Disclaimer: No Copyright infringement intended. Just having fun :)

A/N: If you're getting annoyed with my being mum on the subject of what actually happened to Will and Elizabeth, you'll get a taste of that soon. And for all you Whelp-haters out there, its shows Mr. Turner in a VERY unflattering light. Enjoy!

Note: Thanks so very much for the lovely reviews, I very much appreciate it. And for those of you who don't review, please do. It makes us authors feel special ;)

Chapter Two

She left the Faithful Bride without a second thought or a glance back. There was no attachment, no sense of loss. They would wake in the morning and find her gone; Madame would bewail the loss of her 'best girl', Scarlet would triumphantly re-assume her place as highest-acclaimed whore, and little Molly would be left to the mercy of the older women who knew the things she hadn't been taught in order to survive. None of this induced her to hesitate in her step as she left it behind.

The early morning sky was grayish purple, not yet touched by the golden light of the sun, though a faint sparkle on the ocean was evidence of the slowly rising provider of earth's light. Elizabeth stood on the beach below the dock, the ocean lapping at her bare feet. Her short dress flapped around her knees; she held her slippers in her hand as she looked up at the Black Pearl. She remembered it exactly how it floated lazily before her now: frayed black sails, intricately carved hull, scuffed sides. Prized possession of the rugged captain who sacked Port Nassau without a single shot. She looked around and up slightly to the dock as thoughts of the captain entered her head. He stood arguing with a shady looking man over a crate that stood between them, waving his arms around characteristically. She turned and walked up the bank, swinging her shoes, ignoring the rocks and bits of wood that stabbed her feet. She stepped onto the worn wood of the dock and Jack glanced at her over the other man's shoulder. He took something out of his coat pocket and thrust it into the trader's hand; the man passed Elizabeth on his way off, grinning gleefully and counting the gold pieces in his palm.

She looked at Jack silently as she approached, her eyes cool and shaded by her painted eyelashes. He turned his back halfway to her and gave a sharp whistle in the direction of his ship. Two men appeared at the side and he raised his arm and flicked it in the direction of the crate. The men descended the gangplank, one the proud, well-defined black man who'd given Elizabeth the first good slap of her life when she'd been prisoner; the other the bald midget whose bite much outweighed his size. Bo'sun afforded her nothing more than a glance; he didn't recognize her as the governor's daughter who'd once foolishly thrown the pirates code in his face and expected him to keep to it. He saw her as a harlot his now-captain had for some reason allowed to follow him to the dock. He picked up the crate effortlessly and acknowledged Jack's storage order with a stiff nod.

"You, take tha'," Jack barked, throwing his hand at the small chest that Elizabeth had haphazardly tossed few of her possessions in. Uncaring as she was about anything she'd purchased since her arrival at Tortuga, common sense reminded her she'd have to have something to wear when sailing the ocean indefinitely. Marty saluted Jack in a rather comical way, and gave Elizabeth a more-than-quizzical stare as he did away with her carry-on. She showed no sign of warmth as she returned his stare, almost challenging him with her eyes. He scuttled away, bearing the slight weight of the chest easily.

The distraction provided by the things to move and the men to move them vanished, and she had nothing to do but transfer her cold gaze to him and glean what she could from his slightly less frozen eyes. She didn't know what to say to him. She had nothing to say to him. His sudden re-entrance into her much-altered life did nothing to change the person she'd spent so much time molding herself into; she was still cold, introverted, cynical and bitchy through and through, and she had the keen suspicion he hadn't grasped the full concept of that: he had no idea what he was doing. If he saw himself as the rescuer, so be it. She had only the minutest interest in getting inside his head and pulling out the reason that spurred him to offer her a place on his ship. She certainly wasn't the damsel being rescued in this story. She'd taken her place in the pool of Tortuga's finest quietly, performed every deceitful and immoral bit of trickery and promiscuity in her previously unutilized oh-so-sweet character to obliterate every aspect of the past that nearly destroyed her. She was so far changed from the sassy debutante he'd first pulled from the icy waters of Port Royal, and she'd already made her unbreakable vow to never revisit what had happened or who she used to be. He was not her rescuer. She took care of herself.

But that didn't mean she knew why she was here. She looked at him, her shoulders held straight in that aristocratic posture that had been instilled into her since birth, and tried to pinpoint the exact moment his words had hit her and she'd agreed to. She balked at the answer in her head; the remembrance of the sudden crack she'd felt in her armor when she'd seen him standing in her room and heard his refusal to treat her like he would some other tavern strumpet. He hadn't borne the brunt of her bi-polar self-destructiveness as had the other men did because he caught her unawares and brought ten times too many memories flooding over her meticulously built walls for her to repress and awakened something long dead and shattered when he moaned that quiet Lizzy in her ear. She saw Jack and she remembered. She saw Jack and she couldn't help but see his face in her head and recall every little horror the single syllable that was his name inflicted on her.

She shrugged her shoulders almost imperceptibly, giving him a hardened smirk that silently asked him why he couldn't take his eyes off her. Truth be told she was tired of him staring at her, even if she wasn't bothering to look in any other direction herself. Her impulsive decision to let him whisk her away may confuse and drive her to distraction now, but it didn't mean she was going back to her lascivious existence in this fine place. But she was suddenly, acutely, and angrily aware that he had the dangerous ability to affect her sensibilities to the point where she might at any moment succumb to the violent tears that had been kept prisoner since the night born out of hell two years ago.

And that frightening realization was unacceptable.

A raucous catcall violently interrupted the easy morning; the men of Jack's crew announcing their arrival back at port after their foray into the town of innumerable pleasures available for men of questionable morals. She recognized two of the first who stumbled a bit drunkenly onto the ship, one giving a wobbly salute to his captain as he stomped by, relating his night in a loud voice to his equally tipsy companion. Elizabeth looked around with veritable amusement at the men making their way back to berth in twos and threes. Jack grabbed one of them by the scruff of the neck and gave a sharp reprimand, gesturing to the various crates on the dock that contained whatever was needed for good honest pirating. The man was decidedly unfazed but followed Jack's order and led the other crew members in stocking the ship. Elizabeth sat down on one of the dock posts, sliding her feet easily back into her shoes and watching coolly.

"OY! Watch yerself with that!" came a gruff voice from the ship, followed by a thud. Jack snapped his head in that direction and grumbled in a low voice about incompetence and drunk animals. "Where be Jack?" Elizabeth was sure she recognized the authoritative voice, and she stood languidly and made her way to the ship, walking up the gangplank without a cue from Jack.

"Cap'n's ain't had his fill a' the wenches yet," snickered one.

"Ah, shut yet trap Ragetti. 'E's on the dock!"

Elizabeth stepped over the edge of the ship and rested her hand on the edge just in time to come face to face with a red-faced Joshamee Gibbs, who had his mouth open and ready to shout at Jack until he found her in his path and stopped short, his eyes widening considerably. She'd know him for too long and too well for him not to recognize her, and she found a weird enjoyment in seeing the shock that spread over his wizened features.

"Miss Elizabeth?" he asked incredulously, and she could see in his eyes his recollection of telling her stories of pirates behind her father's back on the voyage from England so many years ago. She flashed him a grin.

"Beautiful morning, is it not, Mr. Gibbs?" his taken aback response almost prompted laughter from her. "Startled, are you?"

"I hardly even recognized you, Miss 'lizbeth…" he faltered, as if unsure if he was insulting her or not. Elizabeth took pity on him for a moment, she had the idea she'd quite nearly given the first mate a heart attack.

"I'd hardly expect you to, after nearly five years." Something rang in her mind as she said the words. Five years. Name something that can happen in five years. Total destruction. She ignored the response. These dialogues with herself were starting to make her wonder if she was going mad. She lived in a solitary world of derision.

She heard Jack's footsteps heavy on the plank behind her, and he put his hand on her shoulder and moved her out of the way so he could get onto the ship.

"Head count?" he demanded.

"All here, Cap'n. Drunk as skunks maybe, but in a right better mood then they were few days ago." Mr. Gibbs replied. Jack clapped the older man on his broad shoulder and nodded.

"Good man. Mr. Gibbs, you no doubt remember our mutual friend Miss Swann?" Gibbs's eyes furrowed at the title Jack addressed her with, but when he turned his eyes to her, her eyes had taken back their hard, warning look. He nodded, closing his mouth, no doubt swallowing the correction he'd had on his lips. "Spectacular. Accustom the crew to the recent development of her presence on this vessel indefinitely."

He slapped him on the back and walked away, leaving Gibbs with a rather confused look on his face. Elizabeth turned towards the plank and kicked it off to the dock with her foot, its use being moot now that the ship was about to set sail. She glanced back over her shoulder with a devilish smirk.

"They won't mind terribly, I'm sure," she started, a fleeting thought rising in her head of how amazed she was that she still retained that blue-blooded ballroom speech of the aristocracy even now, "even if I am bad luck."

The corners of his mouth twitched at her jest and he shrugged his shoulders. She turned around, leaning her back against the raised wall of the ship and stretched out her arms, taking in the surroundings around her. She hadn't become a point of interest yet; the crew was still busy with pulling anchor and adjusting sails for the push off from port. She let her eyes roam to the helm, where Jack stood with his hands resting on the wheel. The breeze stirred her hair and she shook it back out of her face, turning her eyes to the horizon spread out on the other side of the ship. She sun was visible now, its rays spreading out slowly but surely over the rolling blue water.

She kept her back to Tortuga.

--All of the chapter's names are taken from song titles, though sometimes the lyrics pertain to the chapter and sometimes not. this chapter is Reflection: Christina Aguileira, Chapter one was Numb: Linkin Park

--Again, I cordially remind you to review!