A/N:
Brunette-Goddess-89: Wow, Barbossa just lost about 20 of his fearsomeness in my eyes. Calling him Barbie is a stroke of utter genius and I still can't stop laughing. You go girl!
Why is everyone so eager for Beckett to get iced? I love him, he's such a creep!
I can honestly swear I never intended this to be a Barbossa/Elizabeth fic. I still don't. All I can say is, they have a mind of their own, and every time I put them together... Well, stay tuned, you'll see what happens.
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Elizabeth parted her lips a little and Barbossa took that as an invitation to slip her quite a lot of tongue. She found herself unsurprised. And not at all unhappy. She eased him down on his back, pillowing his head with her arm, and settled down sideways in a feeding-grapes-to-Caesar sort of pose that would have struck Will as completely improper. (She told herself that it was mostly so she could keep better pressure on his bloodspewing shoulder. Besides, he really did need to rinse out his mouth after Jack's antics. Besides, she was about to be married, and then it would be too late, and if she didn't now she would probably always regret it. So it was all right.)
At first it was quite a rush to be reclining over the powerful Captain Barbossa and giving him a very firm and authoritative kiss, while he just kissed back and purred with pleasure. At first it was nice. But after all his teasing about temptation and losing control, she soon found she was starting to get impatient with his unusual passivity. At the exact moment that thought crossed her mind, a hand suddenly came up to the back of her neck. He found the energy to lift her off him, sit up, and lay her down on her back. He was practically lying on top of her, the full length of his body pressed against hers, and Elizabeth felt a shudder that had nothing to do with the chilly water or with fear. This is more like it. Against all her best intentions she reached an arm around him, holding him tighter.
His beard was tickling her. He tasted very strongly of blood and was getting blood all over her, but strangely enough she didn't mind any of it. Later on she would look back and thank her lucky stars that Jack had been there, because God only knew what her momentary lapse in judgment might have led to, right there on the beach, if they'd had privacy.
It was he who eventually broke it off, rolling slowly off her and onto his back. Elizabeth sat up. "I'm so glad you're all right," she whispered, reaching out gently to wipe some of the sand and blood off his face.
"So I see." While her kiss was certainly pleasurable, it had not been quite enough to eclipse the lightning bolts of pain radiating from his injury. "Now tell me: how bad's this little pinprick? Ask Jack."
Jack, who had been doing an excellent impression of blind and deaf for the last few minutes, reanimated immediately. "Shove over, Lizzie, let's have a look." He sat Barbossa up, unbuttoned his shirt carefully and poked around for a moment, grimacing when he saw the flash of bone. "Not so bad, it's an awful lot of blood though," he said. Half of it was the truth, anyway. "Let's tie it up and get you back to the ship. I think I heard guns, there must be some kind of battle, but I can't even tell who's fighting who."
"Sounds like just your cup of tea," Barbossa growled. His good mood at being alive (and reaping the rewards that followed, mmm) was rapidly deteriorating in the face of the misery his wounds were bringing him. He winced at the thought of the rusty, moldy weapon that had inflicted the big cut. "And I thought that last one was infection," he muttered.
"Can you use it at all?"
He found he couldn't seem to lift his right arm, but he just gave a one-shoulder shrug and said, "I'm sure once someone's in front of me with a sword it'll work fine."
Jack and Elizabeth both donated their shirts to whip up a bandage. Barbossa was eyeing Elizabeth's undershirt. "Don't you dare say it," she warned. "If we need more cloth we can cut up your clothes for a change."
He grinned at her. "Oh, is that any way to treat a-OH! Ah!" He shouted and tried to jerk away, but Jack held him still. "Jack! What the devil are you-"
"Hang on." Jack held up a bloody hand and dropped something in Barbossa's lap.
Barbossa picked it up to examine it and almost threw up. It was a live hermit crab. "Didn't need that running around in there, now, did we?" Jack asked brightly.
"Well, you might have warned me first," Barbossa grumbled as Jack continued to wrap him up. "And you might tie that a little ti- not that tight, God, the Kraken probably has a lighter touch than you. Inconsiderate whelp, I should throw ye into a barrel full of jellyfish, with Lord Beckett, now how would you like-"
Initially, Elizabeth's instinct was to fuss over him and possibly hold his hand, but all his griping made her think it wasn't even necessary. "Are you really all right? Doesn't that hurt?"
The pirates both looked at her, surprised. Jack answered first: "Not at all. It's just his constant sunny disposition that makes him behave like this, love."
Barbossa lashed out with his fist and missed Jack's face by a hair. "Arrrr," he growled. "Are we done yet?"
"Yep, that'll do it." Jack helped him to his feet and got him dressed while Elizabeth pulled his sword out of one of the dead fish-people for him. She retrieved his knife too, but he told her to keep it.
"I've got two others on me person as we speak," he explained, "And we don't know who we'll be fightin out there, so best all of us be prepared, don't you think?"
She carefully wiped the blade clean of blood and stuck it down the front of her bodice for easy access. She glared preemptively at both pirates in turn. "And I don't need any comments about that."
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What the Black Pearl was doing made no sense whatsoever from the standpoint of naval strategy. One minute the pirates were fleeing full-speed out to sea, the next they were coming around, looking almost as if they wanted to fight but instead veering off at the last moment and sailing past Beckett, heading back towards the island the way they had come.
At one point the ships were so close they could fire guns at each other, but the pirates made no move to do so. They let loose with the cannons on the way past, but otherwise simply ignored Beckett's attempts to fight. They hit the deck when the bullets started, and a moment later had got past and were suddenly moving faster, much faster than Beckett would have expected them to be able to go.
"Follow them! After them! What's going on?" He was reminding himself that losing his temper meant losing face with his men, but it was no good.
Mercer was suddenly by his side. "So what do you think they're up to, then?" he asked easily.
Beckett whipped around. "I've no idea; do you?"
Mercer nodded sagely. "Somebody's reminded those boys that we have an awesome power on our side... one that can operate solely in the deep water... and they're on the run from it."
"The monster? You think I should call for the Dutchman nowIt seems like a waste..."
"Not if they're getting away from us, it's not." Mercer was as calm now as he was when he read poetry by the fire, or slit someone's throat in the dead of night. "I think it's worth it, sir. Show these pirates a thing or two, eh?"
Beckett nodded. He was vain enough to dislike having his arms look like he'd been mauled by a lion, so this time he pulled up his shirt and drew blood from a cut just beside his navel. "If he doesn't answer quickly I'm afraid I'm going to lose my t-"
The Dutchman was already breaking the surface. Beckett was so pleased it didn't occur to him to wonder what Jones was doing so close to the island that had been expressly declared off-limits. "Is it too shallow here to call your beast?" he shouted across.
"Too shallow," Jones agreed.
"That's too bad." Beckett smiled coldly. Deciding it was not dignified to holler like a fishwife, he turned to Mercer and said quietly, "Tell him just to come with us himself. Tell him we'll simply have to kill them by hand. Tell him sorry – we know they're his friends and all. "
He watched Jones carefully while Mercer relayed the message. Was it his imagination, or did Jones look a little more on edge than usual? Well, Beckett thought to himself, it's not my fault I can't read him, he's a bloody octopus for God's sake. Hmph. Because he didn't want to be outdone by his advisor (again), he didn't ask Mercer what he thought.
So both ships went off in pursuit of the Black Pearl. The Dutchman was a fair bit faster than Beckett's ship, and it gained on the Pearl much quicker than the Pearl's crewwould have hoped.
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After they made their U-turn and were sailing past a hail of bullets from Beckett's ship, Will was taking cover behind a barrel until he noticed that Jack (the monkey) was sitting up a ways in the rigging, bouncing up and down and screaming with outrage. He doesn't like the noise, Will thought, and for the first time felt a flash of sympathy for the little beast. Perhaps I won't let Jack shoot him any more...
But suddenly that made him think: For all we know he's not immortal anymore. If Jones had already dropped his Aztec piece in the chest, then he should most definitely not be sitting up in the rigging while they were being shot at, should he.
Will jumped up and climbed after him. Bullets whizzed by his head the whole way, but he miraculously got the monkey by the tail and dragged him to safety before they were shot. They cowered together behind some boxes until the ship was out of range and the shooting stopped.
As soon as he stood up, Will found himself face to face with a shocked and disgusted Former Commodore Norrington.
"You just risked your life for a monkey," Norrington said incredulously.
"Not just any monkey," Will explained. "That is the treasured pet of Captain Barbossa. If anything happens to that animal, he will gut us. All of us." That was half of the truth. The other half – that he had begun to feel sorry for the poor creature – was not something he thought it particularly advisable to advertise.
Norrington was sick and tired of everyone treating the captain like a volcano god whose unpredictable wrath must be constantly appeased at peril of life and limb. He rolled his eyes and shook his head and snapped, "Oh, spare me. That pirate has turned you all into a pack of cringing slaves and it's embarrassing to watch."
Will laughed outright. With a new sword in his belt, his hair hanging loose, and a giant feathered hat on his head, he had never felt so confident or so free. "Whatever you say, mate," he said generously.
Norrington recoiled. "And you said mate!"
"When I start using ye, then we'll know there's a problem," Will laughed.
"Look!" Norrington pointed upwards, where their pint-sized lookout was shouting and waving his arms. They followed his wild gestures to a spot on the horizon. "That's the rowboat."
"And not a moment too soon," Will muttered. He had just noticed that they were now being pursued by two ships, not one, and that the Dutchman was gaining. "Albert? You might want to come down from there, boy, and get below."
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The rowboat and the Pearl crossed paths at a very bad time. Fighting with the Flying Dutchman was well under way, and due to the pressing need to fend off Davy Jones's bloodthirsty fish-people, they had had to borrow men from the oars and now the Pearl's speed was suffering. Beckett's ship would catch up too, soon, and it would be two on one, and-
Will shook his head and forced himself to snap out of it. "Lower a rope! Let them climb, we don't have time to fetch up the boat," he ordered. He turned to Gibbs and gave instructions, without stopping to wonder whether he was actually in charge. "Rack the oars, hard to starboard, and pray that Jack's done his job! In the meantime... keep fighting!"
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Down came a rope. "They've got to be joking," Jack muttered, shooting a look at Barbossa's blood-caked bandage.
"Worry about yourself, Jack," Barbossa advised. "You first. Then Elizabeth, then me. As soon as you get up there, talk to Davy, start sorting things out with the Dutchman, beforethat other ship gets here."
Jack went up without difficulty. Elizabeth went next, exhausted from the day's trials but still at a fairly quick pace.
Barbossa lagged far behind. At first he could hook the rope around his injured right arm as he shifted his left grip higher, but eventually that hurt too much and he was reduced to using his teeth. It hampered his ability to growl curses, which made it much more difficult for him to climb.
By the time he reached the top, the Pearl had been boarded not only by Davy Jones's crew but also by Beckett's. Mass chaos reigned on deck. He could hear women screaming, and he wondered who in their right mind would waste time going after civilians when there were so many actual enemies that had to be taken care of. He saw Jack and Davy shake hands on something and heard Davy bellow some new instructions to his crew.
He saw Elizabeth's father - not wearing his wig, amazingly enough - fencing quite daintily with one of Beckett's men, and found a moment to roll his eyes.
Then he took out his cutlass and got busy.
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Fighting both Jones's crew and Beckett's was very difficult for the pirates, even with the wholehearted assistance of Norrington's men and some of the captives too, but fortunately they didn't have to do it for very long. Soon after Beckett's men boarded, Jack came up and reached an accord with Davy.
As soon as they'd shaken hands, Jack grabbed a nearby pirate and instructed him: "The fishies are now helping us kill Beckett's men, all right? Fish helping kill Beckett's men. Good fishies, nice fishies. Spread the word."
Some people got the right idea. For a while Jones's crew and the pirates were working together. "The fish are helping kill Beckett's men!" Jack shouted the reminder again, trying to avoid confusion in this massive battle with so many opposing sides.
A nearby pirate nodded and took it upon himself to spread the word. "The fish are helping Beckett kill his men! They are helping Beckett kill his men. Spread the word, everyone!"
Others took the message and began to repeat it... but missed a few parts. Soon it was echoing all over the ship: "The fish are helping Beckett!"
Will had been fighting back to back with a man with a shark's head. They turned and exchanged puzzled glances. "No they're not," Will said.
The sharkhead hesitated. "Are we? Maybe we are." He let go of the soldier he had been gnawing on and flashed Will a bloodstained smile. "Sorry!"
Will left off fighting Beckett's men in favor of keeping Sharky's teeth out of his throat.
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TBC.
Not crazy enough for you yet? Don't worry - it gets crazier.
Thanks to everyone who's reviewed. You guys make my day with your awesome comments, and you really do give me ideas about what's to come.