A/N: I want to thank all my readers, especially those who reviewed!!!
My special thanks go to HMG2000 who sent me a PM with information that some words were missing in chapter 5 .
I checked it and indeed important parts were missing.Thanks mate!!! I corrected that chapter and since some of the details are relevant, here's the most important one that you need to know before reading this chapter.
Lizzie talking to Jack about her age: "Alright, I just turned 20. Your turn." (before the correction it was :"Alright. I just turned turn." ) For some strange reason the text always looks OK in the Document Manager but as soon as I publish the chapter,I discover single words or even big parts of sentences missing...I will be correcting all my previous chapters.I hate this problem... :(
So, Elizabeth is 20 and as for Jack... Well,read and see ^^ Hope you enjoy!!!
............CHAPTER 11 "DESIDERATA"...............
"Beautiful..." she said softly, glancing at his gorgeous body stretched next to her on the damp sand. Jack was laying comfortably on his belly , his bronze back exposed to the sun and glistening with sweat.
"What... me butt?" he asked absently
"Your tattoos, Jack. But I do admit, that your butt isn't any less alluring." she smirked, propping herself up on her elbows to get a better view of his ink-decorated back.
"Why, thank you darling."
'Be yourself. Especially do not feign affection. Neither be cynical about love, for in the face of all aridity and disenchantment, it is as perennial as grass.' "What is it ?"
" 'Desiderata'. An ancient poem."
His back was fully covered with Celtic emblems and endless lines of text .She couldn't help but read some more of them aloud. 'Be at peace with God, whatever you conceive him to be. And whatever your labors and aspirations, in the noisy confusion of life, keep peace at your soul.'
Elizabeth was slightly taken aback. Wasn't it more than unusual to find this kind of poem tattooed on the back of a notorious pirate?A man wanted dead or alive for series of crimes against the crown? "But he's a good man,isn't he?" she thought with a smile
"When did you get these ?"
"Quite some time ago, actually. They be your age mates, Lizzie..." he replied her lazily, not even bothering to open his eyes. He gave an impression of being half asleep, his mind already passing borders to uncharted realms.
"Oh, really?" she smiled to herself , raising one of her eyebrows "And how old were you back then?"
" Eighteen... " he answered her after a while; his voice faint and nearly reduced to a whisper.
"Ah, so you are now thir-"
"No!" Jack bolted upright. "Just...don't say it, 'Lizbeth!"
"W-why not? After all, thir-"
"No good!" he exclaimed, gesticulating wildly in protest "Be so kind and do not mention this horrifying number, alright? It needlessly reminds me of me advanced age."
Thinking about his age, about this horrifying number that somehow never stopped growing ,always dismayed Jack, causing him to immediately imagine himself all wrinkled and furrowed like a prune - or like his dear father. It was so appalling that even closing his eyes and pretending it was all a bad dream was not helping.
"Advanced? To say you sound ridiculous would be an understatement."
"Easy to say for a lass merely 'a half of me age' old."
"That would be a half plus one year, Captain."
"Oh yes. That one year does indeed change everything!"
"You're so funny, Jack." she giggled "Let me hug you, my aging stallion." She moved closer to him and he welcomed her,closing her warm body in a tight embrace.
Small,calm waves brushed over their entangled legs,cooling their bodies but Jack knew better. Although the afternoon sun was slowly wandering to the West, he was fully aware
of its power to burn mercilessly with its golden rays.
"Lizzie, if we don't move from here instantly, you will soon turn red like those poor crabs that we've had for breakfast. "
"I don't think I will ever be able to stand up again after these two rounds. I'm done."
"Let's go, luv. C'mon ,the hut isn't that far. See it there? So cool and shady. Doesn't it sound inviting?"
"I prefer to stay here like that..."
"Do you really expect the sun to show us mercy just because we shamelessly shagged right in front of its round face, causing it to blush red?" he asked her with a smirk and sat up beside her.
"Carry me..." She sent him an enchanting smile ,stretching her arms as if just awoken from a blissful sleep.
"What? Must be jokin', lass."
"A gentleman would carry me bridal style straight to our cozy hut."
"Well, you're right. Assuming that the gentleman's head wasn't spinning, his legs weren't wobbly ,but instead strong enough to carry said gentleman in the first place."
"Don't tell me, that the fearless Captain Jack Sparrow is unable to carry his bounty to his hiding. Are you the pirate I've read about or not?"
Oh yes. She knew that would do. Jack stood up ,attempting a graceful bow ,his body swaying from side to side in a quite precarious way.
"Since you insist, my lady..." She stared at him wide-eyed, and a loud shriek escaped her mouth when he lifted her up in a rather rough manner. Jack staggered in circles like a drunk man struggling to dance a waltz, almost causing them to fall right back onto the sand.
"What are you doing?!"
"Carryin' me precious plunder to me cabin!"
"Jack!You are zigzagging like a bilious Tortugan drunkard!"
"Like a proper pirate, luv. Just as you wished."
"I said gentleman!"
"Before you eventually opted for a pirate, dearie."
"Watch out!!!" she screamed
"Ouch!Now,that was close!"
"Close?! Jack, you nearly KILLED ME!!!"
"Looks like the palm tree has dodged right on time, so it doesn't count."
"Dear God, it's you who dodged, not the-...What the hell is wrong with you?!!!" she yelled and pounded her fist against his chest.
He put her down briefly to pick the heaps of their messed up clothes ,before grabbing her again as if she weighed nothing,and throwing her roughly over his shoulder .
"No! I really must protest! That's not the way to carry a lady!"
"This is the pirate way, my fair lass. Much more enjoyable than your fancy bridal style." he smirked, gently slapping her bare bum.
She gasped in response "Definitely not for the "precious prize", being carried in such a primitive, barbaric way!"
Lizzie sighed with relief when they finally reached their little cabin and Jack gently lay her down on the soft grass.
"That was beyond wicked!" she glared daggers at him , trying to catch her breath
"Wickedly entertaining, I'd say." he grinned insolently
"You are insufferable! What was that show suppose to mean, huh?!"
"I think you know what. And I bet that next time you will kindly prefer to use your own, appetizing legs to walk. Not only did you viciously rob me of me entire strength, stole me breath away and made my mind explode into tiniest of pieces. No,that was not enough! You repeated the whole procedure from the beginning to the end and--"
"Likewise, Mr. Sparrow!" she blurted out,crossing her arms on her chest
"Aye, but the subtle difference is, I did not demand from you to carry me in this life-threatening condition!"
Lizzie chuckled in reply, knowing very well that he was heavily exaggerating. She admired his extraordinary stamina and his ability to ravish her time after time, needing nearly no time to recover. "He could easily satisfy two women at the same time..." she thought. She actually had heard that during his visits to taverns,Jack would have spent many nights in the company of two wenches...She blushed slightly at the thought, assuming that some of the dirty stories of Tortugan origin could indeed be true.
"Poor Captain Sparrow..." she pouted sweetly "I guess such a vicious female deserves severe punishment."
He eyed her suspiciously.
"Against the palm tree, perhaps?"
Jack sighed ,rolling his eyes and falling on the ground like a man who just passed out. Reaching blindly for his coat, he covered his face with it. "This voracious she-devil will be the death of me..."
She snuggled to him giggling,and before they could realize it,sweet slumber embraced their exausted bodies.
Jack's eyes fluttered open as he suddenly woke up from his shallow sleep. "She was saying something, wasn't she?" He pricked his ears but didn't register a single sound. "Strange..." he thought, furrowing his eyebrows. As soon as his eyes shut closed, he heard her whisper yet again.
"I'm so sorry..."
"What the hell is she sorry for?Did she take my antics serious?No...couldn't be that." He was about to open his mouth when he heard her again, her voice low and barely audible.
"I did so much to upset you, and yet you are still with me and I'm so grateful-"
"Lizzie, luv... I thought I've given you enough of a hint that we were passed all that?"
"Beg pardon? I didn't hear you, Jack. I was praying."
"Pra-...what?"
"Praying." she repeated "Talking to God."
"Ah. That. Thank you for the explanation darlin', but as startling as it might be to you , I actually know what a prayer is. I even used to pray meself. Before, that is..."
"You don't believe in God anymore? "
"No, not that, luv.I just do not wish to bother him more than necessary. I'm absolutely convinced that the Almighty exists. To my despair, he keeps on reminding me about it quite often. Let's just say that God and me... we are not on good terms. Savvy?"
"Does that have to do with your current ...occupation , so to speak?"
"It all started years before that. One day I realized that he dislikes me and furthermore, finds it extremely entertaining to watch me struggle and suffer. As if my pirate blood was a kind of...original sin? I guess that due to my infamous ancestry,he never considered me one of his sheep. I've always been only a black sheep, after all... "
"Oh that's absurd! How can you even think this way? He loves you!"
"Well, if he does, he demonstrates it in a very peculiar way, indeed."
"Can I hear examples?"
"The best example is the following. As you may have already noticed, me every good deed is rewarded with a ferocious punishment."
"As I have noticed?"
"Haven't you? It all started with the rejection of my father's proposal to join him in piracy .I chose to make an honest living. I risked everything that I'd ever had when I decided to free the slaves. Twice !" he raised his forefinger up "Thought he would like it. My reward? I lost me office, me dear ship, me freedom. More, lost me beloved bride to an old, disgustin' goat and nearly ended on a hemp. My entire world fell apart in a matter of hours... How does that sound to you, Lizzie?"
She opened her mouth ,only to close it right back. How could she disagree with Jack? He was right about paying a high price for his good deeds.
"Now to continue with events familiar to you, let me just mention Port Royal and fishing you out of the docks. If I bloody didn't dive to save you ,nobody would. This pansy Norrington wasn't eager to risk his life for you. But he was eager like hell to send me to the gallows. And again, that was me precious reward. Me second appointment with the noose."
"Sounds terrible, but-"
"No "buts", luv. These are facts.What happened after freeing you and the whelp from Barbossa's grasp? Third meeting with the hangman, and this time this slimy obese bastard nearly hung me to death. Don't even want to mention how I was rewarded for defeating the coward in me and returning to the Pearl when Kraken attacked."
Lizzie frowned, feeling a familiar dull pain returning yet again to clutch her heart. It was obvious to her that not God, but she herself was responsible for many of Jack's close encounters with death, as well as...for his death. If he didn't rush to save her from drowning, he wouldn't have gotten caught by the Navy. If she didn't burn his rum on the rum runners' island, Jack would have avoided the gallows. And if she wasn't so selfish and blind to leave him to the Kraken and run away with Will, he wouldn't have died and ended up in Davy Jones' Locker.
"I'm not trying to say you're wrong Jack, but if you tried to look at things from a slightly different perspective-"
"I did. And believe me Lizzie, no matter how I kept glancing, staring or gaping at it, it always struck me how much God abhors me."
"Maybe you assume so , because you always tend to notice only the negative aspects of past occurrences. Why can't you concentrate on the positive side?"
"Well, maybe because despite my definitely vivid imagination, I can't possibly focus meself on the aspects that are non-existent, as it were?"
"Why are they clearly existent to everybody else,then? People do not only talk of how smart, how clever and witty you are. They are struck by your incredible luck! You are like that cat with seven lives, always landing on all fours,no matter the circumstances!Can't you see this?"
Closing his eyes,he sighed deeply before opening his mouth to speak "Lizzie, you don't-"
"No "don'ts" Jack! Just shut your mouth and think of it! You were marooned, nearly eaten by cannibals,attacked by a shark. You were sentenced to death three times,once you already had the rope around your neck. You tasted death and spent nearly half a year in hell, and yet here you are- alive and well! Every time you felt hopeless, a helping hand would suddenly appear out of nowhere, often a hand of a person from whom you would expect help least. You would have died right at your first appointment with the hangman if not years earlier, was it really the case that God hated you as you claim he does. He loves you ,Jack! He knows it better than anybody else how much of a good man you are,and he keeps on protecting you like an apple of his eye. Is that so hard to notice?! "
Jack's eyes shut half-closed ,his mind once again returning to the hardest moments of his life. Images that he would love to wipe away from his memory , kept flashing through his mind and he figured there were too many of them. Too many for just one man, and far more numerous than Lizzie could ever imagine . She has only heard about several of his"encounters with death" and he wasn't too eager to introduce her to more of them...
For instance, his first stay on the Pelogosto island where he had spent a month locked in a hanging bone cage,waiting for his turn to be fried and devoured during the Great Feast. It was his birthday when the cannibals had finally freed him from his prison,only to tie him to a thick, long pole. He had looked like a giant kebab soon to be roasted, and he had had no trace of hope left. He was supposed to be celebrating his thirty-third birthday with his crew on his ship, ravishing beauties and drinking rum until they would have all passed out. Instead,he was to participate in a cannibal party; as the main dish!Wouldn't it have been ironic?
And then it had hit him. He had suddenly remembered about the "magic trick" that he had planned many weeks ago to impress his crew mates during his birthday celebrations. There had been a truly special reason to call that day remarkable. The thought had made Jack smile. The fate had given him a chance and he was going to take it.
He had yelled at the cannibals using as much of their tongue, as he had learnt within past four weeks . He was gifted with the ability to learn languages uncommonly fast and it wasn't the first time he had found his talent useful. Having warned them of making a huge, irreversible mistake, Jack had claimed to be their god in the human shape making the inhibitants laugh frantically. He had not given up though,claiming to be the highest of their gods on a holy mission and demanding to be freed instantly. Peals of laughter had followed his announcement but Jack didn't give a damn. He had kept on glancing at the position of the sun, as well as at the horizon and his own shade. Thanks to his enormous experience in navigation, he had known when was the right time to act. He had repeated his statement, threatening the Pelogostos with eternal darkness,cold and famine in case of their refusal.
They had laughed again,but this time a bit nervously and clearly not as hard as before. Jack had looked at the skies yelling loudly in their strange language,ordering the sun to stop shining and bring death upon the Pelogostos . As he was pleading to the sun, and damning the maneaters for eternity , the crowd of blood thirsty cannibals had fallen quiet. Most of them now looked frightened, sending worried looks to their chief ,who to their horror ,remained unimpressed.
Minutes had been passing and Jack's voice was getting hoarse but that couldn't have stopped him. Yelling towards the sun, dancing a dance of a mad man, he had continued. After about twenty minutes of his frantic "trance",the chief 's annoyance reached its peak ,and he gestured his sons to hang the buggering piece of meat over the the bonfire. As the flames had began teasingly lick Jack's body, it had suddenly become darker around . All who had been gathered raised their heads to the sky assuming that a large cloud was covering the sun. To their dismay the sky was cloudless and yet the darkness was deepening!They had not looked at their chief anymore, falling on their knees in front of their "to-be-meal", worshipping it and begging for mercy. Eventually they had freed Jack as he had ordered, and in that moment the day had turned into a starless night . Shivering from fear and sudden cold that they had never experienced, Pelogostos pledged for forgiveness, regretting deeply to have treated him with no due respect. To Jack's surprise though, they had still planned on frying and eating him in an attempt to free their mightiest god from human skin! He had paled instantly and cold sweat had covered his trembling body.
Under the cover of darkness, nobody had noticed his alarm and he still had the upper hand. He had announced that his will was to go free to fulfill his mission on the high seas and therefore he needed his human form to sail his holy ship. The crowd of painted people had sworn to follow his will,begging the god to remove the deadly curse from their tribe. Jack had raised his hands to the skies ,addressing the sun once again and soon, first powerful rays appeared on the side of a thin shiny ring in the middle of the pitch black sky. Pelogostos couldn't have contained their delight and stop tears of happiness when the sun,the life bringer, was back in its full glory. And then they had made Jack their chief...
Jack's ship or rather a boat that he was calling a ship at the that time ,had still been anchored in the shallows and he had only needed to swim a short distance to get aboard.
He had spotted his three loyal crewmen at the starboard,and sighed with relief. Turning to "his people" he had noticed tears on their paint-smeared faces and asked them not to despair.
Witty that he was, he had promised to be back from his mission one day,eager to be freed from his human restraints then. Once he was back,they could eat him, as well as his entire crew so that the whole tribe would enjoy the Feast. Cannibals had welcomed his words with unspoken joy,singing and dancing on the shore. They had intended to be patiently waiting for their god...
Jack swallowed nervously." Bugger! Promises are bloody no good." But how could he have known ? He shook his head ,intending to shake off his least favourite memories.
"So?" asked Lizzie after a long silent while.
"Hmm?"
"My question, Jack."
"You really got me thinking, lass..." There was no doubt that his luck was absolutely extraordinary. Either someone would appear like heaven sent (or hell sent,since many of them happened to be his enemies) to get him off the hook, or he would escape due to some unusual circumstances or series of unpredictable events. He recalled how he had been viciously marooned by Barbossa ,only to discover a decade later ,that he had no part in the Aztec Gold curse thanks to that bastard's mutiny. It seemed that none of his miraculous escapes was accidental.
"There is no question that someone up there had his hand in it." he thought
"And? Any particular conclusion as to why you are still alive, Captain Sparrow?"
"Because a bad thing never dies !"
"Very funny!" Lizzie pursed her lips, and turned away from him. Jack rolled over and his arms closed around her waist. His hot breath in her ear caused her heart to skip beats and she trembled slightly when their naked bodies spooned. "You know Miss Swann, I honestly think ,that your seemingly quirky conclusions do make a bit of sense...in a way."
In a mouth of another person it might have sounded ridiculous and offending, but in his, it was all honest and serious. She shifted to face him and his lips covered her small smile.
"I'll get us something to drink,luv. I'll be right back."
A couple of minutes later Jack showed up dressed only in his now dry breeches and dropped Lizzie's clothes beside her, before handing her over a juice filled coconut shell.
"Dress up quickly,Lizziebeth. The sun is already setting." Their first day on the island was indeed coming to an end, and the events of the previous evening seemed simultaneously
distant and recent.
"Why should I? It's not cold yet." she replied a bit confused
"Oh ,I have no problem with that whatsoever, luv. Just thought you might want to put something on before we are off for the promised romantic stroll at sunset." he grinned smugly
Yesterday at sunset he told her to walk the plank, and today he's taking her for a romantic walk. Wasn't it crazy??? She finished her juice and dressed up quickly. She couldn't believe that he really meant it when he had said it that morning. She was ready and anxious; trembling like a girl at her first ball.
Jack picked his coat ,throwing it casually over his shoulder and flashing her a sincere smile. He offered her his hand and let her out of the cabin. Slowly, they were moving in the northern direction.
"Why not to the South? We know this route already."
"Have me own reasons, luv." he smirked mysteriously
"What reasons, Jack?"
He cocked his head and narrowed his eyes at her,as if in deep thought "Nice trees along the way."
She chuckled loudly in response. All palm trees seemed identical to her. Looking at them growing so close to the sea made her recall another familiar island .
"I need to ask you something..."
"Feel free to do so ,luv."
"Those days on the rum runners island, you were marooned with just a pistol and the compass, which are both still attached to your sash. What did you bargain with to barter the passage off ? You never told me, Jack... Had your reasons?"
"Let's say so."
"Tell me. I'd like to know."
"You wouldn't, luv. Believe me." he assured her
"What could you have possibly given to those scallywags in exchange for taking you to the next port?"
"Alright," he sighed locking eyes with her " I'll tell you, but don't complain later that I didn't warn you...."
A/N: What did Jack bargain with??? Well,the answer is coming in the next chapter :)
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