A/N: I am so, so sorry about the long wait before the update! I truly apologize...but hopefully the fact that its the day after Christmas, the pretty holiday season, will grant me some amnesty? Please? I hope this chapter is sufficient, and if its not, I think I'm back on track and the next chapters [I hope] will be better, and up sooner than this one. So anyway, Merry Christmas, Happy Hannukah, Yay Kwanzaaa and Happy New Year to all! :)

Chapter Eleven: Points of Authority

Elizabeth ignored the feeling of her leg tingling, falling sleep where it was curled beneath her on the edge of the Pearl. She lightly tapped her slippered other foot on the outside hull where it hung down, hovering above the clear ocean water. Her arm twisted in and out of the rigging next to her loosely, up to the point where her hand gripped it tightly to ensure she wouldn't tumble into the ocean. She ignored the wind whipping strands of hair wispily against her lips and kept his gaze resolutely, a hard, blazing, unsmiling gaze from both of them that crackled and sparked. After a moment of harsh glaring games, she turned her head away, looking into the dull afternoon sun and smiling devilishly to herself.

"Af'ernoon, Miss Swann,"

Her iron-clad grip on the rigging almost failed her, as she jumped at the sound of Joshamee Gibbs' voice and nearly pitched forward.

"Mighty dangerous place ta be sittin', ain' it?" he asked, leaning against the side next to her, chewing on a stiff piece of wood. Elizabeth relaxed the burning grip she'd suddenly affected to a secure but less painful one, and gave him a smart look through her eyelashes, shaking her hair back a little.

"Another fright like that and I might fall into the deep blue, Mr. Gibbs," she answered snappily, not in a disrespectful way. "We society ladies scare easily, sire. You might not sneak up on me next time,"

"Ah, I wasn't sneakin' up, Elizabeth," he responded with a grin, "Kicked a bucket on me way over, guess you were just too lost in yer thoughts."

Elizabeth didn't respond, instead turning her eyes back to the horizon and following a soaring bird until it was just a speck in the sky. She'd known the man since she was just a girl; she was at ease with him. He didn't threaten or glare. He just seemed to care. Out of character as it was, she found it endearing. That he still thought caring mattered at all in this world.

Elizabeth looked back at him, pursing her lips. He was looking out to sea, a very frustrated, honest look on his wizened face. Elizabeth felt a little steel creep up under her skin. She flicked her eyes covertly over his head, searching. She found him at the helm still, hardly moved. But this time with the compass in his palm, and the usual sour look that accompanied viewing the compass on his face. Perhaps, in order to avoid the frustration, he ought to invest in a new compass, rich pirate that he was.

"I've been wonderin' what's in yer head, Miss 'Lizabeth." Gibbs said quietly, just as calmly and un-menacingly as possible.

Elizabeth pressed her lips in a tight line and stopped her foot-tapping against the side for a moment, bringing her eyes away from the captain. She looked at Gibbs for a moment, and then back at the sunny horizon.

"You don't want to hear my thoughts, Joshamee," she said quietly, in a voice that implied a few rather frightening things. She caught a small shrug of his shoulders out of her peripheral vision, and shifted her weight, to lean against the rope at her side. Her mood was light, but that didn't mean she wasn't on guard, and it didn't mean there was a promise of peace in her atmosphere.

After a moment, she took a little pity on the old man next to her. After all, he had obliged her by telling her all those gruesome stories and teaching her those songs after father had forbidden her to ask another thing about pirates. Without him, she would have died of veritable boredom on the crossing from England all those years ago.

"Did our tempestuous captain send you over to spy on me?" she asked with a smirk. He gave her a wry smile, and blinked guilty eyes, shaking his head.

"Not 'im, missy. Just me nosy old self," he started, a small chortle in his throat.

"Ahhh," Elizabeth breathed, as if she'd just figured out what he was looking around for. Truth be told she knew it very well, but she wasn't going to let on to that. "Well, in all respectfulness and politesse, Mr. Gibbs, I have to deny you access to the inner workings of my unstable mind."

She tapped her temple with her index finger and flashed a smirk again. His brows knit together, his eyes looking apologetic. Surprising enough to her, he bravely soldiered on with his quite innocent prodding.

"'M just curious to know what's put ye in such a bad way, Miss' Lizbeth. What's happened to ye?"

Elizabeth gave him a sharp look, twisting so that she leaned against a slope on the side of the ship, her hands still entwined in the ropes, but now one foot propped on the side and the other planted on the deck.

"Why," she began, "must you and everyone else on this godforsaken ship presume something has 'happened to me'. Is it not a possibility that I tired of my ridiculously stiff old way of living and simply threw in the gauntlet?" she questioned sharply, mulling it over.

Now it was Joshamee's turn to give the sharp look. Elizabeth wasn't sure she'd ever really appreciated the intuitive, very clever glint in his kindly, crinkly eyes, but it was obvious now. He was quite obviously no fool.

"I been on this earth a good long time now, Elizabeth. Long enough to know when somethin's gone wrong with a good girl."

Elizabeth dug her teeth firmly into her tongue to keep from lashing out, the balance in her precarious mood slipping and tipping her inner scales toward misdirected rage. A little voice laughed at her, teased about the seeming imbalance of humors afflicting her that prompted her to lash out at every glint of invasion in her carefully constructed fortress of personality. Another little voice gnashed angrily at Gibbs, and another soothed her with gentle words. She almost lost her grip on the rigging, hearing the voice telling her to calm down, almost leapt in fury upon Gibbs just to spite that voice because the sound of it was uncannily maddening and familiar and she didn't know how Jack Sparrow could have gotten in her head…

"You see what I mean then," Gibbs said, breaking in on her inner bloody battle, a patronizing look in his wise eyes. Elizabeth licked her lips slowly, straightening her shoulders back and relaxing tensed neck muscles.

"Much can happen in five years, Mr. Gibbs." She replied, a little snarl to her voice. He shrugged jacketed shoulders and raised an eyebrow.

"A change for the better and I guess you'd still have that pretty smile on your face, eh?"

"What business is my smile of yours, old man?" Elizabeth hissed, regretting those words instantly. They didn't seem to faze Gibbs that much, but she still felt for him. She sensed in him a very eagerness to help her, no ulterior motives, just a concern. And knowing him as a man who cared for others, who was loyal, and had served her father well…she believed him to be sincere.

He seemed to be looking at something over her shoulders for a moment, ignoring whatever she was doing, and Elizabeth curled her fingers into a fist, feeling her nails dig into her palm. She closed her eyes and turned her head, opening them and turning back just as quickly; he was looking back at her again.

"You know Jack's compass isn't broken?" He said dully, almost cryptically, his eyes boring into hers. Elizabeth raised her eyebrows, completely taken off guard by this random (and utterly false) piece of information.

"It doesn't point north," she snorted, rolling her eyes. Gibbs shrugged, his hands in his pockets.

"What be north, anyhow, Miss Swann? We ain't tryin' to find north."

He said this as if it was the simplest thing in the world, and she was taken aback again.

Elizabeth tilted her head at him, now just one eyebrow quirked high onto her forehead. Something in her alerted to this cryptic bit of code-wording. She didn't know what it was, but it caused her to imperceptibly lean forward, a question forming at pursed lips. He didn't let her ask a thing; he turned his back, stepping away, and barking orders at two idling men across the deck, and then another at Pintel—who dozed on a bucket nearby. After his display of authority, he turned back to Elizabeth, shrugging his shoulders again. She watched him hawkishly, lips still pursed and head still tilted observantly.

"If I were to…inquire of Jack about this compass, what reaction would I receive?" She asked, propping her arm up lazily on her risen knee. Gibbs tipped his hat to her, narrowing his own eyes and settling his brows back to a normal rest.

"You let me know," he said, strolling off looking purposeful. Elizabeth let half her mouth turn up in a smirk, her eyes hard and calculating, and turned her head to try and follow him with her eyes. Something obstructed her view, and she realized what must have spurred Gibbs to make himself sparse, and to shout his authoritative orders. To look busy. Speak of the devil; Jack himself was standing over her shoulder, looking a little less than friendly.

"Are you operating under the impression you're exempt from work, dearie?" he asked bitingly, dark eyes smoldering. Elizabeth swallowed down a shudder at the fire in his onyx orbs. His glare was so chilling and so heated all at once…damn him if he did it on purpose.

"Are you in need of my services, Captain?" she responded coolly, meaning every bit of what the implication suggested. She didn't really give him a moment to answer. "No? Then I'm, ah, on break."

"Contrarily," Jack began, ignoring her comment except with a cutting look from his lidded and piercing eyes, "your aforementioned 'services'—though not the ones you seemed to be so eager to offer—are needed in the form of mending a sale that the bumbling Ragetti ripped. Over there."

Jack pointed patronizingly to where Bo'sun was yelling angrily at a frightened looking Ragetti, who was holding a sail and hanging his head, his shoulders hunched. Elizabeth hopped lightly down from her perch and leaned back against it, sliding her arms out and stretching.

"Are you suggesting that I do the sewing because I am a female?" she asked sweetly, batting her eyelashes at him. Jack took her arm firmly and began marching her forward; Elizabeth made a noise of outrage and jerked her arm away, drawing her nails against his skin harshly in the process. He spun and pushed her against the side of the ship, pinning her there with his body and slamming an arm down on either side of her, his eyes blazing.

"I have about lost my patience with you, Miss Swann. You will follow my orders like any other man aboard this ship and you will not continue to question my authority without facing the consequences. Do not deign to assume that I will not lay lashes to your back simply because your fragile feminity cannot handle it," here he paused, giving her a mocking and terrible smile, and she leapt in, jerking against one of his arms, pressing a palm to his chest and slamming him backwards. He stood strong enough to barely move, and laid his hand over hers, squeezing her fingers in a way that distracted her. Friend or foe, was he?

"You continue to test the waters, Lizzie," he growled softly, so many meanings behind his words and in his eyes that she was momentarily at a loss, trying to find them. Distracted, hypnotized, she wriggled her fingers, grasped his arm and pushed, slipping it from the side of the ship and unlocking the gate of his arms.

"How does your compass work, Jack?" she asked softly, menacingly, suddenly stuck overwhelmingly by Gibb's cryptic words and crushed in his eyes and by his aura. Jack's eyes flickered and he searched her face. He removed her hand from his chest, where she had felt his heart, and reached into his pocket, thrusting the compass at her roughly. She caught it against her chest, smirking slightly.

"That compass," he said dangerously, in a light voice, "is broken, my dear."

He took her arm and jerked her in front of him, taking her shoulder and leaning down close to her ear, pointing over her shoulder to Ragetti and Bo'sun, speaking patronizingly as if to a small unruly child.

"Now get to work."

A/N: Thoughts? Review, please!