A/N-- A nice extra long chapter for all of you today. I just couldn't find a place to break it off for the longest time and it just got longer and longer... my apologies! Also, fanfiction seems to be having issues with formatting tonight and won't let me put in my customary lines to break up sections. I've had to find a new way to do so, and I'm sorry if it's confusing.
----
Chapter Eleven
The Pursuit of Happiness
in which some bed rest is required
When Jack Aubrey woke at last, his head was spinning. It had been a very long time since the rocking of a ship made him feel ill, but the Surprise was doing her best. He closed his eyes again, praying it would make the feeling stop.
"Drink," said a soft voice and a cool hand on the back of his neck. Water slithered down his throat and the world spun a little less.
"Stephen?"
"Who else? Lie still, joy. Sleep."
"Can't. The sails- the chase-"
"Your officers have it under control, I am sure. Rest."
He tried to open his eyes again, his left hand drifting up to touch his shoulder. He could feel thick bandages beneath his shirt.
"My wound?"
"I removed the bullet. You are in no immediate danger, so long as you keep to your bed."
Now there was a faint memory- Stephen counting each drop under his breath, the alcohol taste of laudanum in his mouth, clenching his teeth against the knife in his skin, the exhale when he felt the bullet coming free of his body, the barely registered pricks of the needle drawing the wound closed. The clearest image was that of Stephen standing over him, taking off his spectacles with bloodied hands and looking altogether too sad, too weary. He sighed and walked away, and after that Jack remembered only darkness.
"Dear, have you been watching over me all this time? Surely you must attend to the other patients."
"They are no more than an arm away, and they are accustomed to taking orders. You, Jack Aubrey, I must watch constantly lest you find a way to flee to your beloved maps and ropes and sails. Now sleep."
He tried to sleep. He made an honest attempt. Too many things were flying through his mind- who was in command in his stead? Did they know where the Running was going? He'd have to ask Miss Turner where her next likely berth was...
That was made him open his eyes again.
"They took Cora, didn't they?" The name slipped out, propriety being forgotten in his hazy state.
Stephen must've been reading, because a book snapped shut nearby.
"Go to sleep."
This time he obeyed.
----
Jack finally made his escape the next day when Stephen went into his cabin to shave, seizing his nearby clothes and arriving on deck to a chorus of calls and joyfully tipped hats.
"Risen from the dead, he is!"
"There's our Lucky Jack!"
"Huzzah for Captain Aubrey!"
He made his way through the cheering sailors to the quarterdeck, where Mr. Mowett was waiting for him.
"Do we have a heading?" He asked quietly.
"I've kept us on the course that she was taking when we saw her last, but the wind was with her once more. We haven't had sight of her for at least a day, but we can't be far behind."
"She's undermanned and low on provisions. She has to go somewhere to pick up a crew and food." Jack retreated into thought for a moment, then came out once more. "Keep on as you have, Mr. Mowett. I'll be in my cabin."
"Aye, sir. Good to see you back on your feet, sir."
It was in his cabin, bent over his charts, that he was discovered by his erstwhile captor.
"I knew the second I stood up from your bedside you'd leave. For all love, Jack, can't you listen to my advice?"
"Do you realize that we're in the middle of a pursuit? I can have bed rest later." He bent back over his charts. After a moment, he slapped his hand on the table and stood upright. "There. Tortuga. They say it's mostly deserted now, but it was once a pirate stronghold. She'll feel safe in a familiar place. If we spread a bit more canvas, I daresay we can catch her up thereabouts."
"Yes, by all means, hasten into another battle. Get yourself shot again. Do you realize how easily you could still kill yourself with that wound? Do you realize how close it was to your heart and lungs?"
"Stephen, I'm sorry that I can't bend to your every whim at the moment. I truly am. What baffles me is that the woman you love is lying wounded on that ship and you act as if you don't want me to pursue her."
"I never said I loved her."
"You didn't quite deny it either."
Stephen fell silent once more. He sat on a nearby chair without any of his usual grace.
"The truth is that I can't stop thinking about the fact that Cora is on that ship. She told me they've never had a surgeon aboard. They must care for their own wounds. The shot she took could easily have been fatal- it could've hit any number of vital arteries. She very well could be dead right now. But the fact that I can't have her wound beneath my own to hands torments me, and I can't think on it too often or I will go mad."
"You've done everything you can for my wound, Stephen. Now let me do what I can to bring her back to you."
"No. Don't make that sound like an exchange. I will not weigh her life against yours. Do not ask me to." He laughed bitterly. "Maybe it's a blessing that I can't operate on her myself. It's hard enough for me to operate on you, and I've done it more times than I can count. It never gets easier."
Jack sighed and went to stand beside his particular friend so he could put his hand on his shoulder.
"My dear, how is it that I always find the worst thing possible to say to you?"
"Don't blame yourself. I lead you to the opportunity with alarming sureness. I believe I am a masochist in that respect."
"Only in the slightest of ways."
"Only in the most important of ways."
Before Jack could quite catch his drift, Stephen stood and left.
----
Two days later they reached the island of Tortuga and cleared the deck for action. When their spyglasses swept the harbor, though, the largest ship there was a dingy sloop with worn out grey sails.
"Sail around her. The Running may have another place to hide."
It was a small island, and a matter of hours later they were all the way back where they started, and no better off for it.
"There's one other place she might go." Jack said in his cabin while they were at anchor, waiting for a heading. "Miss Turner told me that the Running makes berth on the island of Alameade, a day or so southwest of here. I have no desire to follow her there- by all accounts it's still a pirate stronghold -but that is the only other place I can think of."
"Shall we chart a course for her, then?" Mr. Mowett asked.
"I believe so. Tell Bonden to set a course for south, southwest."
It should've been smooth sailing, an easy trip. Then the storm came.
For three days they were tossed and battered, at the mercy of a wrathful sea. They lost two men overboard and a third took a fall from the rigging and cracked his skull, damage that not even Stephen could mend. On the fourth day they looked upon dawn with a sort of weary relief, but no satisfaction. Where could they go from here?
Jack's final decision was to head to Port Royal, on the southern cost of Jamaica. It was only a day north of them, and he promised the crew a day or two of shore leave.
"The truth is it doesn't matter when we start the pursuit again." He confided to Stephen later. "Unless the Running made port before that storm hit, she could be anywhere now."
Stephen said nothing to this. It had been over a week since they'd engaged the Running just off Isla Cruces. Over a week since he and Cora spent one forbidden night in the jungle. Over a week since he saw her collapse into the sand, a scream on her lips.
That was why when he heard the calls of 'Larboard bow ahoy!' he wasn't inclined to come running up onto the deck. After some time had passed and the Surprise's course had altered, Jack had to send one of the midshipmen- Mr. Boyle -to bring him topside.
When he stood on deck, it took him a moment to find the ship in question. There was no impressive spread of canvas to draw the eye- none of her sails were up. One of her masts was shorn in half. Her deck was sparsely populated, and all of them clustered at their rail to stare. The storm had been no kinder to them than it had been to the Surprise. But when he drew closer to their own cluster of officers, his heart skipped a beat.
The ship yards away from them was the Running.
For once, Jack didn't seem surprised that Stephen was at his side. Instead he lowered his glass and handed it to the doctor.
"Look."
He could hardly hold it still as he swept the deck of the ship, pausing at the face of each crew member. She wasn't there.
"What am I looking for?" He finally thought to ask.
"Do you see that pennant?"
Jack directed his glass to the stern and Stephen saw the flag in question. It wasn't as large as a normal flag and didn't look like that of any country he knew- it was a blue rectangle with a small white one in its center, and in the center of the white one an even smaller red rectangle.
"Do you know what it means?" Jack asked.
"No." Stephen lowered the glass.
"It's a code flag. It means 'requesting medical assistance.'" (1)
Stephen's hands went suddenly cold where they gripped the spyglass. Cora. The terrible wound in her leg. A dozen possibilities whirled through his head- lost too much blood, festering, a bad amputation, gangrene...
"Get me one of the longboats." He snapped the spyglass closed.
"Not yet. The captain knows that Cora told us about her little ruse and she probably doesn't want to risk flying a white flag. This could be the same trick. We have to see what her intentions are."
"We can't wait that long! Who knows how long they've been flying that flag out here? They could've needed help for days."
"I am not risking your life-"
"It's not yours to risk."
"Stephen!"
He ignored Jack's calls. He ignored the voice in his head that said he'd never be able to launch one of the boats on his own. He pushed aside the men in his way- sailor and officer alike -and went for the nearest one. He was tugging at the ropes to raise it when Mr. Blakeney rushed to his side.
"Sir-"
"Lord Blakeney if you do not intend to help me-"
"Please sir, look! They're sending a boat over."
Stephen froze in his frantic struggle with the ropes to see that a longboat was touching the water as they spoke. He watched its progress across the water, dimly aware that behind him the ship was a scarlet rush as Mr. Howard and his marines took up their positions. He could feel the cold metallic eyes of dozens of muskets behind him, but he was transfixed by the sight before him.
The boat glided closer across the crystal waters, as inevitable as fate. A woman was at the oars, with dark skin and darker hair. Before her sat the fair-haired man Stephen had glimpsed when the pirates were escaping Isla Cruces. In his arms once more was-
They reached the side of the boat and the woman held up her hands.
"We have no weapons. You have seen our flag. We knew you would not come to us, so we have brought the one who needs your assistance to you."
"Bring them up." Jack called, but he didn't stand the marines down.
Moments later they stood on deck. Moments, after over a week of waiting, wondering. Then Cora was only feet away from him. "I'm the doctor. Come with me." Stephen said, leading the man towards the hatch.
"Only if you realize that you are now prisoners of the British Crown." Jack called from where he stood.
The fair-haired man paused, then dropped his gaze to the woman in his arms.
"We all realize that. We are prepared to surrender now."
Stephen ran down to the orlop, very nearly slipping on the steps several times. The table was clear. He helped them lay Cora down, his hands lingering on her side. Her skin was a terrible shade of yellow, her pulse reedy and thin beneath his fingertips when he touched her neck. His fingers might've burned from the temperature of her body. Her eyes were moving restlessly beneath their lids, but she responded to neither touch nor call.
"How long has she been like this?" Stephen asked the man.
He hesitated to answer.
"Two days at the least. No one knows."
"What do you mean, no one knows? Wasn't she cared for?"
"Once we got back onto the Running the captain left us orders to sail for Alameade and locked Cora in her cabin. We didn't see Arlen- the captain -more than three times in this past week. We all heard Cora crying out but we were under orders not to go near the cabin. Finally two days ago I led a mutiny against her and broke in. My first act was the run up that flag and wait in the shipping lane for someone to pass us by."
Stephen's mind stoutly refused to grasp this information. He'd never known such obtuseness in himself, unless it was in relation to nautical lore. He couldn't accept that she'd been left untended for a week- the medical man in him couldn't believe she'd survived.
He allowed himself to refute it. He allowed himself to believe that he could still smell the powder from the battle, that his ears were still ringing from screams and cannon fire. He allowed himself to believe that he had every chance in the world of saving Coraline Jacqueline Turner.
Then he went about accomplishing it.
----
"That's the last of the prisoners, sir. Is the prize crew ready?"
Jack turned away from the rail to face William Mowett. In the back of his head rang the sound of hammers and saws bent on repairing the Lone Star Running. Now that she was no longer the enemy, he allowed himself to admire her- sleek, lovely lines like his Surprise, perhaps a bit longer than she. There was the most beautiful carving in the rail and on the gun ports. The captain's cabin was a thing of wonder, with a real four-poster featherbed, a long gilt mirror and red velvet drapes over the windows of the stern. Whoever had commissioned it was clearly a flash cove.
She's not a bad ship. The Service could use her. Of course that bed will have to go. The only trouble with the cabin was that it rank of sickness and blood now. Jack remembered with more than a little worry that the scent persisted on his own ship, in the orlop. It was two days since Cora was brought to them, and every time he saw Stephen he looked a little worse.
"The bullet is out. I've drained the wound. I've cleaned it a dozen times. She still does not answer." That was all he'd say last Jack paid him a visit. Stephen was at least as stubborn in staying awake as his patient was in remaining unconscious- once everything was wrapped up here, he'd go below and force him into his hammock.
"Sir?"
"I'm terribly sorry, Mr. Mowett. I was quite lost in my own head. What do you need?"
"Sir, the last of the prisoners are secure and the worst of the damage is repaired. Do you want to send the prize crew over to the Running?"
"Not just yet. Give her another day and we'll have that mizzen patched up. She'll look a sight prettier coming into Port Royal with all three masts intact." He smiled and put his hand on his lieutenant's shoulder. "You aren't getting too excited about your first command, are you?"
"No, sir, not at all, sir. Very good, sir." Mowett flushed a healthy shade of pink at this; even if his post was only acting captain, it still had that beautiful, wonderful word 'captain' in it. "Sir, I'd meant to ask you- have you spoken to the Doctor? About Miss Turner, I mean."
Jack took his hand away.
"I'm about to go speak with him now. Keep an eye on everything around here, tell Mr. Lamb to check the Running's hold for an extra spar. We're to raise the new mizzenmast tomorrow. She'll have to borrow a new mainsail from us, unfortunately, so send our spare over."
"Aye, sir."
The same smell that had met him in the other captain's cabin met Jack in the orlop. It was a thick scent that made the air heavier, harder to breathe, as if he were choking it down.
Cora lay in the same hammock she'd occupied before, covered to her chin. She seemed stiller than that last time he saw her, as if the great storm inside of her were no longer raging. Stephen was in a chair at her side, looking just as still. A book was in his lap. He didn't acknowledge Jack's presence when he leaned against the beam above them.
"I'm about to fall asleep on my feet, Stephen, I'm that fagged." The captain tried to smile. "You should be pleased. I suppose you still want bed rest for me."
"If you've been running about all this time and you haven't hurt yourself yet, I doubt it will make a difference."
Jack pursed his lips. Well, there was no sense in beating a course so far around the subject anymore.
"The truth is that you're the one who needs bed rest. I'll wager you haven't slept at all in these past two days. Get up now, you're away to your cabin. I'll watch over her myself if it gets you out of that chair."
"I'm not leaving her. I've tried everything I possibly can, and she won't come to me. I won't leave her until she does, or until the opposite occurs."
Jack sighed. "Stephen, look at me." The doctor complied. "If you've done everything you can then she's out of your hands. This is her battle now, and you will not serve her guilt-ridden and exhausted. You're going to bed if I have to give you an order as captain of this vessel."
Stephen blinked his pale eyes a few times, weighing the possibility of victory and the consequences of defeat, then quietly closed his book and stood, making the journey to his cabin in quick, choppy strides. Not trusting him entirely, Jack followed him.
"My God man, what a disgrace to the Service this place is. I'd forgotten how slovenly you are- that's the food they served in the galley two days ago! If you weren't going to eat it, you could've at least given it back."
"Stuff. I ate the hard tack."
"Then you could've cleaned it up. Don't throw those stockings on the floor, you creature. I do hope Miss Turner lives, you desperately require a feminine presence in your life."
"Unless the Navy's superstitious awe of cleanliness has bled over into the world of pirates, I doubt highly that she will be much better than I am."
He went about straightening up Stephen's cabin while he undressed, finding a dozen excuses to stay until the doctor was safe in his hammock.
"If you swear by your flightless birds that you're going to sleep now, I will leave you in peace."
"I do detest oaths, but I will swear this one for your peace of mind."
"Good. I'll send Bonden down to watch over Miss Turner for you. Sleep well, old soul."
He was somewhere near the door when Stephen's words caught him.
"Jack?"
He turned.
"Thank you."
That did more for his peace of mind than any oath ever could.
----
Remarkably, Stephen slept without the aid of laudanum that day. Even the watch changing failed to disturb him. It wasn't until the unremitting heat gave way at last to the coolness of night that he woke to the sound of a nearby call.
"Doctor, come quickly! She's awake."
He didn't even bother dressing and caught his foot on a splinter as he darted out into the orlop. Barrett Bonden was on his feet, but he only dimly registered this. His eyes were all for the woman in the hammock.
It was hardly the groggy awakening he'd expected. She gripped the sides of her swinging bed, making every muscle in her body rigid. Her grey-blue eyes were wide and dilated. The doctor in him had a dozen questions for her- could she feel her leg, how was her vision, did she feel the fever or was she having chills, did she feel like she could stomach a meal or was she too nauseated -but the man she'd awoken in him all those weeks ago wanted only to hold her and hold her and force the fear out of her eyes.
Cora beat him to saying anything.
"Where is she?"
"Where is who, joy?"
"My mother. When will she come back?"
Very carefully he took her hand. Her skin still burned with fever.
"My dear, there was a mutiny. The crew had to do something to save you. They gave you to us. You're very sick."
For the first time she seemed to really see him.
"Stephen..."
Her other hand extended to touch the whiskers that had sprouted on his face; she stared at the stubble in soft, abstract wonderment.
"I must look a wild man." He said softly, catching this hand too. He ignored the gaze of Bonden, who'd yet to leave- the crew knew already, in their gut. It didn't matter if they had confirmation of what they suspected.
All at once, she recoiled from him, staring as if the wild man were no longer a thing of fascination but something to fear and abhor.
"It was your fault. She said it was. If it hadn't been for you I never would've told. I could've kept lying. I could've been safe and caged instead of free."
His heart beat a little slower.
"Your mother was not a well person, Cora, you shouldn't believe what she says." It tasted sour on his tongue; he knew it was true. It had come from Cora's own lips before.
"How do you feel?" He asked to distract himself from the naked assertion. "You must eat and regain your strength. This fever has sucked you dry-" He went to touch her forehead but she made a desperate sound and tried to pull away.
"You can't touch me. She didn't. She said she couldn't. She said I was unclean, that I was worse than she ever was, that just because I was a pirate it didn't mean I had to be a whore-"
"You aren't a whore. I told you that."
"I don't remember." She was near in tears now. "I just want to sleep again."
"Do not go to sleep. You must stay awake. You'll starve like this."
She just closed her eyes and put her hands over her ears, as if the childish gesture could keep out the world.
Stephen rubbed his eyes and turned to Bonden, whose normally ruddy face had taken on an unusual pallor.
"I think I've rested long enough, Barrett."
He made his obedience and left as quickly as was decent. Very methodically, Stephen went back to the process of waking up. He put on his waistcoat and buttoned his breeches and shirt and tied his neck cloth on and pulled on shoes and stockings. He was about to shave away the two day's growth on his jaw that had so enchanted Cora, then froze with the knife in his hand. Very carefully, he set it down.
When he went back into the orlop she was still in only the lightest sleep. He recognized now why his attempts to stop the fever had failed. Her coma was self-imposed. The demons he was fighting were hers. He reflected bitterly on something Jack once told him: not everything is in your books.
He decided to close the books in his head. He sat in the chair that Bonden had vacated and simply looked at Cora, trying to unlock what made him yearn for her, why she had implanted herself in his consciousness if not his heart from the moment they met. She wasn't stunning like Diana, or fragile and sensitive like Sophie. She had Jack's force of character, but hadn't quite captured his endearing childish charm.
Then he realized it. Not everything was in his books.
He pulled the chair even closer, so that his legs were underneath the swinging hammock and he could feel her feverish heat. It made him shiver to remember that one fevered night on Isla Cruces, and while memories from it glided through him he reached out to take her hand once more.
"Once you told me you wished there was more room in the hammocks, so that both of us could fit." It was a daft place to start- there had to be somewhere better. But he had already begun and his mouth kept rolling, like a loose cannon on a pitching deck or a boulder on a hill. "I only wish there was more room in the world for us. I only wish that the pursuit of a small portion of happiness, or of peace, didn't require such retribution.
"I'd say I wish you weren't a pirate, but it isn't true. If you weren't a pirate, none of this would've happened. Because you possess that great virtue and that great vice that has no hold on me- you will reach for what you want, damn the costs. That... that is what I've been searching for." His words were to himself as much as they were to her. Her fingers curled slightly around his, like those of a child in sleep. "That is why I will never forget you. Why I-"
He couldn't bring himself to say it. It sounded too much like a good-bye. Instead he released her hand and moved the chair up.
"You were wrong. There is room for both of us. I will make room for us."
He put one arm around her unyielding waist and ignored the prod of bones. He lay his cheek next to hers on the pillow and ignored the stiffness he could already feel in his neck. He would make room for them both.
He had to raise himself up a little more to press a kiss to her cheek. Once his lips left her skin, he slid away from the world that he couldn't change, the world that might never have room enough for both of them.
When he awoke much later to a soft touch on his shoulder, Stephen thought for sure his neck had broken. He didn't have a chance to register the progress of the other sensations he'd noted on going to sleep before he heard Jack's quiet voice.
"This isn't what I had in mind as far as bed rest, Stephen."
He sighed and straightened, the magic of his earlier realization gone and leaving him feeling juvenile and strangely empty. But before he could allow the jaded feelings collecting inside him to form words on his tongue, his hand brushed the cool skin of her throat.
The cool skin-
"Her fever's broken." He whispered with the same relief he'd felt when he pulled the bullet free of his own skin, when the Acheron struck her colors. It was the relief that came at the end of a very long pursuit.
----
A/N-- Hmm, everything seems to be okay now. There was even some fluffiness (GASP!) in this chapter! Of course that means yours truly has been up to no good in the next installment... reviewers get an extra ration of grog!
(1) This is one of the few bits of nautical lore I actually know off the top of my head (I'm slightly less lubberly than Stephen!) There's a code flag for every letter of the alphabet (alpha, bravo, charlie, etc.) and each has a specific meaning. Ironically, the flag that signals 'requesting medical assistance' is named Whiskey.
