A/N-- Small disclaimer: I have no notion of how spades is actually played, or if it was around in the early 19th century. It was the only card game with partners I could think of.

Huzzah for the return of the proper dividers!


Chapter Eleven
Terms of Surrender
in which ghosts are laid to rest

"Damn it all to hell, Jack, if you would simply hold still I would be able to get it sufficiently tight!"

Jack ignored the stream of irate Catalan that followed in favor of continuing to watch the progress aboard the Fraternité. He was organizing the repairs and prisoners (more were coming over from the Rising Star, where they'd made up a full half of the crew) there when Stephen appeared, prodded him in all the places where it hurt, and pronounced that he had sprained his wrist, bruised several bones in his back and given himself a mild concussion. He then proceeded to try and wrap the wrist, which had already failed twice.

The flow of Stephen's rage transferred to Cora when she hobbled over to them- she'd hurt an ankle at some point in the battle and was beginning to feel it sorely. She raised an eyebrow and waited for him to take a breath before attempting to speak.

"Most everything is in order on the Deliverance now. I came to ask if you were ready to begin moving the sick onto the Isla de Tesoro."

"Indeed I am. You may care for your wrist yourself, Jack Aubrey. And you are to come with me, Captain Turner. I want that bullet out directly, and I do not like the aspect of that ankle either. You are to remain lying down for the remainder of the day until I can determine what you have managed to do to it."

"Yes, sir." She said, with only a little mockery.

It was a tedious business moving the wounded. One or two at a time lay in the boats. One died on the way. His hammock was already with them, so they sewed him up and hefted the weighted body over the side before they ever reached the shore.

Beyond the shoulder of rock that sheltered the Isla de Tesoro lay a flat expanse of gold sand, the length of two ships on the shore and probably as long on the side. There was little else besides a small stand of jungle trees, the Star at her moorings, and the camps they'd made. Stephen wondered briefly where the money was, but fell into the rhythm of his work too soon to find an answer.

Cora fell asleep the moment she lay wincing down on a cot, and she waved Stephen away when he tried to tend to her- there were others who needed it more. The toll so far was 34 wounded, 14 dead- 8 of those Deliverances, 6 Limericks. The blow, when it fell, would be hard. These crews had known each other off and on for over twelve years. The blow was always hard.

Before Stephen could come to her again, a sailor came to him with a message from Jack- he, in his humble opinion, believed that the French surgeon needed help. Help was an understatement- he didn't have the slightest idea what he was doing. Most of the hurts Stephen had to undo were those caused by an unsteady hand with a scalpel, not a sword or a cannon. By the time he was finished there and paused to eat a little, the afternoon had moved well along. The carpenters had pressed every available sailor into service while he was aboard the Fraternité and no one could be spared to take him back to the Isla de Tesoro until after the hands had been piped to dinner.

His patients there had held up well. Only one death was imminent, so long as nothing drastic happened. He was free at last to go to the captain who'd insisted she needed no help. He stepped into the tent the sailors insisted she take with quiet reverence, lighting the candles that had gone out as he went to the back where she lay on her cot. She lay on her stomach, as she always did. Her strange fringe of shorn hair fell across her face in the candlelight. He resisted the urge to brush it back.

She didn't rouse at the first light touch of his hand on her shoulder, but when it turned to a long, soft caress she stirred with a small groan. Her first reaction was to smile at him with a drowsy, languid sort of joy.

"How much did you drink?" He sighed, even though he'd already seen the bottle beside her.

"It hurt so badly. I didn't have anything else."

"I have laudanum for you."

"No. I've always done without."

"As you wish." He left the bottle on the table at her side anyway.

He went to cut away her shirt, but she sat up and pulled it over her head instead. He averted his eyes but caught a glimpse of her naked torso nonetheless. He pretended it didn't unnerve him when he put his spectacles back on to look at the wound. It didn't look like he'd have to make an incision- only pull the bullet out and sew up the cut.

"Bite down," He instructed softly, giving her the piece of wood with its deep grooves. She did so, her eyes sliding closed. She was remarkably relaxed, and he thanked the rum privately before he went to do the deed.

There was one moment- just one, when the bullet was about to come free of her skin -when all the muscles of her back went taut and he could hear her teeth grind against the wood, when he lost the detachment that made the world of surgery so pleasing to him. The innate sensuality of the gesture nearly made him shiver; he jerked the bullet free and sewed her up as quickly as he could. Another scar to join the multitude on her back- a scar his hands would never trace at night when he couldn't sleep.

When he stood to leave, she pulled him back and kissed him- a warm kiss, her mouth slack with relaxation against his, as comfortable as the fit of a violin in its case.

"Don't leave," She said when he pulled away.

It was a heady offer- an intoxicating one.

"I can't make that promise."

"Pretend that you can."

So he sat her at bedside until she was relaxed with sleep, her hand in his. Then he stood and let his eyes rove over her naked back once more before he pulled the covers over her, blew out the candles, and left her in darkness. He tried a second time to write to Diana. He couldn't even set his quill to the paper.


One patient died overnight, but that had been an expected lost. They took him back to the Deliverance to be sent over the side into the deeper water. Stephen stayed behind with his other patients when they did so; he was with Anamaria when they heard the distant sound of a splash. She tensed, making him miss a stitch on her wound. Privately, he worried for her. She'd been shot where her neck met her shoulder and took a wicked slash on her thigh. She'd lost a good deal of blood before Stephen managed to sew her up, and she was no longer as young as her counterparts.

"Once we make sail, you are to take on only minimal duties. I will ensure that Captain Turner is aware of this, and that she enforces it."

"You could call her Cora, you know." Anamaria murmured.

"It doesn't seem appropriate now."

She said nothing else, but the glare she gave him when he packed up his things and moved away left him wondering what he'd done wrong.

He went back out into the warm sunlight and saw Dominic running in and out of the surf with Ashli watching nearby. She'd dragged a cot out there and Cora reclined in it under the shade of a tree, her swollen ankle heavily wrapped and propped up on pillows.

"Don't let him get too far, he isn't a strong swimmer yet!"

"Stop worrying. He's doing fine!"

"Ashli, those waves are higher than his head, get him to come back!"

"If you can't relax out here, I'll just take you back to your tent."

"I can't believe I'm taking orders from my little sister." Cora mumbled, leaning back and reaching for the bottle at her side as Stephen approached and knelt in the sand at her side. She glanced at him and said nothing.

"Is that rum for further medicinal use, or are you abusing it again?"

"It would be a greater abuse if you kept her from it." Ashli replied, turning to him. A chill ran through Stephen unbidden. She had the same hauteur, the same air of imperious command that her dead mother had carried around her like a thick cloak.

"Let him alone, Ashli. And mind Dominic! Look, the waves have knocked him over. Bring him back before he drowns."

"Good God, that poor child must have no fun at all with you as a mother." Ashli cried, throwing her hands up in the air.

"I can't recall the last time drowning was considered fun!" Cora shouted as the younger woman ran off into the surf, seizing her nephew and spinning him around. "She hasn't changed at all."

"How are you feeling this morning?"

"The best I ever have the day after I drank an entire bottle of rum. There are other patients that need your attention." She looked away from him, searching for the bottle and taking another drink.

"Yes, but I had rather thought they didn't want it as much as you did."

"Maybe it's a good thing that you're leaving," Cora sighed, taking his hand. "You and I can't seem to get by a day without arguing."

"Neither can Jack and I, and we've remained friends through every imaginable trial for eleven years now."

She lay back on her mound of pillows, her thumb tracing circles over his knuckles, and said nothing. She passed him the bottle instead, and despite the disapproving glances he always cast her, he took a drink too. Putting their lips to the rim of the same bottle was the closest they could come to a kiss when nearly the entire crew was watching.

Ashli returned not long after that, Dominic wet and squirming under her arm.

"Well, now that the sawbones has been welcomed into our circle with a drink, I say we start a game of cards."

"Cards? What could we play with three people?"

"Oh, I've already spoken to that Navy captain that's traipsing around with you. He's going to play too."

"How quickly you make friends, my dear." Cora said dryly. "Pray tell, how did you drag the captain from the duties he gave himself aboard the Fraternité?"

"With the promise of some drink and a game of cards. He's gone to fetch a deck, in fact."

"Good. Then while we wait for his return, you can find a place for Dominic to stay that isn't so surrounded by debauchery."

"You must mean relatively speaking, considering the company we keep on this island." Ashli snorted. "Come on, Dominic."

Jack returned before Ashli did. He carried a small table, while a pair of sailors behind him carried pillows and a blanket.

"This way we needn't sit in the sand." He beamed, directing the set up. He and Stephen sat directly across from each other, intending to be partners, and when Ashli returned her back was to the ocean and her face was smiling at her sister.

"What do we say to a game of spades, hm?" She asked. "Do you still remember how to play, Cora?" Her manner was strangely coy when she asked.

Cora smiled back, her feline grin matching her sister's.

"Of course I do, Ashli."

When they won the first game, it was no terrible loss; to Stephen's disappointment, they didn't intend to lay down any money that day. The second game carried with it some small measure of pride. By the fourth game, the greater part of the bottle was gone and Jack was finally inebriated enough to accuse the two women of cheating.

"Cheating? Cheating?" Ashli laughed. "Sister, shall we dignify that with an answer?"

"Indeed we shall not! Cheating would make us pirates!"

"And if we were pirates, they should've expected us to cheat!"

They raised the glasses they'd sent for to each other in toast, and as they drank them down Stephen realized that he'd never heard Cora look so at home with the word 'pirate' before. He smiled at Jack, and they decided to let them cheat a little more.


Cora and Ashli gave up cheating around afternoon, when the dice games came out. It was a little harder to cheat at a game of chance anyway. They paused only for dinner, and afterwards felt too replete with satisfaction to rouse themselves to any kind of great activity.

"Help me to bed, Ashli." Cora said as the sun was setting. Stephen had gone to make his rounds again; Jack was snoring on the table. "Where did you leave Dominic?" She asked as they neared her tent.

"He's with Finn and his men. They promised to behave like good Papists in his presence, for once. And I thought that would be where you wanted him."

"What is your meaning?"

Ashli paused, flicking her dark brown eyes to meet her sister's grey-blue ones.

"Finn... he's Dom's father, isn't he? I always wondered how long it would take the two of you to tear each other's clothes off."

"No, Ashli. Finn isn't his father."

Ashli was silent.

"Then who?"

Cora took a deep breath as they entered her tent. In the close darkness, she felt safer saying it.

"Stephen."

"The sawbones? Him?"

"Aye."

Ashli drew in a breath, then let it out slowly as Cora hobbled to her cot and sat. "I see. When you were held prisoner on that ship."

"Don't insinuate that I was less than willing. I'll bet that's what everyone wanted to believe about what happened to me there. The terrible Navy, trying to ruin our lives again, seducing the eldest daughter from her duty to her family. The simple truth of it is that I realized at last that a pirate's life was no longer the life for me when I first saw him. I realized that I had to get out, or our mother would destroy me."

"She was just grieving- we could've tried to save her-"

"Ashli, you can't be naive about this. Or maybe that's truly how she was to you. She was always different with you- you were born the day Black Wolf came back to us. You represented the start a better time. But I always reminded her of everything she'd lost. She would've destroyed me first, Ashli, and I don't think you would've been safe for much longer either. None of us were."

Ashli sat down stiffly beside Cora on the bed, her eyes fixed on some point in the distance that her sister could only guess at.

"So you betrayed us for him?"

"No, Stephen was... he was just the thing that got everything else started. If I hadn't... fallen in love with him I could've kept on doing what we were doing for much longer out of simple conformity and fear. But once I was with him I realized that there was another life I wanted."

"Yet you didn't marry him."

It was a statement, not a question.

Cora laughed bitterly. "I knew I wanted another life, but I didn't really know what that other life was."

"I'll tell you the life I want now." Ashli said. "I want to keep being a pirate. I'm not particularly good at it, but I love it with every fiber of my being. We were never meant to be caged, sister. I don't want to lose you again but... I don't want to lose the sea either. Freedom is my greatest aspiration."

"Are we little girls again, sharing our dreams?" Cora smiled. "Do you remember you told me you wanted to marry a prince?"

"Aye. What better way to have fine things?"

"You always were like Grandfather Caylyn: velvet and lace and your best boots, even if you were heading into certain death."

Their speech withered away in the utter comfort of simple presence.

"What is the life you want, Cora?"

She swallowed to wet her dry throat before she spoke. "I want Dominic and I to live on Alameade in the big house. I want Dom to have a tutor to give him all the answers I can't. I want you to live with us too- when you're not out doing your trade, respectable and not," Shared laughter. "I want Finn to visit us, and our grandparents too. I want all of us to go sailing on the Deliverance when we can."

"And Stephen?" Ashli asked delicately.

"I can't tell you how much I want him to be part of that life too. I just can't see how it would work."

"It will. It will."

"We aren't little girls anymore, Ashli."

"I know. Does that mean I can't spend the night with you in here?"

She smiled again, rubbing her hand on her sister's back. "Of course not."

The cot was narrow, but neither of them was much bigger than the last night they curled up together. They stripped to their shirts and slid into the same position they always did- both on their stomachs, but with their shoulders and feet touching and their faces turned together, waiting to catch any whispered dreams that might slip free while they slept.


Anamaria improved the next day, very slightly. Color was returning to her cheeks and staying awake for Stephen's examination was no longer such a task. She was the last of his rounds that morning, and Jack joined him just as he finished cleaning her wounds. Stephen had only to glance at him once to know that there was something he needed to say.

"Do you think that the wounded will stand up to a journey?" He asked the moment the sunlight touched their faces.

"I should like to continue caring for them here on dry land, but I would allow them aboard a ship again."

"Today, even?"

"Yes, if pressed. Is Cora considering leaving?"

"She hasn't said anything. Not directly. But the repairs are finished, and if you tell her that our wounded are hardy enough for a journey I'm sure we could get underway again."

"Are you intending to bring this up yourself?"

"...I'd rather hoped you would, old soul. It's been two weeks now, you know, since Tom left us in Port Royal..."

"May I remind you that the note he left with us said that he'd be back in no less than two weeks?"

"It don't signify, Stephen. He can't be waiting for us there forever- no more than three days I'll wager. We must be back there before he is."

Stephen watched the surf running up and down the shoreline. Gulls collected on the dry parts of it, still half asleep. They were rudely awakened when Dominic went charging through, sending them in a flurry of white against the lightening sky with his shrieks.

"He'll never make a naturalist that way." Jack remarked. "Shouldn't you go and correct him?"

Stephen said nothing for a moment. "I'll go speak with his mother instead."

Cora wasn't in her tent; Ashli was there instead. She was leaning over a desk looking at charts, an apple in one hand, when he entered. She looked at him a little differently that morning than she had when they played cards, and Stephen knew instantly that Cora had told her who the father of the boy outside chasing the sea gulls was.

"Cora isn't here." She said, as if it wasn't already obvious.

"Might I ask where she is?"

"She went to the cave to see about the money. She intends to set sail today."

Stephen nodded. His mission was accomplished for him. Yet he couldn't stop himself- the thought of her was under his skin.

"Where is the cave?"

"Go straight towards the trees. The entrance is to the left in the rock."

"My thanks, Miss Turner."

The name felt foreign on his tongue. The last time he'd said it was seven years before- to Cora. He must've frozen at the thought, searching Ashli's face for some clue to the mystery of her sister's, because the look in her eyes changed. She studied him as openly for a moment, seeking the measure of the man who'd ended her world. Then, as she raised the apple to her lips and took another bite, it shifted into the look Anamaria had given him when he referred to Cora as Captain Turner- the look that said he wasn't doing quite what he ought to be doing.

He made a leg in lieu of a good-bye and went back out into the sun. It had grown harsher in his short time inside the dim tent, and it was a small sort of relief to put his back to it and go towards the cool jungle. The liquid shadows of night had yet to dry here, and the entrance to the cave hid coyly in them. It was even cooler within, making the sweat beneath his clothes dry as he stepped forward into the room revealed.

It was the height of a house's roof, but the walls were rough and sloping. A small spring bubbled up from the ground and ran in a circle around the mound in the middle. A large chest sat on the mound, and it was before this that Cora knelt with a sack at her side.

"You're lucky to have money left. Anyone could simply step inside here and see what lay in the chest for themselves."

Cora started slightly, glancing at him and smiling, before going back to filling the sack.

"Aye, but they wouldn't touch a thing in this chest if they'd heard of the terrible curse that came with it. My Grandfather, Caylyn, styled this place after the Isla de Muerta for a reason."

"The Isle of Death?"

She laughed indulgently, the same way he heard her laughing at Dominic's plans to explore the world and learn the name of every creature in it.

"The Isla de Muerta was an island that could only be found by those who already knew where it was. Hidden on this island was a chest of priceless Aztec gold, the bloody money of Hernando Cortez. Of course, there was a curse on it- anyone who removed so much as one piece was left neither living nor dead, starving and unable to die, unable to feel the spray of the sea. My grandparents- Will and Elizabeth, and Jack too -found the island and raised the curse. Conveniently, it disappeared afterwards."

"And you believe their story?"

"Difficult question, that." She finished emptying the chest of its gold and secured the sack. She hefted it onto her back and stood before him. "I suppose you could say I believe the spirit of the stories I grew up with, if not every detail. Jack Sparrow does have a flare for embellishment. Did," She said after a frowning pause. "He still seems alive to me, sometimes." She made no move to leave then, as if the strength of her memory might conjure him at any moment.

"I hear we are to set sail for Port Royal today."

"Yes. It's been two weeks, after all. I promised to have you back."

She left quickly then, ignoring the weight of the gold. There were no memories to hold him there, and so Stephen followed. As he walked across the beach, telling himself he wasn't following her, he tried to imagine how he'd meet Diana again when he returned to England. Perhaps he could accomplish that, if he couldn't write a letter. Where would she be? He would need to discover that first. He wished they could be back at Mapes, under the false pagoda tree, or in her old rooms. Some place that was before all of this.

He realized it as he watched Cora load the sack of gold into a longboat. It was a mundane motion. It was not a flattering position. But it struck him all at once that he couldn't imagine accepting Diana's proposal after everything that had happened in the years between the day they first met and this. There was no letter to be written, no meeting to anticipate. What he wanted was standing not two hundred feet away from him, with only so much sunlit air to separate them.

Naturally, life gave him no repose in which he could ponder his new discovery. They'd already spotted the sails on the horizon.


Jack was floating around the Deliverance's hold, seeing to it that their stores were stowed anew at last and feeling only mild satisfaction when he felt the ship begin to float more evenly in the water, when they passed the word for him.

Following the summons was as natural as breathing. There was a sacredness in them- pass the word for Captain Aubrey, here is something that requires his attention and no one else's, here is a problem we couldn't solve by ourselves -that even saltwater couldn't wear away. It gave him the sense of control that he so relished about the sea. He'd felt restless as a caged beast beneath the decks of the Deliverance, waiting on orders to set sail, but now as he stepped out into the keen morning air he was filled with purpose. Even the sighting of the sails coming towards them from the west didn't deter him. He made his way across the planks leading to the Fraternité, who remained in the same position she had during their battle.

"We've been waiting for them to show their colors for some time now, Captain. They just sent up that signal- but I can't remember what it means." Joshamee Gibbs said, handing him a spyglass when he reached the starboard rail.

"It's a private Navy signal," Jack replied, his heart beating a little faster. "She's trying to discern our identities."

"We have a full set of flags on hand. What should we signal back?"

Jack turned the idea over in his head. He was about to suggest that they signaled their neutral status and perhaps even turn the Fraternité and her prisoners over to them. Cora did say something about doing that in the past. But then he let his eyes run over her once more- she was a frigate much along the lines of the dear old Surprise -and lingered there to watch as she began a turn that would soon put her broadside on. She wasn't more than half a mile away- within distance to fire. It was then that he was able to read the name on the side.

"By God- that's the Renown! The ship we were traveling on!" Then his joy began to fade. "Tom's orders- he said he'd be back in two weeks- he was after a French privateer- "

It didn't take a gifted leader to realize that they were standing on the deck of said privateer.

Jack leapt onto the railing, seizing the speaking trumpet from Gibbs's hand and shouted into it desperately.

"Captain Pullings, do not fire. We've captured the Fraternité. We are not your enemies. Captain Pullings, do not fire! Where are those flags, god damn you?" The last was to the sailor they'd sent in search of them, whose hands were empty.

"We can't find them, sir!"

Before Jack could even raise the speaking trumpet to his lips again, he heard the sharp crack of gunfire. A sharp pain in his arm- he was falling backwards. Then a sharper pain in his head- nothing.


Tom Pullings had once had no greater ambition in life than to be a lieutenant under Jack Aubrey. That made it somewhat of a shock when he became a captain. In fact, those first few hours of freedom aboard the Acheron were the loneliest and most dazed of his life. He turned constantly to the quarterdeck, expecting to find his idol and finding himself utterly alone with a ship full of hostile prisoners whose language he didn't speak with any degree of proficiency.

In a way, Captain Aubrey's discovery that their doctor was not a doctor at all came as a sort of relief. It was embarrassing to be escorted into Valparaiso, true, but comforting all the same. It had been a lovely little jaunt, but he expected now that he could stop playing at being a captain and go back to the security of first lieutenant. Jack wouldn't let him, and suddenly the fact that they could no longer serve together was the proudest moment of their long history.

Tom Pullings was a post captain now, but he was sent ricocheting back to his days as a sniveling midshipman when Jack Aubrey swept aboard the Renown like an angry storm cloud.

"Damn your eyes, Tom, why didn't you stop when I called you?"

Of course, it was rather hard to be full of righteous indignation when you could scarcely stand aright on your own two feet. Tom saw the deep gash in Jack's arm and the glazed cast of his eyes and not long afterwards discovered that his warning shots had severed the thick rigging beside the mainmast Jack had clung to, sending him flying backwards and likely knocking him unconscious.

Tom opened his mouth to pass the word for the surgeon- then remembered that the surgeon was their other wayward passenger.

"Captain, where is Doctor Maturin? He must have a look at this."

"He's back on the Isla de Tesoro with the rest of the crew."

"I must beg your forgiveness for leaving you behind in Port Royal, Captain. It grieved me extremely. Our orders were terribly urgent- the Fraternité had been sighted near us and we didn't want to lose her, slippery as she was" He laughed aloud. "And then I find her already taken a prize, and you in command of her. Whatever happened, Captain?"

Then Jack told him- finding the pirate he'd once saved in Port Royal, journeying with her to Alameade to relieve the monotony, tangling with the Fraternité in the midst of a storm and leaving her to lurk in these waters waiting for a return. He told them about that trap the twice cursed Frenchman had laid- using the captain's own sister as bait.

Tom felt heavier in his seat by the time the tale was done. His highest ambition had been to be a lieutenant under Jack Aubrey. He'd never expected to follow in his footsteps. Yet here he stood at the same crossroads Jack had reached five years before- he had a band of very questionable pirates in his hands now, pirates that had done something to aid the Crown... but were pirates nonetheless.

"Would it be possible for me to speak with Captain Turner... both of them? Do they still remain here?"

"Yes. We were preparing to make sail for Port Royal today, actually, to meet up with you. Fate is a prodigious strange bird, ain't she, Tom?"

"Indeed she is, sir." He murmured.

The sisters Turner were already on their way to the Renown by the time they sent a sailor looking for them, and it took no great amount of time for them to arrive in the captain's cabin. Tom's head was swimming of the stories he'd heard about the elder- that Jack was a fool to let her go, that he was noble to do so, and the whispered ones about why her absence struck Stephen Maturin so deeply. None of them could prepare him for the shock of their attire- breeches and linen shirts, and covered in soot in blood at that! They had a hardness in their eyes and a strength in their bearing- especially in the elder -that he'd never seen in women before. Making a leg seemed a condescending gesture. They deserved his hand. They were his equals.

"Captain Tom Pullings at your service." He said, bowing stiffly.

"Captain Ashli Turner at yours." The younger one said, her chin lifted and her rich brown eyes staring directly into his.

"Cora Turner." The elder said, more softly.

"Please, be seated. Would you care for a drink? It is my understanding that you have captured the French privateer I was seeking."

"Yes, we did. And I am more than willing to turn her over into your hands." Cora said after she'd taken a seat. She moved gingerly across the room and he was stunned to see that one of her feet was bare but for linen wrappings. She'd injured herself in the fight somehow. Tom sighed raggedly, hating to think of the sacrifice he must now destroy.

"You have placed us in an awkward situation," He fought not to add once more.

Without that tiny phrase, he suddenly had nowhere to turn. How had Jack made the decision five years before to let her go? How had he known it was right? How had he known to trust her?

The room was stale with tension as Tom closed his eyes, pinching his forehead and willing him back to that blissful state of first lieutenant- respected, admired, powerful, but not responsible for a decision such as this. It was his duty to capture the Fraternité and bring her to port. She was practically being given to him. But it was also his duty to hang pirates.

"We've done you a great service. Why can't you simply turn the other cheek and let us go?" Ashli asked coldly, sensing his train of thought with a bloodhound's ruthless precision.

"Because, Miss Turner, I was also to detain and destroy if possible the pirate that had been harassing ships of the fleet and stealing from ships of the East India Trading Company. When I last made port, I discovered that the name of this ship was the Rising Star, and that she was captained by a woman named Ashli Turner."

"No," Cora whispered before she could stop herself. "Ashli, tell me you didn't."

"I did what I had to. I did the only thing I knew." She sat straight and proud. "I am what I am. I have no reason to be ashamed or frightened."

"Have you no fear for the noose? For God's sake Ashli, have some sense!" Cora turned quickly to face him. "Please, my sister hasn't had the chance I had. She hasn't had a chance to see another life. Let me help her, let me give her another chance."

"Unfortunately, Miss Turner, being in your sister's presence puts yourself in danger. If I recall the terms of your pardon- and Captain Aubrey may correct me on this -you were to remain under no suspicion so long as you engaged in no acts of piracy and did not associate with known pirates."

He could feel the room go still again. This time even Ashli looked daunted.

"Do you mean... if I keep being a pirate, even if Cora isn't... she can be hanged too?"

"I am afraid so."

"And you could hang me now?"

"...that is the fate for most pirates that cross with the Navy."

"But she has shown no hostility. If she and her crew surrender willingly, can they be sent to jail as before?" Cora asked.

"I'm afraid not. The Admiralty wouldn't believe I'd fallen for the same trick twice."

"You're going to hang me?" Ashli's voice was barely a whisper.

Tom saw her grasp her sister's hand until it was white-knuckled and knew that this would be one of the moments in his life that never dimmed or faded away. It reminded him of the moment Jack first told him he was a captain- the way he felt when he put his hat back on for the first time and realized that there was something beyond even his wildest fantasies. He knew that whatever decision he made here, he would never forget those few moments before he made it.

He rose from his chair and went to the wide windows at the ship's stern. Here was the edge of his demesne, the very limits of his power. It was well within his power now to destroy not one but two lives with one noose, to be praised for valor and never questioned or shunned as his idol was. But he couldn't imagine it any other way, really, because he'd never had any greater ambition than to be a lieutenant under Jack Aubrey.

"There's a fine southerly wind here today. One could run all the way to the United States on it, I'd wager." He paused but didn't turn from the window, soothed by the sight of the sparkling sea. "But with the American resentment towards the British after our... seizure of their ships and impressment of their men has made their ports a dangerous place for a ship like the Renown. Dangerous enough," He paused again, and this time turned to meet Ashli's eyes. "That nearing one would be a justifiable reason to call off a pursuit." (1)

He watched the information flash through the young woman's eyes as she burrowed her way through his light tone to the suggestion buried in his words. Her hand tightened around sister's once more.

"Thank you, sir," She said. "Thank you."

Tom Pullings, post captain, decided that he could now have no greater ambition than to find a moment more fulfilling than this.


Cora could feel the southerly breeze all too well when she stood on the deck of the Rising Star. Her crew was skeletal at best- underfed and cramped from days of captivity aboard the Fraternité -but they would get themselves to America. Or so she prayed.

"Don't overpress your sails with this wind. You'll steal the power right out of it. Avoid your studdings'ls, I know you have an undue fondness for them. Do you know where you are headed for? Go for the southern states, Georgia or Alabama, a port there is just the same as Boston-"

"Hush."

It was all Ashli needed to say, and then every unsaid word they'd dreaded evicting from that tight place in their chest was free. Cora clutched Ashli with a fierceness she'd never felt before.

"Fly, Ashli. Reach for that horizon."

"And you reach for yours. Don't let it slip away."

Cora didn't need to ponder Ashli's words. Their meaning was made apparent to her only moments after they left her lips, when she heard Finn calling out to her from a nearby longboat.

"They're leaving," He shouted, his hands cupped around his mouth. "The captain and the doctor are leaving!"

She was shaking when she climbed down the side of the Star and into the longboat. It was to be expected. What was the point of going to Port Royal now that the Renown had come to them? Yet she still felt robbed of those last two days. How could she begin to say good-bye?

Jack's things were already being sent over to the Renown; he'd been in readiness for days. But Stephen was a different matter.

"What has been done with my medicine chest? It's highly valuable, and I warn any of you that may have seen fit to steal it. I say, I'll stern haul all of you if you don't tell me where it has gone!" His voice echoed over the water as she was climbing up the side. She shivered again.

"Keel haul, Doctor. It's called keel hauling." Gibbs sighed as she set foot on the deck. "The Captain is present!" He called, noticing her.

She waved them away and began to approach Stephen. She was stopped by two strong arms around her knees.

"Momma, are they really going? Esteban and Captain Aubrey?"

"They must, darling. It's time."

He fell away from her, looking perhaps more crushed than he did on the day they left Alameade. Her heart clenched, but it was a motion she scarcely felt.

"We must hurry, Stephen. The tide will change soon." Jack called from the Renown.

"I refuse to leave until I've found my medicine chest. It is very valuable to me."

"A medicine chest? Is that the one that was in the tent with the wounded?" Anamaria asked from where she lay on the hammock they'd slung for her on the deck.

"The very same."

"Oh, I believe I may have dropped it when they were moving us poor invalids." She said vaguely.

"I must have a boat immediately."

Cora froze, watching him cross the deck with a power and purpose in his movements she rarely saw. She wished she could find their parting as easy as he seemed to.

"Well?" Anamaria asked as Stephen was struggling with a boat.

And you reach for yours. Don't let it slip away.

"Let me help you with that." She called to Stephen. "I think I saw your chest earlier. I'll go with you."

"Thank you." He murmured as she helped him ready the boat. When they were safely inside and Gibbs barked at two younger sailors to begin lowering it, their closeness became cloying. There was no way to avoid each other's eyes in a longboat. It was too hard to pretend that they were both trying to memorize each other for the coming days of separation.

They said nothing on the journey to the Isla de Tesoro. Cora glanced briefly up at the Star as they passed, but didn't search too long for Ashli. That good-bye was already said, her peace already made. This one frightened her even more.

They pulled the longboat up on the shore and went immediately to the space where the tent Anamaria spoke of had once stood, but there was no sign of Stephen's chest there. They combed the beach in utter silence and still found nothing. They were ready to go back to the longboat when Cora spied a rock near the small stand of trees that had never been there before.

"Over here, Stephen." It was the first time she'd spoken since they stepped off of the Deliverance's deck. Her heart sunk now, seeing that it was the chest they were seeking, the same way it sunk when they began to lower the boat down.

"Thank you." He said once more.

"I suppose we should get back to the Deliverance- to the Renown, for you." She corrected herself. "You don't want to miss your tide."

"No indeed."

He walked away from her, towards the longboat, his head bowed either to avoid the sunlight or her face. She felt a rising hysteria in her- this was her good-bye? This was all the peace he would allow her.

"No," She cried sharply, following him. He turned back to her. "You made the mistake of letting me walk away from you once. I'm not about to make the same one. I'm not strong enough to do that. I thought I could just have two weeks with you and then be fine for the next seven years or however long it would take you to come back. But I can't. I want more than that."

"I can't stay with you. I'm the Renown's surgeon. I'll be labeled a deserter."

"Maybe not now, but sometime. I want you to promise me you'll come back. I want you to promise you'll stay for more than two weeks."

She watched his breathing quicken, his pulse pound in his neck.

"I could never be certain of when I'd come. Jack- who knows when he'll get a ship or how long he'll have it? And there are things- things I haven't told you- I could get called away to Spain with very short notice."

Her own mind whirled now. How would it ever work? Could she really stand to be waiting on him forever, clinging to memories between visits that might come only once a year?

Yes. God, yes. As long as she knew he was coming back. Coming home.

"I want you to spend every summer that you can with us. I'll come and visit you in England when you can't make it here. I don't care how you do it, or how you get here, but I want to see you every year. I want you. I love you."

He was silent for far too long. His hands were white-knuckled around the medicine chest.

"Stephen Maturin, will you accept my terms of surrender?" She asked with a faint smile.

She barely caught his words before he dropped the chest and drew her close. "With all my heart, yes."


"All aboard, Mr. Blakeney?"

"Aye sir, all but the Doctor."

Pullings clenched his teeth, making the lanky blonde third lieutenant cringe.

"He'll be here sir, I'm sure of it. We just need to wait a little longer, sir."

"Thank you, Blakeney. Captain Aubrey," He called suddenly, seeing the broad-shouldered man stalking across the deck with a small boy at his side. "Captain Aubrey, do you know what has detained Doctor Maturin?"

"He went back to the Isla de Tesoro to fetch a medicine chest that was misplaced. He still has not returned?"

"No sir, and we are ready to make way. The Star is about to leave."

"The Deliverance damn well better be here. I've found one of her crew stowed away in our hold." He glared at the boy at his side, who quailed only slightly.

"I only wanted to join you, sir. I don't want to say good-bye. I was going to write back home to Momma-"

"You're going back to your mother now, Dominic Turner, and that is the last I am to hear of it."

Jack led Dominic over to the rail, seeking the hail the Deliverance. She remained not far behind them as they prepared to follow the Star into the Isla de Tesoro's cove. He was just ready to call out when he noticed that Dominic's mother was not aboard the Deliverance at all, but standing on the beach before him. With her was the Renown's wayward doctor.

"Captain Pullings?" Jack called.

"Aye, sir."

"Is that chaplain they stuck you with still aboard?"

"Aye sir." Suspicion entered the scarred face.

"Thus, very well thus." Jack smiled. "You see, Pullings, I believe there is a wedding afoot."

Pullings followed his gaze to the beach and the sight of their doctor- their reserved, monkish doctor -mouth to mouth with a pirate, looking as if he had no intention of ever leaving.

"Well, I'll be damned." He smiled in spite of himself.

"A wedding?" Dominic asked Jack.

"Yes. I believe your mother will marry Stephen, at long last."

"So Esteban will be my father now?"

Jack smiled down at Dominic, putting a hand on his shoulder and pulling him a little closer.

"As he always was, lad. As he always was."


A/N-- Awwwwwwwwwwwwwwwww! The end! Or is it? Stick around for the epilogue...

Thanks to silverwolf of the night, FuchsiaII and Kelly Tolkien for their reviews.

(1) For anyone who forgot our date, we're in 1812. America and Great Britain are about to begin a naval war.