A/N: I'm afraid I owe a COLOSSAL apology for the long weight. School work was heavier than anticiapted MUCH earlier than anticipated, and sadly, I also must own to the sudden bought of writers block I enountered whenever I got the chance to sit down to the laptop. But, hopefully, with the help of my super beta royalpinkdogs, I've managed to make up for it.

You should let me know in the form of a review ;)

Enjoy!

Chapter 8: Death of Cinderella

She was sitting on the bed, the clear glass of watery ruby wine in her hand, her head leaning against the headboard of the bed, looking off at the wall, away from him. He was in his chair across the room, feet propped up on the table, turned towards her, giving her space. He was waiting for her to start.

She turned her head, looking at the still liquid in her glass, before letting her head shift to focus on him. Her voice was soft and measured in the silence as she spoke.

"Do you want to question me? Or shall I just tell it like a bedtime story?" she asked, the sarcasm gone from her voice. It was gone like the fire had been blown out. He couldn't help but stare at her in the soft light of the cabin, almost entranced by the haunting beauty of her. Her make-up was smeared from the crying, and her thick curls strewn around her in a chaotic tangle, but she was so striking, sitting there, her eyes so piercing. He could look at her and see things he'd looked for all his life. Peace, beauty, laughter. He saw it when he looked at her, even though those qualities were faded and faraway in her.

He let his hand drop onto the table next to him and pressed his hand down, splaying his fingers over the rough woodwork. He didn't directly answer her question; he surveyed her in silence for a moment.

"Why do you react the way you do to William's name?" he asked instead. She tapped her smallest nail against the glass, looking at him solidly. She raised it to her lips and took a drink, staring ahead when she answered.

"Because I hate him." She answered dully, in a measured voice, as if it were the simplest thing in the world. He raised his eyebrows, admittedly floored at that declaration. He had expecting something more…non-vicious, perhaps?

"Hate?" he repeated softly, tilting his head at her. She kept staring across the cabin at the opposite wall, like she had no idea of his presence in the room; looking hypnotized by something he wasn't privy to seeing.

"No," she said suddenly, her lips barely moving. She turned her head to look at him again, her face pale, and the glass gripped tightly in her hand. "I want to hate him." She said hoarsely, her dark, unsmiling eyes glistening again, though no more tears fell. "I want to hate him more than I want my own life and I can't hate him. I can't hate the bastard."

Her voice was shaking, her knuckles were white. Jack rested his hand over one of his knees and adjusted his posture so he seemed to be closer to her, though he was across the room. He let his eyes drink her in, every detail of the emotions he could read from her body and expression, and he tried to fathom this…unforeseeable confession. He could understand this.

"Elizabeth," he started sadly, resisting the urge to shake his head, not sure what reaction he'd get if he showed pity, "what happened?"

He asked it for what must have been the hundredth time since he'd stumbled across her in Tortuga, but this time he asked already having received her promise to answer his probing. He caught a flash of irritation in her glittering orbs and she slanted her piercing eyes at him.

"Once upon a time," she started cynically, grimacing at him, "there lived a governor's daughter and a poor blacksmith."

"That's not very attractive, you know, miss." Jack interrupted sharply, considering the tactics available in his situation. "Somebody might just slap your pretty face."

"Oh, you've been talking to my dear William then? Getting ideas from him, have you?" she snapped back instantly, raising one eyebrow in a furious way. Jack faltered for a moment in his sardonic chiding and clenched his teeth, catching a meaning in her words he didn't want to acknowledge, and not all that sure she'd meant it as he took it or just as another of her meant-to-shock comments.

"Why don't you hit me, Jack? Goodness knows I've done enough to provoke it." She challenged, raising the glass nonchalantly to her lips again.

Jack grunted, flexing the muscles in his hand and digging his nails into his knee, still picking apart her reply in his head. He breathed in deeply through his nose and ignored her jeering, determined not to let her steer him away from his goal as she pulled herself back together.

"This girl and her blacksmith. Perhaps the wicked father kept them apart? Locked her in a tower, if we're speaking in storybook terms?" Jack asked lightly. His wine glass was sitting full and neglected on the table, a surprising feat for someone like him.

"No, no," she answered, mimicking his airy tone accompanied with a touch of sarcasm, hardly a surprise. "The happy couple got married. In white and silk and sunny, happy thoughts. And then the blacksmith went and fucked it all up."

This whole game was making him sick. She was destroyed. There were no other words, and now, so close to the unveiling of the reason for her fall from grace, he shrunk back, not sure he wanted to know. Every thought he'd had had ultimately centered on the conclusion that Will had died, and she had run into a roadblock of decimating events after that. And now, from the way she spoke of it here, he sensed something darker.

"He fucked it up beautifully," she muttered, almost to herself it was so quiet. She elevated the volume of her voice one decibel, and threw him off guard with her next question. "Have you ever been in love, Jack?" she asked softly, a strange new vulnerability in her voice.

He had a strong inclination to get up and leave her right then, to never question her psychotic motives again as long as she never, ever asked him something that intimate. That was too close for personal comfort, it was too revealing, too probing and he was in no way about to go there with her, or anyone—or himself, for that matter. With all the self control he possessed he remained stony-faced and seated in his chair, and though his instincts wanted him out of what could possibly now become too emotionally invasive, his mind anchored him to the room and refused to let him bolt, though he was on guard and a bit suspicious towards her now. This wasn't the way anything was supposed to go.

"I don't believe this story's about me," he responded stiffly, his fingers splaying out on the table and brushing the base of the cool wine glass. He almost missed her movement; she was so quick; she stood up, her glass shattering on the floor, dropped from shaky, unsteady hands, the spilled liquid seeping across the floorboards like blood.

"That's precisely the point," she hissed, not anger but desperation in her voice. It seemed he'd snapped her final strings; she seemed more a mix of too many suppressed emotions to be just angry with him now. "It didn't involve you, it never did and it still doesn't. I knew you for a whirlwind of a moment and then you were gone and I'll be damned if you ever gave another thought to little Elizabeth Swann, that troublesome spoiled bitch who caused all the trouble in the first place and fancied herself in love with that fumbling boy. You hardly had any sort of attachment to me beyond a sordid night on an island most of which you spent sloshed out of your bloody mind—and five years later you stumble across me in a tavern in your beloved haunt of debauchery and you what? You act as if the world has turned upside down because I'm no longer some prissy debutante with silly dreams in her head? You carry me off on your ship and you stare, oh you always stare at me, as if I'm some sort of scientific impossibility. You want this—this story out of me, you want to know the whole devastating affair, and you ask what happened, and you look at me like I've let you down and I don't understand it!"

Her volume had risen slightly, she glared at him with turmoil in her eyes and her shoulders shook, her fists balled at her sides. Her pause was a split-second.

"What do you care if I gouge my veins open to watch the blood run? What is it to you if everything I loved and believed in was dissolved before my eyes and ripped out from underneath me, when did it become your concern that Will was never who I thought he was, that he left me heart-broken in the rain and the mud, how will that ever, ever hurt you like it's destroyed me? Where do you belong in my fucked up, ruined fairytale—what do you want from ME?"

He wasn't concerned with her screaming waking the entire crew—or rather, the entire Caribbean; He was torn between triumph at the final release of her torment and the impact of her words. Elizabeth looked away from him violently, throwing her head to the side, and moving forward; Jack, thinking she was going to run for the door, stepped in front of her and caught her in his arms, trapping her. She didn't move, she stood in the circle of his trapping arms and stared at any point away from him, her throat moving as she swallowed and her lips trembling as she took in her breath.

"You want to know what happened?" she asked sharply, still gazing off at the wall beyond his arms. She turned to him violently, her eyes blazing darkly and furiously, her moods flipping too fast for him to keep up with. "I lost three babies. And he blamed me for every one of them. I had said horrible things to my father and cut him out of my life to marry Will and then he treated me in the same chastising manner as dear old dad, he fastened the same constraints on me and informed me when my behavior was inappropriate. He acted as if I somehow made him feel like he wasn't providing for me like he should, he was bitter, and jealous, we fought all the time and when I—when I—" her color drained from her face and she choked over her words before going on. "When I lost the first, we were okay then, we were still happy, and I hadn't wanted children but that all changed when I got pregnant, and then I lost it and he blamed me, he thought I caused it, on purpose…he said such horrible, awful things, and all I could think about was that child and wonder if I had done something wrong—and even after he apologized, I could see it in his eyes, and after the other two, those devastating moments filled with blood and sorrow and agony, he looked at me like I had let him down, he told me I was careless and it didn't affect me."

Jack took her arms in his and gripped her tightly, trying to steady her, or to wake her up, to calm her down, for her hysteria was hitting him in the gut and reaching a frightening level.

"He started working so late, he never came home, and he was always so angry—he asked me if I ever regretted marrying him and it drove me insane, he would yell and blow things out of proportion, everything I said was to him a slight, when all I cared about was him coming home and putting his arms around me and he couldn't even do that—I can't explain, I can't tell you…everything fell apart so quickly, it was like we didn't know each other, and the more he realized I wasn't the girl he wanted the more I held on and couldn't let go, and when my father died he—he said it was for the better, that I'd stop thinking about what I'd given up and focus on him now and I slapped him and locked him out for days, I made him stay at the forge, and one night, I was so sorry and so hurt and upset and I went down to find him and he…he was fucking some other woman. And I heard him talking about me, to her, calling me useless and selfish and so many things."

Jack pulled her closer, his teeth clenched tightly, disbelieving, but she pulled back, struggling, unable to get out of his grip. She struggled and twisted, stopping finally with her shoulders shaking roughly and tears sliding down her cheeks again.

"I wanted to kill him! He came home that night, and it was storming, and he smelled like her, he smelled so sickly sweet and dusty and I confronted him with everything, I screamed at him and fought him—he couldn't deny a thing and he did, he tried to deny it all, and the look on his face when I repeated his words to him was all I needed, he didn't even flinch—he said—the things he said, and I was screaming so loudly, trying to fix it, always trying to fix it, he accused me of sleeping around, of deliberately killing those babies…I pushed him and ran out into the storm and he followed me, angrier than I'd ever seen him—it happened like a nightmare, we were screaming and yelling, and I was trying to get away, to pull him back, and he turned and struck me or—or…and he was gone, and I was on the ground in the mud, and he was gone, he lef—he left me, he left me.!"

She screamed, leaping back and jerking at his grip on her arm. He pulled her back towards him and drew her close, locking his arms around her and holding her against her will even as she twisted in his arms, again sobbing like she had when he'd awoken her from that nightmare; the nightmare he could only now guess was a rehash of the events.

"I hate him, I HATE HIM! I hate him, I hate him, and he won't stay out of my mind and every day I want to know what I did wrong and why I couldn't make him happy and I want to know why the hell I still love the fucking bastard!" she screamed, her voice muffled against the fabric of his coat.

Jack held onto her tightly, every reeling emotion in her body almost tangible in the tightened muscles of his arms. His teeth were clenched tightly, so that they hurt his jaw, as he comprehended every stinging word coming out of her mouth, getting lividly angrier with every revelation. His hands twitched to get a hold of Will, someone he'd once considered much of a fool but no less of a friend, his old comrade's son, and the perpetuator of her sorrow. To know, to hear that he'd struck her, that he'd gone for comfort somewhere else when he'd had her sitting in his home, simply wanting his regard, made Jack murderous, caused his blood to boil.

He pulled her with him over to the bed and sat down, leaving her still standing, his arms circled around her waist, one hand clenched tightly in her mess of amber curls, the other securing her to him between his legs and against his chest. He murmured her name in her ear, sliding his hand over her shoulder and back.

"You don't love him, Elizabeth." He said, staring over her shoulder to the table across the room, where his wineglass still sat untouched and the mess of maps and charts lay, peaceful and unstirred. "You love what you thought you had with him."

"You don't understand." She moaned, shaking her head against his shoulder. She lifted her head and looked at him, eyes red and flooded, her make-up all but gone now, and her color as pale as white silk. He put his hand on her cheek and tightened the grip, tangling his fingers in the strands of hair falling over her ear and the side of her face.

"Yes I do." He said sharply, reprimanding her. She shook her head and looked to the ceiling, her emotion no longer hidden from him, it all showed in her eyes and she was all heartbreak and despair and she painted the most despairing picture in the world; all he wanted to do was take the pain and bear it on his own shoulders—he'd done this before, he'd taken injury like this before, all he needed was a glass and a drink, and she, she couldn't take it and she shouldn't have to, never her, she should have never suffered this sort of disillusionment.

"I loved him, Jack." She said despondently, "I loved him. He was my everything."

Anger, again, and homicidal tendencies flared in Jack's conscious and his eyes hardened, he saw the set muscle of his jaw reflected in her glittering eyes.

"I know," he said softly, his fingers soft in her hair. His nerves were hyper-sensitive and on edge, and every sense seemed to be alerted to their surroundings.

"You came in that room," she said thickly, her voice shaky and hoarse from screaming, "and it was like everything came back so clearly, everything before…you made me think of when things were good…and then, you…" she took in a deep breath and looked up, blinking her eyes furiously. "You looked at me the way you did…I hated it." She said almost inaudibly.

Jack looked at her solemnly and slowly pulled her close again, holding his hand against her neck and pressing her head into his shoulder. She pressed the base of her palm against his shoulder and wrapped her hand around his bicep, squeezing. Jack closed his eyes tightly again and bit down on the inside of his lip, tasting blood there. Elizabeth's nails pierced his skin through his coat.

"I want to sleep but I can't close my eyes." She said, her lips against his neck, below his ear. "I hear his voice in my head, and I see those men and feel their hands on my skin." She was whispering. He lacing his fingers in her hair again and tugged gently, pulling her head up to look at her. He didn't really hesitate before he pulled her head towards him and pressed his lips gently against hers, closing his eyes for the first time as far back as he could remember to a woman's kiss.

She responded in what he could almost pinpoint as some kind of relief; she slipped her hand under his coat and around his back, her other resting gently on his neck. She stopped for a moment and pressed her forehead against his, still crying, just a little, though her tears didn't bother him like female tears usually did. He took her lips under his again and reached for the tie at the neck of her chemise, something she'd taken to wearing around the cabin when she was alone, a simple, light garment. He pulled gently at the strings and unlaced the bodice so the sides loosened and the ribbon unlaced, and put his hands underneath the linen against her skin, sliding the fabric off her arms and letting it fall to the floor. She put her hands on either side of his neck and lifted her shoulders, he took her by the arm and pulled her onto the bed with him, laying out next to her and leaning over, his one arm across her stomach and under her back.

He opened his lips against hers and let his hand drift from her hair to her cool skin, his hands tracing the contour of her collarbone and shoulder. He wanted her near him, he wanted her to touch him, to look at him with her finally softened eyes and remind him of what was good and innocent in the world, or at least, what used to be. He thought of the compass.

Elizabeth arched her back to him and wrapped her arm around his waist, flattening her palm against his back and pulling him closer, her lips resting at the corner of his mouth, her eyes closed and her mouth parted. She let her head fall back and wrapped her leg around his waist; he put his hand behind her head and raised her mouth to his again, his kiss soft again, his body tangled in hers. She pressed her heel into the small of his back and he pulled his lips away a fraction, sighing.

"Jack," she said quietly, her voice husky, her breath against his ear, her back arching against him again. He slid his hand from her hair to the small of her back and held her tightly, kissing her again, his tongue against hers and his hair brushing against her shoulders. She gasped his name into his lips, tilting her head back more, digging her nails into his skin, unaccustomed to not only the immense display of gentleness from him, but the feeling of their bodies united in an age old embrace simultaneously comforting and satisfying.

He waited for her, waited for that touch of her nails on her skin and that clench of her muscles, before letting go himself and pulling her over the crest with him, keeping her wrapped in his arms when it was over and her legs tangled in his. He laid back on his back, his eyes closed, his chest rising and falling, and the sheen of sweat still covering his body. She curled against his side, her one small hand resting on his chest, just over the two rough gunshot wounds below which his heart beat steadily.

--"Death of Cinderella" Alanis Morissette

Alright, perhaps ten reviews at least this time? Come now, do comply. I see over 500 hits and close to maybe 10 reviews each cahpter. Do these figures sound disproportionate to you? Review, lovelies.