A/N: Thank you so much for all the reviews! :)

Disclaimer: I don't own POTC.

Chapter 40

Elizabeth gasped with both astonishment and relief, when a few minutes after Poseidon had left, Jack lightheartedly walked into the room. She was afraid that he might be not coming back. That the god of the sea might lock him up somewhere, or do something even worse...

She ran to Jack, and before he had a chance to say anything, Elizabeth slammed the glass door shut behind him, and getting hold of him by his shirt, she pushed him violently against the wall.

"I missed you too, luv", he smirked, rather amused, wrapping his arms around her waist.

"Jack, we have a problem", she whispered solemnly, looking into his eyes with desperation.

"Aye", he grinned, leaning towards her. "And what would that be?", he asked pulling her into a kiss.

Ridiculously enough, having no time to lose, she nonetheless deepened the kiss. ...And one day, you won't be able to resist, resounded in her head abstractedly. Indeed. She was annoyed by her own inability to concentrate even in such perilous circumstances. He really is... irresistible, she thought to herself, simultaneously making a mental note never to confess this hazardous thought of hers to him. His self-confidence was well off already, even without it.

"Jack!", she finally regathered the debris of her common sense, and broke the kiss. "There's no time. I'm serious. We've-"

"What's happened?", he broke in, suddenly noticing a really serious expression on her face.

"I am trying to tell you", she replied irritably.

She told him quickly what has happened, nervously plucking his shirt in order to as harmlessly as possible vent her frustration.

Jack stared at Elizabeth in bewilderment. He did not quite expect something like that to happen.

"He is mad!", concluded Elizabeth, waiting for Jack to preferably instantly come up with a plan.

"Yes, I guess he is", agreed Jack wrinkling his forehead. "Planning on stealing me plaything, aye?", he added with a half-grin, cupping Elizabeth's face in his hands.

"Well, I'm glad that you're in such a fine mood", Elizabeth exclaimed impatiently, "but I don't think we can afford cherishing your sense of humor right now. We have to run away!"

"Sail away", corrected Jack rather grimly.

Elizabeth sighed. "We have to get back on the Black Pearl, and-"

"Accidentally, and quite unfortunately as it seems, the whole crew is right now off the Pearl, making themselves comfortable in those fancy rooms here", said Jack unenthusiastically.

"So we have to get everybody back on board", stated Elizabeth resolutely. "Somehow..."

"Aye", nodded Jack, thinking.

"He said that the black pearl is just a souvenir. From his mother", said Elizabeth quietly, suddenly remembering the ring, and slightly drifting away in her thoughts.

Jack looked at her with a trace of a smile flickering across his face. "Is this worrying you, Lizzie?", he asked in a low tone of voice, clasping her in an embrace.

"No", she answered, narrowing her eyes. "But I do have an eluding, but not entirely elusive suspicion that my everlastingly evasive enchanter, otherwise evil-doer whom I expect to marry, would not have endowed me with something extraneously exquisite, and not efficaciously exploitable. Aye?", Elizabeth raised her eyebrow, quite proud of herself.

Jack grinned at her with appreciation, and brushed his lips against hers. "An evil-doer? I thought I was a good man", he whispered with pretended disappointment, and kissed her fiercely.

"I did not bring anything, because- Oh." Governor Swann, who just came into the room without knocking, coughed.

Elizabeth and Jack meekly pulled away from each other. Elizabeth looked blankly at her father, less blankly at Jack, and then she finally snapped back into the reality.

"You are such a distraction", she whispered mock-angrily to Jack, and hit him playfully on the shoulder. "Father!", she exclaimed running to him. "We have to run away!"

The Governor looked perplexed (as he often looked when Elizabeth was informing him about something).

"He wants to marry me!", exclaimed Elizabeth frustratedly.

The Governor raised his eyebrows, and shot Jack a puzzled look. Elizabeth followed his eyes, and shook her head impatiently.

"I'm not talking about Jack", she sighed resignedly, tired at the very thought of explaining everything to her father. He always needed to be told everything twice, before he would even begin considering her words plausible. Although she had to admit that her father's conception of plausibility inevitably improved, if only recently.

"How come not?", asked Jack, giving her an amusedly questioning look.

Elizabeth rolled her eyes. "Can we please become serious?"

"As you wish, luv", consented Jack. "Take off your clothes."

Elizabeth's glare, although a powerful one, was no match to the Governor's.

"Come on. Snap to, Lizzie. Get your bath. Said the dress is on its way, so hurry up", Jack began shuffling utterly confused Elizabeth towards the bath quarters located in the back of the room.

"What- what are you doing?!", she stammered, staring at him in disbelief.

Governor Swann watched the scene, too baffled to intervene.

"Ah", smirked Jack, opening the bathing room door for her. "You keep forgetting one strikingly simple and easy to remember thing, darling-Lizzie-tell-me-everything-luv."

"And what is that?!", she pouted incredulously, as he gently pushed her inside the bath quarters.

Jack's face broke into a grin. "I am Captain Jack Sparrow", he said, and shut the door behind her.

"I thought we were going to run away", said Elizabeth through her gritted teeth, trying to remain as calm as possible, although the temptation to strike Jack with a bouquet of lush water plants that she was holding in her hand right now, was almost overwhelming.

They were sitting in a large ball room, with glass, colorful walls, and the transparent floor. The room was already crowded. Among many more or less strangely looking sea creatures, some of them resembling humans quite accurately, but some of them looking frighteningly alien, were the members of the Black Pearl crew (along with Philip Fairwood, who had not expected being taken on a journey, and was rather worried about his house in Tortuga, because he had forgotten to lock the door), some soldiers trying to find out what has happened to Lord Cutler Beckett who had hired them, and Governor Swann with a distressed look on his face.

Poseidon let everybody attend the wedding ceremony, as he accepted it as a perfectly natural thing for them to assume his superior position, and agree with anything that he has ordered to happen. He did not expect any troubles. Not in his own palace. Not inside the sea.

"Aye", said Jack looking Elizabeth over with delight. She looked exceptionally beautiful in a ruffled, white dress with flounced sleeves. "But you see, luv. In order to run away you have to create an away where you can run to first, and only then you can make your way away without being suspected of running away while you are actually away already. Aye?" Jack waggled his eyebrows conspiratorially.

Elizabeth shot him a grim look, her eyes narrowed. She looked at him in silence for a moment. He expected her to give him a sharp reply of some sort, but instead, quite unexpectedly her facial expression softened. Without any particular reason, but simply because she looked into his eyes, and suddenly felt like telling him that, she said in a quiet, but urgent tone of voice:

"I love everything about you, Jack." He blinked, and looked at her intently. "I love your every word that I understand without understanding it. Every gesture that annoys me, because I cannot feel annoyed by it no matter how hard I try. Every smile that I am unable to decipher, because I have it deciphered already long before it appears on your face. Everything you do, even if you don't do it, and everything you haven't done, but you will never admit it. I love you for all possible reasons, yet, I love you for no reason at all. I love you, Jack", she smiled faintly, and looked away, as if she just said something of average importance.

The years spent at sea among the wonders of nature, calm waves churning up in no time, tempests that seemed to have no end, hurricanes haunting ships with strange, nigh conscious abandon, rains so intense that they appeared to be drowning the entire ocean, nights of abysmal darkness, days of burning humidity, winds that could turn scratches into gashes... Any of these has never put on his face the look that was there right now.

"Elizabeth", he said in a barely audible whisper, turning her face, so she would look at him. He did not know what to say. First time in his life he did not know what to say. "Lizzie", he looked at her with solemnity, which sent shivers up her spine. It was so unlike him, yet so... like him. It was why she has always feel safe with him. This seriousness, this reliability that could be rarely seen, but was the very core of his nature. No matter how hard he has always been trying to deny it, to prove it wrong. "It counts not, what was before I have met you, 'Lizbeth", he said slowly, locking his eyes with hers.

"Just don't tell me that I am for you as important as the sea", whispered Elizabeth with a small smile, trying to sound humorous.

Jack grinned at her quizzically, narrowing his kohl-rimmed eyes, and intensifying his gaze.

"No", he said leaning towards her with a glimpse of roguishness in his eyes. "You are more than that, luv."

Elizabeth stopped smiling, dazed by the words that she has never expected to hear.

"You are more than the sea. To me. For me. You are more important than the sea. You are more important than everything", he ran his hand through her hair, staring at her steadily.

Elizabeth studied his face incredulously. She wanted to say something, but then the ball room door opened ceremoniously, and accompanied by the sound of strange instruments playing a not particularly dazzling melody, Poseidon entered the room.

The Governor sighed. If this plan of his works out, we shall all go to London, and I shall have him introduced to the King. He closed his eyes exasperatedly, shook his head resignedly, and sighed heavily.

Elizabeth and Poseidon's wedding ceremony was about to begin.