"So," Jack Sparrow said as he blew on the fire he'd managed to build using wet materials, "I'm assuming you don't know how to prepare a snapper."

"You assume wrongly," Elizabeth said through clenched teeth. "I am not entirely helpless. I used to like to help our cook out, and we ate fish often. She taught me how to ready them for roasting and smoking."

"Good. It's on that rock over there. Here. You'll need this." Jack pulled his dagger out of its holster and held it out by the handle to Elizabeth. "I need to keep tending to this fire, else it'll go out in a wink. So get that fish ready, and we'll roast it up. Hurry now; it's been out of the water in the heat long enough."

Elizabeth walked over to the boulder where Jack had laid the large red snapper he'd managed to drive through with his cutlass. The fish had a gaping wound from the weapon, but most of the meat was untouched. Elizabeth stared at its odd little eyes and whispered,

"Sorry."

Then she cut its head right off, just as Cook had taught her to do. Ordinarily, she would have kept the head to make stock, but they had no pots for that here. She wondered if Jack would eat the head, and she winced at the thought. Next, Elizabeth grasped the fish firmly by the tail. Holding Jack's knife perpendicular to the fish, she stroked firmly from the tail end toward the head to dislodge the scales. Over and over again, she pressed down on the fish gently and stroked Jack's knife from tail to head until it was entirely divested on both sides of its scales. She carried the scaled fish out toward the ocean and rinsed it in a wave, and then she brought it and Jack's rinsed dagger back to him.

He'd gotten the fire truly going now, and he looked quite pleased with Elizabeth's handiwork. They stuck a rod of palm bark through the hole his cutlass had put into the centre of the fish, and Jack held it aloft over the fire to roast it. As Elizabeth stood beside him, she asked,

"Did we manage to collect any of that rain water?"

"I had six half coconut shells out; we got that much," Jack said, "and I had dug a big hole in the sand to collect it - a hole that didn't go down to the seawater. So we've got a fair bit of water, lass. Add in coconuts that keep on growing, plus rum, and we'll be just fine."

"We're not going to die on this island, are we?" Elizabeth asked, feeling suddenly afraid. Jack turned to her and smirked, tipping his head a bit.

"No, love. This is not how Captain Jack Sparrow dies. He hangs, maybe. He gets run through with a sword. Takes a bullet wrong. But he doesn't shrivel up on an island, marooned from his own ship. No, Miss Swann, we are not going to die on this island. Dinner's ready."

He pulled the fish from above the fire, and and the two of them sank down to sit on the sand to eat it. Elizabeth gingerly pulled off steaming hot bites that burned her fingers. She blew on them and ate them, thinking that they were good but could use a bit of lemon or rosemary. But she said softly to Jack,

"Thank you for catching the fish. You're quite right; if it weren't for you, I wouldn't last three days on this island."

"Well, you'd last just about that, and then you'd die staring up at the sun, desiccated and miserable," Jack said with a little laugh. He took a bite of fish and declared, "Never in my life have I tasted such good fish, I don't think."

Elizabeth flashed him a crooked little grin. "You've spent months at a time aboard ships eating nothing but hardtack and slop, and you're relishing fish after just a few days of coconut?"

"Mmm-hmm," nodded Jack, and he gave no further explanation. Elizabeth frowned a little but took another bite of fish in silence. By the time they'd polished off the snapper, she felt genuinely full, and she lay back in the sand and said rather happily,

"My belly's full. Feels nice."

Jack tossed the bones they'd picked clean aside; they might need them later for something. He twisted and lay on his stomach beside Elizabeth, staring down at her.

"What do you say to breaking out just one bottle from the two crates of rum you didn't blow up?"

"More drinking?" she groaned. She touched her forearm to her face and laughed a little. "All you ever do is drink, Jack Sparrow."

"False," he declared. "I also plunder, commandeer vessels, sail the seven seas, and undertake all other manner of piratey endeavours."

"Piratey endeavours," Elizabeth giggled, and Jack grinned as she pulled her arm away.

"Endeavours of the pirate variety," he clarified. Elizabeth laughed again and tipped her head back against the sand.

"Very well," she agreed. "Fetch the rum, Captain. It might help me forget about Will, if just for a little while."

"Good enough reason for me," Jack declared, heaving himself to his bare feet and waltzing off toward the grove where the rum runners had stashed the liquor.

Elizabeth sat up from where she'd been lying in the sand. She stared into the fire and thought anxiously of Will. What had become of him? Jack had asked her if she loved Will. Did she? No, she didn't suppose she did. He was too… dull. But, then, James Norrington was also very dull, and she was meant to marry him. So many men in the world seemed profoundly dull to Elizabeth Swann.

Jack Sparrow was not dull, said a quiet voice in the back of her mind. She quickly shoved that thought away. She mustn't think of Jack like that, she told herself. She mustn't think of the filthy pirate with whom she'd been marooned in any sort of lustful way. But it was true that he was handsome in a strange and exotic way, and it was true that he was erratic and bizarre in his behaviour in a way that was somehow alluring and even endearing. And it was certainly true that he was not dull.

"I come bearing rum!" cried Jack from behind her, and when she turned round, she saw that he had only one bottle in his hand. He hadn't been kidding, then, about preserving the stores. They were to share. She was to drink out of the same bottle as him. Why did that send a shiver up her spine?

Stop it, Elizabeth! she commanded herself, but it didn't work. She was meant to be exceedingly cross with him about what had happened to Will Turner. She was meant to be furious with him about them getting marooned on this island. Instead, all she could think about as he approached her with a gold-glinted smile was that he'd built fires from nothing, that he'd made her a shelter from palm fronds, that he'd fished them a snapper out of the reef using his sword. All she could think about were the ways he'd saved her life, whacking a coconut open over her head so she could drink of it. And all she could hear was the sound of him singing as the rain beat down around them. Suddenly she found herself very dizzy with no rum in her at all, and she leaned heavily on her hands to steady herself.

"You all right, love?" asked Jack, and Elizabeth just nodded slowly. Jack came to sit beside her and pulled the cork out of the bottle of rum with a decisive sort of blop. He handed the bottle to Elizabeth, and she tipped it back to take the first drink. It burned like fire going down her throat, and she winced.

"Still not used to rum," she said with a little cough. She passed it back to Jack, who gulped down two or three mouthfuls and proudly declared,

"Stuff's like water to me at this point. Been drinking it as long as I can remember."

"So that's why your mind is fried up like an egg," Elizabeth teased, and Jack rumbled with laughter. He sipped again and then passed back the bottle to her. She took it and stared into the amber liquid, and then she asked,

"How'd you get those gunshots, Jack?"

"Captain," he corrected her, but when she glared at him, he just stared and said, "Not telling."

"You're embarrassed of battle scars?" Elizabeth asked, knocking back some more rum. Jack was quiet for a moment until at last he noted,

"Nobody said they came from battle, love. Why don't you just go on with your fairy tales about me sacking Nassau port without firing a single shot, eh?"

"What, that's a lie, too?" Elizabeth drank more deeply now, and Jack sighed as he stared into the fire.

"I sacked the place, all right," he said, "but my men fired more than a few bullets that night. Sorry to inform you. A man has to build up his reputation, you understand. These stories you hear of me, they aren't lies outright, Elizabeth. More like… half-truths. For the truths that we see in their entirety may not excite us sufficiently, thereby leading us to exaggerate and elaborate, and thus we wind up with legends, eh?"

"I like the way you speak," Elizabeth found herself saying suddenly. She took a deep drink, and Jack turned to give her a little smirk.

"What, like a man who's had rum for breakfast, lunch, and dinner and doesn't know upwards from downwards, then?"

"Yes, like that," Elizabeth nodded, handing him back the bottle of rum. He gulped at it, drinking a quarter of the bottle in one go, and he told her,

"I know I'm strange, love; don't need the mockery over it."

"I'm not mocking you." Elizabeth rushed to say the words. She suddenly found herself holding onto Jack's shoulder, and he stared at her fingers curled around his shirt. She ripped her hand away, but he raised his lined eyes to hers and murmured,

"If you're not mocking me, then you're flirting with me, Lizzie, and if you're flirting with me, you'd best go into that shelter I built for you, eh? You've already had too much rum to be flirting."

"I'm not flirting," she whispered, and he tipped his head.

"Then what is it you're doing, love, complimenting my admittedly odd manner of speaking and putting your hand on me? Hmm? What are you up to, then, Miss Swann?"

She just stared. She wasn't sure what she was up to. She was drinking rum with the man who had saved her life in more ways than one. She was alone with him here. No dull Will Turner. No dull James Norrington. No chastising father. No eyes but theirs were here. They and they alone were on this island. Why did that send a sense of liberation flushing through Elizabeth's veins? Why did she feel freer than she'd ever felt at that knowledge?

"Jack," she whispered carefully, "I'm free here. Aren't I?"

"Don't start talking like that, Miss Swann," said Jack, chugging down the last of the rum. He tossed the bottle aside and whispered, "You should go to bed."

"To bed? The sun isn't even down yet," Elizabeth protested. "Perhaps I shall go swimming."

"I saw a shark in the reef when I caught the snapper. Don't go swimming," Jack advised her, and Elizabeth's eyes watered.

"There you go again," she shrugged. "Saving my life all the time. When at last we are rescued, Captain Jack Sparrow, I shall see to it that you are given Letters of Marque and full pardon. I shan't accept anything less if James Norrington wants my hand in marriage."

"Well, I thank you very kindly for the sentiment, Miss Swann, but my last outing working for the East India Trading Company didn't end so very sweetly, so I'm disinclined to traverse down that path yet again. That being said, I'll gladly accept the full pardon and hear your sweet voice spare me the hangman's noose."

Sweet voice. Had he meant that, or was it just a throwaway like so much else that he said? Elizabeth blinked slowly as the rum settled into her veins. She wet her bottom lip and reached out for his shoulder again. Her fingers convulsed upon his shirt the instant she touched him, her nerves taking over. She stared into his kohl-lined eyes and whispered,

"Jack."

He tipped his head to the side and seemed far more serious than usual as he muttered back,

"Yes, Miss Swann?"

"Elizabeth," she corrected him gently, and he quirked up half his mouth. When they'd first come onto this island, he'd called her Elizabeth and she'd barked at him, It's Miss Swann. Now she was doing entirely the opposite. He sucked on his lip for a moment and then nodded, repeating,

"Elizabeth."

"Thank you," she said softly. "For everything. For… not shooting me after the signal fire failed."

"Believe it or not," he said, raising his black eyebrows, "I actually have relatively little interest in shooting you."

She smiled and continued, "Thank you for opening coconuts for us."

"Now you know how; all you have to do is steal my sword," he said lightly, eyeing the place where her fingers were still curled over his shoulder. Elizabeth squeezed a little there and said,

"Thank you for building me a shelter."

"I just wanted an excuse to lie close to you in the storm," he lied, and she laughed a little.

"Thank you for spearing the fish."

"I was hungry for fish," he insisted. Elizabeth pinched her lips and shook her head, narrowing her eyes.

"Pirate," she whispered, and he nodded. They just stared for a very long while, and suddenly Elizabeth realised that if she kept sitting here, she was going to kiss him. She finally dragged herself to her feet and mumbled,

"Best early to bed, early to rise, I suppose. Goodnight, Captain Sparrow."

"Night, Miss Swann." He stayed sitting on the sand, staring into the fire very seriously. Elizabeth huffed a breath and walked off on unsteady legs toward the shelter he'd build for her. She was almost there when she heard his voice panting from behind her.

"Elizabeth."

She whirled around to see Jack trudging as quickly as he could through the thick sand. He approached her in the darkness of the spot where the shelter was, relatively far from the fire, and she could barely make out his face. But he seemed very determined as he walked right up to Elizabeth, snared his right arm around the small of her back, and pleaded,

"Just… don't slap me and ruin this, all right?"

"Ruin what?" Elizabeth was breathless all of a sudden, and then Jack cupped her face in his left hand and bent a little until their mouths met. He pressed his lips to hers, and Elizabeth squealed in surprise. Then she melted like butter in the Caribbean heat, pushing her body against his and letting him splay his hand against the small of her back to pull her close. His left hand tightened on her jaw, and he deepened the kiss. Suddenly his tongue was inside of her mouth, exploring, running over the roof, twining with her own. He was nibbling at her bottom lip, sucking on it, and Elizabeth never, ever wanted the kiss to end. She'd come alive. She'd been lit on fire. She wanted this and so much more, she thought, though she wasn't sure exactly what more she wanted. She wanted him. She wanted Jack Sparrow.

And that was utter madness, she thought as he pulled away at last, as breathless and panting as she was. It was complete lunacy to want him of all people. Jack Sparrow, insane pirate.

He tasted like liquorice and rum.

Elizabeth stared at him as he backed away slowly, his lined eyes wide. He finally said in a quiet voice,

"You can go ahead and slap me now, if you'd like, Miss Swann."

"No, thank you," she replied. She glanced over her shoulder at her shelter and said to him, not for the first time tonight, "Goodnight, Captain Sparrow."

He tipped his head and smiled just a little. "Night, Elizabeth."

Then he turned and walked away, looking remarkably steady for a man who had had so much to drink.

Author's Note: They kisssssssed. Yay! Will he tell her some stories of his past? Will they do a lot more than kissing? Will they get rescued? (Yes to all of these, probably.) Thank you so much for reading. I do realize that my breakneck upload speed doesn't leave a ton of time for reviews, and for that reason, I am infinitely grateful for each and every review that I do receive. Thank you so very much.