Author's Note/Disclaimer: While writing the final chapters of Choices, something occurred to me that will probably be obvious to the rest of you: that this story effectively subverts central characteristics of each of the three canon characters as we know them from the movie. That Will's love for Elizabeth is both true and deep, that Elizabeth loves him unequivocally in turn, and that Jack's heart is given completely to his Black Pearl and the sea—these are articles of canon subtext, implied if not implicit in the script. Thus, the world that I have created here, in which Will and Elizabeth's love has faded and gone cold, in which Jack can look at Elizabeth as he looks at his Pearl and in which the Governor deceives the daughter to whom he is devoted, is almost AU and potentially OOC. So I would like to thank all of you, the readers, for entering with me into this world and allowing me to take such liberties with these much-loved characters, and offer my apologies to the Mouse to whom they belong. (Author's Addendum 07/02/07: And then Dead Man's Chest came out and I realized I'd hit closer to canon than I thought...)

Continuity Note: There were some changes made to the final scene of the preceding chapter which will be reflected here, chiefly concerning a mentioned trip to Port Royal. My reasoning for these changes will be discussed by the characters.

Special thanks to Geek Mama for beta help, Joan for encouragement and gentle kicks in the behind, and all of you who have been kind enough to leave reviews.


Chapter XXVII.
S
afe Harbor

Some think to lose him
by having him confined
some do suppose him
poor thing, to be blind;
but if ne'er so close ye wall him
do the best that you may,
Blind Love, if so ye call him
will find out his way.

--"Love Will Find Out the Way"


Jack has left Elizabeth in his cabin while he goes about the business of the Black Pearl, stopping by the galley to ask that some food be brought to her; he does not intend to put her to work under Anamaria's eye today. In fact he is already wondering if her stated desire to sign on as crew is anything more than a mere fancy, and wondering too how many days or hours of thankless labor it will take before she changes her mind. He supposes that he had best try the experiment before they leave the West Indies; but at the same time he catches himself putting off the inevitable, if only to preserve the time they might have together, and he curses himself, again, for a fool.

It is in this uncomfortable state of mind that Gibbs finds him, requesting "to put a word in your ear about the young lady, Cap'n"; which word, once told, does nothing whatsoever to improve his mood. So, when he strides across the deck and flings open the Great Cabin door—his cabin door, he reminds himself irritably—it is with rather more force and noise than strictly necessary; and the young lady jumps and stares like a rabbit at the crash, which annoys him even further. He knows that she is no shrinking violet, and if she continues to act as such, he resolves to keelhaul her himself. Or at least slap some sense into her.

"What's this I hear from Gibbs about you sending back your breakfast?" he demands, looming over her. At least she doesn't cringe, only looks affronted. He wouldn't be able to bear it if she cringed.

"I wasn't hungry."

"Not hungry, eh? Well, if you're still fixed on crewing up with us, Lizzie, you'd best get accustomed to eating when food's set before you. I've no use for a weak chit who's like to faint away if she works overlong in the sun."

"I wouldn't faint!"

Good; still indignant. "See that you don't," he rejoins. "I'll have Ana toss you overboard if I catch you at it."

She scowls at him; but when Gibbs comes in with a fresh tray laden with bread, cheese, salt pork, and an apple from the barrel he keeps to spite Barbossa's ghost, she sets to willingly enough under his watchful eye.

"That's better. Would you like some rum to wash it all down? No--? Well, one can't have everything, I suppose. No harm in trying, eh?"

She doesn't even smile, but instead sets down her bread and looks up at him seriously.

"Jack, may I ask a favor of you?"

"Anything, my own, provided it does not involve making nice with your pet Commodore again. I've had quite enough of that for at least another three years, thanks very much."

"No-o-o, not exactly. But..."

"Not liking the sound of this, love. What is it, then?"

"It's my father," she says miserably. "He thinks I'm in a convent. He'll expect me to write, and when I don't, he'll worry."

"He might, at that. But what has that to do with me, pray?"

"I just...I don't want him to think that I've died." Her eyes are pleading. "Could you—I mean, can we stop in Port Royal before we sail for India?"

"No," Jack says, more harshly than he means to, because he wants to say yes to those eyes—and to that "we"!—and is impatient with himself for it. "We cannot just 'stop off' in Port Royal, Lizzie."

"Why not?"

"The Black Pearl is not your personal ferry boat, m'lady. You heard the Commodore! Just because you're on board doesn't mean the Black Pearl won't be pursued and blown into little shreds by His Majesty's Navy. Especially as no one but Norrington knows you're on board."

"But—"

"But I can't ask the crew to take such a risk, and you haven't the right," Jack says, overriding her. "Why this sudden attack of conscience, anyway? You seemed quite assured that your father would 'get over it' last night, if I recall rightly."

"I was distraught!" she cries. "I wasn't thinking. I was selfish..."

"And it's selfish you're being now, darlin'. No, listen to me! You have expressed a wish to become a member of this crew, and as such, I cannot be seen to favor you above the others. Ana and Gibbs, they wouldn't mind, but the rest of the men are not your friends, or your servants. They are your shipmates and your equals, and you owe the same duty to them and to the ship as they do to you."

"I know that," she says, sulkily, but her gaze slides away from his.

"No, you don't, love." Naturally; a privileged life doesn't teach such niceties. He casts a sardonic glance upwards at whichever power of fate or chance has seen fit to make him her tutor before proceeding with the lesson at hand. "You can't have both worlds. You can't be both a pirate lass and a governor's daughter." He gestures sharply, silencing her protest. "You have to choose, one or t'other. You've thrown in your lot with me, and that means you can't just drop by the old pater's mansion for a spot of tea and touching family reunion, at least not without getting the rest of us shot to pieces or tossed in gaol."

"And if I wasn't a member of the crew?" There is a challenge in her tone. "What are my choices then, Jack?"

"Then?" He shrugs. "Easy enough, m'lady. If you like, you can change your mind. I will take you home straightaway, and you can tell your Da that I kidnapped you and kept you to feed my own unspeakable appetites, or whatever tale strikes your fancy. It'll only improve my reputation. But I can't hang 'round playing hide-and-seek with Norrington's precious Navy while you have your little visit."

"So you don't care if I stay or go," she flashes. "I understand that, Jack, I know I'm more a burden to you than anything. A woman on board is a liability. Even Gibbs will tell you so, if you ask him! Why didn't you just hand me over to James when you had a chance? It would surely have been easier, would it not!"

"Aye, lass," he says, resigned. It's a conversation he's been hoping to avoid, but she would bring it up, wouldn't she? Not in the girl's nature to let a thing like that be. "It would have been a damn sight easier for both of us, I'd wager."

"Then why?" she insists.

"'Twas not my choice to make," he answers.

But the truth roughens his voice, and she says, triumphant, "You're a liar, Jack. It's your ship. You're the Captain. You could have rid yourself of me and assuaged your conscience as well. And don't go claiming you haven't got one, because I know you do—at least when it doesn't benefit you not to!"

She means to force him to a declaration; well, he'll be damned if he gives her one, when they both know well enough that her presence in his bed this past night was evidence of no more than her need for warmth and comfort. Remind me that I want to live, she said then, and he'll be her remembrance if she asks it; but more he cannot—will not—be, and that he must remind himself. "Aye, it is my ship," he snaps, suddenly irritated beyond all reason. "You're here upon my forbearance, and you'd best not forget it. Do you really think, Lizzie, that because I've bedded you a time or two, because I permitted you to sail with us, I am now to be your willing slave in all things? Because if so, you've a thing or two to learn about pirates, my dear. And men, if it comes to that."

She flushes, drawing back from him. "No, I don't think that," she says, low. "Jack, that's not—"

"Isn't it?" When she does not reply, he goes on, voice hard, "Consider, madam. I have already put this crew in enough danger on what appears to them to be your whim alone, and if I continue to do so without regard for their opinion or their right to get paid, I will become a very unpopular captain very quickly. And when they maroon me on some island with no food, no water, a pistol, and only one shot, you'd best pray they decide to maroon you along with me, because while most of my men are good men at heart, they are all pirates and are, with a few exceptions, wont to think of woman-flesh as another sort of treasure to plunder. Savvy?"

Elizabeth is silent for a moment, eyes wide. He feels a pang of regret for speaking so harshly, but he hasn't told her more than the plain truth; it's one that she must learn, if she truly wants this life, one that he had to learn the hard way. A pirate ship's a certain kind of democracy, in theory, like that of the ancients: the sort in which getting voted out of office means being thrown to the lions in the Coliseum. Metaphorically, at least.

"Jack, I'm sorry," she says at last. "I didn't think—"

"No," he says, his anger draining away as suddenly as it overtook him. "No, I wager you didn't. You usually don't think, do you? You just rush headlong towards whatever it is that you want, using whatever means necessary, and do your thinking afterwards."

She gives him a weak smile. "Ever since I was very small, I'm afraid."

"Hurricane Lizzie. And Lord help anyone who gets in your way, eh?"

"I remember you once said we were like two peas in a pod, that way," she points out.

"Ah." He takes her hand, raises it to his lips; the gesture, he knows, is by way of being a tacit apology, and she seems to accept it as such. "But I learned long ago to do my thinking first whenever possible. It's not so useful, afterwards."

"You mock me, Jack." But her smile is easier this time; and when did he begin counting his success according to her smiles?

"Aye," he agrees, unrepentant. "But never more than you deserve, I promise you. And have no fear, m'lady. We'll see about getting word to your father concerning your whereabouts. Shouldn't be too difficult, though I can't speak for its effect on the old man's constitution. He doesn't suffer from a weak heart, I hope."

"Father has a remarkably strong constitution," says Elizabeth, with dignity. "He never takes ill."

"I imagine he must, with you for a daughter! Still, how he survived your fancies and follies for twenty-three years remains a mystery. I daresay he'll be relieved in his heart of hearts. You'll be the death of me yet, whilst he enjoys a peaceful and well-earned retirement. Fortunate man!"

"Wretch!" she counters, but mirth sparks in her eyes. "Just for that, I've a mind to go home after all, and leave you to your peace."

"What, and cut off your nose to spite your face? You'd be bored silly, just as before, and you and I both know it." He reaches out, traces the line of her jaw with one finger; she leans into his touch, and a little jolt of desire arrows through him. "You're not fit for that life. And that life's not fit for you."

"It might have been," she says, with a quirk of her lips. "Had I never met you...You've ruined me, Jack Sparrow, and I shall never be happy in a respectable life again."

"Ruined you, eh? Oh, I like that—! But no. You were never meant for a small life, Lizzie," he murmurs, and bends to kiss her mouth.

"Jack," she protests, laughing as she pushes him away. "Don't you have work to do?"

"I do, if it comes to that," he says. "Come on." He pulls her to her feet. "Are ye ready to go on deck and be sworn in as crew before my lot of scoundrels, then?"

"I am," she says, and follows him into the sunlight.


Waking comes slowly for Will Turner, accompanied by the soft cooing of doves from somewhere above him and the dust-and-sunlight scent of clean straw. And, for the first time in a long while (how long? He finds he cannot be sure) the absence of sick agony. His head feels almost clear, and his other injuries have subsided from a haze of pain to separately identifiable and endurable aches.

He opens his eyes, squinting past the bright shaft of light angling in from a high window into the long-cross beams of the ceiling; he's in an old barn, perhaps, for the clean-straw scent mingles with the musk of long-ago livestock. It's the comforting aroma of a simpler life, and for an instant he's a boy again, lying in the stable loft adjacent to Brown's smithy, where he would hide from his master's more foul moods and whisper his youthful woes into the patient ear of the smith's donkey. Especially after he had been forbidden to see Elizabeth again, because she was becoming a lady and he was still only a blacksmith's boy...

His sleepy peace dissolves at the thought. For his fragmented memory presents him suddenly with an old enemy's scornful face, and those terrible words spoken softly, triumphantly:

She is beyond your reach, mi amigo. Forever...

Oh, God. Elizabeth.

How could he have forgotten?

The familiar weight of grief and despair takes hold of him; he realizes hazily that he's been dreaming it for days, while he's lain here wracked by pain and fever. And before that, on the fateful voyage to Hispaniola toward what he'd believed to be his doom and his redemption.

But it has turned out all wrong. For he is still alive and his worst fears realized, the wages of his sins visited upon the woman he meant to save and protect. His life should have been given for hers. Not the other way around...

"No," he mutters aloud, and struggles to push himself upright, ignoring the pain that flares in his right side.

But a capable hand plants itself against his chest and presses him back down. "Not so fast, my friend." The woman's warm, amused contralto, flavored by a faint Gallic accent, seems familiar, but Will cannot quite place her. "A broken rib takes patience, I'm afraid, and you have broken not one, but two."

Will turns his head; she's kneeling by his side, dressed in shirt and breeches like a man, her thick russet braid swinging forward over one shoulder. Her face, too, is strangely familiar. "Who...?"

"Nichole," the woman says. "We've met. You had a nasty head wound at the time, which I suppose excuses your forgetfulness." She narrows her eyes, appraising him. "What do you remember?"

The last thing he remembers is Francisco Morena's face. And he doesn't want to talk about that. Or anything at all, for that matter. He turns away, hoping she'll leave him alone.

She doesn't. " I know you've had a bloody rough time of it," she says, with some impatience, "but this is important. I'll start with the easy questions, yes? Do you know your name, at least? The year? The date...? How many fingers am I holding up?"

Feeling suddenly like an unprepared and rather grubby schoolboy, he answers her odd catechism grudgingly until she seems satisfied, although he can't tell her the exact date.

"You've lost a few days to shock and blood-poisoning," she says. "And truth be told, we almost lost you more than once in that time. You're lucky to be alive, Will Turner."

"Lucky--!" The word bursts from him before he can control himself. "You count me lucky?"

The clear green eyes regard him with detached interest. "So you wished not to live, and were disappointed?" She—Nichole—is lifting his arm now, pressing two fingers to his pulse. "It seems I owe you an apology." Her touch is cool and sure; he thinks he remembers the same touch, as felt through the haze of delirium. Had she laid her palm against his forehead, along his cheek? Or had that been nothing but a fever-dream?

"You nursed me through the fever," Will says. "Why?"

Nichole raises an eyebrow. "That's a good question, considering the thanks I'm getting."

"I'm sorry," he says, but it sounds stiff even to his ears. "I am indebted to you. But I don't understand why you should bother. You don't even know me."

"No." She withdraws her hand. "I suppose I was inspired by the misbegotten idea that once you save a man's life, you are henceforth responsible for his existence." Sitting back on her heels, she adds wryly, "As it happens, that is also the reason I try not to make a habit of it. Saving people, that is."

Another memory comes floating to the surface; her face again, over Morena's shoulder. No kindness there then, just rage. Cold, murderous rage...

"You were aboard La Venganza," Will says slowly.

"Yes." Nichole's posture has changed subtly, tensed, her gaze grown sharp and intent; and suddenly he can see in her the woman who had dragged Morena's unresponsive bulk into the brig of his own ship, the Spaniard still conscious, paralyzed by some poison she had administered, his eyes wide with fear.

"You killed Morena."

"Yes," she says, and smiles. It isn't a nice smile. Will, who has been thinking that while she isn't beautiful, exactly—her features are a little too strong, her eyes too hard, her mouth too wide—she is certainly, well, something, knows suddenly that she is, above all, dangerous.

The memory, now begun, cannot be stopped. She had soaked the straw in the cell with kerosene, and before she grabbed Will's arm to pull him up the companionway and out of the hold, she lit a match, and dropped it...

For though she'd worn a knife at her belt, she didn't give Morena the mercy of a swift death. She ensured that he would die by fire, first, before the flames reached the powder-magazine and blew his ship to pieces; that he would be forced to watch the flames creep closer, and know that it wouldn't be an easy end.

But it was a fitting one.

Captain Nichole D'Bouvoire, she calls herself. Who is this woman?

"You rescued me from that cell."

"If you intend to ask me why, again," she says brusquely, "please refrain. It was a foolish thing to do. But he hated you almost as much as he hated me, you see, and it seemed to me that any man he so hated probably deserved to live."

His laugh is harsh and painful. "You're right that it was foolish. A less deserving man would be difficult to find."

That cool green look again, taking his measure. "You judge yourself very cruelly, Captain Turner."

"You don't know what it is that I've done."

"Ah," she says. "You forget that I've spent the last three days at your sickbed, listening to your delirious ramblings. I think I know your story well enough."

"What did I say?"

Nichole's glance is amused. "Don't look so alarmed. A good deal of nonsense, mostly. But enough for me to understand that you take others' guilt upon your own shoulders all too willingly."

"I try to do right," he protests.

"Misguided nobility. Stubborn honor. I know the type," and her gesture is dismissive. "It's a fatal weakness, my friend, and this time it almost caught up with you."

"I live by my principles," he retorts, stung. "It's better than living as Morena lived, for vengeance and blood. As you live."

Those last words were a mistake, he realizes belatedly. And he has forgotten somehow that he is effectively at her mercy. When she moves, he thinks for one panicked moment that she intends to actually kill him.

But she rises to her feet instead, in one fluid motion. "So you would judge me, too." Controlled fury makes ice of her eyes, of her voice. "You have no right, Will Turner. You know nothing of me or how I live my life." Her fists clench at her sides. "I am not like him," she mutters, as if to herself. "I am nothing like him..."

Without sparing him another glance, she turns on her heel and strides from the room.


Left alone in the dim, high-roofed space, Will has nothing else to do but look around him. The shape of the structure itself seems familiar to him, and when he sees the raised stone hearth on the outside wall with its fizz trough, the well-worn anvil beside it and the abandoned bellows crouching nearby in the shadows, he begins to understand why.

In a way, unexpectedly, he has come home to this strange place.

Some time later, he wakes from a light doze when the door to what he assumes is the main house opens. He half-hopes, half-fears it is Nichole, returning from wherever she stormed off to, but an elderly lady bearing a steaming kettle bustles through it instead, followed by several cats of various sizes and colors and a tall, gangly-limbed youth with a plate of food. The boy lays the plate by Will's side; he does not speak, but dips his head oddly so that his lank black hair flops forward to conceal his face, glancing sidelong at Will from beneath it before scuttling away again.

"Pedro!" calls the lady, but the boy is already gone. She clucks her tongue disapprovingly. "I do not know what has gotten into that boy today. He is not usually so flighty."

She crosses the room to him, cocking her head to one side like a bird and regarding him with a bright, canny gaze. "Welcome back to the world, Will Turner," she says. "And how are you this morning?"

"Hungry," he says, casting a longing look at the food placed tantalizingly near his makeshift bed. "And I find that I am at a disadvantage. Everyone seems to know my name, while I know no one."

The old woman chuckles and kneels beside him, arranging cushions behind his shoulders so that he can sit up a little and eat without too much discomfort. "Well, you have met our Nichole already, I believe. I am her tante Marie, and the young man you have just seen the back of is my assistant. And these—" she indicates the cats, who have stationed themselves around the room, observing them, and the food, watchfully— "These are my darlings, Josephine, Tig, and Simone. You will meet the rest if you stay here long." She pours him a cup of fragrant tea. "Drink this, ma chère. It is a restorative and will ease your pains."

"This building," Will says, between bites. "This was a forge once, wasn't it?"

Marie smiles sadly. "Oui. My husband Georges, he was a blacksmith. He is gone now, but I keep the smithy." She shrugs. "I find I do not want to sell it, whatever the profit. And Georges had no apprentice—not after Nichole left us."

Will glances quickly at her, startled. "Nichole? You mean—Miss D'Bouvoire was a blacksmith's apprentice here?"

"For a short time. She didn't take to it, but she wished to learn a man's trade, so Georges obliged her, as he did in all things. You see, we never had a child of our own, so when Nichole came to us—it was like a gift from heaven. For a little time, at least."

"But she left."

"She was always a restless one. A fighter." Marie sighed. "Georges taught her the use of the sword, as well, and she had a talent for it. I often wish that he had not done so—but c'est la vie. One cannot keep a child from doing what they are born to do."

Fascinated, Will says, "And was that what she was born to? How did she come to you?"

"As une enfant perdue, an orphan. A stray, as Nichole herself would say." Marie rises, picks up his empty tray. "She was the daughter of a great family—the father had been a Marquis in France before they sailed to the Colonies. But then the Spanish came to Navidad—we called it Nativité, then—and Morena, he led them." She speaks thickly, as if through a bitter taste in her mouth, and she doesn't have to finish the story; Will knows how it ends.

"He killed them all, didn't he? Her entire family. That's why she hated him so."

"Oui. Every one, dead. And worse. She never told me, but others did, and the rest I could guess." The old woman takes a deep breath; Will sees that she has tears in her eyes. "Our Nichole, she escaped somehow—I told you she was a fighter—and a slave brought her to me, near death from the beating they had given her. It was through God's grace alone that she lived."

"And your healing skills, I'm sure."

"All my skills can do nothing, young man, without la volanté à vivre, the will to live. Any other child, after what was done to her, would have died. But she—she was determined to survive."

"She's a strong woman."

"Very strong indeed. But have a care." The old woman pins him with a keen glance before she turns towards the door; and though they are not family by blood, he sees her resemblance to Nichole in that glance. "She still carries those scars, on her body and mind. It is why she keeps such distance. She does not like them to be seen or touched upon. I have told you her story as a confidence, so that you will understand; but best you do not speak of it, unless she speaks first."

"I would not use what you have told me to hurt Nichole, Marie," Will says, wondering as he does why the old woman thinks he warrants a warning on her adopted child's behalf. "I promise."

"You are a good man, Will Turner," Marie says. "I see that. And Nichole is a good woman, and I think you can see that, too."

She goes out, as quietly as she came in, and shuts the door behind her, leaving Will to puzzle over her meaning, in what she has said and in what she hasn't.

Marie returns again with more food and tea that afternoon; again, the boy Pedro shadows her warily. Seeing the scar he ducks his head to hide—cheekbone to lip, a long jagged tear—Will tries not to stare, stirred by another memory.

He couldn't be the same child. Not here, in this house. Or could he?

"Does the boy ever speak?" he asks Marie.

"No," she says, appearing startled by the abrupt query. "Not since he came to me. He understands us well enough, however."

Indeed, the boy has jerked his head up at Will's question; he seems alarmed, but stands irresolute, as if not sure whether to run away or stay and listen.

"There's a story there," Will says softly. "And I imagine you know it, Marie."

Her face darkens. "It is a sad story, lad."

"Like Nichole's?" He is almost eager to hear it, to know if his guess is correct.

"Un enfant perdue? Oui. Somewhat like." Marie glances toward the boy, as if requesting his permission; Pedro sketches a swift sign with one hand. She goes on, "I do not know the whole of it, for of course he cannot tell it to me. I know that he was beaten harshly by someone in his family, perhaps his father, for some act of disloyalty; I know not what. They had no use for him after that, so he was brought to me."

"And you gave him a place in your household," Will supplied; he's almost sure now that he has the right of it. Pedro must be the boy he remembers. God, that scar. Could there be another like it? But he conceals his thoughts, turning to Marie. "Do you do this often? Adopting the lost, I mean?"

"Why do you think I have so many cats?" Marie asks, twinkling. "Whenever someone here finds a creature that is hurt, or abandoned, they bring it here to me. Mostly I keep them by me, or they stay." She smiles and spreads her hands, a gesture of benevolent resignation. "None have seen enough care in this world; it is given to me to provide a little of what has been neglected. I do my best. It is all I can do, yes?"

"You're a good woman, Marie." He touches her hand. "We lost creatures all see it."

Marie laughs; the sound is tinkling and pure, surprising in a woman of her age. "Ah, but you are not my stray, young Will. Did Nichole not tell you? She is the one who plucked you out of the sea."

When she has gone back to the main house with the things from Will's dinner, Pedro lingers behind. Will calls him over to his pallet; after a moment the boy approaches uncertainly, eyes cast shyly down at the floor.

"You're his son, aren't you?" Will asks gently.

A quick tilt of the head, assent. The boy looks frightened.

"It's all right," Will says. "You're name was different then, but I remember you. The scar's my doing, I think." Pedro raises his hand to his face. "Yes, it is. I'm sorry about that. I tried to stay my hand, you know; but I wasn't fast enough."

The boy's remembering too; Will can see it on his face. There can be no mistake; this is Dominic, the son of Francisco Morena, who Will engaged for a short spell as a cabin boy on the Lady Swann. The boy who was intended to be a plant, a spy for his father. But nothing had turned out as intended for Dominic Morena.

In the moment of truth, when his father moved to strike Will down, the boy had leapt between them; and Will's attempt to parry Morena's blow caught Dominic across the face, while Morena's had knocked him to the floor. But Dominic's foolish act bought Will the time he needed to escape.

And Dominic, now Pedro, had paid the price.

Morena said his son had died, that Will had killed him; and Will believed him. He'd seen the boy fall. But what Morena must have meant was that Dominic was dead to him. Morena, who brooked no breach of loyalty...

They had no use for him after that.

"He punished you for trying to protect me, didn't he?"

Pedro bites his lip, nods.

"I'm sorry about that, too. I never got a chance to thank you, lad. I owe you my life."

At this the boy bends his head—and smiles. The scar pulls his mouth sideways, a grotesque rictus, but the good side of his face fairly glows.

A thought occurs to Will, then. "Does she know who you are? Captain D'Bouvoire?"

The boy shakes his head frantically.

"I thought she didn't. Well, don't worry. I won't tell her."

"Tell me what?" says an interested voice from the door.

Pedro jumps, blanches, and escapes past Nichole into the house. She watches him go, bemused.

"What an odd boy he is," she says. All her anger from their earlier interview seems to have dissipated. "Did he tell you all his secrets?"

"Very nearly," says Will, conscious of his newly given word. He has no idea how this volatile woman would react to the news that the offspring of her sworn enemy is being harbored under Marie's roof, and he doesn't intend to find out. He likes the boy; he did then, at the beginning of this nightmare, and he still does.

"A man-to-man conference, I take it. Don't worry," she says, parroting his words. "I won't ask."

"You're very kind," he says, smiling.

She raises an eyebrow. "I assure you you're the first to say it, my friend. How are you feeling?"

"As though I've been kicked in the ribs, but otherwise well-cared for." He hesitates; and takes the chance. "I'm sorry for my words earlier. They were...not kind."

"They were, however, true." In the shadows cast by the lamp, he cannot read her eyes, but her posture remains neutral, arms folded, pose relaxed; though he knows that calm, in her, can be misleading.

"Not entirely true."

"No," Nichole agrees. "Not entirely."

"Your enemy would not watch over a sick man while he sleeps, for example, to ensure that he doesn't die in the middle of the night."

Nichole shakes her head. "Marie told you that, did she?"

"Yes; but you told me first. So will you watch over me again, tonight?"

"If you wish," she says, then adds, acerbically, "Although if you find you need to take a piss, it's Pedro and not I who will be helping you."

"Yes, ma'am," he avers, and glimpses her smile. It's swift, there and gone again, but real this time; not the cold and frightening expression that she wore earlier when she spoke of Morena. He thinks that she should smile thus more often. It becomes her, and inspires him to take another risk, one he's been warned against. "Nichole," he says softly. "May I ask you a question? You may choose not to answer, if you like."

She steps closer to hear him, tilts her head slightly, waiting.

"How did you survive?" he says. "What Morena did. How did you endure it?"

She goes still, and for a moment he thinks he's made another fatal mistake. But she does not sound angry; only resigned, and perhaps a little exasperated. "Marie told you that, too, I take it."

"She told me a little. Just that he...that you lost your family."

"He took everything I had," she says, and she's not looking at him anymore, but at the dust motes sparkling in the bar of sunlight, watching them as if she were reading her words in their patterns, telling someone else's story. "It was during the war. The Spanish took the town. My father was a landholder. They rounded up the men and shot them while we watched. The women...they were killed too, but not at first. After." Her voice is calm. She might as well be reciting a homily. "They used me with the rest. I was not quite thirteen."

"My God."

"God," snaps Nichole, "had nothing to do with it. Whatever Marie might say."

"I'm sorry," he says, feeling the inadequacy of those small words acutely.

"It was a war. War makes monsters of men, and sets born monsters like Morena free." She lifts her shoulders, a small shrug. "All he left me was myself, and the thought of revenge." Her words take on a tone of bitter amusement. "You might say that I was too stubborn to die."

"And now?" he asks quietly. "Now that you've had your vengeance, and he his justice?"

"Now I have myself," she says, and her smile is still real, if laced with pain. "I have my life, and there are things in it that I love. It is enough." Her touch on his hand is brief and feather-light, so much so that he might have imagined it, if he had not seen her move. "It seems that I am not quite like him, in the end. One can always find other things to live for, Will Turner; and often when one least expects it. You will see."

"I am beginning to," he says, and smiles back at her; and she is right. For now, it is enough.