That night when Jack made his daily visit to his father's house, Maggie met him at the door with the baby on her hip. She told him Elizabeth was in the sitting room, and the captain and Mrs Ainsley-Swann were together in the captain's study, not to be disturbed. "Plotting and planning," Jack speculated under his breath, as he entered the sitting room.

"What's that?" Elizabeth asked, not quite hearing him. She looked up from her sewing.

"I was just wondering if we should be afraid, with your aunt and my father closeted up together again. Last time they did that, they found out you weren't married. What's it going to be next, I wonder?"

Elizabeth smiled a little and shook her head, but seemed preoccupied. She was sewing a new shirt for little Jacob, but after the second time she didn't respond to Jack's conversation, he went and sat down next to her on the divan.

"All right, love. Let's have it."

"What?"

"Whatever's eating at you."

"I'm curious about something that I'm quite sure you probably don't want to tell me," Elizabeth said with a cynical tone.

"Tell you what?"

"About Angelica."

"Eh?"

"Start at the beginning."

"What? Why—why d'ye need to know about her?" His gaze darted about nervously.

Elizabeth sighed. "Jack, she tried to kill me because of you. I think I deserve to know. What did you do to her?"

"What makes you think I did something to her?"

Elizabeth cracked a smile. "Are you saying she randomly wants to kill you for no reason?"

"People often do," he said.

"Oh, and you never do anything to warrant it?" she taunted. "No, let me guess. You seduced Angelica and then ran away. You probably stole something from her in the process. Now she's jealous of any other woman in your life, and is out to kill you. Am I right?"

Jack huffed out a bit of a self-conscious laugh. "I guess you've hit on the high points, yeah. Bit more to it than that, though."

"So tell me. All of it. It won't go any further than me, I give you my word."

"Darling, I'd really rather not. The details don't exactly show me in the best light."

Elizabeth took his hand in hers. "Jack, we're friends. I know loads about you already that show you in a terrible light, and I still care about you quite a lot. Tell me."

With a sigh and a grimace of reluctance, Jack told her the whole sordid tale. He had been wandering drunkenly around Seville, when he saw a beautiful young girl stopping to smell a flower outside the high brick wall of a convent. She was a young novice on her way back in for the evening and had been distracted by the flowers. He stopped to speak with her, and ended up charming her into staying out all night with him. The actual seduction, he was careful to point out, had not happened that first night—but by morning the damage to her reputation was done, and she had been afraid to return to the convent at all.

She'd had nowhere to go, so Jack (out of the goodness of his heart, he said innocently, and Elizabeth raised a skeptical eyebrow) took her in. During the course of this generosity, there may have been certain exchanges of a carnal nature between then. A very carnal nature, he clarified thoughtfully, and quite a few exchanges. He had found the young Angelica very beautiful and appealing in her innocence, especially as she was such a quick and uninhibited study in matters of the flesh.

The Black Pearl had been undergoing repairs (this was before Barbossa's mutiny), so Jack had been at liberty to spend several weeks with her in Seville. During that time, he admitted, there had been some "stirrings," in his heart towards her—perhaps even as much as "feelings" for Angelica. For her part, she had completely opened her heart to him, confessing not only how much she loved him, but also about her childhood, her longings to meet her father someday, her hopes for Jack to take her sailing all over the world.

Jack went along with all of it, freely promising her everything she wanted. It was such a pretty dream that he wanted to indulge himself—and her—as long as possible. However, as soon as the Pearl was repaired, he stole one of her rings and sailed away in the night without her.

He had moped about the Pearl for days, until Gibbs had bearded him in his cabin and demanded to know what was wrong. Jack had told him it involved a woman; Gibbs advised him to get a stuffed toy to sleep with instead, as they were much less trouble. That very day they took a Dutch fluyt filled with valuable cargo, and Jack cheered up immensely.

Listening, Elizabeth smiled. So far, none of the story was surprising except for the "stirrings" that Jack mentioned feeling. But she supposed that even 'Captain Jack Sparrow' might have an actual heart hidden somewhere deep inside. Her aunt certainly thought so, but Elizabeth knew of his conquests in various ports and was still a bit skeptical. Besides, hadn't he once told her that his "first and only love" was the sea?

"Go on," she said.

Jack went on. The next time he saw Angelica was three years later on La Martinique. He hadn't given her much thought during the intervening three years, but when he saw her there, suddenly her appeal came roaring into the forefront of his mind. He told her a cock-and-bull story about having been press-ganged in Spain so that she would forgive his desertion, and then their love affair had flared up again like a wildfire.

She was a little different now: earthier, less naive, more cynical. She didn't dress like a novice anymore—"She dressed more like a professional," Jack said, making a pun on both the novitiate and the "professional" ladies who frequented the docks. She still wore crosses on her wrist and around her neck and paid lip service to her religion, but she had also got a tattoo of the Voodoo goddess of love on her breast. Jack hadn't cared about the clothing, the tattoo or the crosses; it wasn't until later that he had realized the dichotomy, and what a large change in her character they signified.

She had renewed her professions of love, but Jack saw how she behaved with some of the other men as well. It was obvious she wasn't keeping her favors for him alone. He would have been fine with that, except that she had lied and told him that she was his alone.

And it wasn't just a matter of being too free with her body. It was also a matter of her callousness toward others. Clinging to the vestiges of her religious life, she didn't like doing her own dirty work—but had no problem delegating it to others. She had become a hypocrite as well as a pirate.

Jack knew by this point that he wanted to leave, but Angelica clung. The only way he could get free of her was by promising to take her away with him that night. She accepted his offer, and he accepted her token of a strip of Belgian lace torn from her shirt-cuff. They shared one more night of passion, with wine, candlelight, and music (and laudanum in her wine) and when she fell into a drugged sleep, Jack sailed away.

A year later, she found him on Saint Dominique and tried to kill him. She had picked up some excellent fencing instruction, and she came very close to succeeding in her attempt. She did disarm him with a trick he had never seen before or since, but Jack had ever been a resourceful sort. He distracted her by pretending to see something fearsome behind her and when she turned her head, he'd leaped at her. He'd used his superior strength—which she couldn't counter when he was inside the reach of her sword—to wrest the sword from her hand and knock her unconscious while he picked up his sword and made his getaway. He hated having to strike her, but he hoped to heaven that he never saw her again.

Alas, 'never' was too much to hope for; it was actually eight years. Jack told Elizabeth about running into Barbossa in London, and about Angelica's impersonating Jack in a pub there, to either draw him in or ruin his reputation among other pirates. She'd press-ganged him onto Blackbeard's ship as a common sailor—"Me! A common sailor!" Jack was obviously insulted over that one.

Elizabeth hid her smile. "True. Whatever you are, you're definitely uncommon," she placated. "What happened next?"

Next came the unsuccessful mutiny, followed by the revelation that Blackbeard truly was Angelica's father. Elizabeth looked skeptical when Jack told her about the Black Pearl and all the other captured ships in bottles, and he scoffed at her. "What, you don't believe me? After all we've seen?"

"Good point. Go on," Elizabeth ordered.

Jack went on, telling her the whole story of having to jump off a cliff to save Angelica from having to do it or being killed by her father, meeting Barbossa on Ponce de Leon's ship and stealing the chalices with him. He glossed over his daring escape from the Spanish, saying it would be a great story for another time.

Then he told her about everything that had happened at the Fountain of Youth, from Barbossa's appearance, to the fight, to Blackbeard and Angelica both getting poisoned. He told Elizabeth about what he had done with the mermaid's tear, tricking Blackbeard into sacrificing his life to save his daughter. Then, he and Barbossa had parted amicably, Barbossa to his new ship, the Queen Anne's Revenge, and Jack to maroon Angelica on a tiny island. He didn't know how she had got off the island, but now her hatred of him was worse than ever since she now blamed him for her father's death as well as for his corruption and abandonment before.

Jack's face brightened as he told her about meeting up with Mr. Gibbs again, who had stolen the entire fleet of ships in bottles—including the Black Pearl. He was a bit cagey in telling her how they had got the Pearl out of the bottle again, merely mentioning that it involved goats, trumpets, and a crossbow.

Elizabeth decided she really didn't want to know.

"So that's it," Jack said. "That's the whole sordid story. I told you it doesn't show me in the best light. 'F you don't mind, I'd really prefer to keep it between us. Savvy?"

"Oh, of course, of course. But—Jack, something doesn't sound quite right here. You blame yourself for the path she took, but I don't think you're giving her enough credit."

"How's that, love?"

"She made her own choices and then blamed you for all of them—and you just took the blame. I hate to tell you this, Jack, but you're being... well, 'Will-like,' for lack of a better word."

Jack shook his head, looking wounded. "'Will-like,' Elizabeth? That's harsh, dearie."

Elizabeth chuckled. "Usually that would be a compliment, but in this case it's because you're taking on more culpability than you really ought. Will always did that too. Yes, you led her on and then ran out on her. But really, if having a man break her heart is the worst thing to ever happen to her, she's in pretty good shape! She could have returned to the Church, confessed and been absolved, and could still have entered the convent if she wished. Instead, she chose to turn pirate and start killing people. All those people she killed, at the Fountain and at Flimwell? Gone forever. If she had succeeded in killing you? Gone forever. She'd have deprived the world forever of Captain Jack Sparrow, can you imagine? I know I did that as well, but that was only temporary."

Elizabeth smiled, and put her hand on Jack's forearm to make her point. "A broken heart can mend, Jack, but you can't come back from the dead. Oh, all right," she added upon seeing his raised eyebrow. "Perhaps you can, once, but most people can't."

He grinned. "Well, I did have some…" he gestured toward her with his other hand, "help."

Elizabeth took a deep breath, and then went on. "You seem to think she's a good woman at heart, but it doesn't sound to me as if she is. Maybe you're still biased because you met her as a novice in the church, I don't know.

"But look at her actions since then, Jack. She's the one who lured all those sailors onto her father's ship under false pretenses, when she must have known that most of them wouldn't survive the mermaids' attack. She may have saved the missionary's life, but it was for her own purposes rather than any sense of altruism. She was apparently fine with keeping him tied up to the mast for days on end. She had no problem with his being slashed open, as long as it wasn't her or her father doing it. She had no problem allowing a mermaid to be tortured to death.

"When her plan to use Barbossa's life at the Fountain didn't work out, she had no qualms at all about taking your life instead. Would you have done any of that? You, who risked his life and his freedom saving the life of some stranger in Port Royale who had become a victim of her own corset?" She chuckled ruefully and went on, "You, who sacked Nassau without firing a single shot? Would you have taken the life of an innocent person in order to become immortal?"

Jack rolled his eyes. "You know me better than that."

"Yes, I do, so I know you're not giving her enough credit for making her own decisions. Unless you're telling me you forced her into your bed?" She raised her eyebrows in a challenge.

Jack gave her a dirty look. "I've never forced a woman in me life!"

"No, of course not. So allow that you're only responsible for your own actions here, Jack—and granted, they weren't the noblest at the time, but you did try to make it up to her at the Fountain. You're not responsible for her actions, her choices... her crimes," Elizabeth finished, her voice hard. "They're her crimes, not yours."

Jack stared thoughtfully at her for several minutes and covered her hand with his calloused one, stroking it with his thumb. "You still see a good man when you look at me."

She smiled back. "I do."

He shook his head and lifted her hand to his mouth, running his lips across the back of it before pressing a kiss to her knuckles. "Not sure whether you're blind or hallucinating, but I shall generously refrain from arguin' the point with you." He rose. "You'd better get to bed, love. Tomorrow you start practicing swordplay again, and if your aunt and my father are conspiring again, you'll want to be rested to face whatever they bring us next."

Elizabeth laughed and handed Jack his hat. "You're probably right." She sobered for a moment, and said "Thank you for trusting me with the truth about Angelica, Jack. It helps a little, to know why she went after me and Jacob in Flimwell."

She dropped her gaze and flushed a little. "Plus, I hadn't known you were even capable of falling in love. It's nice to know you have a real heart buried somewhere under all that bluster."

She leaned in and kissed his cheek, her lips lingering for a moment longer than a friendly kiss would call for.

Startled, Jack stared at her, making a visible effort to regain his composure. He injected a light, bantering note into his voice as he asked, "You mean you doubted it? Don't you know it's been yours ever since you fed me to the kraken?"

Elizabeth took it as a joke. "You mean since I kissed you or since I killed you?"

"Both, o' course. You want to be careful with the kisses, love," he teased. "I seem to have a weakness for women who murder me."

"I shall try to refrain next time," Elizabeth shot back, "from the murdering, anyway." She kissed him on the cheek again, with a defiant air. "So there!"

Jack laughed and pulled her into his arms, startling a squeak out of her. He kissed her neck several times, ending with a sharp nip to her ear before he released her. "There, now, don't be naughty or you'll end up more than you can handle, darling!"

Elizabeth shook her head. "'More than I can handle,' hmm? And here I thought you knew better than to underestimate me." She tsked at him a few times and shoved him toward the door.

Jack went out the door, still laughing. He never saw Elizabeth sink down on the divan, breathless, with one hand on her heart and the other on her neck where he had kissed her.

Aunt Agatha came in and saw her, and asked with a knowing look, "Is Captain Sparrow still here?"

Elizabeth answered, "No, he's gone," and then started, and gave her aunt a narrow-eyed look as she asked, "How did you know he'd been here?"

If Jack had been there, he would have laughed at Agatha's smile and the way she patted Elizabeth's hand as she told her, "I recognize the after-effects of one of his visits."

*Pirates*of*the*Caribbean*Pirates*of*the*Caribbean*Pirates*of*the*Caribbean*Pirates*of*the*Caribbean*Pirates*

Note: I apologize to any Angelica-fans whom I may have offended with this chapter; however, this is honestly how I see her. I must confess that I found absolutely nothing likeable or admirable about her as she was portrayed in Pirates 4, and I get irritated when people say that she's a female version of Jack, his perfect match, and other variations on that theme. I have to wonder whether they saw the same movie I did! She is nothing of the kind; on her best day she may aspire to be half as decent and clever as Jack, but she could never measure up in either morals or intelligence.

Example: during the tango scene in OST, Angelica tells Jack "You can be so charming when you want something; the trick is figuring out what." Honestly, she's a bit dim, as it was blatantly obvious why he was trying to seduce her—to get her to tell him about the ritual of the mermaid's tear. Which she did. Contrast that with "At World's End," the scene where Elizabeth, Jack, and Barbossa go to that little spit of land to parley with Beckett, Will, and Davy Jones. Elizabeth, who knew nothing about Jack's desire to stab the heart and only a little about Will's efforts to free his father, managed to figure out not only what was going on between Will and Jack, but also arrange it so that it could happen without Becket or Davy Jones suspecting a thing. She and Jack are always, always ten steps ahead of everyone else; Angelica usually about three steps behind. In fact, I did not start 'shipping Jack and Elizabeth at all until after I had seen "On Stranger Tides" and hated Angelica so much that I started missing Elizabeth and wishing Keira Knightley had been able to be in that movie instead of Penelope Cruz.

Lastly, I did not think that Depp and Penelope Cruz had very much romantic/sexual chemistry on-screen at all. I felt the same about them in "Blow." They seemed like two strangers reciting lines to each other by rote. I thought Depp had more chemistry with Dame Judy Dench than he did with his so-called "love interest," and she's 78 years old and only had 10 seconds of screen time! Contrast the flat chemistry he had with Cruz with the sizzle that scorched the screen every time Knightley was on it with him, and in my mind there's no contest.

But again, it's my opinion, and I have no objection to anyone's disagreeing with it. Thank you for reading and reviewing!