A/N: Thanks for your feedback, everyone! I think I'll stick to having preview snippets then…

Chapter 8 - Visitation

Warnings: mentionin's of sickness again

Early the next morning Elizabeth awoke feeling worse than she had felt since her nausea spells had begun. Her head swam with dizziness as her stomach lurched and gurgled, causing her to sit straight up in bed with a start.

She clutched her abdomen with clammy fingers, trying to soothe her stomach by speaking to it in soft tones.

"Come on, stomach; calm down. You're going to get through this without doing anything crazy, right?" She stroked the skin of her abdomen, leaning her back against the wooden headboard of her bed, half tempted to fetch a pail but not wanting to move.

Her stomach looked oddly bloated and filled, even though food had been scarce for more than a month now, but she was more concerned about the sickening feeling it was causing deep within her.

Oh, no. Something's actually going to come of it this time; I can sense it. She searched frantically over the floor for sign of a decent-sized container, though she knew better than to even bother. She had nothing of the sort in her cabin.

There she sat upon her bed, nightgown drawn up over her belly, and blankets covering up to her hips. Her hands remained resting on her subtly rounded abdomen, kneading the soft flesh beneath it, as she prayed this episode would pass.

Eventually Elizabeth attempted to lie back down, but the waves of nausea impeded her effort. She moaned in disgust at the situation she was in, sitting back up and beginning to rock slowly back and forth, moaning in a monotone all the while. She now had chills, and her teeth were chattering, producing an odd sound when she moaned.

Suddenly the door opened, and someone appeared at the door, shutting it very quietly behind himself.

"Who's there?" she ventured to say, peering into the darkness of the room.

The person came closer. She reached haltingly for the pistol that was under her pillow, but felt another surge of nausea and froze in place.

"Stop or I'll shoot," she threatened, hearing her teeth chattering all the while.

The person struck a match, and lit a candle that was being held. In the dim candlelight she could make out her morning visitor as none other than Cutler Beckett. He was wearing his linen shirt and breeches, but was not wearing his frockcoat or waistcoat. He looked much the way he looked when he had first begun changing for the better, having at that time taken off his wig and welcoming the idea of working aboard the ship.

"What are you doing here?" she whispered, her voice wrought with anxiety.

"I thought I heard something, and I wanted to check up on… things," he replied, holding the candle low as to shadow his face. He caught a glimpse of the bare flesh of her abdomen and felt an odd twinge to have seen such a thing.

He saw the sweat beaded on her brow and could hear her teeth chattering, and knew that she was ailing again.

Surprisingly to Elizabeth –and probably to himself as well— he came closer in spite of this, one hand holding the lit candle, the other one moving to his pocket.

"What are you doing?" she asked, her voice a hissed whisper. She hastily pulled the blanket up over her exposed belly.

"I've got something that may help you," he replied, keeping his voice low but not whispering.

"You've got to stay quiet! Jack would kill you if he knew you were here. I have to punish you later on today. How is this going to look?"

Talking to Beckett had temporarily gotten Elizabeth's mind off of her nausea.

"It's still quite early," he said, now whispering. "No one else is awake. I am certain no one saw me enter your cabin."

"But what if they had seen—"

"You needn't worry about it," he replied hastily. "I entered your room on my own volition, not yours. But never mind that. How are you feeling?"

The concerned look on his face confused her to no end. Why is he doing this, when later on today he's going to be flogged—by me, of all people? Maybe he feels guilty about revealing my sickness to Jack, and so wants to get to me first, just like I had tried to do with him.

"Did you tell Jack about me?" she questioned, watching his response. He blinked, but his expression did not change.

"About what?"

"About… this ailment," she replied, continuing to rock back and forth, starting to feel sick again merely for mentioning it again.

"No. Why would I do that?" he replied, sounding sincere enough.

"You mean, you didn't reveal that information to him?"

"No."

She looked suspicious. "Are you telling the truth? I'm not going to hold it against you if you told him, being as you found out that I—"

"I didn't tell him anything." He gave her a big smile, and put his hand to his mouth as if he was buttoning his lips together. "Your secret is safe with me."

She looked up at Beckett, who was now standing by the bed, her teeth chattering and hands wandering back down to her belly, as she began speaking. The shame she felt was almost overwhelming at the moment.

"Right," she said, not convinced.

"Well, it'd be rather easy to prove. Ask anyone aboard about your condition, and no one will have any idea what you're babbling about."

Her look of suspicion faded into one of shame.

"I am so sorry to have let it slip," she stammered. "I did not mean to. I am not one to break promises willfully. It's just, Jack mentioned Pico Island and then I made the automatic connection with that and Azores. My curiosity got the best of me. Something really bad must have happened there, for him to be so resolute on no one finding out."

Beckett then spoke. Elizabeth immediately sucked in a breath, expecting him to begin berating her for her untrustworthiness.

"I wonder if he realizes that the hush-hush way he's going about this is only piquing curiosity about what occurred there," he said. "You watch; it's probably nothing worth noting." However, my problem there is a rather big deal. She was probably the only woman I've ever really loved…. And I wasn't even totally aware of that fact until after she died.

Half a minute passed in silence, Elizabeth just waiting for him to begin scolding her over the broken promise.

Elizabeth was perplexed at his silence. He's not going to say anything more? Why is he not berating me over this! What's going on? He probably realizes that by saying nothing he's making me feel even worse about what I did.

She laid her head back against the headboard, groaning from another sickening squishing of her stomach and the feeling of its contents rising in her throat. Had Beckett really not said anything? She believed it more and more every second. If he had told Jack, then surely Jack would have been checking up on her already. It was amazing: Beckett, upon finding out that she had broken her promise, had not spitefully done it right back to her. He had kept his word. Was he truly a better person than she was?

Beckett watched Elizabeth in this pitiful state with a concerned seriousness about him, one that possessed no arrogance or mischief, just concern.

Suddenly he sat down on the edge of the bed by her side. She flashed him an incredulous look but he remained seated, reaching in his pocket with his left hand. Again she weakly tried to reach behind her for her pistol. He's going to shoot me; I just know it. Or maybe he'll slit my throat, a much quieter alternative. The nausea was simply too intense for her to actually retrieve her firearm, so she could only watch in horror as he pulled something small from his pocket.

It was a tawny-colored lumpy root. He held it on the palm of his hand, a little smirk playing across his mouth, his eyes glittering.

"What is that?" she moaned quietly, gripping her abdomen, feeling a ticklish bead of sweat dripping off the tip of her nose.

"It's ginger," he replied matter-of-factly, scooting closer to her and putting the candle down on the bedside table. She was taken aback. Is he going to poison me?

"It's a very popular… and very effective remedy for nausea," he continued, watching her with those glittering eyes.

"Where did you get it?" she replied cautiously.

"I found it amongst the stores in the hold whilst I was organizing it. After you told me of your plight I thought it would be helpful. There are only a few roots left, but—"

"Why in God's name would we have that aboard the ship?" she replied.

"Seasickness," he said, shrugging, but his tone confident. It made perfect sense. Many a pirate suffered from the unfortunate ailment, and keeping a remedy for it close by was a very smart thing to do.

"Here," he said, taking the hand that she had on her abdomen and placing the root in it, his dry warm hand holding the back of her cold clammy one as he did so. She stared at the ugly thing, sitting in the palm of her hand, looking much like a hard deformed potato.

"What do I do with it?" she said, examining it as she wiped her sweaty brow with her other hand.

"You take a bite of it," he said, remaining seated ever so close to her.

"Are you trying to poison me?" she asked, realizing how stupid the question was.

He let out a single dry chuckle. "If I had wanted to kill you, don't you think I would have done so when all I had to do was simply stand where I was above deck, and watch it occur, while remaining utterly blameless all the while?"

She remembered her rescue, of Beckett lunging at her to knock her out of the cannonball's path. It would have been easy for him to just stay where he was and let her die, which would have been certain. The gunwale she had been kneeling behind had been obliterated.

"Alright," she said cautiously. She examined the ginger root for another moment and then put it in her mouth, biting a chunk off it and chewing it slowly, a thoughtful look on her face all the while. He watched her, though not intensely enough as to arouse suspicion. She finished chewing up the root and looked up at him a moment before swallowing the finely ground-up pieces.

She held the remaining root out to him, causing him to shake his head.

"No. You keep it here, and eat some each morning."

"How is it that you know so much about ginger?" she ventured to ask.

His face reddened noticeably, namely his ears, as he looked about the darkened cabin, the candle the only light. When she said no more, obviously expecting him to answer, he sighed and then responded to her question.

"I suffer from seasickness… chronically," his eyes becoming downcast. This greatly embarrassed him to admit; that she could easily tell.

"You never seemed to be nauseated bef—"

"My crew on the Endeavour always knew to carry ample supply of ginger for such occasions. I drank ginger tea daily to prevent its occurrence. It only took me one or two instances of nausea early on in my sailing career to realize that I suffered from such an unfortunate ailment. And so, until I was brought aboard the Pearl, my seasickness was never an issue."

"I see." Suddenly she was smiling at him, feeling only good thoughts and, daresay, a twinge of pity for this man sitting on the bed next to her.

"But wait," she interjected, "you said there are only a few roots left. What are you going to do in the meantime?"

"I'll manage," he replied calmly. "We are close enough to our destination for it to not be a major problem."

"I may not even need to go to the doctor, if this happens to work!" she exclaimed, her psyche telling her that the ginger was already helping.

I was afraid of this, he mused. He leaned towards her, eyes widened. Involuntarily he laid his hand upon her leg, not even realizing that he had done so.

"No, you should still go, because there may be a more sinister underlying cause for the nausea. You don't want to merely treat the symptoms without further examining the cause, do you?"

He was right. She needed to understand why she was feeling sick like this. He was… touching her. And yet it wasn't all bad… at least for the moment. Odd.

"I'll still go to the doctor there," she replied, hoping he'd remove his hand. "Besides, I think a bit of going ashore will be good for me anyhow, and obviously, it's good for you." She said the last part a bit teasingly, nudging his backside seated on the bed with the side of her outstretched leg. His face, which had been restored to its normal colour after his confession of seasickness, once again reddened, even more so than before. He closed his eyes, obviously mortified, and removed his hand from her leg.

"I'm sorry," she replied good-naturedly. "I won't mention it again. I can see it's a sensitive issue for you."

"Yes, it is," he said curtly, cursing himself for ever telling her. But had that last movement she had done, that strange nudging, been an act of flirtation? Was he making her fall for him? Most certainly not, he mused.

"So why are you helping me?" she asked him, a small smile remaining on her face showing that her question wasn't all based in suspicion.

He stammered out a few syllables. Why had he done this again? It was a good question. He pondered, unable to speak, because he would only look stupid stuttering without actually saying anything in the process. Suddenly he thought of a reason. Mayhap I thought in easing her nausea I'd get a more lenient punishment. That's a rather good reason, actually. That was probably my original intention in coming here. Probably so. …But I can't tell her that.

"I don't know," he managed to say. She chuckled one time silently, which sounded more like a scoff. All of a sudden he had more to say, the actual reason he had shot up in bed this morning, having had a ginger root lodged rather uncomfortably in his pocket during his sleep, immediately remembering the morning before, and Elizabeth's nausea.

"Perhaps it's because I suffer from the same symptom and therefore I know how you're feeling."

"Thank you," she said, smiling at him. He smiled back at her, though uneasiness sat in the back of his brain. Elizabeth had been convinced beyond a doubt that the ginger would work, and as it was getting later in the morning, her nausea had already begun to fade. Besides, why would he admit to such an embarrassing condition as seasickness, unless it was true?

Elizabeth's smile was genuinely grateful over his supplying her with the nausea remedy. But what was to happen later on in the day? Beckett knew there'd be no escaping a flogging from her; Jack would ensure that. But then, the Azores were only a day or two away.

So… here's a preview for what is to come:

Chapter 9:

"Come on, you proper gentleman," she said in a gently mocking tone. "I won't tell anyone of this most scandalous event."