Coming to Terms


Oh precious little thing
With eyes that dance around
Without their clothes.

'Cause I feel just like a map
Without a single place to go of interest
And I'm further north and south.
If I could shut my mouth
She'd probably like this.

-My Winding Wheel by Ryan Adams-


He sailed away free and clear of all the things that had bound him to London, the chains, the jail, the officers demands for Daniel Bryant to put him on trial despite his love's wishes. Jack had found haven in the Pearl, and his crew, the one that had impressed him with their loyalty beyond all belief. Gibbs had been waiting for him with pride and a strong embrace.

And they sailed away, all of them free criminals again thanks to Eva.

Despite it though, they only made it as far as Tortuga before they docked. It burdened Jack's every thought, every minute of the days and nights they travelled, to think of her sacrifice, another one. He couldn't come to terms with why someone like Evangeline, someone who so desired freedom and independence and the seas, wanted so badly to rescue everyone with her own surrender.

And because he couldn't figure it out, he drank until he thought he did. But he still didn't.

"Another one. Stronger this time."

Jack slammed his fist against the bar, ignoring the calls of women and sailors alike behind him. Gibbs' constant interest, Mary, the owner of The Salty Tusk tavern, could only smile knowingly at something she saw in her dear old friend's eye and fill up another tankard for him.

"Who or wot' ye drowning away now, Jack?"

She asked sweetly as he looked up with a shake of his head.

"Nothing but nothing."

"Always nothing. Fer twenty years s'been nothing."

"Ready yerself for another twenty too, Mary."

She laughed heartily and leaned over the bar, her large breasts nearly spilling out.

"Rumor is ye stormed out o' London. Now whatever would tempt ye of all men, t' risk those shores?"

"Me own masochistic nature, perhaps."

Her smile twisted as she wiped the wooden ledge of the bar and filled a few other glasses nearby.

"Rumors are rumors ere' though."

He nodded and gulped a mouthful of rum. "Aye."

"So m' left t' wonder what really led ye thar'?"

Her Irish croon inspired his mind, thinking of the green shores of Ireland and the black haired, blue eyed demon who kept his body burning all these miles beyond where she lay. Eva was one of them, and it had taken him all this time to officially accept it. She was half Irish born, dark as the night and blue as the ocean, and he knew exactly what that all meant but was loathing to follow through with anything that would risk her safety by using it to advantage.

Jack relaxed on his boot heels at the bar and gazed back at Mary, delighted by her interest in his sharing, but only half as interested in the actual sharing.

"Wot' is it Jack? Gold? A ship? A little lass ye can't seem t' let unravel from yer finger?"

He chuckled at her deeply and sighed before replying.

"All of th' aforementioned. An' it's killing me."

"I don't doubt that. Killing ye is easy an' has been fully accomplished before."

The thought of Lizzie sprang to him for a moment and he laughed.

"Why's this one different?"

"Why not?" He responded mockingly, making Mary smile. "She's th' last source of pure oxygen in this world."

"Ah, one o' those…"

"Yeah." He sneered with a sip of the rum. "One o' those blasted set o' legs."

"Does yer demon girl ave' a name?"

He groaned at the thought of speaking it, but nodded. "Evangeline Marley, Goddess o' Confusion."

Mary laughed richly and slid a fresh glass of rum to Jack before relaxing in front of him at the bar again.

"She Irish?"

"Yeah. Dark girl with blue eyes that seem t' drown the weak."

He pointed to himself and a look of strange interest came to Mary's eyes, the same look Jack had gotten when Teague brought up an idea in his study a month before.

"Black Irish eh…real trouble for ye there, Jack."

"Don't I know it."

"Real trouble. But could be elpful' all the same."

"Wot' do ye mean?"

She traced over the wet rings from his glasses and divulged to tell him everything she knew of her homeland.

"A lot o' those black ones ave' these otherworldly gifts, if ye will."

He looked at her in concentrated fear.

"Tricks an' the like. Nothing too dangerous, just curious."

"Curiosity is wot' usually kills me."

"Which is why she as' ye sailing all the way back ere' to ask me for help."

He smirked slightly and drank more as he listened to her soft voice above the crowds.

"Gibbs says yer after that O'Malley oard'. Clare Island?"

"Yeah."

"Ironic then, that this girl o' yours is wot' she seems t' be. Grace O'Malley had a secret son the same."

"The same as wot', Eva? A dark one?"

Mary nodded. "Grace was in love with one o' the blacks who came o'er from Spain. As far as I know by rumored tales from ome', she birthed a son quietly o' the same black blood. He was said t' have been the last of the pure blooded ones, but who really knows…"

Jack thought of the sapphire gem, same as Eva's eyes. He thought of the note, the one that had warned of a treasure's discovery, only by the consent of the last of the Black Irish. Could that be Eva?

"So Eva could be related t' him?"

"Could be, the connections o' the black Irish are few an' far between now. If she is one, then th' chances o' such are as good as the rum I serve."

He chuckled briefly and turned his face down, thinking more about Eva as herself and what she meant to him, than any sort of connection she could have to Grace O'Malley. He needed her badly, more badly than he'd ever needed anything or anyone in the whole of his life. He burned for her like a flame in a toxic, twisted sea. Eva was his energy, the only fresh breath he'd truly taken before. She was the world that had forever been crumbling under his boots.

"Wot' are ye doing ere' when the answer t' your problems is right where ye left it?"

Jack looked up from his thoughts to catch Mary's sparkling green eyes, the only trustworthy ones he'd ever known in all of Tortuga. She was right.

"If th' damned lass is in London, then don't ye think it's where ye ought t' be?"

"Easier plotted than accomplished, dear Mary."

"Oh you better ave' a good reason for that assumption Jack, or I'll be kicking ye back t' the Pearl meself."

He shook his head and finished off his last pint of rum.

"She's th' reason I'm even able t' sit here free tonight."

Mary eyed him confusingly.

"She sacrificed herself t' this fluty, cotton merchant for my release from the British Navy's prison."

At this Mary laughed a little, accepting it as one of Jack's great tales.

"Quite a lass t' do that for a man like ye."

"A foolish lass, but a good one all th' same, yes."

"Is a marriage t' come o' this trade?"

"I don't doubt it's already come an' gone in me time spent ere'."

Mary stood tall again shaking her head down at him.

"Ye left er' there to find out alone, did ye?"

He gulped nervously and rose at her level from the other side of the bar.

"I left her there t' serve her desired sentence."

"Desired? Or hopeful?"

"Hopeful o' what? Permanency? No doubt of that."

"No." Mary grabbed his arm quick across the counter and pulled him to come close to her serious eyes. "Hopeful of ye doing in return wot' she did for ye. She saves you from your cell an' you save er' from the one this gents' got er' in. Tell me ye didn't think o' that?"

His eyes widened with the understanding of what he managed to ruin out of his own subtle ignorance. He hadn't seen it, or thought it at all. His heart had been so confounded in stress and confusion at Daniel Bryant's easy release of him from prison that he'd never thought to justify some hidden point of Eva's beneath it all.

Jack leaned back away from Mary's eyes and forceful smile to catch his balance. He nodded to her and quietly but hastily turned back into the middle of the tavern, searching out Gibbs in the crowd of drunks and half nude women. When he found his old friend swooning with a lapful of girls and two fistfuls of rum, he grabbed him and gave call for the rest of his crew in the bar.

"Wot' in mother's name, Jack? Wot's going on nah?"

He pulled Gibbs along with a sneaky, knowing smile at Mary before they left the tavern.

"We ave' to turn around an' go back."

"Why?"

He sighed and quickened his pace for the Pearl in the night. "I ave' a debt needs repaying still in London."


London – one week later


"Have you anything 'borrowed', Miss?"

Eva sat with a twisted brow, tears welling deep in her eyes and shaking knees before the vanity, looking back into the glass to see her gifted maid, Annabelle, smiling kindly. She only nodded and reached her hand into a drawer on the table, pulling out an old white ribbon, one she'd borrowed from Elizabeth the day before Jack had taken her from the Cove.

She held it up over her head as Annabelle took it and began weaving it into the masterpiece of dark hair she'd created. With a final bow at the curling end of her neck, the older woman glanced into the mirror again.

"And wot' of blue?"

"Something blue?"

"Yes. I'm sure I can find something if ye can't."

"No." Eva replied soundly and rose to walk toward her bedside table. She carefully removed the necklace Jack had given her and returned, placing it into Anna's hand. "Something blue rather than pearls."

The woman nodded and draped it against her neck, careful not to damage her perfect hair. The stone was a focal point, gleaming brighter than anything Daniel had ever bought her and making her smile for the first time in three weeks.

"You look all too lovely for words."

Eva grinned tightly, not sure how much emotion she wanted to show and stood up again to fuss with the mass of silk and beading on her skirts.

"Thank you, Annabelle. I think I'll just need a few moments to myself."

"Of course, Miss."

She ducked out of the room with a few of Eva's dirty linens and shut the door. Annabelle wasn't gone five minutes though, before she suddenly burst right back in with a confused but curious smile on her face and a sizeable package in her arms.

"One last thing. Margaret found this on th' front step naught' of an hour ago. Seems someone sent it for you alone."

Eva looked at the rather flat object, bound loosely in a dark cloth and tied with a blue ribbon. She wasn't sure what to expect, but gently took it and moved back to the window seat as Anna left again. She sat it down upon a few pillows, realizing it was heavier than it had looked, and tore off the ribbon and cloth to make the tragic reveal.

It was a book. Not just any book of course, but a book about a woman, a pirate, who never let anyone stand her in her way of the sea, or happiness, or anything she truly wanted. It was a book about a woman who was stronger than she had proven herself to be; a woman who hadn't sacrificed everything for nothing at all really. Grace O'Malley's story had never looked so inviting and so wonderful to her before that moment.

Eva's tears fell heavy and quick across the leather sheen of the book's cover. She grasped it with both arms and hugged the large binding to her chest, resting her chin on it as she looked down through the window's glittering panels. Below, in the back of her new home, was a wedding ceremony to end all of them. A hundred or more souls walked about in fine dress and tapered suits, clinking glasses with laughter and thrill, waiting for a show.

And all she could do was curse her sign; Jack's sign.

"You bastard…" she cried with a whisper, tossing the book onto the floor harshly the moment she realized the book's power in her hands. The power to remember too much.

But as she moved to stand and walk for the door, ready to get everything over with and follow through with what she'd chosen to keep him safe, she saw something sticking out from the book. She knelt down in her white gown, throwing back the cover and reaching for the slip of parchment that lay with a flattened rose.

It had hardly browned at all and she breathed in its fresh sweetness with more tears and a growl for what he'd done. She didn't like that he'd been here all of an hour before, had dropped this off to drive her madder, or that he was still in London at all. Everything she'd given up for his safety, his freedom, and still he lingered somewhere dangerously.

"Greedy fool."

She shook her head and began peeling open the paper, creased with wax. Words flowed over the rough parchment like a novel, words that she never knew someone like Jack could have in him, luring her to them instantly.


Evangeline,

You beautiful fool. I wonder briefly, does your gentleman keeper sit by and watch you drink yourself into such a stupor as to come up with irrational plans and compromises? He must be London's own idiot to have fallen for your ruse, yet indeed he can't be as gullible as I though, right?

She found herself giggling away her tears, unexpectedly. They'd branded each other with the same insult.

Never mind his capacity for intelligence or mockery of his stance in society. I am writing this for you alone. My reasons are limited by the pain in my gut from what will be alcohol poisoning by week's end and the ache I feel in my heart just knowing you're trapped in something impossible. You're a caged bird, same as you were mine once. The only difference being, that I fear you won't sing ever again.

Her heart pounded as she heard a band of violins strike up below and she grasped the paper harsher to read.

Of course, perhaps I'm mislead and you really do love him dearly, and in which case this letter will serve little purpose at all except to service as my continuance in foolishness. But if I know you at all, and if I judge merely on the last words you ever spoke to me, err rather screamed at me, then I dread also knowing that you are being held there as nothing but sacrifice for me. And damn you for it, Eva.

The tears returned to her swollen eyes, with black washing on her soft cheeks as her eye paint spilled down.

You are too brilliant for you own good and too tricky for mine. I run free in the streets below you every night, wondering when he'll let you down from that crooked tower to breathe. Do you even breathe anymore? Or are your lungs consumed by nothing but feathers and fine silks up there? Can you even see the sun through these wicked grey skies? For I assure you the view from down here is worth little more than the dirt under my boots.

Eva stood and walked with the letter to take a seat at the opposing window, the one facing the back alley of the house. She thought maybe he would be there, with his voice so strong, so liberating in her head. But of course, he wasn't.

He's going to keep you locked away until you die. He won't give you the sea, or that treasure you so desire finding. He's not going to listen to anything you have to say, ever. It's the harsh truth of this place, and I can't stand to let you fade into it. This isn't you, London isn't you Evangeline Marley. Being his pretty little wife, giving birth to his sons and half as accepted daughters, it's not what you want. I know better than you do of this even, because I know what you do want.

She was fearful of what was coming, what could possibly be coming of this.

You want to be free, you want to live before you forget how to, and you want to see places and do things and risk yourself for the thrill of coming out of it alive every time. And you will come out of it alive, for I'll be by your side every moment of it. Interruption kept me from telling you any of this when you were on the Pearl near of a month ago, but I can tell you everything now and even more when I find a way to you, and I will.

I'm going to save you Eva, if it's the last thing I do, if it leads to my own death I'll get you down from that fortress and back on the sea where you belong. You must know, for if you don't I will have no choice but to reprimand your ignorance, but you must know how I feel, how I've felt all this time.

You are, I fear, my match, the one I've tried to ignore. I walk in circles just to get to a moment when I can stand still without thinking about you, and I chart routes on my maps all night, none of which I travel, because you're not with me. I drink myself into an incomprehensible sickness every evening, always in an attempt to drown you, to numb everything you've done to me.

You are mine, Eva, only mine. Let him have his way tonight, let him make you his wife, but in the morning, when he's left for Boston Harbor on his seafaring business venture, let me take you back. Meet me in the garden, the one I've stood in for three nights passing, watching the glow in your room before you sleep. Let me save you from this place and that coward.

Her heart had stopped beating paragraphs ago, and now the words were merely working to keep her breath coming and going in a stagger. How had he known so well of Daniel's plans for Boston the day after their wedding? How else could he known so much unless he was closer than she had realized, all this time? She held the paper with trembling hands as she heard someone call and knock on her door. But she had to finish, there was no choice at this point.

When the skies turn a brighter grey, I'll be waiting for you, where only you know. Leave everything behind for him to find and allow me to turn you back to the life you're meant to follow. If there was a way for me to save you from today and the bond he's forcing you to make with him, know that I would. But I had no way of finding out the timing or the determination of it all, and am forced to leave it as this for your safety. You will be his wife with a ring, but you will be my whole life with far more.

I love you like the ocean loves the embrace of the sky, Evangeline.

Don't linger, love. Meet me without fearing him.

Still yours, Jack


It was the longest letter she'd ever received, from anyone. And more than that, it meant more than any other letter, or kiss or hug or jewel from any other man, especially Daniel. He loved her, the conclusion of it all, even more so than the escape plan, was that it was all bound together with his love. The power of which covered her skin like a blanket, warming the coldness her cage had built up over three weeks.

Eva wiped her face dry and clear and fixed the creases in her dress and the messy tousle of her hair as she moved toward the doorway. She left Jack's note on the small table, folded into a pile of books.

The music moved onward with her steps from the room. Annabelle helped her down the main staircase, handing off her bouquet of perfectly set white roses, and making minor adjustments to everything as they neared the garden at the backside of the house. It was more than a wedding, because it was a business agreement for Daniel's standing in London. She smiled and played the part Jack had urged her to in his letter. She walked with grace that made jealous men swoon and the proper ladies turn their noses up in thought.

Evangeline married Daniel without a fight. This, only because she knew fighting wasn't necessary when she had something even better to save her. She'd freed a man who could in turn rescue her, and a few rings or kisses to make a bond in society didn't scare her. And the best part was Jack was in her head, laughing drunkenly through all of it.

When he wasn't in her head though and she was too focused on pleasing the many people she didn't know and never would know, Jack's true location was masked by nothing more than a freestanding cherry tree at the back of the property. He swore he was there for moral, un-established support, rather than his own entertainment. He also swore he wouldn't stay beyond the vows, for fear of being caught or losing his mind with sickened anger.

But for whatever reason, good, bad, or foreboding, he remained and watched after her right into the night.