A/N: And here we take a look into Jack's opinion on the matter. I want to thank all my fabbbbulous reviewers who gave me some love (haha) and, surprising as it may be, my one critical reviewer, who pointed out some inetersting things and made me think. Good Job, Son of a Gun.

Read on!

Chapter Four

The first thing he did when he stormed out of that cabin, the slam of the door still ringing in his ears, was find that damned impossible to get rid of undead monkey and shoot it square in the head.

A scene which stunned the entire crew eating in the hold (where the scapegoat monkey had been found) into silence.

"As you where!" Jack barked, and flinched as her screaming echoed from above deck. A few of the men raised their eyes curiously to the ceiling. Jack banged his pistol against the wall of the ship and glared at them all. Slowly they went back to their eating and gambling, only Mr. Gibbs looking solemnly over one of their shoulders to probe Jack's eyes. He released the monkey violently and left the hold swiftly, having succeeded in getting rid of the urge to shoot something and satisfied that it hadn't been Elizabeth (though it eventually might be).

He had been all but kicked out of his own cabin, and he stood on the stairs glaring at the exit onto deck above him. He turned back and stomped down all the way to the depth of the ship and, busting open the crate of rum that he'd bartered for in Tortuga, sat down amongst the barrels of gunpowder and popped the cork.

He took a swig from the familiar bottle and tipped his head back against the wall, making quite a loud thump, and ignored the dull pain that throbbed through his skull.

Son of a bitch, what had happened to that girl? That beautiful, young, spirited, brave woman? He remembered her so well because she had so captured his attention then; how many class-system princesses do you meet who'll jump in front of twenty bayonets for the most notorious pirate in the Caribbean? Most of them were all stuck-up, snobbish, so called well-bred brain-washed bitches who wouldn't lift a finger to help a fellow human in need. He'd been highly amused standing behind her in front of all those men, she wearing only a chemise or whatever trapping undergarments those kind of girls wore, and listening to her defend him. Pirate or not, this man saved my life! And he didn't even know why he'd done it. Probably to escape those blundering idiots who had blockaded his smooth entry into their port. Or just because he'd been so incredibly bored. In which case, why not save a damsel from drowning. Of course, said damsel happened to have the infamous medallion tucked between her breasts. Hadn't that been a fun discovery?

She'd gone on the bloody ship. Just waltzed into the middle of Barbossa's little pseudo-kingdom and demanded they leave her precious little town alone. And you had to admit, that took guts. He didn't actually want to imagine what Barbossa could have done—well, what he very well might have done, to such a painfully naïve girl.

She walked the plank without tears or complaint, even throwing one of her cutting remarks at Hector and not even giving a slight flinch at the cruel mutterings going on around her.

He recalled that island clearly, sharply in his head, no matter how drunk she'd thought he'd been. He was never as drunk as they assumed he was, and more to his advantage. Alone, on an island, with the commodore's fiancée, any numerous things could've happened if he'd just made sure she drank more than he saw her secretly pour out on the sand beside her and chosen his manipulating words carefully. But instead, he was fascinated by what she was doing—as someone who'd spent ample time in Tortuga, he could tell a truly smashed woman from one who was decidedly not drunk; Elizabeth Swann was not drunk. So instead of his usual games of seduction, he felt a keen interest to follow her rules of her game and see who came out the winner and what the ultimate goal was.

And damn it all, if she hadn't succeeded in getting them off that island quicker than he had the first time.

In the darkness of the ship's storage, the last place where the captain of this fine vessel should be, he knew exactly why she captivated and drew his thoughts so annoyingly much. He thought of himself when he saw her, all those years ago, determined to through off a mantle that had been cast on her by birth, daring enough to try and show them all that she was going to do whatever the hell she pleased, that she was going to entice the Commodore to further her means and charm everyone in her path until they saw her as completely innocent. But she had been. She had been so innocent and so untouched by the caprice of the world and he'd somehow seen that through all the pride and bravado she fronted and he wanted to keep her that way. Because he had been there. He had joined up the army, signed with the East India Trading Company with visions of grandeur and thoughts of being a hero, swearing not to become the filthy pirate his father had been. And then there's been the ghastly sigh of human bondage he'd come across in the holds of the Wicked Wench and he saw the Company stripped of its glory and freed them all, cost Cutler Beckett thousands. And in that one act of good will he'd been branded as a pirate and became exactly the man he hated. But he had been like her. She had been so clever; he saw in here the willingness to accept the questionable means if the end benefited well, while her stuffy self-righteously moral blacksmith counterpart would take only the high road. She was calculating. And she had had the most beautiful smile he'd ever seen; one that lit up her eyes and her entire complexion. He remembered asking Gibbs about her after she'd recognized him with shock on the ship, and the things he'd told her about knowing the Swann girl as a child. Curious little lass. Loved the Blackbeard stories, she did. He'd never seen this in her future. He'd never wanted to find her in the ultimate despair she drowned in now.

Jack brought the top of the bottle to his forehead and pressed against it, closing his eyes and shaking his head. Incomprehensible. Elizabeth was all but destroyed. Speaking metaphorically, that is, the Elizabeth of past acquaintance was changed into this unrecognizable hardened—well, to put it bluntly—harlot. Though he threw those words from all his descriptions of her character as quickly as possible, completely unwilling to associate that vulgarity with Elizabeth Swann, the fact remained that she was. And a damn good one at that.

He tapped the bottle against his temple violently. That particular recollection was the most forbidden pleasure mixed with disgust and, well, almost shame. No matter how many times he conjured up images of her naked, or fantasized about her in his bed (or naked on the sand, wherever he happened to be at the moment) he'd never actually thought he'd ever experience those…favors. Though knowing what he did about the tight British society hierarchy she'd been brought up in he rather doubted anyone would.

Obviously, he did have the human failing of sometimes thinking wrong.

Very wrong, in this certain affair. He almost drained the rest of the rum from the bottle, trying to bring some sort of clarity to the entire puzzling situation. Elizabeth, still styling herself under her maiden name, working in a tavern in Tortuga—according to whispers and Madame, the apparent best in Tortuga—unsmiling, bitter, and with an aversion to hearing William Turner's name. And wasn't that just the most curious turn of events of all, when previously her girlish thoughts had been bothered about nothing but how she was going to attract that dense eunuch's attention. Which focused his attention on that aspect of the possible influences of what seemed to be her sudden schizophrenia.

He was unaware of what had unfolded after his…artistic departure from Port Royal and ultimately the hangman's noose. Jack didn't know if she'd married Turner or if she'd followed through on her ill-made promise and married that peacock Norrington and carried on some kind of badly-ended clandestine affair with the blacksmith. What he could glean from her behavior and harpy-like reaction to his openly accusing Turner in the cabin was that her rose-coloured glasses had broken and the initial view of young William (and the world in itself) had been shaken to the core. In other words, she'd grown up. The hard way. But yet, it was near impossible to construct any theory on what could have possibly happened that was this devastating. Much as he held Turner's holier-than-though attitude in contempt, he couldn't see in him any inclination to abuse, not after knowing the man's father for years on end. Bootstrap hadn't been one for child-rearing, hadn't been around much as far as Jack knew, but he did know how to treat that woman he up and married out of the blue. Of course, one had to remember that even the closes friends of people couldn't always see the darkest aspects of their person. Everyone had secrets; some were just infinitely better at hiding them. Abuse? There was the possibility of Turner's death; but she hardly seemed the kind of person to let grief so completely destroy her life. Blast it. It was all a maddening maze of dead ends.

Emptying the bottle, Jack got up from the floor and threw it down beside him, for the time being washing his hands of her mystifying insanity. He found his way back on deck, where at least half of the crew had reappeared from dinner. Though the bunch of lazy insubordinate bilge rats were doing absolutely nothing productive. It was dark now; the stars were brightly visible in the sky, so much more clear out here on the ocean than anywhere else on the planet. Infinitely more beautiful. It was quiet but for the slow murmur of men talking and swishy rolling of the ocean. Enough to clear even the most troubled mind. He had the sudden inclination to drag her spiteful ass out here and tie her down until she appreciated every sparkling light in the sky.

Actually, that wasn't a bad idea.

He marched purposely over to the cabin, shouldering Cotton and his disturbing parrot out of the way as he passed. He contemplated knocking for a split second then thought to hell with it; he wasn't knocking on his own cabin and giving her the opportunity to send him away. He just opened the door and walked in—

--to find her asleep on the bed. At that, he nudged the door shut with his foot, not wanting any of the crew to look in and see a woman sprawled on a bed. He looked over at the table; the plate of food had been upended and thrown to the floor, no doubt by her majesty the queen of throwing breakable objects. He moved closer to the bed and looked over her. The dress was hanging off her shoulder again, in the usual style he'd seen worn before by countless other women. Her eyes was closed but her slumber looked anything but peaceful; her lips were parted and her brows were knotted together in the middle. Strands of hair were slanted over her lips and the side of her cheek. He didn't dare touch her, because he had an inkling that when she did sleep it was much needed and light and he didn't want to risk waking her up and having her scream like a banshee and set the whole crew off demanding he explain to them whatever rumor they'd started circulating among themselves. No doubt that he'd brought his favorite whore along on a whim and wasn't going to share. Wasn't that thought a breeding ground for mutiny.

His eyes fell over her and he looked judgingly, with the ironic thoughts that he really had no right to be judging anyone. Her one arm was stretched out, the sheet tangled in her fingers, looking as if she'd drawn it into her grasp and pulled. His sight was suddenly arrested by her other wrist, facing up with the fingers curled in a slight fist, resting on her thigh. There was a thin smear of dark reddish-brown blood staining her skin there. He looked again to her face; she wasn't pale, her chest rose and fell normally; not unconscious. Sleeping. He forgot his initial reluctance to touch her and reached for her hand, picking it up gingerly and holding it in his own, wanting to inspect the self-inflicted wound at closer range.

He touched the scar with his finger and put pressure on it slightly, and almost the instant he touched it she gave a strangled gasp and twisted out of his grip, sitting up and scrambling back against the head of the bed, her eyes wild and her breathing quick, looking completely lost.

--Again, I want to remind you to PLEASE reveiw. It's very nice :)

-"I Write Sins Not Trageides" by Panic! At the Disco (may need a little background, but ask me if you're curious)