glint in his eyes, and the utterly mirthless note in his laughter, the effect was every bit as terrifying as it was meant to be.

"I hardly think you are in a position to negotiate, my dear."

"We'll just have to see about that," I said. And brought the bottom of the aluminum kettle down on the knuckles of his left hand, which was resting on the countertop close beside me. At the same time, my knee shot up toward his groin.

He shouted in pain and snatched his hand back, but he dodged the knee with surprising agility. Thrown off-balance, I stumbled forward and away from him, still clutching the kettle, and managed to put the table between us before he was finished swearing.

"You can't say you didn't deserve that," I told him, trying to keep my voice calm, though I was shaking from fear and adrenaline.

"Just my bloody luck you're a spirited lass," he snarled, and headed around the table towards me. The fact that he was sucking on his burned knuckles did reduce his dangerous appearance somewhat; or it would have, if he didn't look so pissed off.

Nonetheless, I waved the kettle threateningly at him. "You're asking for a good quantity of hot water in the face, *Mister* Sparrow." I continued moving, not without a vague sense of the ridiculous...I was being chased around my own kitchen table in my pajamas, wielding only a teapot, by a bona-fide time-traveling eyeliner-fetishist pirate.

Except, he'd stopped coming after me. Which would have been a good thing, if I'd been able to ignore the pistol trained on me...again.

"An unusually brave lass, as well," he said. "Or would that be foolish? I find it rather difficult to tell the difference, sometimes." And the gold teeth flashed.

I stood still, no longer able to classify this situation as at all ridiculous, and swallowed hard; my mouth was suddenly parched.

"Let us try this once more, shall we?" He was obviously working hard to keep his temper in check.

"Look, I'm unarmed and hardly dangerous." I thunked the cooling kettle down on the table. "You don't want to shoot me." I hoped that I was right, and that I could count on his curiosity to win out over his anger and possible homicidal tendencies.

"I hadn't wanted to, particularly," he emphasized the past tense, "until you played that nasty little trick of yours. Now, I'm not so sure."

"Oh, please. I was only defending myself," I retorted. "Your hand will heal up just fine. Really. I'd think a big, scary pirate like yourself would be able to handle the pain of a minor burn."

"It's not an issue of *pain*," he said, sulkily. "It's the principle of the thing, see. Insult added to injury, and what-not..." I stifled a laugh, and he scowled. "So. Pray explain to me why I don't want to shoot you."

Damn idiot, me, taunting a gun-waving maniac.

But I gathered my courage, and said, simply, "You don't want to shoot me because I'm all you've got right now, Jack Sparrow."

"You're all I've..." The gun lowered a fraction, and he scowled at me suspiciously. "How's that, then?"

"Because, Jack." I sank down onto a chair, realizing I was extraordinarily tired; my adrenaline receptors must have become as fatigued as the rest of me, or perhaps I'd begun to grow used to having a pistol aimed in my general direction. If one can get used to something like that. But I found I hardly cared anymore; I wanted nothing more than to go back to bed and sleep for a very long time. "Because this is my time, not yours, and trust me, you wouldn't last a day out on *my* streets, on your own, pistol or no pistol. Because I'm probably the only person who will even half-believe your tale about how you got here--" I rubbed my temples-- "even though I'm still pretty well-convinced that at least one of us is crazy. And incidentally, because without me I suspect that your chances, however slim, of finding your way back to wherever it is that you belong will be reduced to something closely resembling nil."

Head cocked to one side, he considered this, letting the pistol drop a few more inches.

"And how am I to know that you're telling the truth, now, love?"

"First off," I said firmly, "my name's Leah Kerr. Not love, missy, darling, or any of the like. And secondly..." I sighed. "Hell, believe what you like. But I'm telling you right now, this is not a joke, practical or otherwise. I didn't ask for this," and I glared at him, "for *you*. All I want is a decent night's sleep, for once...and, while I'm wishing, to wake up from said sleep to the realization that this was all another bad dream." I looked up at him, and sighed again. "Now, will you put the gun away, please?"

He glanced at it, then back at me, and replaced it in its holster. "Mayhaps you'd best begin at the beginning, then...Miss Leah Kerr." He said my name experimentally; it sounded different on his lips, transformed by his accent from a few ordinary syllables into something unusual, almost exotic. "It is *Miss* Kerr, is it not?"

"Just Leah will do," I said, and waved a gracious hand at the seat across from me. "Sit down, why don't you. This is going to get a bit...complicated."

"I think I'll stand, thanks."

I shrugged. "Suit yourself."

So he paced the not-very-long length of the kitchen, succeeding in making me more than a little nervous by his restlessness, as I told him about the strange shop in New Orleans and its equally strange proprietor, how I'd come to purchase the bottle that wore the insignia of the sparrow.

"And then I started having these highly freaky dreams--"

He held up a hand, cutting into my narrative. "One moment, lass. This shopkeeper bird...you mentioned she was dark, aye? Foreign-lookin'?"

"I don't know about 'foreign'," I said, cautiously. "Her coloring was a lot like yours, actually. And she apparently shared your weakness for tattoos."

A very odd expression came over his face. He had stopped in front of me, and stood staring down at me, his dark eyes wide and distant; I got the idea that, though I sat squarely in his line of sight, he had all but forgotten my presence.

"Carmen," he murmured. "I'll be damned..."

"Huh...?"

He seemed to shake himself, looking at me as if seeing me for the first time. "The lady's tattoos," he said slowly. "They wouldn't have been coiled all up and round about her arms, would they? All--" He made a spiraling gesture with one finger, forming an intricate pattern in the air-- "Snaky, like?"

"Yeah. Exactly like that," I said, and frowned. "Hey...how did you--?"

"I'll be damned," he said again. "That's her, all right." He resumed pacing, sink to stove and back. It really got on my nerves, though I would soon learn that he was rarely ever completely still, and that it behooved one to be much more wary of him when he *did* stop moving...as the latter behavior generally indicated that Jack Sparrow was at his most predatory, and probably about to spring.

"Her...who?" I ventured, feeling supremely unintelligent. I had clearly missed something important. Or he was missing something important. Say, for instance, his sanity?

"*Her*," he said impatiently, and unhelpfully. "'Tis all coming back to me now, see? I know the lady." He met my bewildered gaze with a crooked half-smile. "In my time, as you so quaintly put it."

"You...*know* her?" I repeated. "Knew her, I mean. In the sixteen hundreds."

"Aye. The self-same Gypsy witch whose face, it so happens, is the last thing I recollect laying eyes on, before--" his gesture took in me, the room, and the entire twenty-first century-- "This."

I shook my head. "Jack...that's impossible."

"*Improbable*," he corrected. "And to a degree, may I point out, only slightly exceeding that of the tale which you have already related to me."

"Okay," I said. "You do have a point there. But--" I struggled with my sadly limited math skills for a moment, then burst out-- "But that would make her over three hundred years old!"

"As, by your account, am I." He shrugged eloquently. "Besides, Leah darling, if you'd seen and done half of what I have...in *my* time...you would not be so quick to discount the possibility...savvy?"

"'There are more things in Heaven and Earth...'" I muttered, remembering a dream of metal piercing flesh, of detachedly noting how palely my own bones gleamed in moonlight.

"'Than are dreamt of in your philosophy.' Aye, love. Not just a pretty piece of poetry, y'know."

I gaped at him. "You know *Shakespeare*?"

"Was that the bloke's name?" he said vaguely. "I'd forgotten. What," he added, at my inarticulate noise of disbelief, "did you assume that I was never fortunate enough to undergo a proper education? They did attempt to make an upstanding young gentleman out of me, once upon a time, Miss Kerr." He smirked, and his slurred Cockneyfied drawl returned full force, as if it had never been replaced by the clipped intonations of an upperclass Englishman. "But as ye can see, me dear, it didn't quite take."

"Apparently not," I said, making up for my lack of a logical response with as much heavy sarcasm as I could muster. Then I buried my face in my hands. "Christ...none of this makes *sense*--!"

"You don't believe a gentleman can become a pirate?"

"Not that, Captain Jackass." I glared at him between my fingers. "Try...everything else?"

"Oh. That." He paused. "I find I strongly resent your choice of epithets."

"Sorry," I lied, and scrubbed at my eyelids. "So let me get this straight," I said. "You think this Carmen chick is responsible for keeping you corked up in that bottle for several centuries, just so I could exchange my hard-earned money for the privilege of--"

"Hold up, there, missy," he interrupted me. "Corked up in a *bottle*?"

"Sounds crazy, I know," I said, surrendering to the absurd. "But I'm afraid that's my best guess. Clumsy old me knocked the damn thing off the nightstand, the bottle went smash, and poof! You."

"'Poof'?" He snorted. "What exactly d'you think I am, some sort of bloody genie?"

"Do you grant wishes?" I demanded acidly.

"Not that I'm aware of." He considered. "No harm in tryin', though. Wish away, darling."

"Fine. Like I said before--I want to wake up."

He grinned, bowed, and snapped his fingers in admirable "Thousand and One Nights" style. And looked clearly disappointed when nothing happened. I felt pretty depressed, myself. For a moment I'd hoped for some modicum of dream-logic to take hold and cause this ploy to actually work.

"Damn." He examined his fingers regretfully, and snapped them again...evidently just to make sure. "Didn't think so."

"Too bad," I agreed.

"At any rate, I must inform you that I do not 'poof', madame. Such a thing would be highly undignified."

"How about 'Kazaam'?" I suggested, unable to repress the slightly mad giggle rising in my throat...which swiftly gained strength and evolved into a full-on fit of hysterical laughter. I laid my head down on the table and succumbed to the hilarity of it all.

The sound of him loudly clearing his throat pulled me back from the brink; wiping my streaming eyes, I struggled to regain control of myself. He was regarding me with an expression of extreme misgiving, as if *I*--not he--was the potentially dangerous lunatic here.

"I fail to understand what it is about me that you find so terribly amusing," he said plaintively.

"It's just--too much," I gasped out, trying to stifle another spasm of demented mirth.

"Ah. Well. I suppose I can see how all this might be a bit of a strain," he conceded. "Must admit, I'm feelin' more than a bit strained meself, at present..." Pulling out the chair next to me, he sat--or rather, lounged there in his loose-limbed way, still watching me narrowly. "Breathe, love," he advised, after a moment.

I glowered at him, and hiccuped.

"This is completely surreal," I declared, when I could speak.

"Aye. Without a doubt." He frowned thoughtfully, tugging at his braided beard. "But it seems to be happenin' anyway, so I suggest you stop tryin' to deny it, and face up to the facts, lass." He spread his long-fingered, be-ringed hands in an expressive gesture of resignation. "I'm here and you're here, and both of us are sane..." he paused, "more or less, that is. And it's the bloody...twenty-first century, you said it was?"

"Aye...I mean, yes." Damn my predilection for picking up other people's speech patterns.

"Right," he said. "So it simply remains for us to puzzle out what's to be done about it." His tone implied that this statement represented a stroke of utter genius, and at the same time managed to sound as if he had just proposed we solve a crossword, or pick a color scheme for my living room, or unravel some other equally mundane, everyday problem that possessed a logical solution.

"Well, I know what *I'm* going to do about it," I announced, rising abruptly. "I'm going back to bed, and hopefully, to sleep." I picked up my abandoned mug of hot chocolate, which was now, to my disgust, no longer hot, and stalked over to the microwave. "And I suggest--" there I went again, imitating his vocabulary before I could catch myself-- "that you do the same, Captain Sparrow."

He grinned at me, an expression which, along with any tendency towards preternatural stillness, I would soon read as a sign that he was almost certainly up to nothing good.

"Shall I take that as an invitation, Miss Leah?"

At that point, I wasn't quite wise to him yet, so the innuendo flew right over my head. "Invitation...?" I repeated, setting the microwave on high. To tell the truth, I was much more interested in the temperature of my hot chocolate than whatever nonsense he was getting at, until I glanced at him and noticed that his grin had become an unmistakable leer. "Ugh...for God's sake--"

I reminded myself that in his day and age, women were certainly treated much differently and that I was definitely not dressed modestly by seventeenth-century standards. Nonetheless...

"You're a pig, Jack," I told him decisively.

The smirk didn't waver. "Wasn't that 'jackass,' love? At least you used the proper title with that one." Then he *winked* at me. The nerve... "C'mon, darlin'. Don't you have a bit of room for me in that great big soft bed of yours?"

"The name's *Leah,*" I snapped. "In fact...I liked *Miss* Leah, if you don't mind. And your answer is...no." The microwave chimed, and I grabbed my cup. "A world of no."

"Oh," he said, exaggerated disappointment weighting his voice, though he did not appear fazed in the slightest. "Where then might I lay my poor three-hundred-year-old body down, Lady Kerr? If it's not too bold a question to put forth, that is."

He was mocking me, I realized. "I suppose you can sleep on my couch for tonight," I said frostily, and swept past him to my bedroom, chocolate in hand.

Once there, I stopped short, surveying the disaster that was my floor. All that sand was going to be a bitch and a half to clean up. "Well, fuck me..."

"Bit of a mess, innit?"

I jumped. "Damn you!"

Of course he'd followed me, and was leaning insolently against the doorjamb. "A shame about your pretty bottle," he observed. "Bet you're sorry to see it all smashed to pieces, eh?"

"Oh, no, Captain Sparrow," I said, in saccharine tones. "I wasn't overly attached to that dusty old thing." I rounded on him. "The real tragedy is that I can't seem to figure out a way to *put you back inside it.*"

He pressed a hand over his heart, contriving to appear deeply injured. "You are so very cruel, madame."

"And you are full of shit," I informed him.

"Such language!" He tutted at me. God, he was insufferable.

"You." I pointed. "Couch. Now." I advanced on him grimly, and he must have seen the look in my eye--perfected after a year and a half of substitute teaching, during which one quickly becomes accustomed to laying down the law for unruly middle-schoolers on a pretty much constant basis--because he retreated back to the living room, where he cast a doubtful eye at my much-faded and threadbare sofa.

"I hardly think I will fit there," he objected, mournfully. In fact, he was probably right about that...I could barely stretch out on the couch, myself.

"Well, that's just too bad," I said, with a thorough lack of sympathy. "Beggars can't be choosers, Captain. There's a blanket under the coffee table, and the bathroom's through that door."

"Bathroom," he said blankly.

"Loo? Lavatory?" He still looked mystified. "Piss-pot?"

"Oh."

"And you better not leave the seat up," I warned him. "Or you'll be fending for yourself in the big, bad, twenty-first-century world outside...'savvy'?"

"Aye, love," he said. He sounded amused again.

"I know you probably think that doesn't sound too awful," I added. "But believe you me, buddy, you don't want that to happen. The cops'd lock you up in a heartbeat, acting like you do."

He tilted his head. "Y'know, when you put it that way, doesn't sound so different from my own time."

"Well, it is." I hesitated. Why was I trying to protect him? He was, after all, a grown man, one who had threatened my life and sanity more than once this evening. But there was something about Captain Sparrow that I found undeniably fascinating, despite his cocky demeanor and his less-than-impressive personal hygiene, a kind of wild magnificence that made the idea of his imprisonment unconscionable. To think of him shut into a padded white room for the rest of his days...I shuddered.

Some things should never be caged. And to take this man's freedom away could not be anything but wrong.

I don't go to zoos for similar reasons, and this man, this *pirate*, reminded me of nothing so much as some sort of exotic, feral creature...a great cat perhaps, slightly scruffy but full of restless energy and the pride that comes with absolute self-confidence, as well as that predatory grace I had witnessed earlier when he'd trapped me so easily in my own kitchen.

Studying him, I decided that the analogy was an apt one. Having him here was much like having a tiger in my living room. Improbable, impractical, and incredibly dangerous. But also somehow marvelously exhilarating.

"Anything else, love?" he drawled, and I realized that I'd been staring openly at him for some time now.

I turned away quickly. "Just don't break anything, okay?" I said over my shoulder, hand on the doorknob. "In fact, please don't touch anything that looks at all breakable."

"Duly noted, m'lady."

"Good night, Jack."

His only response was a faint, frustrated mutter of "*Captain,*" which I chose to ignore. As I closed my door, I glimpsed him sitting cautiously down on my couch, much as if he expected it to open wide and swallow him whole. I shook my head, and sighed, and then to my dismay, caught myself smiling.

I sipped my cocoa. It was luke-warm again.

Damn him. He'd caused me to neglect my hot chocolate twice in one night. But I wasn't about to go back out there and reheat it. Instead, I gave up and got into bed, careful to avoid the shards of glass littering the carpet.

When I fell asleep at last, I did not dream. Except for once, and it was not a dream of death and mayhem, nor of the blue, endless ocean, nor of any people that I knew but did not know, nor even of darkness without end.

What was the dream, then? I'm not entirely sure. But I think I remember something about a tiger with chocolate eyes.







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To my reviewers:

Shad: Stir-crazy, yes. Or just plain crazy. Yeah, I would have jumped him too. Although I think I agree with Leah that a bath might be in order for him first. He's certainly a dirty pretty thing.

Megan-earthstar: Pretty name! I'm glad I'm doing ok. Thank you!

Miss Becky: I'm definitely curious to hear your input in regards to A/N #2. Ah...if only I could magick Johnny into my living room...my life would be complete.

wellduh: No plot, just impulse, and a few fun scene ideas floating around in my chaotic brain.

Eledhwen: I appreciate your suggestion, and I'm mulling it over. Jack and Johnny are two different people in this story, but I agree that the story wouldn't suffer from losing the PotC references. I'm definitely leaning towards cutting them...they do kind of add a sense of ridiculousness above and beyond the basic level of silliness.

Ghosts-girl23: Finally, more! Glad you enjoyed.

Pink Elephant Fairy: Hehe, great penname. Um...so, I'm sorry that I didn't exactly hurry... :-)

Maryn: *blush* Thanks, love. It means a lot to hear that from someone whose writing skill I respect so much in turn.

Maat: Yeah, I'm not sure where the drug references came from, or if that aspect of her character will be explored more...it just kind of happened that way, and then I couldn't lie and pretend Leah *hadn't* been doing illegal drugs the night before the story begins. Artifacts of my irresponsible youth showing up in my character, I suppose.

Kery: I am going to keep it up...it's very fun to write, this story is like my writer's playground. And I love Jack far too much to not try very hard to preserve his integrity as a character, so if he slips, let me know.

Saiyan-girl-cheetah: I'm glad you like it! And if I have indeed made this premise both fresh and believeable, I've done far more than I hoped, and that is a happy thing. Thank you for saying so.

Meghan5: Cool! Another San Diegan! Just wait til I take our Jack down to the SD Pier...wanna come with? *grins* Hey, I seem to remember that you were working on a story too, girl! Where's your updates, huh?

Captainsparrow'sgirl, BuxomWench, Indigo, Calendar, Moonbroken, Aelimir, Eva, CQ: Thank you all so very much!

If I missed anyone, my sincere apologies, and to any of you who read but didn't review, thank you for reading!