Chapter 30: On the Coast of Somewhere Beautiful


Strong like a mother holds her child
Free as horses running wild
And real as a prayer on a lonely night
And sure as the ocean tide

Oh love
Oh the many colors that you're made of
You heal
You bleed
You're the simple truth
And you're the biggest mystery…

-Oh Love by Brad Paisley and Carrie Underwood-


"Makin' me believe she wanted me child. Despicable race, th' lot of ye."

Jack mumbled darkly under his breath, sitting beside Elizabeth at the wooden table in the kitchen, watching as she cut the seams of his stitches. She just rolled her eyes and went on snipping at the perfectly healed wound from front to back.

He played with small bits of excess cooking flour under his fingers and kept on demeaning everything he still knew Eva was to him. Whether he really wanted to or not.

"Wot' did she think? That lyin' to a pirate was a smart way t' hold his trust?"

"Jack. I don't know."

Elizabeth was frustrated with his moving around and the way he snapped about her friend, her little sister in many ways. She knew better than him, that Eva must have had a good reason for what she did, all women in her position do.

"I'm certain she didn't mean to hurt you, though."

"A good job she did o' it then."

"What are you saying?" She stopped when all of the thread stitches were pulled free of his skin and looked him directly in the eye, "Are you truly hurt by her lie? Or is that only what you'd like her to think?"

He said nothing.

"She's just a girl, Jack. She was scared for your life. She said something that wasn't entirely true to defend your honor, never realizing the power it could have against her own mind, a still mind in comparison to yours." Lizzie wrung out a bloodied rag in a bowl and stood up, glaring down at him an added moment, "Is that so wrong of us women, then? To want to protect what we love against all odds?"

He could see the nerve he'd unknowingly struck in his dear friend; the one that he often times did under looming circumstances, upon topics that triggered memories of William Turner. Elizabeth was set to defend Eva because of it, much the same way Eva had defended him with the faux claim of pregnancy. He was going to lose this battle. He knew it. So he just shook his head in response and rose to leave the room.

He was stopped only once more, "Jack?"

"Wot'?" He asked turning back to Elizabeth's brightened auburn eyes under him.

"You can't hold this against her at any means and you know it. She sat by your side for two weeks as Gibbs tells it. And who's to say," she paused and handed him his shirt again, "that she doesn't want to carry your child, to make a family with you, someday at best?"

Jack shrugged and threw his shirt on, his mind a wild fever of everything being said.

"Eva's sacrificed a lot for you. Maybe you should sacrifice your damn pride for her this once."

He wasn't sure he liked that. Jack's pride was his barrier of defense in the drama of real life, with women. But, with that and a kiss on Lizzie's head in gratitude for her medicinal help, he left the kitchen and house to take a walk around the island. There were a million and one things to think about, most of them concerning what he was at risk of losing, all because he was too stubborn to let the obvious cover a mistake.


It was not much longer into the hour, as Elizabeth carried a freshly folded pile of linens toward Eva's room, that she heard shouting, stomping and incessant movement. With her ear pressed to the door curiously, she could then half understand a blend of words coming from both Little Jack and Eva alike, as they rushed from one end of the room to the next.

"You'll never catch me, giant!"

There was a forced, humoring roar from Eva as Elizabeth heard her son screech and turned the knob to see him scooting across the room for the bed. He barely hopped up on his small legs as Eva lunged for him, her teeth bared and her arms raised like a monster.

"I'm going to eat you, my little pirate…"

Jack held his sword out at her and thrust it about, "Never, never!"

"You look so tasty."

Her teasing continued even after she had seen Elizabeth watching with an idle smile in the doorway. She chased Little Jack down off of the bed, crawling after him to the floor, until she picked up a fierce pace on foot again. They ran in circles for a steady amount of time before Eva suddenly felt her bare feet shifting underneath of her, wobbling almost. Dizziness preceded her as she slowed and tried to catch her breath.

Little Jack came to her side, worried, and began tugging on her to continue chasing him, "Eva! Eva! Be the giant!"

She patted his head and worked to get her balance back, but instead, the moment she let her foot slide out in front of her to run again, she felt herself falling down to the floor. Eva fainted in a heap at Little Jack's feet as Elizabeth rushed to her aide anxiously.

"Oh my word…! Eva?"

She turned her over to rest her head on her lap as she urged her son to run and get Teague in his study. Jack darted away down the hall and Elizabeth sat with a pale and semi-conscious Eva in the middle of the room's floor.

"Evangeline," she patted a cloth from her dress pocket over her clammy skin, "Open your eyes, dear. It's Elizabeth, I'm right here."

"Lizzie…" she finally sighed, fluttering her eyes up at her friend, her sister. "I didn't mean to lie to him."

It was an unexpected statement, one that was unnecessary for the condition she was in, but still, Elizabeth couldn't help thinking it meant something truer, something Eva obviously regretted more than anything. Teague arrived only a minute later in a flurry of nervous words and assistance as he helped Liz pull Eva to her feet, and then toward a close chair. Little Jack was sent to fetch a cup of water from the pitcher in the kitchen, while Elizabeth wet a cooler rag and laid it to rest on her forehead.

Teague finally asked in a whisper, "Wot' happened t' er'?"

"She was running around with Jack, sword fighting, just playing. And then she fainted."

"Th' color is all but gone from 'er cheeks." Softly, Teague held Eva's face and knelt before her. "Eva, dear, ye look terribly ill. How do ye feel?"

Her head lolled for a moment as she widened her eyes and breathed heavily.

"Very hot, it's too warm in here."

Teague and Elizabeth both felt comfortable, especially with the February wind howling in from the open windows.

"On the contrary, it's rather cold in here. Perhaps you're falling ill as Teague says."

"No," Teague interrupted as he looked deep into Eva's eyes, "No, sickness isn't th' matter, Liz."

"What then?"

He smiled at the way Eva's brow turned up confusingly, for he saw something in her eyes alone that told him this was all beyond a flu, "I do believe our little Eva has other reasons for 'er spell."

Little Jack returned with a spilling cup of water and gently handed it up to Eva, as she smiled down at him and ruffled his hair. She sipped as Lizzie spoke finally.

"Which are, what Teague?"

"Oh don' tell me ye can't see it, an' compare it t' your own time spent fainting all o' five years gone now."

Elizabeth's eyes lit up then as she knelt by Teague's side, touching Eva's shaking leg and seeing just what he saw, the magnetism of truth hidden away, the truth that had so fleetingly been a destructive fib.

"What are you talking about?" She asked them both nervously, feeling as though she were about to vomit. "Why are you looking at me like that, Teague? Lizzie?"

Together they laughed lightly at her, nodding in agreement, as Teague wiped away the falling drops of water on her forehead from the wet cloth.

With a sigh, Elizabeth stroked her hair with a smile and whispered, "It appears you haven't lied to Jack after all, Eva."

And with that being said and understanding met, she nearly fainted in their hands a second time.


Jack felt sure he'd walked clear across the island, maybe twice even. He'd made it as far as loneliness would let him, as far as he could get from the noises and the life of the barricaded town of ships laid to rest. He had made it to the low hills that cascaded down the south walls to the fortress. They led to only a beach, one he'd sat on alone too many times in his life, a place where he'd contemplated the truth of living and being and going on.

And somehow, he always managed to.

He forgave Eva miles and miles back on his walk, and probably miles and miles of thinking and hours before that. There was little reason for him to be mad, other than his own foolish will to let the anger boil up in the first place. Elizabeth was right; she must have had a good enough to reason, one that had no doubt proven him a good man, a strong one, a protector and a provider against Daniel Bryant's seemingly harsh words.

In every crevice of his mind, he could hear her. And in every corner of his heart, there she sat.

"Ere', let me help you, quickly."

He saw blue eyes, a stolen satchel and a dirtied bunch of skirts in the road beneath him. And then he saw her disappear, gone for bigger adventures. Ones that led her right back beneath his feet again, somehow.

"Need t' find those sea legs o' yours boy…"

Nets and tiny hands; he saw chopped black hair and a gash in her pretty, sun kissed arm.

"I acknowledge that you're tending to my wound, but I won't show gratitude for your own mistake."

"I wouldn't ave' forgotten th' damned lock, if ye hadn't set 'bout me room like a siren this morning."

"Your weaknesses are your own. You needn't take them out on my arm!"

That was the first time he had witnessed the fight in her, the strength and will. Jack knew he was never the same again after that day. From there it was a straight shot of deliverance to Shipwreck as promised, where he'd left her to serve an unnecessary sentence of apprenticeship under Teague. If only he'd known what he would have to come back to, what she'd be, and how unpredictable a thing learning could be for a young girl with ambitions, he might have held onto her a little longer out of fear for his livelihood alone.

If only he hadn't given her up after that very first taste.

"I am nothing more than a girl on the run, Jack. What could ever interest you so about that?"

"I've been a man on th' run me whole life, Eva. Figure it out…"

"I could leave ye at th' Cove with naught more than a handshake an' tip of me hat..."

"…which would be wise."

"But m' not after wisdom ere', lass."

"Then what are you after?"

There was that first kiss, the first claim of sweetness and bitterness and rebellion in her. She was right there beneath him, giving herself to him, letting him come in finally. And he instead gave into the calls from an anchoring deck.

Stupid, bloody stupid, he thought to himself now, as his boots struck the soft grasses of a lower hill spanned out a good twenty feet from the shore below. He heard the bark of a familiar little dog and followed it.

"I'm glad you consider me a fair equal."

"After that spectacle t'night, if I don't…I'll most likely 'ave me prick torn an' fed to the dogs."

"I wouldn't dream of sharing any single part of you with the dogs. Especially THIS part…"

Katang Port and a fresh tattoo; a bar fight and another night spent reminding himself why he came back for her at the Cove in the first place. Jack's loins burned with an ancient fire that only Eva and the thought of her had ever sparked with such immediacy before. He stumbled across the flat grasses until he ran into Dill, barking his head off in the middle of the sloping hill.

"Wot'?" He asked as he came near and reached down to scratch behind his ears. "Wot' are ye barking all th' way out 'ere for?"

Dill continued to howl as he ran about in circles near Jack, jumping through the grass. Jack's eyes followed him a short distance father until they ran across something settled on the ground a yard ahead. He walked to the brown looking object, only to realize it was a boot, a small boot at that. He knew the second he lifted it from the ground, that it was hers.

"Where is she, mutt?" Jack shoved the boot angrily down to Dill's nose as his head turned, "Show me where yer mum's at."

The dog skipped around in the direction the waves were crashing and echoing with the wind. Jack followed near enough, his eyes falling upon her second boot only another yard or so further, but closer to the beach. He picked it up as well and ran the rest of the way down the rocky path, his mind a sudden rush, an instant battle of all things evil in the world for some reason.

His own boots hit the beach minutes later, and he pulled them off to gain a better balance on his toes. Jack kicked up sand, running, hurrying to where Dill had disappeared down the curve of the small shore to the more secluded bay. Distorted, twisted things floated around in his head, preparing him for what he might find, what he couldn't bear to find. He thought of calling out her name, and would have, if he hadn't so easily and so quickly staggered upon the only scene he hadn't expected.

There, a short walk further down the private shore, Eva was crumbled at the water's edge, her head hanging in her hands as the waves crashed over her folded, haphazard legs. Her long black tresses blew with the easterly wind, tangling in the beaded necklaces and gems he could just see dangling off her neck. Her dress, another tattered and self-fashioned one from the Indian silks he'd purchased especially for her, drifted with the incoming waves and then clung to her bare legs as the water tumbled back to sea, each time.

She was mesmerizing to him, even washed in the pain that radiated from every bit of her. The pain he'd caused no doubt. The pain that drew him to her, like a fly to a flame, his eyes stuck on every tiny detail, from the way her hands trembled against her hidden face, to the way her legs made a personal intent in the wet sand, a mold that fit her like he was sure his body could even better.

The water rushed over his feet as he walked towards her, inching ever closer, until finally, he was within arm's reach and not stopping. He kept going, kept stepping behind her, his feet sinking in the sand her body was, his legs bending to kneel just against her, his hands moving out to hold her shaking, freezing shoulders.

Eva gasped with a choke of tears in her hands and looked up to see the distant, grey horizon. The touch she felt didn't have to be determined with a view, she knew it. She just, hadn't ever expected it.

"Vang'line. Yer shivering, darlin'."

No words were returned, even as he lowered himself to the sand and crashing waves. Not when he wrapped his legs around hers at either side, nor when he did the same with his arms, sliding them down each of hers, feeling every goose bump and raised hair.

"Wot' are ye doing all th' way out 'ere alone?"

Eva felt his breath, hot, sentimental on her neck, her ear, but she couldn't bring herself to look at him or talk.

So he begged then, "Please," whispering, stroking through her hair the way he loved doing, "Talk t' me."

His arm around her was strong, as though he were keeping her from what he somehow knew she was thinking of, what she had been contemplating silently. He was that arm, the one she'd felt such a long time ago, the first night they slept by each other's side. Jack was that string, the one that refused to let her sail away or fly away or sink any further than her knees would allow in the sand.

Finally, against the wind she said with a teary gulp, "I let you down. I hurt you, Jack."

"No." His answer was fast, reassuring. "No, you've ne'er let me down. And m' not hurt. Jus' concerned."

"Because I lied to you…"

He shook his head where she couldn't see and rested it to the back of hers, breathing in the scent of her wild jasmine soap, like always.

"No. Concerned because I didn't know it could affect me like that."

Eva wiped a tear from each of her eyes and hugged his arm around her waist tight.

"Affect you how?"

"All kinds o' ways," he sighed and pulled her deeper into him, eyes closed and counting her breaths. "I've come t' realize I do want that, Eva, little ones, a family. Ne'er thought I did or could."

"With whom, preferably? A woman who won't lie to you, I'm sure."

At this, she felt him suddenly shift their position, gently spinning her around in his arms until she was cradled and facing him, their legs tangled and bodies falling back and forth with the incoming waves on the wet shore. Jack looked directly into her eyes, catching the flicker of green amidst all the blue, and brought his forehead down to hers, entrancing every bit of her then.

"You had e'ery good intention in mind when ye made that claim t' Daniel, t' me. I know that."

"I did."

"An' that's enough."

"How can that be enough? Is forgiveness such a difficult thing for you to let me win back?"

"Wot's t' be forgiven? Wot's t' win back? You 'ave me; I'm right 'ere."

Eva sighed almost in annoyance, but more so confusion with him.

"You were so angry that day, when we arrived back here. You've ignored me every moment since then. And now you come down here, readily willing to charm me into thinking it's all well and good again."

"It is though, Eva."

Silence fell but he continued.

"I'm a proud sort o' bastard, you already know as much. Can't very well ward off fear with utter humbleness, now can I?" Eva's tears spilled slowly while he talked, but she acknowledged every little word that was spun and shook her head at the question. "Liz'beth put me in my place this morning."

"She's good at that," Eva teased, knowingly.

Jack chuckled briefly and caressed her cold cheeks, "She is. Good nough' in fact, to bring me 'ere, back t' you to apologize."

"You don't have to--"

His hand over her mouth stopped the words as his deep glare sunk her into listening again.

"Eva, I saw yer boots tossed aside on th' trail down 'ere. Ye ran here, didn't you?"

She nodded against his palm with a tightened, confused brow.

"Thought so, running from wot', now that I don't know. Maybe I don' need t' know." He breathed deep, focusing on the way her eyes shifted back and forth between his solemn, grotesque ones. "All I know is I saw those boots, I heard th' dog barking his bloody head off, I came t' the beach and saw you 'ere and only one thing came t' me mind. An' believe me darling, I don't ever want t' have to think that thought again. Ye understand?"

Again, a swift nod as he lowered his hand.

"Good. Because I can't bear th' thought o' losing ye. Not now. Not when I finally 'ave ye safe again."

"A well and safe hypocrite."

He rolled his eyes with a tired laugh, "Now don't worry 'bout that, I'll make an honest liar out o' you yet, love."

Eva faintly smiled as Jack wiped the tears from her eyes.

"I'm sorry otherwise, for delivering false hope." She stopped a short time and lifted one of his hands from her leg to settle it upon her stomach as Jack watched on oddly. Eva pressed his palm hard against her wet silk dress, her watery eyes rising a moment later to hold onto the weary gaze in his. "If only I'd chosen a fortnight later to lie to you. I might have succeeded in the task."

His brow creased down, lost, unsure of her point, but patient in waiting.

"Grace brought us quite a bit more than rubies in Ireland, Jack."

"Wot' are ye--"

She cut him short with her trembling lips dancing on his. "I am carrying your child. I only just discovered it before you did me here today."

"You…" he sighed in wonderment, eyes wide, bringing his second hand to also rub and press to her flat stomach, "You can't be--"

"I am." More tears flourished in a flash. "And in all the running around I've done with you, all the risks I've come to see," Eva breathed deeply but the wetness still soaked her cheeks as her lips trembled, "I've never been so afraid in all my life, as I am now."

Jack couldn't help but to hold her shaking form, watch her, learn to understand Eva's only fear.

"What can I possibly know about having a child? About being a mother?"

Her jaw chattered as he held her face, bringing it close to his.

"I'm not Elizabeth. I'm can't possibly be your mother, I don't know what I'm doing."

Jack's forehead met hers, his fingers and rings twisted up in her misty curls, just breathing her worry in.

"She defeats the Royal Navy an' the Company's finest, and still, it's bats an' babies she's afraid of," his teasing whisper made Eva shrug even past her own nervousness as she clung to him. "What am I going t' do with ye, lass?"

"Probably lose your mind."

"Too late, love."

That's when he finally smiled sideways down at her, his dark eyes glowing in the late light of day from under his red sash. The twitch of his nose, the wiggle of his mustache against her upper lip, all of it convincing her of the childish joy her words had brought back to him, for real this time.

"My baby, our baby; it has a nice ring to it, ay?"

"Yes," she was cut by a simply delivered kiss and then a dreamy sigh, "It does. The best."

A fit of shocked laughter broke between them, eyes sparkling from one to the other as he claimed heartily, again and again, "I've loved ye so long, Eva Marley. My little Irish gem. An' now yer me whole life, me whole world."

Her face cupped in his hands drew a wide, teary-eyed smile as she replied, "And I love you all the more, Jack."

"All th' more than wot'?" He teased with kisses all about her face.

"All the more than the day before and the day before that; I love you all the more with each passing second, every crash of every single wave on this earth. That's the way I love you."

And then the advantage of another passing second was stolen by Jack. With one hand cradling her body against his and the bubbling rush water, his other held the nape of her neck, fingers twisting about on her coal spindles as his lips and tongue did the same to her mouth. It was the taste he was understandably greedy of, the one that he would let kill him, bring him back to life and kill him all over again just for the fun of it. Her tongue did not fight for control this time, like so many other moments before. Eva let him have complete freedom over her and allowed Jack to simply feel the contentment welling inside of her.

The rebel was still there though. He knew it too well for it not to be. She showed herself when they fell down to the sandy water together, covered in nothing but each other's love and skin and the sea and forgiveness. Kisses were like rain in a storm, matching the curvature of her neck, shoulders, her breasts over her dress and her thighs through silk and lace. Jack lifted her long, olive legs one by one, kissing from toes to the arc of her ankles, up the back of her calves and to the crook of her knee, remembering all the little bits of her that he never truly needed to be reminded of to feel throughout the long days anyway.

She was his. Not Daniel Bryant's. Not London's. Not Shipwreck's. Not St. Pierre's, just his.

In the end, he came to realize that the good message, the one she was meant to deliver to him, had been coming in pieces all along, ones he'd undoubtedly collected forever. Eva was his match. She was the pirate that few women dared to be and even fewer men believed could exist. She was the thief who stole the most impossibly, black soul in the ocean and reminded it how to shine loyally in love. She had conquered an adventure of historic proportions, a feat of hidden infamy her first round in the field, and taught him, the expert, a thing or two in the process.

Evangeline Marley was everything that Jack Sparrow was said to be to the world, and more than that, she was his rebel heart, the one that no one had ever seen or known before her. Better yet still, she was the compass to his ever wavering pace of confusion on this earth.

And unlike all the other pretty compasses, she was always able to lead him back North, and back home.