A/N: Sorry its been a short while, I had more trouble hashing out this chapter than the last. Of course, as usualy, thanks to the lovely royalpinkdogs for being my beta (and boosting my ego marvelously).

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Chapter Seven: Our Lady of Sorrows

Jack leaned back in his chair, balancing himself with one foot braced against the edge of the table full of maps and crumpled slips of paper. Bottle in hand, he set his hat on the table in front of him and glanced across the room to the bed where she was sleeping. He kept his probing eyes on her as he took a swig of rum, and licked his lips absently. For the first time in a very long time, Jack Sparrow was watching a woman sleep.

She hardly ever slept. He knew it. It was as if she slept with one eye open; if she seemed in the hold of slumber when he walked in, she was awake instantly, fixing him with her piercing, cold gaze. There was a constant darkness under her eyes, and a pale look about her. She seemed afraid to fall asleep. Even after their sudden, often angry and heated trysts between the sheets she left, sometimes without a word, as if it was all a game. A distraction.

She hadn't left this time. Hadn't looked at him, either, but at least it was a step forward. He didn't remember her falling asleep, just the sudden realization that she was still there, and fast asleep, with her hair spread out over the pillow and her head pillowed on her arm. Exhaustion had finally caught up with her. She hadn't stirred when he got up to prowl around the ship for a final night look, still she was asleep when he'd come back in. She was really sleeping, not the light, jumpy sleep she'd flickered nervously in and out of lately, but a sleep where she looked relaxed and peaceful. Almost.

He couldn't see peace in her. He couldn't see happiness or optimism. He couldn't even see her anymore, through the opaque glass shields she built up around her. She was just an enigma he couldn't figure out, due to the hard-to-overcome distraction technique she used when she, as he saw it, started to feel trapped. She fought with him and raged against him and seemed to take vindictive pleasure in contests of who could possibly say the harshest words before they reached the inevitable end with a pretty damn good fuck. She was unfathomable.

He couldn't even begin to grasp what went on her head. She was simultaneously the most tempting, irrational, enticing, infuriating woman he'd ever met. He'd always, even before, in the days when her eyes had been turned to the heavens with that sickeningly soppy look of girlish infatuation, seen that fire in her personality. She'd possessed a calculating cleverness that was rare in women of the aristocracy; absent in her was the quality of docile nursemaid to a rich bridegroom. She had a sharp, observant eye—he'd found her watching him often when he was speaking ,negotiating, as if she knew that though the others may take his promises of deliverance from Barbossa seriously, there was something that needed to be watched. Maybe she was the reason he had made it a point to keep closer to his word than usual, if not just for the fact that Will was his good friend's son.

Jack reached his hand down to his belt and unclipped the wooden compass, running his fingers over it familiarly as he held it in his palm. A compass that doesn't work. To the contrary, Master Norrington. Just not in the generally acknowledged fashion of working compasses. He caught the compass by its string and held it flat in his palm, holding it at eye level, regarding it with near dislike. Traitorous thing.

His compass was one of curious propensity. It didn't point north, but that trifling fact hardly meant it was broken. The compass had served him well; it was ancient, of unknown origins, bartered from an island witch-woman. He'd wager that it wasn't of this world. The compass—incomprehensibly connected to the holder's thoughts and subconscious—once opened pointed not in the determined direction that all useful compasses commonly point, but in the direction of the thing the bearer wanted most. And for a pirate, a trinket like that was as valuable as life itself; all one had to do was focus his thoughts on the treasure, the legend he wished to discover, and the compass led the way. Seek and ye shall find. It contributed to half the enigma of the dashing Captain Sparrow; it was the answer to the mystery surrounding his discovery of the infamous Isla de Muerta—and it was the most frustrating bloody object he'd ever laid eyes on.

It had always been straightforward. He always knew what he wanted, and whatever legend or destination he was after, the compass had provided an instant guide—handy because it meant no bartering for a map or information. And it suddenly didn't work. Or so he vehemently insisted in his head. The needle wouldn't focus. They'd hardly had legitimate heading. The compass swiveled around uncertainly, occasionally focusing on a fixed point, and the one time he had thrown caution to the changing winds and decided to find out what the sodding object's problem was, they'd ended up in Tortuga. This gave him a sneaking, strongly unacceptable suspicion of what exactly his subconscious mind wanted most.

He took another drink, squinted his eyes, and thumbed open the compass, closing one eye and looking at it warily. The silver needle twitched, spinning slowly in a circle, pointing briefly in one direction, then another. In a moment it jerked sharply and settled on a point. He counted five seconds of stillness before slowly looking up and following the needle's tell-tale line to Elizabeth's sleeping figure in the bed. He resisted the urge to groan, and settled for a quiet sigh instead. She was more trouble than she was worth.

He was still glaring dubiously at the compass when she jerked suddenly in her sleep. She made a quiet, shaky, gasping noise and whimpered. Jack was alert instantly; he lowered the compass from his face a bit and titled his head to look at her. She was shifting in the bed, slowly raising herself up on unsteady arms.

"Lizzie?" he grunted, eyeing her closely. She looked over at him when she heard her name. He shut the compass and set it on the table as he got up, letting his chair fall carelessly to the floor and leaving the bottle next to the compass. She looked disoriented and lost, and she turned her eyes up to him as he came up near bedside. Her eyes were dark and still filled with whatever had awakened her from her sleep, vulnerability written across her face. Her hair was tumbling down one shoulder, the tendrils around her face wet with sweat, her skin was pale and he swore he found tears in her eyes. He reached out with hesitant fingers and brushed them against her shoulder.

"Don't," she whispered quietly, her voice barely steady. "Don't, Jack." But she sounded so hurt and confused that he brushed her words away and hardly acknowledged that she had spoken. His hand spread out over her clammy cheek and he slipped it behind her head, pulling her hair into a fist. He fixed her with a penetrating stare.

"Elizabeth," he pleaded softly. Her eyes fluttered weakly and he sat down on the bed near her bended knees and pulled her against him, snaking his arm around her waist and securing her lithe form against his chest. Her body, so warm and fragile to him, was stiff in his arms, but she didn't pull back. He didn't know if she was too surprised to react, by his uncharacteristically, rash movement, but he could feel the intense coil of everyone of her muscles beneath her skin, clenched tight and rigid. He put his hand against her neck, two of his fingers pressing against her cheek, below her ear, trying to feel some semblance of emotion in her skin. She made a soft choking noise in the back of her throat and her head collapsed against his shoulder, her forehead nestled at his neck, and he felt her cheek moving beneath his hand, as if her lips were moving.

"Love," he coaxed softly, with an underlying hint of warning to his quiet tone. He could feel it in her muscles; he wanted her to break. It was the rarest of feelings, Jack Sparrow wanting a woman to cry. But she needed this. And he…he needed it too, in a way. Anything that made her stop.

"Make it stop," her voice broke at the end, fragile already, in a flood of raw emotion she'd kept chained tight in some dark recess of her mind. Her crying was harsh, violent, though he could feel her holding back. She was still afraid of him or herself or her demons—whatever was poisoning her nightmares. He knotted his fingers tighter in her hair and rested his chin on the crown of her head, closing his eyes. Her shoulders shook, his hand was catching her tears as they fell fast against it, one of her hands was splayed across his shoulder, pressing hard against his bicep. The other was pinned between his side and hers, the fingers curled and pressing tightly against his ribs.

He pressed his fingertips against her scalp, grasping at memories for some kind of soothing motion to comfort her, if possible. It seemed almost as if she was still shackled in her dream world; she was in hysterics but not in any way he'd seen before, she wasn't wild or violent, she just cried and shivered, her shaking somewhat steadied by the firm grasp of his arms. He breathed in the scent of her tousled hair and pulled her closer, so that one of her legs was over his lap. Make it stop. He didn't understand the meaning behind her whispered plea, he could only grasp at the strings of hypothesis, and wonder what had been the final straw that broke her façade. Wonder what had been the cause of the façade in the first place. He would make it stop, he would do anything—everything—to make it stop, if she would just tell him what it was.

Elizabeth mumbled something, her voice blurred completely by tears, words unintelligible. He caught a word or two, unconnected thoughts, remembering the past or the dream, no doubt, from the feel of it. He didn't ask her to elaborate. Instinct, perhaps, or inability to open his mouth and say something that wouldn't sound utterly wrong, or maybe because he knew, if she was anything like him, she would despise a reminder of her weakness.

But she was going to talk. He resolved that, he was determined, they had all night, and she was not leaving this room until she gave him some explanation, something to go on, an inkling even, of the dark shadow in her. The key to the shell she'd become. Apart from his selfish curiosity to know what could have gone so horribly wrong in her privileged life, he didn't want to see her hurt. The closer he was to this constant, hardened pain of hers, the more he hated to see her suffer. She was suffering. She confirmed that now, willingly or not, as she—for lack of better description—fell apart in his arms.

Delicately, Jack shifted away from her. He lifted his arm from around her waist and rested it on her shoulder, curving it behind her neck to keep her still, still half-expecting a bolt for the door or a vicious verbal assault. His hand was still against her cheek, but her head was dipped, her hair in tangles around her face, she was still crying uncontrollably, yet now she was quickly realizing her position and trying to compose herself.

"Elizabeth," he said quietly, in a calm, least-threatening tone he possessed, making his voice easy and soft. "Honey." The endearment, even quieter, caused a raised eyebrow from him; he was a bit floored by that one. He could only guess a moniker so uncharacteristically sweet must have been inspired by the distracting color of her silky hair. She tried to take a deep breath, but she was prevented by another rush of tears mid-intake, and tried to bring up her arm to block her face. Jack firmly knocked it out of the way and nudged her face up. He ran his thumb under her eyes, streaking her already smudged make-up across her face. Her red-rimmed copper eyes looked defeated, disgusted, misty with so many things. Her eyelashes, wet and heavy, blinked slowly, trying to hide her eyes. He pushed her hair back, dragging his fingers through it, avoiding the knots while he framed it back around her face. "Hush now." He commanded softly, not in any way suggesting that he was annoyed by her weeping.

Jack removed his arm from around her neck gingerly and slid his hand off her cheek, getting off the bed with his eyes still fixed on her face. She lifted her chin at his movement and looked towards the head of the bed, still refusing to look at him. She was still getting herself in hand, still trying to stop the tears and the trembling and he knew she was already trying to harden herself again, and subsequently failing. He turned to the corner and jerked an old box forward, opening the top and reaching into the jumbled contents within. A surprisingly cool bottle and a glass reappeared with him. He thumbed the cork out deftly, turning back to Elizabeth with a stony face. She reacted slowly, reaching out tentatively and then looking up with a slightly quizzical look to her deadened eyes.

"Wine," Jack stated grimly, pouring the blood red liquid into her glass. He didn't miss the shake of her hand as he handed the cup to her and she grasped it tightly. He set the bottle on a table next to the bed, keeping his eyes on her. She seemed desperate for the distraction of a drink, and tipped the glass to her lips. Her nose twitched slightly as she drank, and her lips trembled when she brought the glass down. "Bitter. It drowns what makes your skin crawl." Jack offered by means of explanation of the sharp alcohol.

He stepped up closer and stood in front of her, where she sat with her glass at chest level, one leg off the bed and the other angled in towards her stomach, where Jack had slid it off his lap. He reached out quickly, before she could avert her hollow eyes, and held her head again, not her cheek but behind her ear, gripping her hair and running it all through his fingers smoothly. He let himself weigh her tolerance first, staring unflinchingly at her in a way he knew she would hate.

"You are going to talk." He chose his words carefully, speaking slowly in a way that wouldn't easily be challenged, and not relaxing his grip on her. He thought there was a change in her eyes, subtle, but a slight pull back to a point.

"You'll never get me that drunk," she said hoarsely, her nail tapping against the glass. He reached up with his other hand and rested it on her other cheek, holding her face between his palms now and watching her steadily.

"Being drunk wouldn't fix a damn thing," he said, a slight edge to his voice. "Take it from someone who knows." He ran his thumb across her lip, for a moment not realizing the sensual side of the touch and only trying to soothe. Tears, tears again that welled up and she did a commendable job of not letting fall. "It's eating you up, Lizzie, killing you. You can't do this do yourself. You can't let whatever it is stay in your mind."

She swallowed hard and her hand came up to grip his arm, squeezing above his elbow tightly.

"Shouldn't I take advice like that," she asked in a defeated, last-attempt voice, "from someone who knows?"

The truth of that hit home. He didn't flinch, didn't react. He looked at her again, studying, searching. The right choice of words, and she was moments away from making the decision not to let this crush her, to tell her story—but the same accusation in her response was what stopped him from stepping that line. Again, he picked through the minefield of dangerous words gingerly.

"Peas in a pod, love," he said softly, running more hair through his fingers, "but I don't cut myself open."

She pulled on his arm, until he was closer, and tilted her head up to look at him, closer.

"I need more wine, then."

It sounded like she was heralding her own doom.

--Our Lady of Sorrows: by My Chemical Romance

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