Aboard the Dauntless Chapter 2: The Best Laid Plans

By Honorat Selonnet

Rating: K

Disclaimer: There are only two rules that matter: what a man can do and what a man can't do. For instance—I can write POTC fanfiction; but I can't make any money at it by me onesies, savvy?

Summary: Elizabeth is back in the arms of her father, where she discovers she doesn't want to be. Jack is back in the hands of the law, where he always knew he didn't want to be. Plans go awry. Temptation occurs. Sacrifices are made. Norrington makes a vile joke. Elizabeth's and Jack's points of view. Don't worry. Governor Swann and Commodore Norrington will get their chance next. More movie novelization including deleted scenes and filler—the second trip to Isla de Muerta.

Thanks and one small Caribbean Island in a nearby universe go to geekmama2 for beta work on this. Any errors and inconsistencies remain mine.

The Best Laid Plans

The arrival of Jack and Elizabeth on the deck of the Dauntless coincided with a flurry of activity designed to prepare the great vessel to make way. Midshipmen rushed to stow and store the longboat, sailors turned the bars of the capstan to draw up the anchor, and the rigging swarmed with crewmen intent on unfurling and sheeting home the vast sails. She would be carrying all her canvas away from this island. Men hauled halyards and braced yards preparatory to bringing the ship about onto her new course. Crisp commands snapped through the air like the voice of God calling order out of chaos.

The arrival of Jack and Elizabeth on the deck of the coincided with a flurry of activity designed to prepare the great vessel to make way. Midshipmen rushed to stow and store the longboat, sailors turned the bars of the capstan to draw up the anchor, and the rigging swarmed with crewmen intent on unfurling and sheeting home the vast sails. She would be carrying all her canvas away from this island. Men hauled halyards and braced yards preparatory to bringing the ship about onto her new course. Crisp commands snapped through the air like the voice of God calling order out of chaos.

Elizabeth was herded away from her disreputable fellow castaway by an enormously relieved Governor Swann. The man had nearly crushed his daughter with embraces, murmuring broken endearments into her hair. As well he might, Jack conceded, considering the usual fate of young women abducted by pirates. Nevertheless the governor always made the hackles rise on his instinct for self-preservation. Here was another man whose eyes snapped "gallows" whenever he looked at Jack. In spite of the fact that he hadn't laid a finger on the lass. Well not too many fingers anyway. He gave a sigh for lost opportunities. A sense of honour was a bloody nuisance for a pirate.

Jack had a bad moment when Elizabeth began to explain Will's plight to their rescuers. This was not the time for honest stupidity nor, for that matter, for stupid honesty. He needn't have worried. Elizabeth was no Will Turner. The lass had a firm grasp of the need for subterfuge—as he should have remembered. She revealed only that Will had been taken captive by the pirates of the Black Pearl. Jack let himself breathe again.

However, her story wasn't going to be good enough. Jack, slouching with deceptive nonchalance by the rail, flanked by his increasingly familiar guard dogs, already knew that Elizabeth's grand plan was going awry. The set of the Dauntless's gradually filling sails meant Jamaica was their destination, rather than Isla de Muerta. He'd had doubts that the great British flagship would contain many who cared about the fate of an orphaned blacksmith's apprentice. They had their governor's daughter and a token pirate to hang for the attack on Port Royal—never mind he'd not even been involved. They'd be setting sail for their home port with all due speed.

He watched as Elizabeth stood on the warm tarred planks and came to the same conclusion. No mean sailor herself, the bonnie lass. The delight drained out of her face like a rip tide, which was, in Jack's opinion, a bloody shame.

As the combination of orders and movements about the ship registered with her, Elizabeth felt the sting of fear. No one was asking about the likeliest course of the Black Pearl. No one seemed concerned about Will. Her father, noticing her distress and misinterpreting its cause, reassured her that she would soon be home. But as Elizabeth stared around the decks of the Dauntless at the indifferent faces of the men in whose hands lay Will's fate, she began to feel that she no longer had a home to which to return. How could she have imagined that her world would have expanded to match the changes she felt in herself?

Her father still saw her as the child which, to be honest, she hadn't been for some time. But that child that she wasn't was the only hope Will had. She had to find some way to make these bloody men care about him. She turned to her father, ready to do battle with the only weapons available to her.

Facing up to her father she insisted that he look at her, begging, "But we've got to save Will!"

Jack watched every move of the little drama, seeking any sign of an opportune moment. He knew from experience how persistent the lass could be when she started in on this topic. But he wasn't seeing anything encouraging.

Governor Swann confronted his child. "No," he told her firmly. "You're safe now." He held up his hands as though to restrain her next outburst.

You're operating under a mistaken assumption, mate, Jack thought. You thought you'd lost her, but can't you see you'll lose her again if you hold her back just as surely as if you let her go?

Apparently telepathy wasn't working this morning because the Governor brushed by Elizabeth heading for the stairs of the quarterdeck where Norrington awaited him flanked by Gillette. Beside Jack, Mr. Murtogg was looking down, embarrassed to witness the family spat.

"We will return to Port Royal immediately," the Governor informed Elizabeth. His frustrated daughter spun about to rush after him, her lips pursed in anger as her father snapped over his shoulder, "Not go gallivanting after pirates!"

Uh oh! Jack tensed, waiting for the storm to hit. That was the wrong tone to take. She might have been a child when she'd left Port Royal, but she wasn't one any longer. He held up his hands as though he could physically realign the governor, but there was nothing he could do.

Her voice bitterly accusing, Elizabeth retorted, "Then we condemn him to death."

Governor Swann turned to frown at his undutiful daughter. The commodore glanced down and looked away; his mouth opened as if he might intervene, then shut as he swallowed his words, watching the governor instead.

Governor Swann appeared to realize he had taken a misstep with Elizabeth. He chose his next words carefully—using his political voice, the voice of reason and good government: "The boy's fate is regrettable, but, then, so was his decision to engage in piracy."

Norrington looked down again, refusing to meet Elizabeth's eyes. That's right, mate, she won't be forgiving any of you for this. Jack tipped his head back in exasperation watching the sails still bracing for Port Royal. C'mon you bloody fools! Give the girl this ship so I can go get mine! He gripped his hands together to still the urge to dislocate somebody's arm. Several arms. Perhaps it was time to try a new tack. He opened his mouth, but was cut off before he could speak.

In disbelief Elizabeth cried, "To rescue me! To prevent anything from happening to me!"

Shedding Murtogg and Mulroy with an expert twitch of his shoulders, Jack stepped forward holding up his hand to claim the attention of the commodore.

"If I may be so bold as to inject my professional opinion," he offered.

His guards came scurrying along to catch up to their escapee as Jack dodged around Elizabeth and accosted the governor and the commodore. Governor Swan looked away in annoyance as Jack approached. Elizabeth twisted from glaring at her father to staring suspiciously at Jack.

"The Pearl was listing near to scuppers after the battle," he assured them, his voice coaxing, tempting. He arrived in front of Norrington, shaking his head regretfully. "It's very unlikely she'll be able to make good time."

The commodore remained impassive.

Elizabeth watched with clenched teeth as Jack attempted to persuade Commodore Norrington to pursue the Black Pearl. The sense of her own failure pervaded her mind like dense smoke. She felt she would explode with impotent fury at her father, at Commodore Norrington, at the entire world to which she had been so eager to get back.

All it had taken was one day on an island with Jack Sparrow to totally erode the shaky foundations of her upbringing. She'd always hated the constraints placed on her by her gender. Hated the fond dismissal of anything of importance she had to say. Hated her gentle exclusion from anything difficult or ugly or real. Hated the lace and silk and cotton wool that encompassed her narrowing life. Of all the men in her life, only Will had ever really looked at her. But since they'd grown up, he had dropped his eyes—had listened to her father's warnings and had slipped back into the ritual of class divisions that she also hated.

But Jack had been different. He was a grown man, a man used to holding authority as were most of the men who had surrounded her all her life. Nevertheless, he'd always seen her for what she was. Never simply pinned her in a box, labeled her, placed her on a high shelf, pulled her out only to admire. He had argued with her, mocked her, horrified her, laughed with her, tried to seduce her, but he had never dismissed her.

Not as her father and Commodore Norrington were doing. The air was heavy with the sense of their indulgence and implacability. The men were in charge now. Time to take care of the little woman. Poor dear! She's had such a horrible experience. Let's get her home as fast as possible and forget anything has happened. She felt as helpless as she had on Barbossa's ship—as though she had lost her voice and all her words fell away into some great chasm of silence.

She had thought the only thing she had to escape was the island. But the chains, not of iron, looped about her, burning into her soul as Jack had foreseen they would.

Jack had freed her from more than that dratted corset that day on the docks. And she'd developed a taste for that freedom. Who said only men could fight and sacrifice their lives? She had plunged a knife into the heart of a man so evil, hell itself had spat him back out. She had directed strategy in a sea battle between tall ships, bending a pirate crew to her will. She had fought immortal pirates with all the skill she possessed as a marksman, skill Will had imparted to her back when he still saw the person she was and not the lady into which she was being made. And she had held her own on a desert island with the legendary Captain Jack Sparrow—had in fact brought about their rescue. And if burning Jack's rum hadn't been risking her very life, she didn't know what was.

At the moment that cunning pirate was luring Norrington with his dulcet words. "Think about it," he breathed, enticing—Lucifer himself might have charmed the angels out of heaven with such a voice. Elizabeth darted a glance between her father and the commodore. What she saw was not encouraging. Her father and the commodore were no idealistic angels. She could tell that Jack saw it too.

"The Black Pearl," he urged, his eyebrows raised. Even now he gave her name like a man might sigh the name of his beloved—as if he were offering up to Norrington his greatest treasure. "The last real pirate threat in the Caribbean, mate," he continued, smiling with desperate temptation. Eyes wide, Jack leaned into Norrington's face, invading his personal space as though he could force his will through air alone and in through the commodore's eyes. "How can you pass that up?" However, Norrington flinched away from the pirate's admittedly unsavory breath.

His gaze cold and unmoving, Commodore Norrington answered Jack, contempt dripping from his voice, "By remembering that I serve others, Mr. Sparrow, not only myself."

That was James all over, Elizabeth reflected. The ultimate self-sacrificing public servant. Captain Sparrow would never comprehend such a man. But how could she use that trait to her advantage? Jack was wasting his time. Even now, she could see his plan failing. Could see that Commodore Norrington was dismissing the pirate in the same way he had dismissed her—as though the worthlessness of what he had to say were a foregone conclusion, an inconvenient rattle to be endured and if possible silenced with as little fuss as possible. Norrington would never budge one iota for his own gain. But could he be convinced he was doing it for someone else's sake?

Jack could have cheerfully shot Norrington right in his smug official face. If he had his hands on his pistol. If he hadn't already vowed to use that shot on Barbossa. The man was made of solid iron. Not a human chink in him. Mark down another reason why Jack hated dealing with the Royal Navy. They did not have any of the same motivations as normal men. He'd rather bargain with Barbossa, whose twisted desires he at least understood.

Elizabeth saw Jack glance uneasily at the governor and back to Norrington, smiling almost as though he were nervous. She remembered what he had said to her about his fate if he was captured by the British Navy again. This was a man who was fighting for his life. But the commodore had already turned his back on Jack and was following Lieutenant Gillette up the steps to the quarterdeck. To him, Jack Sparrow had no value at all.

However, even if Jack and the Pearl had no value in Norrington's world, Elizabeth knew that she had one commodity left that did hold its value in his market. She had one golden coin to spend. The question was whether she could bear to spend it. This would not be some weak transaction easily annulled. This would be a sacrifice sealed with her body and blood and sacred honour. For the first time she would offer her word in all seriousness—the only word she knew would be heard. For Will's sake Elizabeth knew she could do it. But she did not know if she could survive the crack of her heart when she did.

Elizabeth called up the nightmare picture of that cave on Isla de Muerta, envisioning Will standing there before that stone chest of blood-stained gold. She heard again Jack's answer. They would kill Bootstrap's son. She had to save him. Her own survival was not an option anymore. Elizabeth Swann must die so that Will Turner might live.

Slipping by Jack Sparrow, who was looking as dejected as she had ever seen him, his slight quicksilver form trapped motionless between the two husky, stolid marines, she touched his arm in a brief moment of encouragement, whether his or her own she couldn't have said. Then she was alone before the quarterdeck. Her father reached out to stop her from bothering the commodore, but Elizabeth was finished heeding her father's wishes. She shrugged away from him in her earnest pursuit of Norrington who was continuing firmly up the stairs.

"Commodore," she called to him, her eyes beseeching. "I beg you, please do this."

Hemmed in by his honour guard, Jack waited, poised with bated breath, his hands straining and still. Elizabeth had one more plan. And he'd already developed a healthy respect for the lass's plans. They had a naïve, bloody, vicious brilliance to them that he admired—preferably from a distance. She counted no cost, did Will's bonnie lass, not to herself, nor to anyone else. But she was no fool.

Halting at the bottom of the stairs, Elizabeth looked up at the commodore. Her voice was soft, pleading. "For me," she entreated. "As a wedding gift."

Optimism coursed back through Jack, and he let out a small sigh of sheer relief. The bonnie lass was a bloody genius! He'd like to see the man who could resist those fervent self-sacrificing eyes.

Norrington pivoted in shock and stared at the girl.

Governor Swann looked incredulous and delighted, beginning to smile. "Elizabeth!" he exclaimed. "Are you accepting the Commodore's proposal?

The proud papa was swift to change his disapproving tune when his little girl danced to his piping, Jack decided. But Elizabeth did not have about her the air of a woman giving herself joyously into the hands of her beloved.

There was in her face the look that had been on Will's face when he had stood on the rail of the Pearl and had thrown down his gauntlet to Barbossa: "You can't die, but I can." All sacrifice and glorious stupidity. But sometimes a little stupidity was the only thing left—when cunning and logic and treachery and bribery had failed. Jack understood that fatal last strike only too well—the death blow that took a man down with his enemy when the goal was more vital than life itself. Miss Swann was striking her colours. She'd had only one chance, and she was taking it like a martyr.

Elizabeth answered her father, quietly and firmly, looking up into Norrington's stunned face, "I am."

There. She had done it. She had given her answer to James's proposal. Had thrown her dice, played her last trump, gambled her last sovereign. The chains drew more tightly about her chest, graying her vision. Could imaginary chains choke a person in reality? It seemed so. Whatever happened now for Will, she had spent her life for his here on the deck of the Dauntless.

Jack, on the other hand, was elated. That's it lass! Use any weapon that comes to your hand! Whirling about, he pounced with grimy fingers on the disgusted Mulroy's pristine white uniform front and crossed baldrics.

"A wedding! I love weddings!" he crowed, his grin showing every one of his gold teeth. Waving his arms festively, he shouted, "Drinks all around!"

He stood corrected. Apparently navy men had one motivation in common with normal men. Just his misfortune that it wasn't one he could take advantage of. But Elizabeth had proved herself ruthless enough to take that advantage. The girl bore watching. He could feel the commodore wavering, could already see him falling. This was a prize no man of sense would turn down. A Plan of his own was unfurling itself swiftly in Jack's fertile brain.

Elizabeth glanced at him suspiciously, distracted for a moment. The bonnie lass was too sharp for his own good, Jack reflected. But she did not swerve from her own goal, returning her gaze to the commodore's grim countenance. Good girl. You just keep your bloody fiancé in line and leave ol' Jack to his own devices.

He noticed the commodore eyeing him after his outburst rather as a man looks at something he is going to have to scrape off his boot. In a burst of merriment, Jack raised his eyebrows, wiped off his delighted expression and assumed one of ardent and phony contrition.

"I know," he smiled placatingly, holding up his hands with wrists pressed together. "Clap him in irons, right?"

Norrington did not appear amused. Jaw clenched, lips pressed together in annoyance, he descended several stairs towards the pirate who was the bane of his life.

"Mr. Sparrow," he snapped coldly.

Jack dropped his hands, the smile gone as though it had never been there. He grimaced. How he hated a man with no sense of humour!

Elizabeth found herself mouthing, "It's Captain, Captain Sparrow!" since Jack wasn't in a position to insist on anything.

"You will accompany these fine men to the helm," Norrington continued in that same icy tone, his eyes sweeping the decks of the Dauntless, "and provide us with the bearing to Isla de Muerta." He glared back at the pirate.

Elizabeth let out her breath, eyes still on the commodore, her face sober. This was her reward—the result she had been scheming to achieve. She could not summon up any emotion beyond a bedrock sense of accomplishment. Jack would have to be excited enough for both of them.

"You will then spend the rest of the voyage contemplating all possible meanings of the phrase 'silent as the grave.'" Norrington's level voice still managed to contain enough venom to do justice to that veiled threat.

Jack opened his mouth but no words seemed adequate. He tilted his head quizzically, then pressed his lips together in a small insincere smile. Correction—he hated a man with an absolutely vile sense of humour.

With quiet loathing, Norrington prompted the pirate, "Do I make myself clear?"

Jack shrugged. "Inescapably clear," he said with a sour smile. All puns are intended, he thought bitterly as Murtogg and Mulroy nodded to each other then, gripping him roughly by the arms, dragged him off towards the helm.

TBC