Disclaimer: I do not own anything from Pirates of the Caribbean, and I don't claim to

Disclaimer: I do not own anything from Pirates of the Caribbean, and I don't claim to.

Chapter Twelve

The HMS Albatross, nearing Port Royal, Caribbean Sea

Jack was beginning to get used to the close confines of the brig – even closer now that there was a whole other crew of pirates being held belowdecks with them – but he was also beginning to wonder if he would ever get out.

So, when the sailor acting as guard exchanged his rifle with a fresh face, Jack was overjoyed; any change in the environment broke the monotony. He was even more pleased to see that it was the boy – Edmund.

"What ho," Jack said cheerfully as Edmund took up his position, holding the rifle at ready. "Long time no see. What has it been, a few hours now?"

Edmund only glared at him, then looked quickly away.

"Come now, that's no way to treat an old friend."

"You're not my friend," Edmund said, his voice strangely tight.

It was obvious that the boy thought he was hiding his emotions very well, and Jack was loathe to hurt the boy's ego in any way, but curiosity got the better of him. "Something the matter, son?"

Edmund let his jaw go slack and breathed through his mouth for a minute, staring at the floor in front of him. After a moment, he looked up and stared Jack right in the eyes. "You'll be dead within the next few days."

Jack raised his eyebrows, and behind him he felt the bodies of a few of his conscious crewmembers shift. "Something you'd like to tell me about? A terminal illness I'm at the moment unaare of perhaps?"

"I told you that a man named Beckett hired me."

"Yes, yes," Jack said impatiently. He felt oddly detached about the whole affair; he couldn't count how many times he'd received death threats. "Cutler Beckett, yes, I know."

Something changed in the boy's eyes, and he had to look away again. "He hired me to find you, to kill you."

Jack shrugged. "I suspected as much from the beginning." To Edmund's surprised expression, he added, "Cutler and I have something of a history."

"A history?"

Jack ignored Edmund's timid question. "But I highly doubt that his orders were to shoot me. Where's the fun in that?" He grinned, but his mouth carried none of the humor in his words. "No, it's much more in Cutler's style to bring a man in for what he likes to call 'questioning,' especially a man like me. What is it exactly that he told you to do?"

Edmund looked uncomfortable now. "He said to bring you back – dead or alive."

Jack snapped his finger. "See? No reason for you to sully your white hands."

The boy looked away from Jack's kind smile, crossing his arms awkwardly. A silence fell over them, punctuated by creaking wood and snoring men. Jack eventually turned away for a time, dozed with his head against the cold bars, until a sharp roll of the ship jolted him awake.

He looked back over his shoulder to where Edmund stood, looking more alert and hands held tighter on his rifle than before; he had braced himself against the wall and was waiting for the ship to right itself.

Jack's eyes eventually wandered back to the small lump beneath the boy's thin shirt, where he knew that ring rested on a worn leather string. It was hard to take his gaze away; he squinted his eyes, searching his memory. He knew he had seen that very ring before once, he recognized it well. But where? There were so many women in his past, so many rings given away as favors. But so many rings lost, as well. And who knew what the women did with his rings – probably sold them, for food money.

Edmund noticed him staring and was evidently alarmed at Jack's expression, because his voice was slightly higher than was natural, far more aggressive. "What are you staring at?"

Jack smiled. "You said it was your mother's?"

"Oh. Yes."

"What did she look like?" It was a long shot, but–

Edmund shrugged. "I don't know. She died before I could remember."

"You don't have any drawings of her–?"

"No."

"That's too bad. She must have been a beautiful woman, to have such a handsome lad as yourself." If there was one thing Jack had learned in all his years as an outlaw, it was that flattery never hurt anyone.

"I wouldn't know." The tone of his voice signaled that, to him, the discussion was closed.

But Jack wasn't willing to let the conversation die; the silence was beginning to get to him. "So how are you planning to tell Beckett that you have me? Through a letter? In person? In a confidential whisper? In a song? Perhaps a shout and a cheer, followed by three loud and drawn out huzzahs?"

"I don't know," Edmund snapped. And if Jack had never before seen what the face of a young man struggling with a difficult moral decision looked like, he was certain that he was seeing one now.

Edmund had screwed his face up so that there were long lines on his forehead, deep creases between his brow, and fleshy folds around his down-turned mouth; he couldn't look at Jack, couldn't look anywhere around him and instead kept his eyes focused on the floor with such intensity that Jack was surprised either his eyes didn't pop out of his head or the wood didn't catch fire; he couldn't stop shifting, changing his position against the wall, changing the angle at which he held his gun, scratching his head, rubbing his ankle.

The door to the rest of the deck opened suddenly and the same guard that had practically just left appeared, looking rather sour.

Edmund jumped away from the wall. "Er?"

"Norrington wants to see you," he said curtly. "We're almost to port. Said he had some orders or something for you."

Before the door shut behind him, Jack said loudly, "Say hello to dear old Cutler for me, preferably before you hand him my death sentence." He smiled to himself; perhaps that would tip the boy's moral scale one way or the other.

It was easy enough for James to subdue Edmund, for he was more than a head shorter. He grabbed him from behind as he entered the room, before he'd even realized that James wasn't sitting at his desk, pulled his arms high up behind his back, bending him over and keeping him at his mercy while he locked his hands into irons. With a second set, he chained him securely to the stout leg of his desk.

What would he harder, though, would be trying to explain to Edmund what he was doing. "I hope you realize that this is for your own good, Edmund."

He pulled violently at the irons but only succeeded in cutting shallow gashes into his wrists. He leaned forward a bit. "How is this for my own good?"

"If you were to tell Beckett, as you were planning to, he would have held you responsible, too, since you didn't tell him when you first knew. He doesn't give out pardons, Edmund, not without conditions." He frowned. "I just want to keep you safe."

"I hate you."

"Ingram wouldn't want you to do this, needlessly give up your own life for the capture of one man."

But the one name that seemed to always have a calming effect on the boy this time had the opposite. "How dare you speak his name!" Edmund hissed, pulling on the chains to get closer to James. "If Ingram were alive, he would agree with me; it's my duty, and I intend to fulfill it, no matter the cost. I'd rather die innocent than be condemned to an eternity of torture in Hell."

"You don't know much about Ingram, do you, Edmund?" His voice was quiet, Edmund had to be still to hear him. "You have no real measure of the man. He was far nobler than either you or I, but he never would have given up any man, knowing that he would probably die a gruesome death, no matter his crime."

"Go away," Edmund said, incensed.

"You'll thank me when you realize that you don't have your conscience to contend with."

"I promise you, I will never thank you." Edmund stared up into James' face for a couple seconds, the color high in his cheeks, then snapped his gaze away and rested his forehead against his knees.

If he hadn't been so sure that he was right, James might have pitied Edmund. Even now, he was tempted to do the merciful thing and let the boy go, get him to give his word to stay out of trouble, anything but leave him chained and humiliated.

But he couldn't take that risk, he knew that. If Edmund somehow got free and got in touch with Beckett, people would die, Edmund probably being the first of them. He was doing this for Edmund, for his life that he seemed so eager to throw away.

James locked the door, slipping the key into his pocket. He could see land now, Port Royal. In an uncharacteristic lapse in decorum, James leaned down with his elbows on the railing and took off his hat. The afternoon Caribbean sun was hot, made him sweat and drained the anger out of him, putting in its place a sort of hazy discomfort.

He was going to break the law. He was going to deliberately withhold information from the man who employed him. He was going to spare a criminal's life, a man who had raped, pillaged, murdered, a man who had nearly killed him before. He was going to break every oath he'd ever taken, he was going to do exactly what he'd sworn never to do, he was going to do exactly what Ingram would have done, and this wasn't the first time.

It shouldn't be so easy to lie.

Beckett set his wine glass down, surrounded by plates full of all manner of meat and cooked vegetables and delicacies. He settled back in his chair, one hand resting languidly on the chair's arm, the other resting next to the crystal goblet, his fingers tracing the sharp designs carved into the glass. "Mercer tells me that you were successful in your endeavor."

James, sitting across the table from Beckett, sat up a bit straighter. "We came across a pirate ship, my lord."

"Came across it?"

"We took the crew prisoner."

"Capital." He took another sip of his wine. When James said nothing more, Beckett said, "Is that all?"

"Actually," James began, but the words he had rehearsed on his way up the hill to Beckett's headquarters slipped his mind, and he found himself silent, staring at the grain of the wood on the table, trying to keep his mind off Jack.

The chair creaked as Beckett leaned forward, and James' eyes were drawn up to the impatient face staring back at him. "James," Beckett said, his voice slow and patronizing, "I really wish you wouldn't waste my time. There's obviously something on your mind; say it and get out."

It was the faint sound of complaints from further down the hall that shook James out of his stupor. "The pirates mentioned your name, said they had business to talk with you."

Nothing. No flicker of fear or guilt that James had been expecting. No, Beckett smirked. "Business?" he said, in that way of his that never failed to make James feel small and foolish. "Now this I have to hear. You brought some with you, didn't you?" He turned his head to the side and said, "Mercer."

Mercer stepped forward, his hat shading all but his mouth, which was forever set in an unpleasant grimace. "Yes, my lord?"

"Fetch the prisoners. I believe I can hear them now."

The men shuffled in, manacled and in irons, clanking with every step they took.

James watched Beckett carefully. He could have sworn – he must have – that there was a twinge of recognition in Beckett's face when the men stepped through the doors, unconscious and masked again before Beckett himself had realized his tell. He was sitting up straighter in his chair, his hands clenched tighter on the arms of his chair, jaw clenched and eyes dark.

But – James knew the danger of seeing only what he expected to see, not the truth, not reality.

When the pirates saw Beckett, their mutinous glares turned to something like hope. "Lord Beckett," their captain said, as soon as he came to a stop before the table, "tell these bastards to unhand us. Tell them what you told us, that we're your men just as they are." They shrugged the guards' hands off their shoulders and stood looking around like they were the ones in the right.

Beckett said in a very cold, dry voice, "Who are you?"

The pirates exchanged glances that were quickly nearing panic. "I don't understand. What are you about?" His voice growing progressively angry, he said, "Money was promised. We had an accord."

Beckett clenched and unclenched his jaw. His voice was cutting, deadly. "I don't make deals with pirates."

One of the pirates let out a deep growl. "You bastard–" he shouted, stepping forward.

He didn't even have time to react. A guard lashed out at him, striking him hard in the temple with the butt of his rifle, and the man crumpled to the ground without a sound. None of the others dared move.

Beckett stood up. "Let this man be a lesson to the rest of you." He started walking forward slowly; the man on the ground began to stir. "No one," Beckett said, his voice flat and malicious, "no one, ever accuses me of dealing with pirates." And standing above the now partly conscious pirate, he pulled out his pistol and pulled the trigger.

The man collapsed, dead. James had to look away – close range head wounds were gruesome.

He handed his pistol to Mercer for him to reload it. "Now," he said, aiming the gun back at the remaining captives. "Did I ever make a deal with you?"

The pirates had backed up as far as they could go. "N– no, sir."

"Then you were lying?"

The pirates couldn't take their eyes from the pistol, from the split head of their crewmember. "Yes, sir."

"Much better." Beckett lowered his pistol to his side, and the men visibly relaxed. "Take these criminals to the prison. They will be hanged on the morrow."

As the pirates were being directed out of the room, Beckett turned back to James, leaning against the table next to him so that the pistol he still held in his hand was casually pointed at James. "See? This is where your problem lies, James."

"What problem is that, sir?"

"You can't spoil them like you do. They're animals, and they need to be dealt with strongly. If you don't–" He barked out laughter. "If you don't, well then, you'll just end up like him," he said, nodding toward the man on the floor; a pool of blood was expanding, pushing up against James' boots. "And you don't want to end up like him, do you, James?"

Author's Note: Wow, I'm always surprised (and shamed) when someone new finds this story after all these months. So, here is a guilt chapter as a thanks for all of you who have (hopefully) stuck with this story. I just finished outlining the remaining chapters – there are about six left, if I can fit all that I need to in them. This is the most exciting part of the story, so stick around! (:

Please review! Let me know what you think.