I hope you enjoy the very very altered version of Elizabeth and Will's talk below deck! I know making them just friends means he no longer gets to cop a feel of her boobs, but there you have it. All he got out of it was a cursed medallion, anyway.

Meanwhile, I think they're pretty sweet together as childhood friends. Their relationship works very differently and it was fun to play around with.

8

When Jack is ashore he beats his way
Towards some boarding-house
He's welcomed in with his rum and gin
And he's fed with his pork and scouse
For he'll spend and spend and never offend
But lay drunk on the ground, ground, ground
When my money is gone it's the same old song
Get up, Jack! Will, sit down!

"The girl's blood didn't work, did it?" Jack said confidently as twenty pistols were cocked and aimed at his head.
Barbossa froze mid-walk with his back to him.

"Hold your fire!" he barked, spinning on his heel to stare at Jack menacingly.

"You know whose blood we need." he stated.

Oh-ho. Watch out, William. Jack's a-coming back.

He smirked with a vengeful, self-satisfied glee.
"... I know whose blood ye need."

Elizabeth bandaged her hand too fast, in a downright temper. Will sat across from her, unapologetically scowling, twisting his thumbs together as he waited for her to say something.

"I know you're a good man, Will. We brought you up to be." she sighed finally, still wrapping away, "That's why I don't understand why you left him there."

"Miss Swann -" he began respectively despite his disagreement with her.
"Oh, for goodness' sakes, Will. Just call me by my name. We're not in Port Royal any more."

"Elizabeth, then," he corrected, controlling his temper, "I don't think you quite understand."
"Well, explain it to me better!" she snapped, real sparks of annoyance in her eyes.

"He plotted all along to bargain me off for his wretched ship." Will argued with indignance, "Elizabeth, he was going to let me die to fulfill his own ends -"
"You don't know that. They didn't kill me."
"They well could have."

"How do you know he wasn't trying to double-bluff and rescue us both somehow, if it turned out for the worse?"
"I don't, but I wouldn't care to risk it."
"He's Captain Jack Sparrow." she retorted, "Haven't you read about him? He can do anything."

Will gazed at her, at a genuine loss for words.
There was no convincing her. She had weaved so much imaginary glory around the man, filling her child's head with pirate fantasies.

Sparrow had been right. All those days playing in the Governor's house and down by the beach. Playing pirates. Or 'sailors' as Elizabeth had announced to her father, should he happen to enquire into the contents of their imagined worlds.

"He's not the moral genius you think he is, Elizabeth. Having him on board could put you in more danger. It's my obligation to make sure that doesn't happen." he said earnestly.
She was silent, her body language giving off a resounding no of its own accord.

"He wants one thing, and one thing only: his ship. That's all he cares about. I know you spoke to him before they took you - and I know he must have left an impression on you. But don't think that just because you exchanged words between cell bars means he came all this way to rescue you, or even with you in mind."

That last part was a lie. She had been on Jack's mind - just the few fleeting times he had mentioned her, praised her for her supposedly pirate-esque qualities... He probably had intended, somewhere in the back of his wily head, to do at least some good by her if he got everything else.

Will didn't like the thought of what some good may have meant anyhow.

"Besides," he began, taking up his train of thought, "What do you think he would have done with you after, if you had been on his mind? Taken you all the way home?"
"What are you implying?"
"That he's a pirate. And therefore probably a womaniser."

Elizabeth glared rebelliously at him for a few moments, and he could tell that he had hurt her.
She was always most stubborn when he was closest to challenging her weak spots.

Jack had been right. Again. She was a fighter, if not a pirate. She hadn't been made for the world she'd grown up in.

William sighed heavily. He didn't regret leaving Jack, not one bit, but... she did. And that was what mattered.
"Do you want to talk about... what happened?" he gently laid a hand close to her freshly bandaged one on the table.

She glanced up at him, dark orbs sparkling with half-formed tears. She didn't want him to see her as weak, she never had, but he was her friend - her closest friend - and she needed to let it out to somebody.

"They were - cursed." she half-whispered, half-choked, looking down quickly as her eyes finally overflowed.
It was all just too much for her, Will saw, what with the guilt for Jack dumped on top of everything else. She didn't feel relieved, like he did. She must feel torn, somehow.
"Jack said something about a curse." he felt guilty for even mentioning the name to her.

She nodded, dabbing quickly at her face.
"They were skeletons. Held-together skeletons, like some awful nightmare, but it wouldn't go away. Will, I had the most awful -" she broke off, shivering and taking little gasps, trying to prevent the sobs from breaking out.

He leaned over and put both arms around her, her forehead buried into his shoulder.

"I was so scared."
"I know. That's why I came for you. I would have, even if he hadn't held me at gunpoint to make sure I got on the ship with him."

"But, Will - I don't know. It sounds awful, but... it was the most exciting thing that's ever happened to me." she burst out, fingers of her good hand clenching on his back, "I've never been so terrified in all my life, but even when I thought I was going to die, and I realised they couldn't lift the curse with my blood - Will, I felt so heroic. I felt that, even if I died, it would have been for a cause. I've never had a cause before. It was everything I thought it would be, and more."

Will didn't like where this was going.

"But you didn't die, Elizabeth. And your father doesn't have to grieve you. You can come home and tell him all about your adventure."
"I know." she muttered, but there was still a hint of wistfulness in her tone.

"It's probably a good thing your first experience with pirates was such a bad one." he tried to joke, "It would have been a lot harder to bring you home if you'd had a jolly old time."
"Yes... First experience." she repeated.

"And the last, I hope." he broke the embrace quickly and gazed into her eyes, putting on a solemn expression, "You have to promise you won't go looking for more trouble once we're safely home."
"And what about you? We've discovered your father's real identity, out here. You're not going to turn your back on that, are you? Not if you have a chance of finding him?"

Will seemed to switch off, as though a flame had suddenly died inside of him.
She had never seen him so serious or sad-looking.

"That is another thing." he meditated quietly.

Elizabeth looked at him for a long while. Then she pulled out the medallion from its hiding place, lifted the chain from her neck, and handed it to him without a word.
He glanced up at her, confused.
"I took it the day we found you." she faltered by way of explanation, "I'm sorry... I didn't know what else to do with it."

"I thought I'd lost it. It was a gift - from my father."

He looked at it steadily, something rising and billowing out behind his eyes like a gathering storm.
"Jack told me he was a good man. A good pirate. I didn't want to believe him. I haven't even thought about it, not for all of this journey... only about the possibility of finding him."

Elizabeth shifted nervously.
"That's what they wanted, as well as the blood. To lift the curse. It's - aztek gold, cursed gold."

"Well." he clenched his teeth and his fist, his breath tight in his chest, "Here is the proof. All along. My blood. Pirate blood."
With each pause his eyes were getting blacker, his brows slanting and then crushing together with the almighty weight of his burden.

It mattered to him. She could see that it mattered so much to him.
He blamed himself. Somehow, in some foolish twisted way, he managed to hate himself for being descended unknowingly from crime.

Governor Swann had really enforced good morals into the boy. Or maybe that was just his father's spirit, residing in him.

Without warning, William slammed the medallion down onto the table, probably hurting his hand in the process.
It was time to leave him be.

Jack stepped casually in front of Barbossa's extended telescope, in a last attempt to fix his so well improvised plan in place.

Medallion. Whelp git. Negotiations. Pearl - and girl.
Nothing going to get in me way this time.

"I'm 'aving a thought here, Barbossa." he said, knowing full well how annoying he was being, and silently revelling in it, "What say we run up a flag of truce? I scurry over to the Interceptor, and I negotiate the return of your medallion, eh? What say you to that?"

It was a long shot that Hector would let him out of his sights now.
But he had to warn the lass, and secure the traitor while he was at it.

"Now you see, Jack, that's exactly the attitude that lost you the Pearl. People are easy to search when they're dead." the grimy, heartless blaggard sneered, "Lock him in the brig."
He even confiscated Jack's apple as he was being led firmly away.

Bugger. Bugger, bugger, bugger.