Disclaimer: Jack, Elizabeth, William Turners I, II and III and all other original PotC characters do NOT belong to me. All of their offspring and other original characters, as well as the storyline and plot, are (c) Lady Asvin - me.

/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/

"We've no way of returning," insisted the sailor Waring. His chapped, weathered face betrayed is dismay over the circumstances. His shift-partner Fahzeri nodded and gestured toward the middle of the ship, where the other sailors stood morosely around a heap that smelled strongly of sour milk and old eggs.

"He's right," said the second sailor with his pronounced Eastern accent. "The supplies are as rot as if we'd pissed in 'em, an' the rudder chain's somehow been disabled." They looked to him for an answer, a course, a heading – none of these being things that, at the precise moment, Captain Jack Sparrow could provide. They stared at him en masse, and he was for a frantic moment reminded of that day that he'd been convinced to give up his precious coordinates - and that night he'd been mercilessly mutinied against. Gritting his teeth and flicking his dark eyes from sailor to sailor, he finally shooed them away with an elegant twirl of his fingers. He could feel Elizabeth's eyes burning holes in his back, and when he turned to meet them, offering her a sly, false smile, she couldn't help but remember every time that that smile had preceded trouble.

"A slight delay, nothing more," he declared airily, twirling one mustache braid. The other hand was at the wheel of the ship, although what purpose it served was unclear; the ship had been stock-still in a horrid doldrums for nearly a week, and they had no manner of steering it anyway, what with the rudder chain gone. He turned until he was in profile to her, and glanced out of the corner of his eyes in time to see her roll hers grandly. Her mouth was twisted into a sneer of disappointment; her eyes were red and the skin around the wrinkled and chapped; she had been crying many, many tears of late. He thought it was rather a wonder that she hadn't collapsed, himself; but then, the Elizabeth Swann - no, Turner - that he knew had always had more steel in her spine than most men of his acquaintance.

"How far are we from land, Captain Sparrow?" she inquired in a clipped tone. "Any land?" Joshamee Gibbs, having come to stand behind Jack until orders were announced, winced at her voice. It had been a long time, after all, since the girl had called the man anything but "Jack," and he was unaccustomed to hearing her use his title so... insultingly. The Captain, however, seemed unperturbed; turning to Gibbs, he gestured ambiguously before him, in no specific direction.

"Mister Gibbs," said Jack, placing his hat on his head. Pausing for a moment, he frowned, took the hat off, rearranged some sun-bleached dreadlocks, and replaced it. The older man squinted at him.

"Aye Cap'n?" Jack went back to his mustache, long, elegant fingers twirling and twirling the tiny braids. These nervous ticks were nothing like Jack's usual sun-drunk locomotions; instead, they belied an insistent feeling of anxiety and dread, one that had already permeated the atmosphere of the Pearl once it had become clear that they were well and truly stranded in open water, with no way to move. The captain stopped for a moment, and then seemed to remember that he had been about to give orders.

"See that this deck is swabbed an' that the Pearl sparkles like she was just built and about to sail her maiden voyage. I mean cannons, deck, brig, everything." Gibbs looked incredulously around him; aye, the Pearl was shipshape - but clean? The railing he was holding onto probably had salt and dirt caked inch-deep on its surface!

"Aye… Cap'n?" Jack stopped twirling and pierced the sailor with a sharp gaze.

"Was any part of what I said unclear, misunderstandable or otherwise incapable of being turned into orders for my crew, Mister Gibbs?" he asked, his voice unusually serious. The other man gulped and shook his balding head, for once shaken even of his squint.

"No, Cap'n," he replied.

"Right then," said Jack. "Run along. Shoo." Once the man was gone, the captain of the Black Pearl turned to his once-paramour, a one Elizabeth Turner née Swann, who was still glaring daggers at him from her vantage point on the other side of his ship's wheel. He took a dramatically deep breath, expelled it, and put one hand over his compass and the other on the hilt of his sword, shuffling slightly closer to his audience.

"Elizabeth," he began. "Lizzie…" Her look had turned stony and mulish, not the best for listening, but what he had to say was rather important. He waited until her eyes were looking directly at him, searing from beneath her hat, before he continued. "I have several pressing questions with which to question you," he declared. His dark eyes darted to meet hers from beneath his kerchief, and he saw that his eloquent non-eloquence would get him only so far with her. "They are vital to finding our lass." He knew this was his ace in the hole, and although it infuriated Elizabeth that he was using Madeleine as a ploy to get her to listen, she could do nothing more than press her lips together and move a hand unconsciously to her sword.

"Say what you have to say, Jack," she replied tersely, eyes flashing. The pirate peered at her, seemingly satisfied with her response, and flipped his compass open and closed, open and closed.

"Firstly, if I may," he began, "I'd like to establish that you are indeed well and truly angered with me and despise me more than you have ever despised anyone. Ever." The woman glared.

"Established," she spat, and the pirate winced a little at her lack of hesitation, sending his sword hand dramatically to cover his heart as though in pain.

"Secondly," he continued, clearing his throat, "I wish to ascertain that you are bunking with the crew, rather than in my personal quarters, due to said and aforementioned anger over my deemed despicable actions." Elizabeth's eyebrows shot up and together in confusion and anger. Her grip tightened on her sword, pressing the complicated inlay Will had so lovingly designed into her palms.

"It's true," she confirmed slowly. "What –" Jack held up a grimy palm and swayed, silencing her. His thumb rubbed nervous circles on the compass.

"Thirdly – and most importantly – I need to know that you are entirely willing to do whatever is necessary to save our lovely Madeleine- and I mean anything at all that is necessary to save her, savvy?" Elizabeth had lost patience with him, and pressed her face practically into his.

"Anything, Jack, have you heard nothing of what I've told you? But why –" Her face had grown closer and closer to his with the last response, and he rather mourned the loss of its heat when she pulled away. He suspected, however, that his next course of action would require some distancing of a similar sort; and so he said and did nothing to make her come close again. It would be his safest option… perhaps... assuming that everything went as planned... assuming he had a plan.

"Black sails!" cried the lookout. "Black sails on the horizon!" The crew looked to Jack, who had thrown up his hands and faintly smiled, but he did not respond for long moments. He seemed almost to be praising someone, a circumstance strengthened when he put his palms together and closed his eyes in supplication. Looking between captain and crew, a red-faced Joshamee Gibbs catapulted into action.

"Ready the guns!" he shouted. "Once we're in range, fire at will!"

"BELAY THAT," bellowed the captain finally, opening his eyes. Gibbs threw up his arms and looked at him.

"But Cap'n," he shouted back, "they're headin' for us right an' true, black sails, no guns in sight yet but no flags either –"

"I said belay that, Mister Gibbs," said Jack loudly. "I am the captain of this ship, and as such, I command, give orders, provide instructions, and lay out guidelines, are we clear? Continue to clean up the Pearl, and keep to your own – owns – respectively speaking." He eyed each member of the crew fiercely, as though they would dare speak out.

"Wind in the sails," squawked a parrot that had once belonged to Mr. Cotton, but after his death had chosen the Pearl for a home rather than a life on land. "Wind in the sails." The crew appeared to be dumbstruck; some looked simply vacant, while others looked anxious, doubtful, or downright confused.

"The parrot is right. We remain calm. Trust me. I'm captain." With no further explanation, he took his compass out an flipped it open, and Gibbs turned back to the crew.

"You heard the cap'n," he bellowed with all the force in his lungs. "Get her to sparkle! Move, ye scurvy dogs, we've orders to follow!" Elizabeth had been neglected throughout this exchange, but remedied that situation by elbowing her way into Jack's line of sight. She put her hands on his shoulders, dragging him down to her eye level.

"Jack," she hissed, "What are you doing? Every pirate on these seas wants you dead!" She frowned at him and shook him by the shoulders like a daft child. "What ship and captain are you allowing to get so dangerously close to that objective?" Her sibilant hiss was doing funny things to his insides, but rather than let her see it, his straightened to his full height and towered several inches over her head.

"That," he declared, meeting her eyes with his dark ones, "would be the Queen Anne's Revenge." His hands grasped her roughly, pulling them so that her palms rested on his coat lapels. "And because you once loved me, and because you still love Madeleine, and because, despite wanting to kill me a second time, you need me to get her back – because of all of those things, you will be civil to her captain." Elizabeth was confused, a feeling she hated, but the captain offered nothing by way of clarification; instead, he released her hands and turned back to the wheel.

"Although," he mused aloud, "it would benefit you to work on your swordsmanship... swordswomanship..." Elizabeth, one hand on the railing, felt as though she had been given a child's puzzle - the wooden one she had once, where she had to match up the alphabet on every side before it opened to reveal a trinket. Right now, I am at the matching stage, she thought, frustrated, and stalked from the wheel to the main deck to help the men.

Gibbs, who had tucked himself under the stairs for a toddy, almost choked on his flask as he heard the exchange.

The Queen Anne's Revenge.

Was Jack mad?

A chill descended on his old bones as he strained his eyes for those black sails on the horizon.

"Mary, Jesus and Joseph."

/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/

From some hundred yards away, the captain of the Queen Anne's Revenge clicked a telescope closed angrily. From where the captain stood, it had appeared as though a fellow, well-known captain, one Captain Jack Sparrow, had been embracing someone at the wheel of his stilled ship. The other figure had stiffened, allowed itself to be drawn close, and then stalked away - no, not it - she, for the figure's hat had revealed her long, dirty blond waves and high cheekbones.

"Look alive, men." The order slipped viciously from pursed lips. "It appears we have finally found our friend Captain Sparrow, and we are long overdue for a visit."

The crew sped up as the wind whipped the captain's hat off, releasing long, think, mahogany waves that hung past shapely shoulders.

"Aye, Captain Angélica!"