A/N: Hello everyone and sorry for the long wait! Now that quarantine has given me so much free time, I will hopefully be uploading a lot faster :) I hope you enjoy Chapter 20 and I am so grateful for all the kind reviews I've been receiving. I can't believe this story almost has 100 follows! It means so much to me that people are reading and enjoying this because it's so much fun to write, so thank you!
"Elizabeth!"
Violet crashed into the arms of her friend, pushing all thoughts of Beckett and gunfire and murder from her mind as she breathed in Elizabeth's familiar scent.
But almost immediately, memories flooded her brain: dark, painful memories of cold handcuffs pressed into her palm and sweet words that bit into her skin, and suddenly Elizabeth felt cold and unfamiliar in Violet's arms.
"Captain, I-" Elizabeth pulled away from Violet, her expression dark and unwavering as though she was sensing Violet's thoughts.. "I can never tell you how sorry I am."
Violet didn't answer. She wasn't sure she knew how. Instead, she gave the girl a tight-lipped smile and was about to attempt a weak response when she was ambushed by the whole crew, standing in front of her and Jack in a sea of bedraggled clothes and sopping wet hair.
"Well, if it isn't Jack Sparrow and his lady love," said Captain Hector Barbossa, who stepped in front of the rest of the group, already taking a possessive stance. "I can't say I ever thought I'd be seeing you two imbeciles again."
"After all we've been through, I can't say I'm surprised," Violet said, folding her arms. "The dead seem to walk again quite often these days, I would say."
"Oh, enough with the pleasantries, Charles. What in the seven seas do all of you lousy scallywags think you're doing here?" Jack said, sauntering up next to Violet with his arms outstretched in that sort of unbalanced stance he always seemed to hold. "As I recall, many of you were far too eager to see myself and the lovely captain thrown to the beast like some kind of bait."
"Jack, Cutler Beckett has the heart of Davy Jones." Violet's gaze was drawn immediately to Will Turner, who pushed past the rest of the pirates to stand at Elizabeth's side. "He controls the Flying Dutchman."
"Ah, well if it isn't good old William," Jack said, slinging one of his arms around Violet's shoulders, who pointedly grabbed his wrist and removed his arm, biting back a smile. "Come back to your senses then, and realized that we were not the enemy after all?"
"Oh, I haven't changed my feelings towards the two of you." Will folded his arms and stared into Jack's eyes defiantly, far from the young naive boy Violet had nearly been sacrificed to cannibals with merely a year ago. "Jack, you're still a raving lunatic who has a complete lack of judgement when it comes to morals, and Violet, well…" Will trailed off, looking reluctantly at Violet.
"What do your personal grudges have to do with anything, Will, when Cutler Beckett has control of the seas?" Violet threw her hands up in the air, a horrible, dark picture entering her mind, a picture of Beckett's cold smile and harsh laugh filling up her senses. "If he is left to his own devices it will be the end of everything."
"Have you met him?" Will asked, his expression softening slightly at the obvious discomfort on Violet's face. "Beckett, that is?"
"Aye," Violet said, her gaze meeting Will's. He looked at her expectantly, as if he wanted her to say something more, but she didn't oblige him. He didn't need to know any more of her past. The boy had grown on her, and now look at him. She'd failed him, and now his bitterness would be the end of any relationship they once had.
As Will turned to Elizabeth, whispering something that Violet couldn't hear, she couldn't help but think about the time she'd found him on Tortuga, the time she'd told him she'd aid him in his quest to find Jack, the time she'd taken her life and tacked it onto Jack's once and for all.
He was different now. Will was- colder, or maybe he had just grown up. The sea tended to do that to a man, one way or another.
"Jack, the song has already been sung." A woman stepped forward, and Violet recognized her with bitter disappointment. Tia Dalma. As Violet recalled, their last visit hadn't been entirely amiable. "The Brethren Court is called."
At this, Violet saw Jack tense beside her, so small that none of the others would have seen it, but it was enough. She knew enough about the Brethren Court to know that the nine Pirate Lords were not people you wanted to fall out with, and that Jack and Barbossa were two of them.
"Leave you people alone for a minute and look what's happened, everything's gone to pot!" Jack turned away from the crowd, sauntering down across the sandy beach, and Violet rolled her eyes as the crew began to follow him.
"Aye, Jack. The world needs you back something fierce," Gibbs said, putting a hand on Jack's shoulders.
"And you need a crew." Will said pointedly, his sharp gaze locked onto Jack's back.
"We came to rescue you, Jack," Elizabeth said quietly, although the name she spoke was not the name of the person she turned her gaze on, and Violet shifted uncomfortably as Elizabeth looked at her.
"Well, that's all well and good, but why should I sail with any of you? Four of you have tried to kill me in the past. Two of you hate me. And one of you-" Jack gestured uncomfortably at Elizabeth, "has most likely been the very reason for my untimely demise."
"I didn't-" Elizabeth began, but then she fell silent, reconsidering her words. "It wasn't out of malice, Jack. What I did."
"What did you do?" Will asked, and a knowing smile crossed Jack's face.
"Ah, she's not told you. Well, seeing as I possess a ship and you do not, it seems you'll have lots to talk about while you're here." Jack grinned at the two of them, and Will frowned at Elizabeth.
Well, this certainly was an interesting development. Violet's eyes narrowed as she watched Will and Elizabeth, the former picture of love, who were now avoiding each other's gaze. Evidently Elizabeth felt guilty for her coercion of Violet, and she hadn't told Will about it. Violet wondered whether or not she should reassure Elizabeth, tell her it hadn't been her words that had swayed her. And yet, some twisted part of her didn't want to. She wanted to see Elizabeth squirm. And maybe, really, it was Elizabeth's words that had sent her to her death. So maybe she did deserve it.
When Violet looked back at Jack, he had already swept through the rest of the crew, sorting them into those he was taking on his voyage and those he was abandoning behind.
"Well, weigh anchor, all hands! Prepare to make sail!" Jack had seemingly chosen Tia Dalma (much to Violet's chagrin), the entire foreign crew, Gibbs, Marty, and Cotton. Quite the crew. Confident, Jack pulled the compass from his pocket and watched the needle spin around and around until it landed, resolutely, in Violet's direction.
"Well, would you look at that," Barbossa said, laughing coldly. "Which way are you going, Jack? How will you know where to find what you seek when you can't seem to get your mind off of Miss Charles?"
It was then that Violet saw what he was clutching in his hand, and her heart sank. It was the charts they needed. They would, unfortunately, be taking Captain Barbossa with them.
Violet watched, bored, as Jack and Barbossa fought angrily, striding across the ship like two whining children. Twenty minutes into being back from the dead and she was already missing the peace and quiet of the Locker.
"I'm sorry, Captain."
Violet turned to see Elizabeth leaning on the railing next to her, the two of them overlooking the sea. It seemed like just yesterday they'd been having a different conversation in the same spot. A conversation that only one of them had come back from.
"I know you are." Violet sighed heavily, trying to sort through the insanity that had been the past few days. "I don't blame you for my decision."
"So you do love him, then? After all?" Elizabeth gave Violet a rueful smile, and Violet smiled back, turning out to the sea.
"I think that I do, crazy as that sounds," Violet said, shaking her head. "He is- probably insane, and he drives me to the brink of insanity half the time as well, and sometimes I wish I'd never met him, but-" She trailed off, her thoughts swirling around and mixing with her memories in one tangled mess.
"It's hard to imagine life without him, though, isn't it? I can barely remember the days before I got mixed up with pirates and skeletons and the open sea." Elizabeth set her chin on her arms from where they rested on the railing.
"Neither can I," Violet said with a sigh, and Elizabeth's head turned sharply towards her.
"Good Lord, I can't believe I've never asked you about your past! I suppose I always assumed you were just born a pirate," Elizabeth said, her eyes wide, and Violet laughed.
"Unfortunately no, although that would have made things a lot easier." Violet sighed, looking out at the open ocean, her mind drifting back to days when her feet were firmly planted on dry land. Days when she had a mother. "But my past is rather uninteresting, and I wouldn't want to bore you with the story."
"Well, I won't pry," Elizabeth said, looking up at Violet in a way that suggested she very much wanted to pry. "And besides, I should be-"
"Elizabeth?" The two of them turned to see Will standing behind them, a hardness to his features as he frowned at her. "Might I have a word?"
Elizabeth nodded solemnly and shot Violet a quick smile before following Will, and Violet was alone once more.
Violet was awoken halfway through the night to Pintel and Ragetti squawking from above deck, and she rolled over in the dingy hammock, sighing loudly. She hated the crew's quarters, and had a long-standing argument with Jack over who deserved the sacred place in the Captain's quarters since the day she had stepped foot on the Pearl. Eventually, she had reluctantly decided that Jack, being the captain of the vessel, most likely deserved the room. To his credit, he had told her he would be more than happy to share it, but that particular statement had sent her running below deck the minute it left his lips.
Now, lying wide-eyed in the dingy, hole-strewn fabric, she couldn't help but wish she had taken him up on the offer. Normally she shared a small room off the main bunks with Elizabeth, but who knows where she'd gone off to tonight. Yawning, she sat up, nearly falling out of the hammock as she did so. Someone had to shut those two idiots up, or they'd wake up the whole ship.
Stumbling up the stairs, she made her way to the dark deck. The sky was- blank, as if someone had scrubbed it of any stars, and it sent an eerie chill down her arms.
"Now it's boats coming!" She turned to see Pintel, Ragetti, and Tia Dalma leaning against the edge of the railing, staring down at the sea below. Of course Tia Dalma would be with them.
"What is it?" Violet hissed, and Ragetti jumped at her voice, nearly falling out of the ship.
"Goodness, miss, you just about-"
"What are you looking at?" Violet repeated, walking over next to Pintel to peer down into the water. "What in the-" She gasped, recoiling back from the sight below her and nearly crashing into the shaggy pirate beside her.
Below the Pearl, millions of little boats were gliding softly down the calm ocean surface, each lit by a small lantern that cast a little circle of cold light around the vessels, a shield from the impending darkness of the night. But it wasn't the boats themselves that made Violet uncomfortable, no, it was there passengers. Inside each boat sat a completely expressionless person, unmoving and cold. They were all ages: young, old, twins, women, men, and the sight took Violet's breath away.
"They're not a threat to us, am I right?" Suddenly Will was beside her, a worried expression on his face as he too stared down below at the passengers. They weren't alive, Violet realized then. They had not yet returned to the land of the living.
"We are nothing but ghosts to them." Tia Dalma's expression was shattering, and the raw sadness on her face made Violet's heart twist. She hated seeing them, these people. Sooner or later one of them was bound to be someone she'd put in an early grave.
"Is best just let them be," a low voice added, and Violet realized that most of the crew had joined them, watching wordlessly as the boats passed by.
Suddenly, Elizabeth lurched forward, pointing at one of the people, and Violet took in a sharp breath. Governor Swann, Elizabeth's white-wigged, well-meaning father was looking forward, his eyes glassy. Someone has to get to Elizabeth.
"Look, it's my father, we've made it back!" Elizabeth called, her face breaking into a huge smile. "Father, here! Look here!"
"Will," Violet whispered, gently tapping the man's arm from beside her, and Will gave her a small nod, understanding her meaning. This was not Violet's rescue to make.
"Elizabeth, we're not back." The voice came from the other side of the line of pirates, and Violet was surprised at the pain that she heard in Jack's words. It was almost- regret.
"Father!" Elizabeth called, moving up the deck of the ship now, waving frantically.
"Elizabeth, are you dead?" Governor Swann looked up at his daughter, his expression blank, and even in the darkness, Violet could see the understanding begin to wash across Elizabeth's face as tears filled her friend's eyes.
"No, no," Elizabeth rambled, leaning further across the railing. Violet dug her fingers into the wood of the ship, itching to run over to her, but she knew the girl would resent that.
"I think I am," her father said quietly, and Elizabeth shook her head, her eyes shining in the light of the thousands of lanterns below.
"No, you can't be!" she shouted, clutching the railing like it was a lifeline.
"There was this chest, you see. And a heart. At the time it seemed so important," Governor Swann said solemnly, looking straight ahead of his little boat and ignoring Elizabeth's pleas for him to come aboard. "I learned that if you stab the heart, yours must take its place. Sail the seas for eternity. Silly thing to die for."
Beckett. The name entered Violet's mind with such ferocity it burned through all of her other thoughts, and she shook her head. It was Beckett who had killed this man, Beckett who had the heart of Davy Jones. Another victim of that man's insanity.
"Someone cast a line!" Elizabeth shrieked, and Marty came forward reluctantly, passing her a rope. Frantic, she tore it out of his hands and tossed it into the sea below, and Will began to move towards her as Tia Dalma shouted "She must not leave the ship!"
"Elizabeth, I'm so proud of you." Governor Swann's eyes were shining in the glow of the water, and Elizabeth began to sob as his boat began to drift further and further from the line.
"Take the line!" she cried, shaking the rope with all her might. "Come back with us! I won't leave you!"
Will had reached her now, and he enveloped her in his arms as she thrashed, tears running down her cheeks. "Elizabeth," he said quietly, and she buried her face in his shirt, sobbing.
"Terrible, isn't it." Jack had come up behind Violet, and she turned to face him, drawing in a shaky breath. "You're crying, love." She reached up to her face, running a finger under her lower eyelid, surprised. She hadn't realized she'd been so affected by it.
"It's just that I know what it's like. To lose someone so important." Violet couldn't look at Elizabeth, couldn't watch her only friend suffer so deeply. "And it can destroy you."
Jack was silent, for once in his life, and the two of them watched as the crew began to disperse back belowdeck, Will holding Elizabeth as the two of them followed the rest of the pirates, no doubt about to have another much-needed conversation. Soon enough, Jack and Violet were alone once more on deck, the night colder than any other she'd ever had out at sea.
"It's a bit jarring, I'd say. Dead one minute then alive the next and the very next day you're faced with death once again, staring you straight in the face, as if you never did leave." Jack sighed, leaning on the railing next to her, the two of them facing the ship. "We never did talk about the Locker, did we, love?"
"You want to relive that?" Violet said, scoffing in spite of herself, and Jack shook his head, fingering one of the strands of beads that hung from his hair.
"It's not a matter of what I want," he said, looking pointedly at her. "More of a matter of what I need. And what I need is to talk to you. And if you want to talk about the Locker, well then I'm more than happy to oblige."
"You need that, do you?" Violet couldn't help but smile at his sideways way of talking in circles, and she lay her head on his shoulder, suddenly overcome by a wave of emotion that made her want to crumple into a ball. For heaven's sake, she was a lot less strong than she'd thought.
"I need you. I think- no I'm fairly certain that I'll always need you, for as long as I live." Jack leaned his head against her own and wrapped his arm around her shoulders, and the two of them stood there like that for most of what remained of the night, these two pirates who had seen both sides of the world and come out the victors.