Birds of a Feather

The Curse of the Black Pearl

Chapter Seventeen

Drink Up Me Hearties

For years, Elizabeth Swann dreamed of going on an adventure with pirates. She had always thought the idea of fighting scallywags for cursed treasure or being stranded on a deserted island with the infamous Captain Jack Sparrow would be the highlight of her life.

But now that she had actually experienced it?

"If you're going to shoot me, please do so without delay."

Jack Sparrow leaned forward, resting his elbows on his knees. He didn't look that impressed at the request.

Didn't sound it either.

"Is there a problem between us, Miss Swann?"

Elizabeth arched an eyebrow, "Are you joking? Set aside the fact that you took me hostage and no doubt did several things to Philip-"

"Your family is oddly protective for a bunch that refuses to dabble in incest. Have you seriously considered marrying your cousin? My parents were cousins and look how well I turned out."

"But the reason we have a problem," Elizabeth loudly cut him off to get back to her point, seriously wondering if Philip could find a passage in the Bible that would justify her inevitable murder of Jack Sparrow on this bloody island, "is that you were going to tell Barbossa about Will in exchange for a ship."

"Actually, I think your biggest problem right now is the likelihood of a mermaid deflowering and devouring dear sweet Philip."

"Sparrow!"

Jack sighed, conceding to get back to the point, "We could use a ship. The fact is, I was going to not tell Barbossa about bloody Will in exchange for a ship because as long as he didn't know about bloody Will I had something to bargain with, which now no one has! Thanks to bloody, stupid Will! Honestly, those boys of yours seem to be in a contest of who can be the most naïve, ridiculous, plan-ruining dolt. At least your cousin can act as a suitable projectile!"

It took Elizabeth's brain a minute to process his words, "...Oh."

"Oh," Jack rolled his eyes as he got to his feet. "Love, if we're going to be stranded on an island together, I'm going to tell you something I told your priest and your lover boy. Let us not doubt my infinite wisdom, for I know what I am doing… Most of the time."

"Really?"

"Really."

"And what was your plan about Philip?" Elizabeth challenged.

"Hadn't thought of one yet," Jack replied, his voice no less haughty. "But as entertaining as the thought of abandoning a preacher on a pirate ship was, I knew bloody Norrington would never give up the chase to rescue Philip for your Daddy Dearest, so I did have the intentions to rescue the boy as well. Though honestly, considering the events that played out, I think we could've surprisingly left Philip to his own devices. I don't know what went on in that cabin, but he went from chained to the wall about to be tortured to shirtless and making time with a mermaid. I genuinely cannot explain that and definitely will be stealing that story as my own."

"How can you be so blasé? Philip is being held as prisoner on a pirate ship, as well as your crew, as well as Will who risked his life to save ours."

"Ahh!" Jack threw up his hands and started to swagger away. Unfortunately, he couldn't quite shake the overzealous Miss Elizabeth Swann. She and Swift truly were birds of a… similar colouring pattern.

That was how the idiom went, right?

"But we have to do something to rescue them!" Elizabeth exclaimed, chasing after him.

Jack spun around, "Off you go, then! Let me know how that turns out. Maybe you'll be lucky and Philip will have magically tamed a whole pack of mermaids this time."

As he resumed his walk away from her, Elizabeth gave herself a moment. She stood still, closed her eyes, and took a deep breath.

Captain Jack Sparrow, the man of so many myths and legends. If there was anyone in the world crazy enough to find her a way off this island, it would be him.

Aunt Rebecca, please don't let your stories fail me now.

She took another deep breath and remembered the feeling of Will Turner's lips on hers, of Philip Swift's arms around her. Elizabeth would do whatever it took to feel those again. They had saved her, and now it was her turn to save them.

Then Elizabeth broke into a run.

"But you were marooned on this island before," Elizabeth chased after Sparrow, the pair breaking into the thicket of palm trees. "We can escape the same way you did."

Jack rounded on her again, "To what point and purpose, young missy? The Black Pearl is gone. Unless you have a rudder and sails hidden in that bodice."

He paused to look her attire up and down like it was a genuine possibility.

"Unlikely," Jack admitted. "Young Mr. Turner will be dead long before you can reach him. Now, maybe, just maybe Mr. Swift has a chance, but you and I do not. We have a pistol, some food… but no way of escape. The odds are that even if they don't kill Philip, you'll be long deal before he even gets home."

The words hit her harder than anything had for her entire adventure. Will and Philip dead. She would be dead. Elizabeth was overwhelmed by the image of her father sitting sad and lonely in their grand mansion, crying because the only things that truly mattered to him were gone. He had lost his mother, then his father, then his wife – not to mention all the children from her mother's many miscarriages and stillbirths that were so numerous Elizabeth never got a straight number from her father – then his brother-in-law, and finally his sister, Rebecca Swann who had been his rock through everything.

And now Weatherby Swann would lose Philip and Elizabeth, the only things he had left in the world.

It felt like a lifetime ago since she had stood on her balcony overlooking the attack on Port Royal fearing she would never see the men she loved again. And now, Philip… Will… her father… She would lose them all.

Elizabeth's fists tightened.

No! She wouldn't let this be their fate. She would see them again; all of them, alive and well.

"But you're Captain Jack Sparrow," Elizabeth hadn't noticed the funny gestures Sparrow had started. Counting his steps, knocking on trees, bouncing on the sand. The acts made her furious when she registered them; this was no time for play. "You vanished from seven agents of the East India Company. You sacked Nassau Port without even firing a shot."

She forced her way in front of him, her fury building as she desperately held on to the stories of her youth. The stories her Aunt Rebecca would tell her to balm the fear that she would go away on an adventure and never come back.

"Are you the pirate I've read about or not?" Elizabeth tried not to let her voice shake.

Her words seem to startle Jack as the desperation and hint of their deeper meaning to her shone through.

She took another breath, and in a lower but stronger voice asked, "How did you escape last time?"

Jack fought against it, but finally conceded to admit the truth. He adored being the image of a legend and have people all around the world look upon his with stars in their eyes. But here was a girl on the verge of death, so desperately clinging onto those stories to give her a semblance of hope.

A false hope that everything would be alright.

The same kind of hope Jack had held ten years ago that despite Bootstrap's warning, no one would ever take the Black Pearl from him. And as he remembered standing in that very same spot ten years ago with those dying embers of hope in his heart, Jack Sparrow decided to be the very thing he had promised Will Turner could exist.

A pirate and a good man.

"Last time… I was here a grand total of three days, all right?" Jack admitted. "Last time…"

And so he revealed the truth of his escape and the hidden cache of rum and the likelihood Norrington had put a stop to a repeat escape. He could see in her eyes the way her heart broke as Miss Swann fought to accept the fate before them. He could see her heartbreak and anguish and could only watch as he crushed her girlhood dreams.

"So that's it, then?" Elizabeth struggled not to cry. Why had she put her faith in those silly stories anyway? But sorrow quickly turned to anger as her words felt like acid on her tongue. "That's the secret grand adventure of the infamous Jack Sparrow? You spent three days lying on a beach, drinking rum?"

He looked at her for a moment, no doubt feeling pity, but then just held up a pair of rum bottles and said, "Welcome to the Caribbean, love."

She honestly could have hit him in that moment.

As Jack returned to the beach, Elizabeth stood there, nails digging into her palms as she struggled to control herself. She was so mad that she was certain smoke was going to come out of her ears.

Wait… smoke. That was it! A smoke signal. Every ship in the Caribbean would be looking for her. If she got a smoke signal going… What could she make a fire with? …Of course, just burn everything. The shade. The food. The rum. Oh, but how was she going to distract Jack?

She raced back to the beach where Jack had settled on the sand with two bottles of run. Elizabeth just had to find something she could use to trick Jack.

"So..." she skidded to a halt in front of him. He had already spat the cork to one bottle on the ground and was nursing the mouth of the bottle like a newborn babe. "...is there any truth to the other stories? Or were they just a bunch of made up nonsense my aunt told me to annoy my father?"

"Darling, is that aunt single?"

Her eyes burned into Jack, "That's Philip's mother."

"That's not a problem."

"She's married."

"I reiterate, that's not a problem."

"She's dead."

"See," Jack said, "now there's a problem."

Elizabeth very seriously considered the likelihood of her getting away with murder if she pushed Sparrow into her bonfire.

"So, it's just nonsense then?" Elizabeth spat. "The truth is you never endured any of it."

Jack's face hardened, "Truth?"

He rose to his feet and pulled up one sleeve to reveal his sparrow tattoo and pirate brand. He then pulled up the other sleeve to showcase a fork of white and red nasty-looking scars splayed across his arm. He pulled down his shirt to reveal two large round marks on his breast, definitely gunshot wounds.

"No truth at all," he glared at her.

Elizabeth stared at the man in confusion and shock. The man was a mystery wrapped in a contradiction. How much of his legend truly was real? And why did she get the feeling that this was only the beginning of things to come?

She definitely couldn't underestimate him.

"We stay out for a month, maybe more," Jack settled back down on the sand. "Keep a weather eye open for passing ships and our chances are fair."

But Elizabeth couldn't take her heart or mind off the two men captured aboard the Black Pearl.

"And what about Will? Philip? We have to do something. Those monsters will kill them, and I shudder to think what that mermaid will do to him." Elizabeth refused to acknowledge that she felt a twinge of guilt towards her treatment of The Mermaid. She had shown kindness to Elizabeth and later Philip, and yet still Elizabeth couldn't help but think of her as just as much a terror as the skeletal crew.

She just didn't understand how The Mermaid could care for someone like Barbossa.

"You're absolutely right." Jack capped and rolled his bottle of rum to Elizabeth's feet. He picked up the other at his side and held it up in a cheers to the horizon, "Here's luck to you, Will Turner. Philip Swift… Kudos for charming a mermaid. You truly were a man of many surprises."

Elizabeth slowly bent down and picked up the bottle. She had only had rum on one other occasion, at a social event where Aunt Rebecca had snuck ten-year-old Elizabeth the tiniest pour of it behind Weatherby's back.

Rebecca could never tempt her own son with rum as Weatherby had always warned the children of the dangers of the vile drink. Secretly, Aunt Rebecca had once told Elizabeth the story of why Weatherby hated it so much. When he was sixteen, he and a few friends stole a bottle from his father and gotten blackout drunk. He was out cold for nineteen hours and the hangover was nothing compared to the wrath of his father. Elizabeth's grandfather wasn't known as the Fearsome Bartholomew Swann without a good reason.

Settling on the sand next to Jack, Elizabeth let herself smile at the memory of her aunt sneaking her rum.

"Drink up me hearties, yo ho," she murmured the words Aunt Rebecca had said as Elizabeth took her first drink.

It tasted just as she remembered: like burnt caramel and wood… for a grand total of one second before her throat burned hotter than Judas Iscariot in Hell. The simile had been her aunt's.

Jack's ears perked up, "What was that, Elizabeth?"

"It's Miss Swann," she snapped.

Sparrow just held up his hands in surrender.

Then it hit her. The rum. If she could get him to pass out drinking… Of course, in order to do that, Elizabeth herself would probably have to get pretty drunk.

Getting drunk with Captain Jack Sparrow. Oh, this was going to be an interesting night.

Elizabeth wasn't sure how well she could handle it; she hadn't been drunk a lot in her life. But it wouldn't be the first time Elizabeth had ever gotten drunk. No, that happened when she was fourteen and stole a couple bottles of brandy from her father – Weatherby was significantly less fearsome than his father so Elizabeth didn't worry about the consequences – and she had convinced Philip and Will to drink with her at the old abandoned lighthouse they played in as children.

When the trio's guardians found them missing the next morning, a search was ordered by Weatherby that resulted in a bit of a scandal. Will, Philip, and Elizabeth were found passed out and hungover in said lighthouse, much to Weatherby's horror.

That had been the incident that made him decide Elizabeth was too old to be hanging around penniless William Turner.

No, she won't let that happen again. No one was going to take Will Turner from her; not now that she had tasted the sweet victory of being allowed to love him. And if getting to be with William Turner meant she had to get drunk with Captain Jack Sparrow then so be it.

…What had her life turned into?

"Nothing," Elizabeth pretended to be dismissive, trying to lure Jack into her plan. "Just a song my Aunt Rebecca taught me as a child when I actually thought it'd be exciting to meet a pirate."

"Let's hear it," Jack urged. There was something oddly familiar about those words. He could have sworn that he knew it.

"No."

"C'mon, we got the time! Let's have it."

"No!" She paused for a moment before slyly (though trying not to actually sound sly) adding, "I'd have to have a lot more to drink."

Jack was silent for a while.

"...How much more?"

Elizabeth smiled. It was almost too easy.

"We're devils and black sheep and really bad eggs. Drink up me 'earties yo ho! Yo ho, yo ho a pirate's life for me."

Elizabeth Swann wasn't drunk. Elizabeth Swann was wasted. There she was dancing arm in arm around a bonfire with a pirate she genuinely hated being around. Sure, Jack seemed to be kind of, sort of, maybe a decent enough man, but she'd much rather spent her days with Will and Philip.

Still, she'd be lying if she said she wasn't having fun in the moment.

"I love this song!" Jack exclaimed.

Elizabeth laughed as they hooked arms and spun around, "Oh, Philip used to hate it so much, even when his mother sang it. Oh course, she was the one who taught it to us."

"You had a really fun aunt!" Jack yelled out, "Really bad eggs!"

Then he fell down.

"When I get the Pearl back," Jack suddenly yanked Elizabeth down with him. She tumbled next to him with a laugh, "I'm gonna teach it to the whole crew, and we'll sing it all the time!

Elizabeth found herself with the perfect opportunity to stroke his ego, "And you'll be positively the most fearsome pirate in the Spanish Main."

"Not just the Spanish Main, love," he fell for it. "The entire ocean. The entire world."

"Oh, Philip is going to hate that," Elizabeth giggled. "He'll do a mission in Africa and end up finding the natives singing about a pirates' life for me."

"Why does the preacher hate the song?"

"Because he's impossibly straight-laced. You would think considering his mother was the kind of woman who broke off her engagement to one of the most powerful men in the world," Elizabeth was a little too drunk to mentally fact check Cutler Beckett's actual situation in life at the time of Rebecca's elopement, "by running off with a missionary in the dead of night that Philip would be remotely adventurous."

"Well, he did come to save you, plus he tamed a mermaid. Trust me, Love, that's not easy." Jack paused for a second, "Wait… his mother eloped with a preacher?"

"It was the most ironically sophisticated scandal in London society for a good three years." Elizabeth took another drink, letting a much smaller amount than it appeared actually go into her mouth, "Honestly, I believe Aunt Rebecca would have run off even if Uncle Nathaniel wasn't around. She absolutely despised her fiancé. He was an officer in the East India Trading Company and loved parading her around to the sailors to show them what they could never aspire to."

"Ugh," Jack pulled a face, "I knew a man like that once. Tried to even pay off her lover with a ship and crew in exchange for never seeing her again."

Elizabeth froze. Wait a minute… didn't that happen to Uncle Nathaniel?

Oh good God. Had Jack Sparrow met her aunt?

Was that why Aunt Rebecca was obsessed with his stories?

"What, uh…" Elizabeth cleared her throat. She needed to stay casual, "What happened to her?"

"I don't know; the marriage didn't go through. She seemed nice for a rich lady. Not much a snob and in fact liked to spent time with the crew below deck when she could escape her fiancé. She was there when I first heard that pirate song – I knew it was familiar. Some sailor broke out a fiddle and started playing it. She danced with a few men, but her fiancé found the scene and put a stop to it before I had my chance. Pity, she was pretty. Looked kinda like you now that I think about it."

Elizabeth just couldn't believe it. Her aunt had met Captain Jack Sparrow.

Philip was going to lose his mind when she told him.

"Did you ever… speak to her?"

"Not much. Did have one conversation though. I'm not proud of it, but once upon a time I did work in the EITC. There was a falling out, and I became a pirate, joining the crew of the Pirate Lord Robert Smith."

"Pirate Lord?" Elizabeth questioned.

"Story for another time, Darling," Jack waved off. "Years later, I was in pursuit of some treasure my first mate was desperate to get, and I went undercover back in the EITC to help get the treasure. Again, story for another time."

"Did Barbossa's treasure cause less problems than his current one?"

"Oh, it wasn't Barbossa's treasure. It was Will's mother, Sarah. Woman was a fanatic about myths and legends of all kinds. Her greatest wish in life was to find the Trident of Poseidon. Pity she never got to. Bill even found a book on our last adventure that he swore up and down would help her… all while swearing up and down that he and Sarah were going to be done with that life. Bigger lie than Barbossa swearing his loyalty to me."

"I'm sorry," Elizabeth struggled to wrap her head around Jack's admission. "But you had a woman as your First Mate?"

"And the bloody best First Mate a man could ask for. Only reason she left was Bill getting her pregnant with the hellspawn you call Lover Boy."

Elizabeth fought off her blush, "But still… a woman was actually allowed to be First Mate of a ship? A woman?"

"I think you'll find Pirates to be an oddly liberal lot." Jack took another swig of rum, "Weren't we talking about pirate songs?"

"Right," Elizabeth pushed away the thoughts of Will's mother and focused back on Philip's. "What happened with the woman?

"Well, while I was undercover, I pretended that I wanted to be a ship's captain, but that wasn't happening for me undercover self. She decided to give me words of support. I told her that she couldn't understand what it was like to be me, her being a Lord's daughter or something. And she told me that she wanted nothing more than the freedom to make her own choices. I told her the two of us could get a ship and have freedom. Wherever we wanted to go, we'll go. Would have actually taken her with me too. But her heart was with some man staying as a guest in her family's home for the year. Still… the girl was tempted."

And that locked it for Elizabeth. Aunt Rebecca had to be the one Sparrow was talking about. Uncle Nathaniel had stayed with the Swanns for a year, Bartholomew using him as a way to project a softer image to society. Of course, anything that softer image accomplished was thrown out the same day Nathaniel Swift was.

"Cause, that's what a ship is, you know," Jack continued. "It's not just a keel and a hull and a deck and sails that's what a ship needs but what a ship is…what the Black Pearl really is…is freedom. And that's what the girl wanted… What you want, isn't it?"

In another universe, Elizabeth might have used flirting as a way to subdue Jack, but not in this one. Elizabeth was far too focused on the revelation of her aunt, as well as held back by her newly begun romance with Will. The story of Rebecca and Nathaniel and new knowledge that her aunt could have apparently run off with Jack Sparrow was a harsh reminder that the excitement of freedom was nothing compared to true love. Will would never hold back Elizabeth the same way that Nathaniel hadn't held back Rebecca.

"What happened to the woman, Jack?" Elizabeth ignored his baiting query.

"Dunno," Jack shrugged and took another swing of rum. "I know she didn't marry the man she hated, but I don't know how she managed to get out of it. Last rumors we heard were that her father had literally dragged her by the hair and threw her into her room, yelling that he would force her to the altar in the same way if he had to. Always wondered how she got from point A to point B. We were just told one day that the marriage hadn't occurred and to never mention the woman around her ex-fiancé ever again."

Elizabeth's eyes widened. Her Grandfather had dragged Aunt Rebecca by the hair into her room? That was a detail her father had never mentioned. Then again, it wasn't surprising that Weatherby withheld that information. It had been from Aunt Rebecca that Elizabeth learned Aunt Rebecca had been legitimately locked in her room a month before her wedding. If her father had tried to sweep that detail under the rug, no wonder he didn't bring up the fact his father physically assaulted his own daughter.

Not for the first time in her life did Elizabeth thank God that her grandfather had died years before she was born. If it were up to Bartholomew Swann, Elizabeth would be married to Norrington by now and William Turner would be hanging from nails through his thumbs in a dungeon somewhere.

"Hope she found that freedom," Jack smiled a little. He raised his bottle of rum to the stars, "Here's to you random Noble Lady I don't remember the name of. Here's to freedom."

"To freedom!" Elizabeth lifted her own bottle of rum as a bonfire burned behind herself and Jack. She smiled as she thought of her adventurous aunt who she missed so dearly. Aunt Rebecca was the only one of Elizabeth's four parental figures who really understood her.

Elizabeth had thought a lot about her aunt that night and how much Aunt Rebecca would have loved to be in Elizabeth's place. Auburn hair flailing about, and the green eyes she shared with her brother and son lit up in utter delight as she danced around the fire with the infamous Captain Jack Sparrow. A reunion now, Elizabeth was amazed at the thought. There was no doubt in Elizabeth's mind that if Rebecca Swift née Swann had been alive to witness all of this, not only would she been proud of Will and Philip's actions to save Elizabeth… Rebecca would have also probably come along for the ride.

What Elizabeth wouldn't give to see Rebecca Swann square off against Hector Barbossa.

Of course, Aunt Rebecca certainly would not approve of Elizabeth allowing a pirate like Jack put her arm around Elizabeth's shoulder and try to turn the mood in his favor. However, Elizabeth had refused Jack's further flirtatious actions, and besides, it was all part of her plan to get them off this island. She just first needed to get Jack a little drunker.

Jack paused for a moment, and then said, "To the Black Pearl."

He clanked their bottles together and took a long swig. Elizabeth feigned drinking hers but stopped and watched Jack slowly lower himself to the ground as he gulped down the remaining contents of his bottle. The next thing she knew, Jack was lying unconscious on the ground.

Elizabeth smirked and tossed aside the bottle, "That was almost too easy."

It was time to go to work.

She started with the crates of food as she wasn't sure of the noise throwing alcohol on the fire would make. As Elizabeth rolled over the barrels and hauled the boxes towards the bonfire, her thoughts were strictly on Will and Philip. They had risked everything to save her, and she would do the same to save them. She had finally gotten her happily ever after with Will, and she wasn't about to let it slip out of her fingers.

Plus she was too confused about this whole Aunt Rebecca/Jack Sparrow nonsense or this Philip may or may not be romantically involved with a mermaid who kept Elizabeth hostage business. Frankly, focusing on nothing but rescuing Will and Philip was more a coping mechanism than anything else.

Elizabeth had just thrown another crate on the fire when she spotted it: lying in the sand among the footprints ringing the fire was a handkerchief. Frowning, she picked it up.

It was yellow, though the dye was quite faded, and the edges were very ragged. Clearly it was very old. At the top of the handkerchief, hand embroidered into the fabric was a brown compass cross, each point labeled with a tiny letter of N, E, S, or W. Near the bottom in blue thread was stitched the letters SS, and in black thread, clearly added later was a T making the stitching read SST. But most peculiar of all were the three bloodstains splayed across it randomly. One was a blot, another a smear, and the third had a spraying sort of pattern.

It took Elizabeth a minute to realise that she had seen this handkerchief before; Jack wore it tied around belt. Why would he carry a bloodstained handkerchief stitched with the letters SST?

Shrugging, Elizabeth decided that since it was so old and ruined by bloodstains, it must have just been something he used to wipe sweat off his brow. No doubt the handkerchief was worthless.

"More fuel for the fire then," Elizabeth thought.

She threw it on the fire and started to walk away.

Suddenly a gust of wind blew past her. The night had been relatively calm so it was odd enough for a sudden burst of wind, but even odder was the way the wind seemed to circle her. It was almost like it was trying to push Elizabeth back towards the fire. Frowning, Elizabeth turned to look at her bonfire, and immediately her jaw dropped.

The handkerchief was sitting in the fire, flames licking all around… and yet it did not burn.

Elizabeth went into the trees and found a branch. She cautiously approached the fire and used the stick to drag out the handkerchief. The wind seemed to whistle louder and louder as she dragged the handkerchief onto the sand.

The handkerchief didn't even have as much as a scorch mark.

"Beware," a voice on the wind whistled in Elizabeth's ear. It was sharp and cold, and Elizabeth could suddenly smell scent of blood, salt water, and ash. "Beware the Seven."

Its message delivered, the wind disappeared, and Elizabeth was left staring at the handkerchief in utter confusion. She carefully knelt down and picked up the handkerchief. It was cool to the touch as if it had never been near a fire its entire history.

Frowning, Elizabeth stuffed the handkerchief into the pocket of her dressing gown. Maybe it was best if she returned the handkerchief to Jack in the morning.

And yet she couldn't help but wonder who were "The Seven?"