Gibbs, Tristan, and his sister had been loitering in the captain's cabin for hours. The Pearl still moored in Tortuga.
Jack sat on a chair and played with a dagger in his hands. Indecisively, his dark eyes kept wandering from the dagger to Tia Dalma.
The others were already giving each other irritated looks, but the captain didn't seem to notice it.
Tia Dalma sat opposite him, smiling. Pintel, Ragetti and Cotton joined them and made astonished faces as they slowly understood the strange situation from the conversation between Jack and Tia Dalma.
"And after I have killed you, you will in a manner of speaking from deity to deity help Rachel to get by with her situation? And you will help her manifest into her human body? You're not going to go crazy and kill us all next time we're out at sea? Did I get that right?" asked Jack, and Temari looked up at the ceiling, snorting.
It had been like that all along. The witch just grinned and nodded her head in confirmation.
"Jack, she can be the undoing of us all …," Gibbs said quietly.
But Jack did not share the fear. He looked at Tia Dalma, and she could read the certainty in his eyes. The certainty that this time he could place his trust in her.
Sighing, he stood up and walked slowly towards the sea goddess. His hands were moist. He raised the dagger as if in slow motion and was about to stab it into her heart, but Ragetti cried out. Startled, all pairs of eyes turned to the skinny pirate.
"And you're saying what with this?" asked Jack with a raised eyebrow.
"Won't she never be able to get back into that body if you wound it badly?" said Ragetti, looking sheepish and embarrassed.
"How am I …," began Jack, then looked at Tia Dalma, "What do you think?"
Tia Dalma sighed. "Don't worry. I will be able to return to this exact body. If you prefer, you can suffocate me with a pillow. Less messy."
The witch gave Jack a smile, which was ironically returned.
Temari uncrossed her legs and stood up. Leisurely, she stepped to Jack, took the dagger from him and leaned forward to Tia Dalma.
"Don't take offence, but this is a waste of time," said Temari.
Jack stared at Temari as if spellbound. It was her way of moving that exerted a merciless attraction on him. Efficient – no muscle moved more than necessary. Smooth transitions and the rare combination of a casual elegance made it hard to look away from her.
Temari had held the dagger in front of Tia Dalma's chest and now pushed it forward.
Jack had turned away slightly disgusted, but now he looked at Calypso's dying shell and spoke urgently to her, "You do come back with Rachel and you don't keep us waiting long, aye?"
Tia Dalma looked at him one last time and nodded. Her eyes grew dim and a last breath of air escaped her lips.
For the first time in a long time, the wind died down.
The pirates on the Black Pearl had all rushed on deck, and now they watched the spectacle between the two elements. Gibbs paced nervously in circles, his boots stamping rhythmically on the planks.
"Easy, Master Gibbs. Everything will be all right," Jack tried to reassure him, but with moderate success.
After an uneventful while of waiting, many of the pirates went back below deck or to the island to indulge in something, be it rum, gambling, women or conversation. Only Jack and Temari remained at the railing as night settled over the sea.
Jack squinted indecisively at Temari.
"What's going on inside you?" he asked in a very casual tone of voice.
"I'm getting impatient. Thought I wouldn't have to wait long." She eyed Jack and her green eyes sparkled enterprisingly. "Shall we kill time?" she asked, radiating an energy that was probably unlikely to tame.
Without thinking about it, Jack closed the distance between them. When he stood directly in front of her, her forehead was barely level with his mouth and to look her in the face he had to look down.
"I don't hear myself saying no," Jack said in the lowest of tones.
They did not mean the same thing. Temari's grin was too wide for that, and the sound of a drawn sabre had nothing to do with what Jack wanted to refer to her question.
"Don't want to hurt you," he said.
"Save the politeness and let's get started," Temari said, pointing to Jack's sabre with a nod of her head.
"Don't want to hurt you, little one."
Temari's blade circled once in the air and she rolled her eyes. "It's not like we're fighting seriously, we …," she looked to the side thoughtfully. "… just pretend."
"A mock fight," Jack helped her.
He remembered how she had intercepted a slap for him, and he wanted to know if she was always so nimble.
"The winner gets rewarded how?" he asked, walking in a circle around her.
Temari laughed and shook her head suggestively. Her blade would have hit Jack in the stomach if he hadn't turned away immediately.
Jack widened his eyes. "A mock fight, savage!"
Apologetically, she raised her shoulders and went into a sequence of attacks that came at him from all directions.
Jack didn't need more to understand her self-confidence. She was agile and nimble. Her sabre was the seamless and natural extension of her arm.
Jack found ample pleasure in following her movements, and therefore mainly parried her blows rather than attacking himself. Having weathered the storm, he lacked stamina for a long battle. Her speed on top of his missing stamina caused him to take the reacting part of their dance. Jack saw only one advantage he had over her to end the skirmish soon – he was stronger than Temari.
Her next blow came from diagonally above and was aimed at his neck. Jack jerked his sabre upwards from below and parried the blow above his head. The clashing steel clanged and vibrated in his arm.
He started to sweat. Jack grinned at Temari before he increased the pressure on her weapon. Then she made a mistake and grabbed her sabre with both hands to push against his with more force.
Awe at her swordsmanship came over Jack and he forced himself to notice it as minimally as possible.
He changed the angle at which his blade rested against hers and applied more pressure. Her arms trembled, her gaze did not leave his eyes – wanting to predict his next move.
Her sabre lowered in his direction, and Jack was sure she was using all her body weight. He would now also have had to use both arms to keep her at a distance. Unlike him, who only stretched his arm in her direction and kept the rest of his upper sideways to Temari, her shoulders and arms were facing him head-on.
Jack took a step towards Temari, his sabre sliding further up her blade as he did so, and the laws of leverage turned in his favour. Bit by bit, he pushed her sabre back.
"Whoever taught you how to use a sword, trained you well, just forgot or didn't have the courage to remind you that you will be inferior to most in strength and size," Jack said.
Temari's gaze lingered for a moment on his chest. Where his shirt did not cover it, his skin shone conspicuously, and Jack also knew how deep his breathing was at the moment.
"He never got tired of pointing it out to me," said Temari.
His palm, around the hilt of his sabre, still lamented the strain it had been subjected to during the storm, but did not betray him. Jack was extremely sensitive when it came to sensing the tension that was between the steel of his weapon and that of his opponent. At that moment, that tension eased ever so slightly, and it was only because he noticed it immediately that he was able to thwart Temari's plan.
She jerked her arms even higher, directly above her head. As she did so, she whirled around her own axis and changed position to Jack. Her speed enabled her to perform such a risky manoeuvre. Had she been even slightly slower, she would have simply let her guard down and felt Jack's blade now.
She was no longer standing directly in front of him, but next to him. He would have stumbled forward had he kept up the pressure against her blade, which had suddenly disappeared. But Jack had shifted his weight backwards as she prepared her turn. So he kept his balance and was able to turn with her.
Temari loosened a hand around the hilt of her sabre and thrust towards his chest. Jack's defence was on point, buying him the time he needed to grab her wrist and twist it until she had to drop the weapon.
He pulled Temari towards him. Annoyance at her calm breathing and the fact that she was not sweating at all broke out in Jack. He was also annoyed by her smile, because he knew it from himself. The smile he put on when he was playing a game only he knew about …
He let go of Temari before his gaze would automatically settle on her lips. She picked up her weapon and put it away. He did the same and trotted over to the railing.
"I think, I don't have a signature from you yet that marks you as a member of the Pearl. Do you want to correct this omission directly, or do I have to threaten you for it?" he asked as Temari stood next to him and watched at the sea again.
"I have no idea what I'm going to do yet."
Jack snorted with a smile. "Thought you'd want to talk to Tia Dalma when she got back."
Temari raised her head questioningly and looked at him.
"Your brother, he's had a valid point to consider … if I were you, I'd really like to talk to the witch."
Her reaction was to let her eyes gleam treacherously and then blink angrily.
"Ah … my second hit, little one."
He missed the moment to keep himself under control. His eyes moved to her lips, he leaned towards her and froze. Her eyes flung her concentrated anger at him, and Jack turned and hurried to his cabin.