"Captain?" squeaked Lovehaste, flailing about and flapping her narrow hands a few inches above Barbossa's bowed head. "Are you alright?"
Of course I'm not bloody alright. What do yer think I'm doing, alternative callisthenics? "nnGggk," was all, however, that he managed to say.
His chest was in agony. Barbossa forced himself to lower his hand and, trembling violently, took a look at his chest, completely expecting to see blood gushing out of the gunshot wound. Instead, before his very eyes, the scar was contorting, writhing... disappearing...
It vanished with a noise very much like schlup, and the pain vanished with it.
Barbossa breathed out. "Voodoo woman," he muttered. "What has she done?"
Lovehaste did not answer, because she made a little yelping noise, went absolutely rigid and keeled over.
He sighed. The last thing he needed was his map-reader fainting before he'd even had time to have one dream. He hauled her, none too gently, into a chair, and slapped her around the face a couple of times. When this had no effect, other than to give her cheeks a bit of colour, he decided he'd throw some water at her. He picked a doorway and strolled in.
It failed to be a kitchen. It was a bedroom, with a small but very ornate single bed (for some reason, the smallness and obvious singularity of the bed made Barbossa smile wryly), an overcrowded dressing table, eye-watering red wallpaper and a cot. It was the cot that prevented Barbossa from exiting and looking for the kitchen. He frowned at it and peered over.
As he looked inside, his mind drifted back to a memory- either the third or fourth year of the curse, he couldn't remember- when he'd gone to visit Lovehaste (she was living in a treehouse with a little foreign family on one of the most beautiful islands outside of Paradise at the time) to see how she was getting along. He'd brought a dress with him. He sometimes bought Lovehaste dresses from a quiet little shop that specialised in corsets creating bosoms and playing down ribcages for the 'slighter lady', because, he reasoned, he may as well have Lovehaste looking as nice as she meagrely could if he had to look at her.
This was a particularly lovely dress, a rich purple silk affair with full, elegant sleeves and black Chantilly lace edging. She'd come out to greet him (rubbing at her scar) and he'd dumped in on her lap.
"Present," he'd said, by way of greeting.
She'd given him a sad smile, one of those alas-if-only-but-no smiles that made her look as if she had gas. "You must stop giving me these lovely things," she'd murmured.
Barbossa had got huffy, understandably. "Oh, that's nice. That's wonderful gratitude, that is."
She'd shaken her daft head, still holding that sad smile in place. Barbossa had briefly wondered whether it was detachable. "What's the point of my looking pretty?" she'd asked. Barbossa was about to tell her his eyes could only take so much abuse, but she talked over him. "After all, I'll never have a true love now, will I?"
"We might lift the curse," he'd said bitterly. "Then ye can have Ragetti." Ragetti and Lovehaste were still shyly blushing at each other during this period. "Yer can go the whole way- white wedding, fifteen babies, house with a farm out back, the works."
"I can't have children," Lovehaste had replied, suddenly going all prim on him. "I'd rather not discuss it either, thank you so very much."
In the event, he'd taken the dress back after she'd only worn it once. The next woman to wear it was the similarly slim and slight Miss Swann. It had to be said, even though the dress was made for Lovehaste's measurements, Elizabeth Swann had looked a thousand times more attractive.
So it was a sensation of shock that overcame Barbossa when he saw the snoozing pink sausage of a baby in the cot.
Oh well, at least now he knew what Tia Dalma had given Lovehaste in return for 'information'. He said a string of rude things, centring on casting aspersions on the two women's species and working up from there. How the hell was he going to persuade Lovehaste to take a brat of a few months old onto a ship, for ship read 'floating hothouse of disease'?
A groan and a fluted, "Oh! Where am I?" indicated Lovehaste had woken up and was going to play the fainting card for everything it was worth.
He strode back in. "Lovehaste," he snarled, and she jumped, apparently working out where she was very quickly.
"Y-yes, captain?" she asked, tremulously.
Barbossa pointed towards the bedroom and gave her a steely glare. Lovehaste made a wailing noise. "Oh, oh please let me take him!" she exclaimed, starting up her pleading-with-bad-men sobs. "I will make sure he never bothers you! Don't make me leave my baby!"
Barbossa was thrown slightly off course by this, (and rather creeped out by Lovehaste's use of 'my baby') but he was never one to let his guard down. "Ye had better not," he hissed at her, whilst inside he yowled with happy laughter and rolled around on the floor, making 'bduh bduh bduh' noises. "I hope yer realise it'll be dead within three days. I don't want yer cluttering up my ship with dear little coffins, understand? When it dies, yer toss it over the side."
Lovehaste had turned a sickly shade of spring green, but she nodded, weakly. Then she shuddered a full body shudder and sat down, heavily on the floor.
Barbossa's eye was drawn to her chest, for want of a better word. There was a rather familiar mark on her breastbone, circular, puckered and tender-looking, that he could swear wasn't there when he'd entered the house.
He smiled, grimly satisfied. Ye evil bitch, Tia Dalma. Yer really know what yer doing, don't yer?