old friend on the hunt; includes a plan involving ancestor's ghosts, a book, and of course, smut.

Their business in Toamasino complete, Jack had made the unusual request that she join him in the great cabin for dinner.Elizabethsat bemused before a mismatched array of silver, china, and crystal. She had not known the chests in his cabin contained such luxuries. Cotton and Jacob had placed the serving dishes with formality and retired, the parrot complicit in their decorum. Jacob, however, had embellished his exit with bows, flourishes, and a grin. His play spoke of his pleasure in this new role, as well as all that he was learning from careful study of Jack, whom he obviously idolized. She was distracted from worry for the boy's future by her captain's elegant handling of cutlery and decanter, and the grave manner in which he passed the ever-present boiled fish. Her particular devil was afoot; as he had a penchant for expediency, she was sure she would soon know to what purpose.

Calling forth old habits and for once wishing she was clad in something other than worn breeches and a man's shirt, she ate as daintily as she had ever been capable of, given her healthy appreciation of food and fare that was surprisingly good for a pirate's table. "What occasioned all this, Jack? It's lovely, but a side of you I've not seen before."

"We've both come a long way from our pasts, love. Thought I'd see what remembrance might bring to the table."

She was left to wonder if this was a new twist on seduction. When he rose, stood behind her chair, and lowered his lips to her neck and his hands to her breasts, she was certain of it. "Shall I take you over the dessert plates, Bess, or will you join me in bed? I find myself envying every blessed thing you raise to your mouth." The flickering point of his tongue stroked her ear, and his handsmoved on her with the same finesse he had demonstrated with the tableware. In the spirit of creative passion, she felt compelled to take the first choice offered.

"I find myself craving the sweet, captain."

With a flash of ringed fingers and glinting teeth, he had swept aside china and silver, lifted her thigh to circle his waist and her body to rest on the table. Elegance abandoned, clothing stripped away in heated impatience, they found new use for Cotton's craft. Both had dipped into the syrupy golden mess, painted lover's maps on willing flesh to guide their ministrations. Jack's mouth formed a heaven, the most tender part of him, caressing and laving her skin and finally reaching her center to send her quivering into rapture. She moved over his chest, attending to each scar and sector of unmarred bronze satin in turn. Decorated his bodyin sweetness with playful fingers, and watched him come undone as she took him with lips and tongue.

In the end, they finished between spilled goblets and strewn silver. He raised himself on an elbow, grinning, looking inordinately pleased with himself. She smiled; a sated Jack Sparrow was a delicious sight, a golden stretch of feline bliss adorned with a lion's dark mane of tangled hair and beads.

"Highly original, Jack; or did I misunderstand what you meant by remembrance?" The tease was only half in jest, but she found she did not much care what he answered. His past was slowly becoming for her a dimension of the man she had chosen, a part of him she could accept, find a place for.

"You have the honor of being the first I've taken atop the dining table, love; underneath, now, that's another story."

Elizabethanswered by kissing the smirk off his mouth, holding him firmly in place by grasping his returning hardness. A cursory and sensual mutual cleansing with a dampened cloth removed the last vestiges of dessert, and they found their way to the bed. Landing above him, she took the lead, straddling him and taking his length inside with tantalizing slowness.Elizabethwatched his face, mesmerized as always by its transformation as he entered her, the night's shadows gentle on its planes and hollows. She trailed her fingers across his chest, traced the dark line of silken hair that ended where their bodies joined; he responded with a sharp hiss, then a sigh that formed her name. Her finish built slowly, reflected in his eyes as she tensed and arched, her body's hunger drawing him deeper. She withdrew, brought him to completion between breasts and cupped hands as he begged her to do. He voiced his pleasure in whispers, a lover's song. "God, Lizzie, my Lizzie, so soft, so sweet, there, love, just there…"

She lay tangled with him afterward, regretting her offer to Gibbs to take the next watch. They had agreed that although thePearlwas at anchor, she rested in a harbor filled with miscreants from all corners of the globe. Jack's new habit of hedging his bets was one with which she was in full accord. She turned to him to take her leave, and caught the change in his mood. His face was thoughtful, and his eyes held questions.

He raised a hand, brushed her cheek with uncharacteristic hesitance. "Won't always be like this, love. Can't recall another voyage with the ease of this one; fish jumping out of the sea and into the pot at Cotton's behest, fair weather with just enough rain to keep the water barrels full, no one and nothing in pursuit. It won't last."

"I know that, Jack. I may not have seen what you have of this life, but I've known the hardship, the brutality of it. I know…how quickly death can come." She kept her eyes fixed on his but struggled to fight back the image of his ship's midnight grace being pulled broken into the sea, the look in his eyes when he'd clung to her at the brink of hell.

"And you'll stay? Through all of it, you'll stay and won't regret your choice?" She caught her breath; this was Jack Sparrow offering his fears to her, trusting her to answer true. She suspected he may have set the stage, offered her the contrast between tonight's interlude and what may come in order to delineate the question, make it clear what he was asking. She found she did not begrudge him that; it was his own version of honesty, of love, offering both his own vulnerability and his understanding of what the decision meant for her.

"Yes, Jack. Yes. I'll stay, with no regrets."

~

The next day saw the return of Captain Beauvais to thePearl, and a final discussion of strategy before initiating their joint undertaking. Jack's plan involved a tale he insisted had been confirmed by a reliable source, an elder of the Betsimisaraka named Ashawa with whom he claimed "prior and rewarding acquaintance." He had arranged a meeting with this man and disappeared for an hour on the second day of their sojourn in Toamasino.Elizabethrecalled his expression when he returned as that of a cat with its eye on a particularly fascinating mouse hole. The story told of a 17thcentury French pirate, pursued by privateers in the service of their mutual homeland's crown. In desperation, the pirate captain had journeyed inland up the Mananjary river into the territory of the Antaimoro, south of the land held by the Betsimisaraka. There he had concealed his treasure, said to be a priceless cache of gold and jewels, in a sacred place known only to the inner circle of the mystics who held supreme power in that southern province.

Ashawa had also spoken of a sacred book, asorabe, lost to the Antaimoro in some distant past, under mysterious circumstances. Jack had described the volume as containing divine secrets, access to a vast power that men had died for. "Holds the secret that unlocks the door between life and death; another bloody key, don't know why the gods always insist on that particular metaphor, would think they'd be capable of more variety."

Ashawa claimed that the book had come to be in the possession of a certain Betsimisaraka ruler, a descendant of great ancient kings known as Zahul. This gentleman had a daughter of marriageable age. He had expressed his wish to have Jack preside at her wedding ceremony. As someone who had recently walked among the dead, undoubtedly carrying their power back into this world, Captain Jack Sparrow would bring good fortune to the union and to the house of Zahul. Thesorabewould then be presented to Jack in grateful payment for his service.

Growing impatient with detail and history, Jack offered a summation with typical fluency and punctuating gesture. "Never mind the names, the ancestry and the corpse-worship, what we're about is this: we perform the ceremony, lay hands on said book, take both our ships to the mouth of the Mananjary, proceed inland on Jean-Luc's ship - lovely high flying silver bird that she is - present the long lost book to the appropriate long-bearded sages who in their gratitude will provide the location of the aforementioned Frenchman's treasure, with which we will then abscond since nobody will miss it anyway. Clear?"

With some trepidation, Elizabeth acknowledged that it was; Jean-Luc grinned, pulled both of them in succession into an embrace complete with resounding Gallic kisses on each cheek, and pronounced an accord.Elizabethnoted his acceptance and intuitive understanding of both Jack's flamboyance and his cunning. This was someone who saw what she did, underneath the façade and the stage play. He believed in Jack as a man, and knew his capability as a pirate.

She realized that in her first encounters with Captain Jack Sparrow, he had reached the end of a spiraling fall that began before the loss of thePearl,in a dark time when he had lost a part of himself. His return from death had seen him restored, transformed. Some in their rescue party had sought revenge, some had other self-serving motives. She knew that a buried, shame-filled part of her had been seeking some kind of redemption. But in no small measure, he lived now not because of trickery or bargains with the gods, but because he had allowed himself on more than one occasion to be a good man. For her, for Gibbs and the crew, even for Will. She loved the contradiction of him, the internal battle between his pirate's soul and his strong heart. She now believed that this was what she had come to accept in herself, seen mirrored in his eyes.

Elizabethfound herself relaxing in their new partnership, and wondering again about Captain Beauvais, his history, and what he might bring to the adventure of the next few days. When the French captain left to prepare his ship atmidday, they stood on deck surveying the busy harbor. She asked Jack what her role in all this might be.

"Every deity worth consideration has a consort, love; according to the gentry we're dealing with, I fit somewhere in the pantheon between the gods and their legion of the dead. And you, love, are a consort worthy of the divine." He slipped his fingers along the curve of her throat, through her hair, turning strands to catch the sun's offering of gold.

"And what would such a consort do, in the grand scheme of things?"Elizabethwas fully aware of her misgivings but could not help sharing his joy at the hunt's beginning. She had expected to fight for an answer that provided any detail, and was surprised when he proceeded to carefully describe what he had in mind, beyond what had sufficed for Jean-Luc's ready agreement. His words did little to quiet her apprehension, as there was more than a slight possibility of miscalculation and risk. Jack may have learned to hedge his bets, but his talent for blithely twisted logic had not left him. Nevertheless, she thrilled to it, found a return of the singing excitement she felt in battle while balanced on the razor's edge of her own power.

"You'll walk at my side, love, protect my back, and lord knows you're well able to handle a sword." To seal the double meaning, he kissed her deep, his mouth promising danger and adventure of another kind, in a venture of their own making