Hello! I got five so I am updating, as promised. There are feels in this, and it makes me feel sappy, but maybe I'm okay at romance? I don't usually lay it on so thick, so please let me know if you like it/ want more of it. Seriously. If you don't tell me I don't know. Thanks you guys, keep reviewing.

-Han

Phillip gasped awake at the bottom of a ravine with a name of a siren on his lips, face first in the mud, barely breathing through the decaying leaves and heavy dirt that smelled heady and wet with layers of humidity. His arms trembled as he struggled to push himself up, out of the caked ground that choked the air from his lungs, nose pressed into the earth and unable to see. His body ached, pins and needles shooting through his body as he forced himself up in the heavy darkness of the night. His arms gave out; slamming him back into the ground as it came rising up to meet his sweaty face.

He coughed, face twisted in agony as he felt for the shallow slice along his collar bone, blood mixing with mud mixing with sweat swirling in an open wound, flesh open to the world's ministrations, to be played with as the muck and filth pleased.

He was tempted to lie there, limbs splayed awkwardly like a broken doll, bleeding slowly from the slit on his neck, to be done with as God wanted, as God willed. But the whispers stopped him, the sound of a voice hollowed out by fear and mistrust, the halting twitch of her hands trapped against his chest when he held her, the murmur of her lips in a language he didn't speak.

He locked his jaw, muscles tensing hard and coiling beneath his skin, and pushed again, forcing his body up onto his knees long enough to suck in air between his teeth. His head was bowed, facing the ground, stained with the trails of his blood, and he didn't pray.

Instead he made himself stand on his own strength, his legs quivering beneath him. He turned, facing the hill, the steep wall of a ravine, the climb into the light. He swallowed, the familiar fear of the pain, of the possibility of failure with no one but himself to turn to. It made him feel unsteady, without a God to blame.

His fingers clawed into the side of the gorge, bracken and coarse weeds bunched beneath his hands, digging into his flesh, scraping against his palms. Phillip hissed, curses passing his lips in a way foreign to his lips, that tasted wrong on his tongue.

Breathing hard, he pushed on, making slow progress as the cut across his throat throbbed and stung with every movement, every whisper of sticky wind against it. Halfway up and he slipped, body giving out against the uphill ravine, dirt and vegetation blanketing his body in the embrace of the jungle.

But he could still see Syrena's eyes, fathomless as the sea he used to chase so freely, lips like and angels smiling down from heaven and divinity in the way her voice threaded through his head. More than a prayer, more than scripture.

He started again, remembering the way the mermaid had looked at him, like she had never seen compassion, kindness, like his gentle touch was frightening. She hadn't known of a princess who valued a pirate boy more than herself, or a pirate that valued a missionary. She hadn't known of second chances and lunging dances of swords at play, of heroism and a smile turned towards her with all the achingly beautiful good the world had to offer. She hadn't known the goodness that people could offer, the sweet selflessness of breathing for another, dying for another.

Phillip would show her, in small steps of sweat-soaked skin and bruises, taking hits for her and tumbling down the side of a ravine when her tears wouldn't fall. Because he could make the choice, because his soul was already irrevocably tied to hers, in beauty and desperation and dry eyes.

He loved her.

So he reached the top with shaking limbs, stuttering heartbeats, and a calm mind, his thoughts focused on her, on saving her. He stumbled in the dark, bracing himself against strong trees for support his God couldn't give, wouldn't, didn't. He didn't know anymore.

"Syrena," he whispered at the sight of her, arms behind her head and chest heaving with exertion, trying to keep herself from falling too far into the water and risk having her arms ripped free of their sockets. Cold sweat beaded on her forehead, her eyes lost on the dark sky above her, wandering endlessly through the gaps in the trees, trying to see the stars.

He dropped to the ground behind her, knees scraping against rock, fingers fumbling for her bonds, undoing the knots in scrambled, unsteady motions.

"I'm so sorry," he murmured, blue-green eyes rapt on her face as it snapped in his direction, eyes open and vulnerable and so broken. "Syrena." Her name was his new hymn, a prayer on his lips that tasted sweeter than any words to God.

"Phillip, you are alive," she whispered, her accent making the words sound like a song, sung to the sway of the wind and the beat of the waves against the shore.

"Yes," he answered, so much more to say but 'I love you' was stuck in his throat, the words clawing at him trying to get out.

"You came for me." The hushed reverence in her voice did not go unnoticed, warming his soul and making his skin cold all at once. She hadn't believed he would, hadn't thought he would fight to make it back to the delicate being in front of him. He finished the last knot, and she moved to rest her body on the edge of the rocks. "Why?"

"You are different, are you not?" he said with an attempt at a grin. His face was pale, drawn with exertion and pain, and she could see so deep into his eyes. She felt like she was falling, so far and so fast, heart racing, pounding in her ears. His face was caught in her vision, dirty and bleeding and alive, and she'd never seen anything so beautiful. "Do you know not of kindness? Compassion?"

She did now.

Her head nodded of its own accord, pressure building behind her eyes and breaking, a dam falling through and water crashing past her senses. Warmth spread from her chest, radiating from her cold heart, wet water dried away by the beauty of the thing, of the feeling. She couldn't breathe, her body feeling heavier than it ever had before, crushing and welcome, starting behind her eyes and catching on her veins, running down to her fingertips. A tear slipped from her eye, a smile on her lips, choked on a laugh of relief.

Phillip was yanked back, torn from a perfect moment by the iron grip of the Quartermaster, his hands bruising on his arms as he held the missionary still, the fires of the other crewmen growing as they jumped the mermaid. White water sloshed in the dirty pool, splashing the pirates as they lunged for the elegant creature, and Phillip could still feel the calm, could still savor it on his tongue.

Syrena felt herself spread wide by the arms, crucified by her sisters for the magic in her tears, the value of her broken joy, her depthless love. A canister was pressed beneath her eye and she twisted, her tail flailing wildly, trying to find purchase enough to sink below the surface of the water and flee. To go back to her life of cold and of empty, where betrayal and love men didn't deserve couldn't touch her.

She didn't know if she could do it, and the tear sank lower into the metal tin, the last pieces of a fractured dream that could never be. She was shoved roughly back against the rock siding, her soft white skin scraping against the rough surface.

"Tears of sorrow, never," Blackbeard whispered soothingly, his voice deceptively sweet and calming, flowing over skin like water. "Mermaids be too tough for that."

Syrena hissed, back arching off the edge of the pool, succumbing to feral hate, animal fear. Phillip caught her eyes, and they were alive in the same way she was, desperate and clinging to the love she thought she'd managed to find, the need and want and desire and safety.

"But tears of joy. They say they be more potent anyway," Blackbeard finished mockingly, standing straight as he took the small canister from Angelica's numb fingers, a grin half shadowed in the darkness. He was so much worse than the mermaid, so consumed by the blackness in his soul he had nowhere to go, no light to claw his way towards. He was broken from the inside out by his own hand.

"Syrena, on my word, I had no part in this!" Phillip screamed, trying to launch himself from the arms that caged him, his heart leaping to his throat and his vision focused on her shattered eyes. She sucked in a breath, daring to hope, daring to let herself fall, to submerge herself in the dangerous beauty of love.

She stayed silent, but she hoped he could see the understanding in her eyes, could see the belief that transcended the devotion Phillip had in his God, that went beyond the soul until it hit something deeper. Something that never let go.

He tried to smile, but the expression was shaky, unstable. His eyes were hard, turned to Blackbeard with something so much like fury, so much like agony and rage rolled into one expression.

"Let her go," he commanded, the demand in his voice bounding off the trees and echoing through the jungle, the darkness consuming the sound and spitting it back out at them. "You don't need her now."

Blackbeard smirked, hollow and evil and haunting. Phillip refused to shiver at the sight, to quake like he had at the bottom of the ravine, when giving up was so simple, and slipping into a void he'd been so sure he understood would have been a gift. But there was a woman he loved on sight, so completely he couldn't turn away from her, and maybe he understood the way the princess that had saved his life had looked at the pirate captain. Maybe he understood the hopelessly devoted look in her eyes.

"Let her go? No," Blackbeard answered, not even the ghost of humanity flickered in his eyes. Only emptiness and hatred. "Secure her bonds. We leave her with her own."

The corpses of Syrena's sisters screamed at her as she thrashed against the men tying her back to the wall, her teeth bared and body writhing. She didn't want to die here, not when she finally felt so achingly complete.

Phillip was pulled away, his body jerking without his minds conscious permission, trying to reach her, trying to touch the mystical creature that had taken him from his faith and into a scorching heat that bathed his heart in the soft fires of a new heaven. One on Earth.

She met his eyes, and she seemed to tell him to go, her chin suddenly sticking up in the air again, confident and haughty, promising to see him again. Promising to be there for him when he came back with her. Because she believed he would come back for her.

He let himself be pulled away, a last look, last whisper of goodbye, a shadow of all the emotion they had been consumed in, a lingering kiss through the hot air between them.

Xx

Anna's ribs protested the harsh bonds, thick rope digging into her abdomen and all the little hurts and pains she'd accumulated since London twisted her senses, forced them to bend around the dull ache that settled deep into her bones. Her body was tired but her mind was alive, tumbling over itself with an energy she knew better than she did herself. The kind of fire that consumed and tore at the pieces of her lost soul and crammed them back together with an unforgiving efficiency that left her reeling and tasting the wind.

Her heart stuttered in her chest, begging for another dance, flowing movements of give and take that could leave her enraptured and barely breathing, hanging onto only a thread of conscious thought while the rest of her was given over to the fluid nature of her sword. Those moments were carnal, animal, and tied to a tree left her feeling like a trapped bird, one begging to spread its wings and feel air kiss the underside.

She shifted experimentally, her shoulder brushing against Jack's comforting warmth, so different from the sticky heat of the night around her that pushed against her senses and tried to make them cloudy. Jack was an assurance that amounted to heartbeats and quick thinking, and the way his shoulders tensed as he rolled his wrists against the tight bonds, searching for weaknesses in the knots. He was warm in the way embraces were, and the way lightning was when it strikes the ground during a storm, electric and terrifyingly perfect and beautiful and home.

The delicate skin of her wrists chaffed, but she twisted them anyway, rhythmic motions to match the swell of the sea in her mind while her eyes searched out Barbossa, who sat awkwardly sprawled out with his wooden leg at an odd angle, his eyes seeming to roll continuously in exasperation. She liked to think he was searching the heavens for answers, but she knew the truth was that he was tired and aching and hungry for a revenge close enough to touch but too far away to grip.

"How's that escape route workin'?" she asked as lightly as she could, her voice coming out tense and wired with the same energy still flooding through her fingertips, refusing to let her sit still long enough to take a proper breath around the slowly healing injuries she'd accumulated on the streets of London.

"Here's your chance to improvise," Barbossa quipped back, directed at both of them. Jack smiled blandly at him, all teeth as he rolled his wrists again, the tan planes of his face twitching slightly at the pain. Anna's shoulder bumped against his in silent reassurance, enough pressure to send familiar sparks dancing across his body.

"I'm attempting it," he answered, quietly reveling in the scorching fires their skin made together, flowing between them in equal measures. "I might be able to get a hand loose," he said stiffly, alternating between rotating his wrists towards and away from himself, all in careful movements that lessened the sharp bite of thick cord against his skin.

He'd thought Barbossa was doing the same, gentle, slow motions of his hands hovering around the peg leg to ease the pressure. A slick pop made a chill crawl up his spine, jaw tense and hands shake for a moment at the wet sound of meat disconnecting from wood. Barbossa had twisted off his false limb with barely a wince and relieved sigh as the hard weight slid from his body, and his barely healed flesh could breathe.

"Oh good, you've got a knife," Anna commented hopefully as Barbossa slid his bound hands down the steadily thinning peg until his fingers wrapped all the way around, and the wood there was comfortably worn down, easy to grip. He brought it up towards his face, breathing in the scent of wood and his own sweat-slick flesh. Barbossa's lips wrapped around the cork, weak teeth digging in and ripping out, the intoxicating smell of rum covering the sick meat of his damaged limb.

"Better," he declared, spitting the cork into his lap and taking a long swallow of the heady liquid. It went down smooth, so many years accustomed to the taste, and it didn't matter to him where it came from, formerly attached to his stump of a leg or a few drops sliding off another man's glass.

"I want one of those," Jack said quietly, longing itching at the back of his throat with the reminder of the last time he'd had anything to drink beside white water flung by ravenous mermaids. His hands stuck out like a greedy child when Barbossa moved to pass leg-turned-bottle across the small breath of space between their trees. The older man wheezed slightly, bent in half to try and reach him with the tight ropes digging into his abdomen. The Spanish had done their job well, taking away Jack's freedom with an efficiency that almost frightened him, pinning him down at the wings.

"Here's to revenge, sweet and clear," he said quietly, watching Barbossa's face twitch as he raised the rum to his lips. He thought about Blackbeard, and the way his ship had come alive, the way rope had bit into his skin in such a familiar way.

Jack silenced his thoughts with long swallows of sweet tasting rum, and let his eyes slide closed to a dark world, dark jungle, dark thoughts. He couldn't remember the last time he slept, and his body was running on stuttering heartbeats and adrenaline fueled blood, but the small smirk was still at the corners of his lips, spark in his eyes. They were going to get through this, destroy the Fountain of Youth and retire to the Pearl, where Jack would bring back all the little scattered pieces of Anna that had been lost on the journey with all the slow, sweet touches he didn't let himself indulge in in front of so many.

When he passed her the rum, she took it with a soft look, one that expected promises and kisses and adventures. He would give them, all of them, all of himself. He thought she knew that.

"Here's to...tomorrow," Anna said finally, her eyes moving from him to the stars, watching them with interest. "May we meet it with a lesser burden on our shoulders." She took a long swallow, her eyes sliding closed, sheltering the unequivocally beautiful blue from his sight. He tried not to be entranced by the way her throat moved and failed, barley managing to resist the urge to lean into her and just breathe.

"Revenge, ye say?" Barbossa asked cautiously, gaze narrowed on Jack as the young man rolled his wrists again. He nodded without looking up, teeth worrying his bottom lip and catching on wind-chapped skin.

"It's rather obvious you're here to dispatch Blackbeard. If not, you would have seen the Chalices and gone, with or without Bonny holding a gun to your head," Anna noted, passing back the older man's leg with careful, steady hands.

"King George, privateer. Wig. Cheap theatrical facade. Not buying it," Jack surmised quickly, his voice clipped and short as he watched emotion trickle through the careful mask his old enemy had put in place.

"You weren't there that night," Barbossa whispered, his voice a hushed crack of old pain and age that had seen too much. Anna watched him speak intently, the way his eyes grew far and away as he seemed to forget where he was, suddenly back to face unspeakable horrors that left him numb.

"What happened?" she asked softly, vulnerable and reassuring in a way she had never been to him before. Hadn't been to anyone but Will and Jack. The world was changing beneath their feet, enemies becoming friends and old friends enemies. Jack could taste the differences on his tongue, and he didn't know if he liked them.

"I'd stolen The Orion two weeks after Tortuga, left with a crew an' didn't look back. She was beautiful, nothin' on the Pearl, but strong with the wind. We were off the coast of Hispaniola when we came under attack. No provocation nor warning nor offer of parley," he started, voice gruff and unsteady, soft, like he was speaking to the wind. "We were peppered with cannon fire. And then the sea beneath the Orion began to roil. The Pearl was pitching and yawing violently. Every plank, every rail, every spar all at once began to creak."

His voice was a ghost, whispering across the distance and screaming in their heads. Agony laced his words and nothing could cover the crack in his voice, how hollowness tinged his words.

"The rigging had come to life, and our own ship turned against us. Tangling the crew, wrapping around them like snakes. And wrapping around my leg," he said quietly, staring down at the scarred over stump, a piece of himself he could never get back. "But me arms were free and my sword was at hand." His eyes grew hard, vicious and scorching through the darkness, lighting the night with fury and pain and all the hatred his heart could muster.

"I am the master of my ship, not Blackbeard. I am the master of my fate, not Blackbeard!" he nearly screamed, his face twisted and voice shaking. He leaned back against the tree, holding onto his wooden appendage with slack hands. "So I did what needed done." Barbossa punctuated it with a long drink, a triumphant look hovering in his eyes. When he spoke again it was grave and quiet, slow and more human than Anna had ever heard. "I survived."
He leaned down with practiced fingers to reattach his leg, the only thing that kept him useful and alive, that kept him on the rolling tides of the sea. Jack watched with an aching sorrow that sat uncomfortably in his chest, like a tightness he couldn't be rid of.

"I care not for King George or tavern yarns that give hope for a healed limb. But I'd give my left arm for a chance at Blackbeard," Barbossa said quietly, bolts of strength shooting up and down his words, piracy in the blood rising to the surface. Jack could hear it, could feel it in a universal way he thought all pirates could. The sea had risen and taken the three of them, they belonged to it, completely, and Barbossa could only survive without it for so long.

"Not your right?" Anna asked softly, a final twist of her hands against the slowly loosening rope.

"I need me good arm to drive my poisoned blade through his heart," he answered with a grim smile, all teeth and burning anger just beneath the surface. His face had run free of the caked white powder, sweat drawing it away in slow increments, and his uniform was dirty, frayed. He looked like a pirate.

Jack and Anna rubbed at their wrists absently, shedding the ropes to the floor of the jungle one after the other, and staring understandingly at the older man as he came back to himself, as he shed the mask and the careful plans and became the pirate he should have been all along.

"We'll see you get the chance, mate," Jack said lightly, spreading his arms wide in an early goodbye as he moved to stand, looping an arm through Anna's for leverage. The ropes moved with them, pinning them to the tree and giving them what they needed to climb up and into the darkest corners of heaven.

The night was hot, sticky and sweet against Barbossa's face as two pirates leaned into each other and skimmed their boots against the bark of a rough palm, already beginning to slide out of sight. He leaned back, looking past their elegant forms and into the stars that watched the sea with glittering intensity, tired body resting against the tree. He promised them and himself, that he would return, lost again amongst waves that knew him by the hoarse shout of his command over a crew and cooing sweet whisper to the lapping water. He let himself be content in the knowledge that Jack and Anna were with him, not against, and that the night would end eventually.

The sun would rise, and he would greet it with lighter shoulders, a lighter soul.