Disclaimer: Let me check my resume. Have I ever worked for Disney, Ted and Terry, Jerry Bruckheimer…no. No, I have not. Don't own.

A Very Persistent Illusion

She is splayed out across the deck, head resting in a pile of rope, and Cairbre has a hand on her stomach, hands splayed, waiting for the telltale sign of life. She can feel her heart beating a steady pulse against his palm.

"I'll give him a good, strong name, and he'll be positively the most fearsome pirate in the entire ocean."

"You're the most fearsome pirate in the entire ocean."

"He'll be worse."

"How do you know it will be a he?" Nolan asks, watching her with dark eyes.

"I just know," she says, and is rewarded when the babe kicks at Nolan's hand. She raises her eyebrow at him, and he gives her a small grin, shrugging.

"Feels like a girl to me."

She sits up in a huff, swatting his hand away from her belly. "You just like to be contrary, you little –."

"You'd never have it any other way, Captain," he says, and she finds herself drawn to the color of his eyes. They've always been a mystery to her. One day they will be green, others blue, and then sometimes they will turn brown, or a deep, dark chocolate color that is almost black. Today they are green, but as she holds his gaze, she can see flecks of gold in them.

"You're lucky I don't have you marooned on some rumless spit of land without a single shot."

Cairbre chuckles at her. "You'd miss me too much."

His hand has somehow tangled itself in her hair. She takes a moment to wonder how it got there in the first place, but then she winces as he tries to pull a ring loose, and he bends forward, inches from her face as he slowly unravels the ring. His breath is warm against her ear.

When he finally gets it free, he smiles beguilingly at her, and she glances at his hand. The ring is on his ring finger, a small, simple band with a tiny gem inside, which she is sure is what caught.

"You're married," she says softly.

Nolan glances up at her, shakes his head. "T'was a long time ago."

On impulse, she reaches for his hand, pulls the fingers close, to study the ring. Mostly, it is an excuse to feel the calluses adorning his palm, to slip a few fingers into the little hollow at his wrists and feel the pulse pounding there. "What happened?"

His heartbeat is slower than she'd expected it. Stronger. "Died in childbirth."

"And the baby?"

He just shakes his head. She notices his hand has moved up her forearm, to rest at the crook of her elbow. "Oh," she says, eyes turned up to study him. His face is downcast, the lids of his eyes almost closed, and she has a strong urge to touch the lashes, to make sure they are real. She follows the dark lines of them down his cheeks, strong and slightly jutting, down to his jaw. He seems regal, almost unreal, and the urge to make sure he is flesh and bone crawls across her fingers, digging deep until she can't take it, and she reaches out, smoothes a hand across his face.

His hand drops from her arm. "Elizabeth…" he says.

Whatever had been between them a moment before breaks. One of them always breaks it, and she hates it. She hates it, but neither of them can help it. She is carrying a different man's baby, and yet another man's looks, and soft touch. She is pulled in so many different directions it is sometimes hard to think.

Cairbre stands, reaches out for her hand, and she willingly takes the help. She's not yet at the point where she needs it, but with her moment gone again, she has to grab hold of something.

"Joseph."

"Maria."

"Addison."

"Helen."

"It's a boy, Cairbre, how many times do I have to tell you?"

She's begun craving chocolate. And crumpets. And breakfast tea.

How dearly she wants breakfast tea.

"You don't know that. You can't know that." He takes a bite out of the apple he'd stolen from a merchant ship yesterday.

"I know," she tells him. She watches him as he glances around the cabin, takes in the shelves, the trunks, the bed.

"You've been moving things."

She sighs. "I can't help it. I'm nesting."

He chuckles at the exasperated look she is wearing. It annoys her more than anyone else, and he can be sure of that. She despises it. And she really, really, desperately wants tea.

"Tell me about your husband," he says, and she glances down at her bare ring finger. Sighs again. She thinks about Will Turner, and for a moment, all she can remember is a gold trinket, a coin with more to it than met the eye, and then she remembers Jack Sparrow.

She blinks, and the vision is gone, replaced by a grinning William, the blacksmiths apprentice, William the pirate, William who refused to call her Elizabeth. And then come the other memories – William who threw in his lot with pirates he hated to save her. William, the man who kissed her at the fort, with the wind in their hair and the Black Pearl sailing in the wind away, away from them. William, her fiancé, the man she intended to spend the rest of her life with.

William the pirate, fighting beside her as he made her his wife. Or she made him her husband.

William dying, dead, dead, dead, and Jack reaching for his hand, throwing the heart on the deck as he curled Will's dead hand around the knife.

William her husband, the undead, the lovely, the man who'd given her his heart in every way possible.

"Will…" she starts, then falters. "He floated into my life when I was twelve. My father…he was being made governor of Port Royal, and so he set Will up with an apprenticeship, as a blacksmith. I'd always sneak out whenever my governess had had enough of me, and I'd charm Mr. Brown into letting Will out to play, and we'd go to this little cove no one knew about, and we'd play pirates."

Elizabeth smiles. "I always wanted to be a pirate." She turns to look at the faint edge of Cuba on one of her maps. "Eventually, though, my father got to Will, and he stopped playing pirates with me. Started calling me Miss Swann, like everyone else, and I hated it. Oh, how I hated that name." The smile returns. "Until I was nineteen, he called me that. Then, well, then pirates came to Port Royal." She thinks this would be a good time to mention Jack Sparrow. But she doesn't. "They kidnapped me – or, they found me and I said 'parlay' and they took me to their ship, and…it was Will who saved me. Will always did that, even when I didn't need saving."

"What happened…?"

She lets out a sigh. "We were married in the middle of a battle with the East India Company. We both…I'm sure we both thought we were going to die anyway, but…" She plays with the frayed edge of a bit of lace tied across her palm. "It was right. It was so right. But then Will, he… He'd made a promise to his father, to free him from the Dutchman, and the only way to do that was to stab the heart of Davy Jones."

"So, he stabbed the heart of Davy Jones."

This, she thinks, is where she should mention Jack Sparrow.

"Yes," she says. "He stabbed the heart. And he became Captain of the Flying Dutchman."

Cairbre eyes her for a moment, and she knows she's been called out on. Knows he's heard the stories. Knows she'd left out some very important things.

"I'm sorry," he says. She shrugs.

"He always did have a touch of destiny in him."

The men refuse to disembark from the ship until she does, and she can hear gold jingling in their pockets as they follow behind her. They gather around her, as if waiting for permission to leave, and she smiles at them all. "Try not to spend it all in one place, gentleman. No telling how long it will be before a ship leaves here."

They give her scandalized looks, like they can't quite believe she'd even contemplate them sailing under another Captain.

Men, she thinks, are confusing creatures. She waves them off, and they scurry like overexcited schoolchildren.

Cairbre takes a spot at her side as she makes her way toward the source of the music, and she glances up at him. "They do know they'll have to take up with another crew eventually?"

"They'll avoid it at all costs, I promise you."

"Look, I've taken less than fifty percent whenever we're paid, but even I know it's not enough to last them five months and longer. Not here."

"I think you underestimate how much they've learned from you. And how much they value you."

"Even my lectures on abstaining aren't enough in a town filled with rum and whores."

Cairbre only smiled. "They'd forego quite a lot to stay under your command. Don't think they don't know exactly what percentage you take."

She frowned a bit, then blinked blearily as she entered the cavernous hull of the beached ship, filled on either side with worthless, shining gems. On either side of her they sparkled brilliantly, leading the way into the inner sanctum of Shipwreck Cove. Elizabeth followed the path to it's end, and nodded to the woman standing sentry. Once she caught sight of Elizabeth's face, however, she was suddenly on her feet and at her side, a hand curling around Elizabeth's arm as she was pushed forward. She glanced back at Nolan, to find him attempting to hide a small grin.

"Cairbre, what –?"

He shook his head, following behind her at a leisurely pace. She was moving so quickly she had little time to take anything in – a few maps on the walls, trinkets placed in odd little hollows that must have been carved out after Shipwreck Cove had been created, children scurrying from room to room. She'd barely taken that in before she was stopping in the middle of another room, and the woman was letting go of her arm.

This was where the music had been coming from.

It is a medley sort of group. One man has a banjo, another is seated at an organ, one like she thought only ever played deep, sorrowful music, but is now holding a playful, upbeat note. There was a flute or something like it, and a pair of triangles, and in the middle of the tangle of music was Captain Teague, his hands dancing across the strings of his guitar.

Elizabeth watched them for a moment, until she felt Cairbre's hand at her back, and turned to look at him. "What exactly is going on, here?" she asked, and heard the guitar stop, followed rather quickly by the rest of the instruments.

Teague was the first to look up. "Ah, Nolan. You've returned."

"Yes."

"And with the Pirate King as your Captain. You've talent, I'll give you that."

Nolan bowed his head. "Sir."

Teague made a sweeping motion with his hand, and his companions began to move from the room, giving Elizabeth curious glances as they disappeared through doorways or behind curtains.

"Captain Swann," Teague says, and swings forward, his gait familiar, his smile kind.

"Captain Teague."

He nods at Nolan, and then at her protruding stomach. She dares him to say something.

"Come," he says finally. "I'll show you to your rooms."