Chapter 4 - I feel bad for Jack for not coming up with the plan on his own, so I'm going to change that just a little bit! Yay!

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Not long after Jack had ventured far enough away from Elizabeth to be seen, she awoke. She instantly knew where she was, her mind not giving her any sympathy in the hot sun. She did her best to ignore her growling stomach, and sat up in the warm said to look out to sea once more. 'Keep a weather eye,' she remembered Jack saying and sighed.

Elizabeth sat staring out at the horizon blankly for quite some time. Jack was still meandering around in the trees, probably to waste time. It was beginning to look like she wasn't going to get off the island. She had expected Jack to have a plan by the time they got back to shore, but apparently he didn't.

Maybe he did, and he just wasn't telling her. He had proven himself to be rather shady on more than one occasion since Elizabeth had met him. He was, after all, called Captain Jack Sparrow for a reason.

As Elizabeth's hands sifted through the sand, her eyes watched the waves without seeing anything. Her mind was a blank, and so were most of her other senses. The night before had been ridiculously cold causing her to barely sleep. And now she was uncomfortable in her white chemise as the sun beat down on her. She angrily wiped away a drop of sweat that had started to travel down across her temple, remembering how long she had stayed awake shivering even with the rum in her system. Consequentially, all of her muscles ached with exhaustion, and her eyes burned and felt rather swollen in the sun.

Elizabeth Swann was feeling pathetic at the moment.

Without a thought, she let her muscles go limp and her back hit the hot sand almost gratefully. It was at the precise moment when she had begun to relax and she felt a nap coming on, that Jack chose to grace her with his presence. His shade covered her, removing the warmth that was easing the tension out of her body, and then the jingling of his hair decorations was accompanied by his voice. "I have come to the conclusion, love, that there is- in fact- no one else on this island." He told her nearly comically, then shot his eyes sideways with a tight smile before continuing. "Besides the two of us, of course."

"That's wonderful, Jack." Elizabeth murmured, not caring to hear what he was saying, wondering why he would come and tell her something to ridiculous as the two of them began to slowly die.

The fact of the matter was that Jack had already grown lonely, and wanted Elizabeth to speak to him like she had yesterday. In such eternal silence, one's mind could wander with ease to very worrisome places.

"Miss Swann, I do believe that if you put some rum in yourself you would feel quite better." He said, squatting down with a stare on her closed eyelids.

"And I, Jack, do believe that you're wrong." She answered, but then considered her options. Jack hadn't mentioned any fresh water on the island aside from the jugs underground- meaning the drink in question would eventually be her only option. Little did she know that alcohol would, in fact, dehydrate her body.

"Well fine then," Jack said gravely and stood. "I'll be enjoying our vacation, if you'd care to join me."

Elizabeth opened her eyes and stared at the sky. To her, that seemed to be some sort of an admission that he had a plan. 'Vacation?' She repeated and waited a moment before getting up and walking quickly through the sand to find Jack. He was already sitting right in the middle of the island, a bottle of rum in had as he lounged in the cool shade from the palm trees.

"Jack, do you have a plan?" She watched as the Captain looked calmly over to her and grinned before closing his eyes and lying back in the grass. "Jack?" He simply held up his rum bottle to her and she waited for a moment before taking it from him. "Do you have a plan?" She repeated once more in an impatient tone.

"Relax love." He said in a calm tone as he sat up, and took the bottle of rum back from her. He uncorked it and handed it back to her before saying, "I believe it was you that said, 'Drink up.'" He said and she stared at him once again.

-

"We're devils and black sheep and really bad eggs!" Both sang in their loudest voices. "Drink up me 'earties yo ho! Yo ho yo ho a pirates life for me!"

The sun had set and it was probably close to midnight, but with the help of the large fire that had been built and the obscene amount of alcohol between the two of them, Elizabeth and Jack were perfectly comfortable.

"I love this song!" Jack said, half walking, half stumbling back around to the north side of the fire. "Really bad eggs!" He shouted and fell with a grunt. Elizabeth followed him, not trying hard to ape his path, the sand and alcohol doing a fine job of it for her. Once she got within an arms length of Jack, he shot out his arm and pulled her down next to him. "When I get the Pearl back, I'm gonna teach it to the whole crew," He stated with a wave of his rum-bearing arm and a squint as though he was picturing it. "and we'll sing it all the time!"

Elizabeth leaned in closer as she spoke hurriedly with a proud stature. "And you'll be positively the most fearsome pirates in the Spanish Main."

Jack's eyes seemed to widen at the thought- as though he found it blasphemous. "Not just the Spanish Main, love." He started in his drunken, almost growling tone. "the entire ocean... the entire wo'ld... Wherever we want to go, we'll go." He said, bobbing his head in time to his words, and still waving his arm about as he told his story. "That's what a ship is, yanno. It's not just a keel and a hull and a deck and sails- that's what a ship needs. But what a ship really is," Jack paused, his voice getting lower as he got further into his speech. "What the Pearl really is..." He looked out to the water and near-whispered, "Is freedom."

Elizabeth sighed and thought of what Jack was saying. She had always wanted freedom when she was a little girl. Jack had always lived in freedom- and here he was on the island with no escape. At that very moment, Elizabeth Swann understood the pirate next to her. "Jack," She said, and leaned in further with her head on his shoulder. "It must be really terrible for you to be trapped on this island." She said and looked out to the waters as well.

Jack seemed to snap back to his senses as he felt Elizabeth's weight lean into him, and he looked down at her. "Oh yes." He said and wrapped his arm around her. "But the company is... infinitely better then last time." His fingers, one by one, slightly gripped her shoulder. "I think. And the- the scenery has definitely improved."

Elizabeth had barely realized that Jack had put his arm upon her shoulder, but was trying her damnedest to think of how her plan would work. "Mr. Sparrow!" She squealed as his words started to sink in, and sat straight up. "I'm not entirely sure that I've had enough rum to allow that kind of talk." Yes, that would do, that would do very nicely, in fact.

Jack looked at her with something like a trace of a smirk. "I know exactly what you mean, love." He murmured and set his bottle of rum down in the sand, then returned his hand to his face. He took one end of his moustache in between each of his thumbs and forefingers and curled it slightly upward before picking up his bottle again.

"To freedom." Elizabeth said as a toast with her bottle raised, and Jack returned it. After a long drink, and then some silence after Jack laid down to stare at the stars. "How are we going to get off this island, Jack." She asked, finally having a plan of her own in case Jack hadn't come up with one.

"Oh Elizabeth, do quit worrying. We've got some time, and we'll devise a plan soon enough." Jack answered, sick of her bothering him about it and more interested in the alcohol.

"But what about Barbossa? What about your ship?" She asked, leaning over the captain just a bit.

Jack opened his eyes wide and stared at her. She was perhaps the first person in ten years to properly acknowledge him as the rightful owner of The Black Pearl. "Well, I suppose we should do something, then." He slurred, the alcohol finally catching up with him. There was, after all, only so much rum one can drink before he is inebriated.

"What about a signal?" Elizabeth asked, trying to plant her ideas into his own. "A... smoke signal?" Her tone was quiet, as Jack looked as though he was thinking.

He seemed to have an epiphany. "I believe we'll build a smoke signal!" He told her with great arm gestures as he spoke.

"And we'll burn the trees?" She asked, and he repeated. "And the... contents of the cellar?"

"And the contents of the cellar!" Jack paused before reasoning, "But not the rum, of course."

"Oh but we'll need the rum." Elizabeth told him, propping herself up on one arm as she reached across Captain Jack Sparrow to pick up his half-full bottle. Jack was shaking his head enough to cause his trinkets to jingle. She put the bottle up to his lips and he took a long drink.

"And we shall burn the rum." Jack said, narrowing his eyes after Elizabeth nodded at his 'genius'. She pulled them up, and they were off to start a very large fire before Jack passed out...