Title: A Priori

Chapter One: Allegiance

Author: djarum99

Rating: N-17

Pairing: J/E

Notes: Sequel to Fiat Lux, Jack and Liz discovering what they are together. Many thanks to erinya for the beta and saving me endless after-post edits!

A/N:Elizabeth's POV this chapter, new realizations about Jack as thePearl's captain, and the crew she sails with. Alas, I discovered a grievous research error in namingAntananarivoas thePearl's port of call in Desiderata and C. 6 of Fiat Lux. It's actually the lovely inland capital ofMadagascar, so, not working here. I can only claim as a defense that my head was too full of a certain pirate. I have faithfully researched the references to the island's culture and geography here, I swear, and have corrected the other two stories. This story actually has a plot in future chapters, lurking beneath the sexual tension, although hopefully that will continue here too.

It had seemed a small point, had seemed right for her to offer it. Jack had been dispensing orders as to the distribution of the plunder in thePearl'shold and the acquisition of new supplies, when they reached theportofToamasinaonMadagascar's eastern coast. "You'll haul the goods to the stalls I determine will give the best price; stay with them and wait for me to haggle with the merchants. My reputation carries a certain weight with the Malagasy, given that the dead, or one such as myself who has recently been so, are viewed as divine intermediaries between god and the devil, good fortune and ill. A strange theology, but one that will work to our advantage."

She had felt an inward dagger's blow at the reference to his death, although she knew this was simply Jack incorporating legend into grasping at the main chance. Perhaps it was the pain that colored her judgment. "Why could Gibbs not handle some of the barter, Jack; you said we could not linger long away from thePearland I'd like to spend some time exploring the marketplace afterward." This was true; he had described coastalMadagascaras teeming with all nationalities of pirates, a favorite port of some of the most savage of the clan. He had also painted Toamasino as a veritable cornucopia of the pleasures of a world she was intent on exploring at his side.

He had turned on her tiger quick, eyes cold and blazing, the mouth that had given her so much loving attention the night before a grim line. "Do noteverquestion my orders. This ship has a brig like any other, and I'll see anyone in it who even whispers a challenge to my orders as captain." Gibbs had harrumphed and found something fascinating at his feet; Kalé had turned his gaze firmly towards his captain, and the rest of the crew had made haste to disperse when Jack dismissed them to their assignments. After a brief frozen moment in which she waited in vain for the predator's glare to leave his face, she had gone to the hold to sort textiles carrying the savagery of his response. She had no idea where to place it in the new and fragile lexicon of their bond.

When the voices of her own anger, damaged pride, and lover's hurt had all had their say, she managed to gather her wits and consider the meaning of it. Anger was not a part of Jack Sparrow's usual façade; she knew he carried his emotions close, played the droll and cunning jester, as a way to conceal his motives and to disarm opponents and compatriots alike. That façade must in part have been developed in response to the mutiny of thePearl'sformer crew against his captaincy, although she suspected it had been born long before that. She had challenged him, his orders, in front of his crew, however unwitting she had been at the time of the meaning this would hold for him.

The evening meal with the crew assembled on deck had begun as a cautious affair, the men appearing to share her uncertainty as to the captain's current mood. Jack, however, had returned to his usual good humor, dispensing rum via an order to Jacob, a boy of about fifteen with skin the color of milky tea who assisted Cotton in the galley. Jack began to expound with his usual lyric circumnavigation on the background of the Betsimisaraka people, whom he said ruled the eastern coastal territory, although she noticed he used the bottle in his hand more for graceful punctuation than imbibing.

"The Betsi whatsit, name means 'numerous and inseparable,' are ruled by a confederacy built by the son of a Malagasy princess and a British pirate; sow our seed everywhere, we do." A swig from the bottle, and a sway towards his audience. "Ratsimilaho, his name was," his enunciation here causing Gibbs to discreetly wipe his face of sprayed sibilance, "the son, not the pirate; died two decades ago and things are falling into ruin for the confederation. Slavers, pirates, the buggering French, civil strife, dueling ancestries, a terrible mess; no harm to our interests, though, the economy still thrives." Not for the first time she marveled at his Machiavellian fascination with the devious workings of the world, his store of esoteric knowledge, and the years of his history that were dark to her.

The crew had shown her no indication of any holdover of discord or disrespect from the earlier confrontation. She found herself grateful, and considered the incongruity of that. How had the experience of being a prideful governor's daughter transferred with such ease to life among thePearl'sstrangely diverse and wholly male crew? She was distracted from such musings by the plaintive notes of Ragetti's play on a rough hewn flute of his own making. His music was painfully thin yet evocative, as much a paradox as the man himself. The men stilled, listening with respect and allowing the notes to carry them home, to the mysterious places that meant for them. Ragetti still mourned Pintel, she knew; had once come upon him holding a knife that had belonged to his shipmate, turning it in bony fingers and staring out to sea with tears in his remaining eye. She had placed a hand on his dirty sleeve in comfort, and he had nodded his thanks, with no shame for his weeping. She supposed even Pintel deserved a eulogy from someone.

Jack rose eventually, having spent the evening seated between Gibbs and Kalé and managing to avoid meeting her eyes after a brief, questioning glance. She had tried to convey her acceptance of his earlier actions, but remained uncertain of her success. He took her hand, a question again in his dark eyes, and she stood with him and walked by his side to the great cabin.

She started to voice her thoughts once inside, but he had taken her face in both hands in the darkness, parted her lips with the stroke of a gentle finger, kissed her deep and long. "Let me tell it first, love; I think you might already understand, but let me tell it." He lit the room's candles then, keeping his face in shadow until he turned back to her, gestured for her to come to him. Standing close, he studied her face, his own sober and musing; when he found what he needed there he began, as she knew he would, to talk of the mutiny.

"They put a sword to my throat, in my own bed; hauled me out on deck, Barbossa and the rest; spit in my face and told me I was nothing of a pirate, a captain, was too soft, too slow to kill for the ease of taking prey. Left me on that devil's toenail of an island, took thePearl, the ship I'd killed for, sold my soul for. I'm not a fool who disregards life's lessons; this crew I chose with care. I left men behind, in Malé, those I saw the beast in, a fondness for drawing blood with no other purpose than to see it run red. Brought on board men with more than two thoughts to rattle their heads, men who loved the sea. The rest have reason enough to be loyal to me, and some would carry that to death itself. I sleep with my weapons at my bedside, when I sleep, and never,neverdo I tolerate anyone questioning my orders. Not even you, Lizzie. You can give me commands in this cabin, treat me like your whore in that bed if you wish. I know full well you are my match in wit and strength of mind. I hold you as my equal, demand that of you, everywhere but with my crew and my ship. There, I am captain."

"Jack, I swear, I gave no thought to it; I should have, if I had done, it would never have happened. I understand what thePearlmeans, to you, to us, what my place is aboard her. I can hold to loyalty as your lover, be true to that and to myself, and be loyal to you as my captain as well. I will mark it with my blood oath, if you need it, open my skin and swear. I'm sorry…" hearing the echo of those words, too late, from a past denial of regret. Would she ever be able to say them to him, as lovers so often found need to, without thinking of that betrayal?

"Don't, love. Don't." He pulled her in, taking another kiss, warm mouth and hands dispelling a need for further discussion. When he broke away, his lips twitched in a slow, lascivious grin. "Now would be an excellent time for you to assume dominance, as it were; I'm feeling a bit of the whore tonight."

She blushed, an unfamiliar flaming glow that spread from her chest to her forehead. Sex, and the functions of the body, were held to be taboo for open discussion in her former life. She'd had no mother or female relatives to provide an opportunity for more private talk. She sometimes wondered if this lack of discourse on the subject provided a perverse contribution to the ease with which she fell into Jack's habit of uninhibited sensuality. Those aspects of morality that were permitted for public exploration, such as prohibitions against treachery, violence, and thievery, were not so easily breeched. However, she had discovered with a confusing mix of pride and dismay that she was more than capable of trespass in those areas as well. Had found herself highly qualified, in fact, by her previous experience and her inherent streak of iron determination, to be a pirate. As a daughter of privilege isolated in the limited culture of aCaribbeanoutpost, she had lived very much outside the pale of the social order. She had developed a propensity for willfulness and for following her own autocratic counsel that had made her father cringe. These traits, which she was now able to acknowledge with some small repentance, had probably enabled her transition to piracy quite nicely. This, however, what she must speak to him of now…it was very much uncharted territory for her, for her newborn self, for what was between them.

"Jack, I…I can't. Not tonight." He raised an eyebrow, certain enough of her now to be puzzled rather than injured.

"Why on earth not,Elizabeth? You certainly deserve retribution for your earlier humiliation; I'm more than willing to suffer it, and it seems your duty as a pirate." His hands and leer were stilled then by her look of complete dismay. "What is it, love, out with it, now," thumb stroking the heat of her cheek.

"I started my courses, Jack, I'm bleeding, so we can't…" She paused at the dawning comprehension in his eyes, and was taken aback by the expression which followed of absolute delight.

"Darling Lizzie, it's only a little blood, lord knows you've spilled enough in battle without falter, and you offered me blood tonight, did you not? What better way to swear an oath to your captain than to let him draw it with his own sword, so to speak. A piece or two of linen and the washing bowl are all that's needed." He lowered his mouth to the place behind her ear that never failed to make her thrill under his lips and tongue. "It means I can come inside you, love, pay tribute in you as I'm meant to, without fear. Let me, Lizzie. Let me."

She acquiesced to him as she nearly always would, allowed him his persuasion. It was what he had promised with warm breath and soft lover's words in her ear. The slow, sweet build of pleasure with each stroke of his cock, his body fluid ease and hard expectation covering hers, taking time and joy in this. His voice spun a rich, raw tale of her undoing, the music of it her lifeline. "Come for me, love, crash like the sea, want to feel you around me, want you to feel me break like a wave inside you."

He did break, shattering in her arms, spilling into her for the first time. She wanted an eternity of first times, with him; saw no end to the novelty of what they brought to each other. She lay after with him still inside her, both reluctant to rise and make the necessary effort to tend to the practical tithes her body's gift demanded. He pulled himself up above her at last, kissed her, eyes open to his heart in the flickering light, reading her face. "Blood oaths, Lizzie, solemn sworn. Have to keep them, you know, or risk the god's furies."

"I'll hold to them, Jack. I swear. No matter what comes, where we go, what we become, I swear." He brought a finger to her lips, touched it to his heart. He did not offer words, not then, but it was enough for her. Enough to add to the private language they were creating, a dialect that promised to speak a history uniquely theirs. She left their bed, performed the chores their bodies required, washing him clean of her pledge with a handmaiden's care. He found sleep before she did, his body still but warm, his heartbeat against her palm a benediction.