Authoress Note: Welcome to Chapter 18 of Fake It. Thank you to those who have left reviews for this story. It really does mean a lot. I hope that you guys enjoy this next chapter. Without further ado Chapter 18. ENJOY!

Chapter 18

Elizabeth's feet left prints in the sand before they met up with matching footprints she had made earlier, going in the same direction. She had walked all the way around the island.

Morgan let out a breath as she wrung her hair out.

"Not all that big, is it?" Jack said as he laid down on the beach. He had dismantled his pistol, the parts, ball and powder to dry on his scarf.

"Has it changed since the last time you were here?"

"The trees are taller." Jack sat up checking his pistol to check if the parts wet dry. Which thankfully they were. He began to reassemble his pistol and load it.

Morgan let out a tired breath as she wrung out her shirt and stood up on her feet.

"I hope you have no intention of using that." Elizabeth pointed out looking at the pistol with a worried gaze.

Jack finished putting his pistol back together. He shoved it in his belt and began to walk. "Not yet. Ask me again in a few weeks."

Elizabeth looked at Jack in shock. She couldn't believe it. "Captain Sparrow! We have to get off this island - immediately!"

"Don't be thinking I'm not already working on it." Jack said, climbing towards a clump of palm trees. He began to dig for something under the sand. He found a large iron ring.

Elizabeth blinked a few times. "What is that? Is there a boat under there?"

Morgan slowly followed her father and helped him heave the trap door up and over revealing a pit.

Inside are barrels and bottles of rum, all covered with dust and cobwebs, long abandoned.

Jack's face fell.

Morgan let out a soft breath.

"What? What's wrong? How will this help us get off the island?"

"It won't. It won't, and so we won't." Jack jumped down into the pit, cracking open a bottle of rum, taking a swig of it.

"But ... you did it before! Last time -"

"Oh do shut up." Morgan snapped looking at Elizabeth with irritation in her eyes.

"Last time, I was here a grand total of three days. Last time, the rum runners who used this island as a cache came by, and I bartered passage off. But from the looks of this, they've been out of business, and so that won't be happening again." He took another swig of the rum. "We probably have your friend Norrington to thank for that."

"So that's it? That's the secret grand adventure of the infamous Jack Sparrow? You spent three days on the beach drinking rum?"

"Welcome to the Caribbean, love." He said as he gathered a few bottles before heading to the beach.

Morgan grabbed some bottles and followed her father slowly.

"You should look at our contretemps this way: we've got shade trees, thank the Lord. We've got some food on the trees, thank the Lord again. And we've got rum, praise the Lord. We can stay alive a month, maybe more. Keep a weather eye open for passing ships, and our chances are fair."

"A month? Will doesn't have a month! We've got to do something to help him!"

"You're right." He hoisted a bottle up. "Here's luck to you, Will Turner." He drank some of the rum and definitely returned Elizabeth's angry gaze, but then turned away, sitting down. "Don't be thinking I'm happy about this, Elizabeth. But I see no use in wailing and gnashing my teeth over that which I can do nothing about."

Morgan sat down letting out a breath and taking a swig of her rum.

"Not when you can drink instead, at least." Elizabeth said, shaking her head lightly.

Jack tossed her a bottle. "Try it. It goes down rough, but it goes down - and the second swig goes down easier."

Elizabeth was concerned for a moment and then came to a decision. She unsealed the bottle before taking a swig.

The three of them sat in silence.

"And you will call me Miss Swann."

Jack lifted his rum bottle.

Elizabeth studied the bottle and gave Jack a sidelong glance before going back to the bottle. "Drink up me hearties, yo ho …" She said under her breath.

"What? What was that?"

Elizabeth smiled.

"Something funny, Miss Swann? Share, please."

Morgan let out a scoff as she drank some more of her rum.

"Nothing ... it's nothing. Just … I'm reminded of a song I learned as a child. A song about pirates."

"I know a lot of songs about pirates, but none I'd teach a child. Let's hear it."

"Oh, no ... it's silly. Back in England we didn't know a thing about pirates, really. They seemed so romantic and daring -"

Jack liked the way that it sounded.

"That was before I met one, of course."

Morgan shook her head lightly. "You've met two pirates." Morgan said, looking over at Elizabeth. "You seem to have forgotten I'm one too unless you count your friend Norrington who deemed me not one."

Jack let out a soft chuckle at what his daughter had said. He knew that she was a bit rough around the edges and of course she didn't have a brush with the East India Trading Company. "Now I must hear this song. An authentic pirate song. Have at it."

"Well, perhaps ... with a bit more to drink, I might …" Elizabeth admitted.

"More to drink!" He gathered two more bottles and tossed one to her.

Elizabeth dropped her half-finished bottle to catch it. She opened it and took a sip.

"Well?"

Elizabeth cleared her throat and began to sing self-consciously, becoming stronger as she went on. "We pillage, we plunder, we rifle, we loot, Drink up me hearties, yo ho." She gestured for him to drink and he did just that. "We kidnap and ravage and we don't give a hoot, Drink up me hearties, yo ho -"

PIRATES

The night fell upon the three of them. A fire was blazing on to keep them warm.

Elizabeth and Jack were roaring drunk, arm in arm, singing the song all the way up to the stars.

Morgan watched the two of them with a scowl upon her face. She thought that it was wrong for how her father was acting. She knew that her family would even be more torn due to her father being the way he was.

" Yo ho, yo ho, a pirate's life for me! Yo ho, yo ho, a pirate's life for me!"

"I LOVE this song!" Jack said happily. "Yo ho, yo ho, a pirate's life for me! We're beggars and blighters, ne'er do well cads, Drink up me hearties, yo ho! Aye but we're loved by our mums and our dads. Drink up me hearties, yo ho!"

They hoisted their bottles, but only Jack drank. He drained his bottle and tossed away barely missing Morgan who had to scramble out of the way.

"When I get the Black Pearl back, I'm going to teach it to the whole crew, and we'll sing it all the time!"

"You'll be positively the most fearsome pirates to sail the Spanish Main." Elizabeth salutes the idea with her bottle.

Jack didn't have a bottle to salute back.

Elizabeth quickly handed him her bottle.

Jack drank it down, then settled shakily to the ground.

Elizabeth sat down next to him.

"Not just the Spanish Main. The whole ocean ... the whole world. Wherever we want to go, we go. That's what a ship is, you know. Not just a keel and a hull and a deck and sails. That's what a ship needs ... but what a ship is - what the Black Pearl really is … is freedom."

Elizabeth laid her head on his shoulder. "Jack, it must be so terrible for you, to be trapped here on this island, all over again."

"Ah, well ... the company is better than last time. And the scenery has definitely improved."

Morgan huffed and got up to her feet. She stormed away from the two of them. How dare he say that the company was better? Elizabeth was her age and he was married to her mother and now he was flirting openly in front of her. It hurt her feelings to know that her father probably never really cared about her. She knew that her choice of what she was going to do and that wasn't going to be sailing on the open ocean with her father. Perhaps she could make a home in Port Royal or perhaps somewhere else.

PIRATES

Jack's nose twitched as a bit of smoke drifted by. His nose twitched again and his eyes opened. He groaned and sat up. He rubbed his head and looked over and all of the foliage in the middle of the island was on fire. Smoke raised high up into the clear blue kept up to his feet. He saw Elizabeth and Morgan pouring the last bit of rum, dowsing the scrub brush at the base of the palm tree. It went up in flames and Elizabeth rolled the barrel forward and it started to burn. Jack couldn't believe what he was seeing. "What are you doing? You've burned our food, the shade - the rum!"

"Yes, the rum is gone." Elizabeth said as she wiped her hands together.

One of the rum barrels in the fire exploded.

"Why?"

"One, because it is a vile drink that turns even the most respectable men into scoundrels. Two -" Elizabeth pointed to the sky. "That signal is over a thousand feet high, which means it can be seen for two hundred leagues in every direction. The entire Royal Navy is out to sea looking for me - do you think there is even a chance they could miss it?"

"You - you burned up the island, for a one-time chance at being spotted?"

"Exactly." Elizabeth turned towards the sea. "Just you wait, Captain. In an hour, maybe two, keep a 'weather eye open' and you'll be seeing white sails on that horizon!" She sat down, determined. She shield her eyes and scanned the water watching, searching and waiting.

Jack stood there speechless. He threw his hands up and stalked up the sand dune, just to get away from his daughter and Elizabeth.

Morgan took a soft breath, pursing her lips together. "Next time you come up with a plan Miss Swan. I would suggest not flirting with my father."

Elizabeth turned her head to look at the young woman. "I wasn't flirting."

"I think you were. Making him think that the scenery this time was better than the last time he was here. He was with an eight year old, me!" She snapped, shaking her head lightly.

"I'm sorry…"

Morgan shook her head lightly and looked away to see white sails against the turquoise water. She saw a long boat already headed their way. "Looks like your plan worked."

XXXXXXXXXXXX

This is the end of Chapter 18. I hope that you guys enjoyed it. Please leave a review and let me know what you think. I know that Morgan was a bit of a pistol in this part of the story but there is a good reason, and she's thinking of what to do with her life now. The question is will she still be a pirate on the seas or will she stay somewhere and be a proper lady? I will try to update with the next chapter soon. Until next time.