Chapter 2: Plank

James climbed up to the deck of the quarantined Pearl, looking around in the eerie silence. "Elizabeth!" He shouted. He had to take her back before it was too late, although it could've been too late already as he only found out about her leaving two days after she did so when he came back from the fort. He had to find her. He stepped wearily forward, half ready to bump into her dead body or having to carry her home in his arms ill. Until he was in the open air, it wasn't so bad, but when he reached the opening that led down to the lower deck it hit him. The smell of sickness, the rancid, bodily stench that lingered there was overpowering. "Damn it," he whispered, put an arm in front of his mouth and nose and willed himself to take the steps. Down there he immediately bumped into a body, he assumed it was that, since it was covered with a sheet, although the fetid vapors were a give away as well. He didn't dare to lift the sheet to see who it was, but even though they left a dead man just lying there, it was a good sign that somebody was still alive having bothered to cover the corpse. Or was that too long ago too? He hesitated whether he should look nevertheless under, but then he heard some movement from behind him from the half dark corridor.

He turned around to see Jack Sparrow standing there leaning onto a door. "Leave 'm!" He warned the commodore energetically, making a step, but when he left the body alone Jack stumbled back to hanging on to the door. "Follow...follow me," the latter sounding a lot more weakly and pained.

"Elizabeth?" James inquired avidly. Risk of contagion or not, if he didn't see her right away or if anything happened to her he was gonna take the chance for Jack not being at his best and was gonna pummel all his own sorrows out of him.

Jack gulped, opened the door to his cabin and motioned him in with a small nod. James marched in, then stopped short at the sight.

Elizabeth was lying on the bed seemingly unconscious. She was drawing breaths, he established immediately, he was feeling powerless nevertheless and not sure what to do. Yes, he could kill Sparrow, it was all his fault, but how would that help Elizabeth now?

"Take her," Jack said. He sat down by the table and buried his face in his palms, "I knocked her in the head I'm afraid, she wouldn't leave otherwise. Just gathering the strength to put her out in a dinghy. Even taken away by the waves she'd be better off than dying here with us," he said quietly.

"She doesn't have the disease then?" James asked anxiously.

"No, not yet...maybe...just take her already! And keep her away with brute force if you have to, can you do that commodore?"

James nodded, there was no reason to spend any more time in this environment than it was absolutely necessary. He gathered Elizabeth into his arms and stepped out the door. Then he remembered, "I brought fresh water and food, some fumes and potions the doctor that was here recommended."

Jack snorted, "funny how love is, isn't it James? And you're the winner, the one who can actually be with her the most."

"But she loves you, so what is it I really get? Dreamy looks?" James replied, "come for her Sparrow, I can't watch her waste away like that. Take her with you, she was always yours since that day in the harbor," he rolled his eyes.

"Elizabeth doesn't belong here."

"Where does she belong then?"

"The whelp."

"Elizabeth might be out the ordinary, but melodramatic she is not. Four, five days in a lifetime with a man who she fell in love with cause she thought he MIGHT be a pirate? Tell me you can't top that. Sparrow, come off this ship if you don't want to die here. That's what she wants, why do you torture her?"

"I have to take care of Mr. Gibbs just now," he said quietly.

James nodded and cuddling Elizabeth up to him he started walking, enjoying those few moments he will ever have with her so close. If Sparrow'd come, he didn't know, but it hardly mattered in that sense. Elizabeth carried a man's heart with her, yet hers was another man's and he had long got used to the fact it wasn't his.

Tbc