"Elizabeth left Will for the sea..."
ETA: Light hearted.
Title: "Elizabeth left Will for the sea..."
Author: ash_night
Rating: PG
Pairing: Hmm... Nothing dramatic or central. A bit of Commodore love here and there.
Genre: Humor
Summery: Elizabeth proves her wits as a savvy, manipulating pirate, and Jack finally goes mad.
Disclaimer: The Mouse owns Pirates. There's a reference to Snow White and The Mummy. And me? I own nothing but the wornout socks on my feet.
A/N: The result of being soaked inthe PotC DVD for too long. Feedback is always welcome. :)
Elizabeth left Will for the sea after three years of marriage. Will, despite the pirate in his veins, insisted on being a blacksmith and refused, adamantly, to Elizabeth's desire to run away with Jack in order to become a couple of pirates.
So when the rumors spread that the marriage between the young Elizabeth and Will was not going very well, Sparrow couldn't help but think that the lass had finally tied her laces straight and would be going after a certain Commodore Norrington. When Sparrow, instead, met a prim and proper Elizabeth in the very not prim and proper Tortuga tavern, he was so surprised that he bought her a tankard of rum, even though she certainly could afford it and wouldn't drink it.
"Sit down love. What is a lady like you doing in a town like this?" Sparrow asked, setting his drink loudly down with a chink onto the wooden table, and leaned away delicately when a fight between two men had slammed one of them down onto their table.
Elizabeth had the dignity to look shocked as the two men scuffled off throwing mad punches into one another's faces. "Jack -- Captain Jack Sparrow, I would like to entreat you to..." she lowered her voice, "to allow me to join the crew of the Black Pearl."
"The Black Pearl? You? What makes you think that there's the remotest possibility of letting the woman who burnt the rum onto my beloved ship?" Sparrow cupped his tankard as if it were a bundle of jewels. He studied her suspiciously. "You just might burn the rum stores again in some mad homesick effort of returning to your Will and Commodore."
Elizabeth simply glared at Sparrow, pursing her lips and fidgeting with a lace handkerchief in her hands.
"Is it marital troubles, then?" he resigned.
"That is too bold."
"Oh, come off your throne princess. If you're aiming to be a pirate, you'll have to be able to withstand a lot more than bold words, rum, and scurvy scoundrels like Captain Jack Sparrow."
"Yes I know. I've left Will, and I am not marrying the Commodore," she added when she saw the interested glint of hope in Jack's eyes. "Will refuses to leave his smithy to become a pirate with me, so I've taken matters in my own hands." She watched as Sparrow downed the rest of his drink and hers within a couple of seconds. "And I've always," she pressed her advantage, leaning across the table towards him, smiling, "found you rather attractive in your own...charmingly mad way."
"Have you, love?" His eyes glinted as he considered her compliment for a moment. "I don't trust you either, Mrs. Turner - no? - Miss Swann, then." He stood. "Have a good day. Very best of luck to you. I've a crew I ought to be getting back to."
She was in his face again, angry and stubborn. "You can't just leave me here. I haven't a ride back to Port Royal or anywhere."
"Not a blemish on my conscious. I'm sure you can barter your passage onto a respectable ship." He eyed her long dress that had enough bead and pearl work to buy ten large hens with money left to spare. He made a broad gesture with his hands. "The world is your oyster. You supply the hot sauce. Now excuse me --"
"-- No Jack! You will take me to the Black Pearl or I'll --"
"You'll what?" A seedy grin. "Have me arrested and hanged for treason for not complying to the Governor's daughter's wishes?"
"Captain Jack Sparrow," said a voice that was disagreeably familiar to Jack.
Sparrow turned around to see the stiff Commodore Norrington staring sternly back at him. "Commodore, my respects." He smiled apologetically.
"You will escort the lovely Miss Swann to wherever her heart desires on the Black Pearl or else I will see to it that you are strung like a dead and dry fish by dawn."
"Always well-connected aren't you Miss Swann?" Sparrow shot a sour glance at Elizabeth. Returning his attention to the Commodore, he said, "It would be my one true pleasure to allow the lady onto my ship and take her even to the South Pole if her heart desires it so."
"And if you so much as --" Norrington began.
"-- as harm the little blonde curls on her head, make her hands calloused from pulling the ropes or have her thrown into the warm seas to be eaten by the sharks -- I'd shoot myself first before any of that happens to your sweet muffin miss."
"Very well. Take care Miss Swann."
"Thank you Commodore, I will. And if I have any troubles, I would not hesitate to write to you."
Norrington stayed behind in the tavern and was strategically stalked by a plump wench with too much rouge and too thin of a dress. He never stood a chance.
In the meanwhile, Sparrow and Elizabeth left the tavern with a grouchy Sparrow muttering a flourish of epithets and occasionally stumbling on a collapsed body on the ground. Elizabeth, on the other hand, held her poise and made him carry her heavy bags of luggage.
She only smiled broadly when she heard Jack curse, "God damn all the manipulating women in the world, and the lovers, oh yes, especially the lovers, strung along like dumb, blind, mute, faithful puppies! If only I were born a eunuch like the French…or the Governor’s daughter.”
Elizabeth sang happily, “Drink up me hearties, yo ho.” It was going to be a very good day for her.
“Dan, dan dan, dan, yo ho! And really bad eggs,” Sparrow joined in, unable to help himself. It was, after all, his favorite song in the world. When he saw an infuriatingly amused expression dancing on her face, he grumbled, “The crew will never take me seriously again.”
“Oh cheer up Jack. I do actually think you’re charmingly attractive.”
“Any man that’s mad enough to save your life, even if he’s a three-legged hunchback, is going to be attractive in your eyes. You, Elizabeth, are danger on two feet! And I - Captain Jack Sparrow of the Black Pearl - have finally gone mad and will never, ever be known as the most fearsome pirate of the Caribbeans.”
“You never were known as the most fearsome pirate of the Caribbeans.”
“That’s not the point, love! The point is that, you have…” He swayed slightly, thinking very carefully about the choice of words. “A dreadful condition.”
“What are you talking about?” She looked slightly concerned for his sanity and her safety, gripping her fan tightly as if it were a knife.
“You, m’dear lady, have your head and your nose stuck so highly in the clouds that -”
THWACK! “Are you implying that I’m a snob Mr. Sparrow?”
That hurt much more than regular slaps. He eyed the fan warily. “No, no, no, not at all, Miss Elizabeth. Just a tad…violent, mayhaps? Are you sure you’re not Bootstrap’s child? You act more like a pirate than that Will Turner ever does.”
“Thank you. And that is precisely the reason why I left Will.”
“For me?”
“Yes. I left Will and the Commodore, in search for you because you are a pirate.”
“But why me, specifically, love? There are many, many other pirate captains in the world.” He paused, counting the number on his fingers. “Never mind, there are only a dozen or so left, but surely you didn’t write love letters to all of them, and they all turned such a…lovely lass like you down.”
“Because,” she looked thoughtful, “you are Captain Jack Sparrow and a good man.” She took pity on the poor man and pulled one of the bags away from his hands and carried it by herself, obviously capable of manual labor.
“You know, that ‘good man’ part in the title is starting to ruin my reputation. A couple of sailors on the last merchant ship heard my name and started bawling their eyes out in laughter. And you certainly won’t help it. Two women on me ship! Gibbs would never let me hear the end of it.”
“Where are we going, Jack?”
“I don’t know. Where do you want to go? My ship’s your carriage, as the Commodore delicately put it. I hear that the South Pole is really quite lovely this time of the year.”
“Seriously Jack. What’s our next adventure?”
“Our next adventure involves sitting around the docks waiting for the Black Pearl to be finished with her repairs. And then, it’s off to Isla de Muerto again to fill our pockets with so much gold we sink into the ground.”
“What?” This certainly wasn’t what she had bargained for when she decided to join with him.
Catching her disappointed stare, he quickly explained, “Well, we can’t let all that gold go to waste, now can we?”
A stony glare. She tapped the slats of the fan against the palm of her hand.
“Alright, how about this. If you can manage to convince the crew to abandon that big cave of gold and glitter to go gallivanting off to terrorize a few merchant ships with all the dangers and risks of losing limbs and lives, I’ll follow your orders silently for the rest of the trip.”
“Good. I hope you can take orders from a woman better than Will does or I’ll have you marooned on that little island,” she said briskly, taking in the sights of the harbor at night.
“Not funny,” Sparrow answered, but he was too distracted by the arrival at the beach that he dumped the rest of her luggage, much to her protests, and ran off very quickly toward the black ocean waters. The surf crashed against his legs, and the slippery cool water felt so nice against his skin.
“Jack Sparrow! Come back here this instant! Don’t you dare swim away from me!” Elizabeth screamed, running after the mad pirate captain.
“Never in a million years, love,” he yelled. “I’m free!” He smiled to no one in particular with the satisfaction of getting out of a particularly sticky situation before diving beneath the water. She would never catch up with all her silly petticoats, layers and corset. He could see the little lantern lights of the Black Pearl glistening in the distance, and his heart swelled. Yes, the Black Pearl was freedom, freedom from responsibilities, from the law, and from wannabe frothing and rabid pirate fan girls.
When Sparrow reached his ship, he was stunned. Elizabeth was there, dry and still graceful as if she had only went for a stroll in the park, playing a game of cards with Anamaria, Gibbs and Mr. Cotton. By the large stack of gold bits and pieces on Elizabeth’s end of the table, Jack could tell she was winning too.
“It’s not possible,” he sputtered, taking an unsteady step towards her, poking her in the arm just to make sure he hadn’t truly gone mad. No one swims faster than Jack Sparrow, and nobody beats a pirate at a game of cards.
“Not probable. Would you like a bottle of rum to drink?” she asked, smiling in her faux-innocence, raising a bottle of amber rum at him.
“Never again,” he swore to himself, “will I drink rum with a woman." He gripped the railings and stroked the wood. "At least I have you my darling Black Pearl. You'll always be mine, won't you?"
"Jack?"
No, not that blasted woman again.
“The crew and I have agreed to not go to the Isla de Muerto and instead go -”
“No!” he cried furiously, kicking the side of the ship. “You’re supposed to be on my side, remember?” He stalked off to somewhere below deck, wailing like a banshee a thousand more curses. It was turning into a very bad day for Captain Sparrow.
“Well,” Elizabeth announced to Anamaria and Gibbs, “you’ll always remember this day as the day that the charmingly attractive Captain Jack Sparrow went mad, quit drinking, and voluntarily turned himself into a eunuch.”
“Wind in the sails. Wind in the sails,” said Mr. Cottons’ parrot.
“Amen,” answered Gibbs.
“Should’ve been castrated long ago,” said Anamaria. “Welcome aboard, Miss Swann. I propose a drinking song!”
And all was right with the world… except for a few minor technicalities with a Will who couldn’t seem to find the bottom of a rum bottle, a Norrington who was finally expressing more emotion than the stiff upper lip of a coconut tree and was moaning quite loudly in sweet defeat, and a Jack Sparrow who just locked himself in his rooms and promptly went mad with hatred for that damnable Barbossa’s successor, the Bloody Pirate Miss Elizabeth Swann.
"Compass, compass, who's the fairest one of all?" Sparrow said, whirling around the room with his compass in hand. He stopped, still a bit wobbly, and looked down for the answer. "I never liked you much anyway," he snapped the lid shut and tossed it onto his bed.
He heard a strange clanking of metal that seemed to claw up the side of the ship. Curious, he walked towards the sound, sword drawn. And there was the face of Bootstrap Bill Turner peering into porthole of his cabin. "Ahoy! I finally found you, Jack Sparrow."
Sparrow immediately collapsed neatly onto the disarray of stuff on his bed. The last few thoughts that drifted to his mind before proceeding to black out was, "I should've been born a Norrington. A good, law-abiding Norrington. Damnit. The gossipers were right all along. I’ve gone bloody mad…."
And thus ended a spectacularly bad day for the now mad Captain Jack Sparrow.
Balance and order were restored to the world. And somewhere in the heavens was a sadistic goddess who simply smiled an amused smile and then went to sleep.
Title: "Elizabeth left Will for the sea..."
Author: ash_night
Rating: PG
Pairing: Hmm... Nothing dramatic or central. A bit of Commodore love here and there.
Genre: Humor
Summery: Elizabeth proves her wits as a savvy, manipulating pirate, and Jack finally goes mad.
Disclaimer: The Mouse owns Pirates. There's a reference to Snow White and The Mummy. And me? I own nothing but the wornout socks on my feet.
A/N: The result of being soaked inthe PotC DVD for too long. Feedback is always welcome. :)
Elizabeth left Will for the sea after three years of marriage. Will, despite the pirate in his veins, insisted on being a blacksmith and refused, adamantly, to Elizabeth's desire to run away with Jack in order to become a couple of pirates.
So when the rumors spread that the marriage between the young Elizabeth and Will was not going very well, Sparrow couldn't help but think that the lass had finally tied her laces straight and would be going after a certain Commodore Norrington. When Sparrow, instead, met a prim and proper Elizabeth in the very not prim and proper Tortuga tavern, he was so surprised that he bought her a tankard of rum, even though she certainly could afford it and wouldn't drink it.
"Sit down love. What is a lady like you doing in a town like this?" Sparrow asked, setting his drink loudly down with a chink onto the wooden table, and leaned away delicately when a fight between two men had slammed one of them down onto their table.
Elizabeth had the dignity to look shocked as the two men scuffled off throwing mad punches into one another's faces. "Jack -- Captain Jack Sparrow, I would like to entreat you to..." she lowered her voice, "to allow me to join the crew of the Black Pearl."
"The Black Pearl? You? What makes you think that there's the remotest possibility of letting the woman who burnt the rum onto my beloved ship?" Sparrow cupped his tankard as if it were a bundle of jewels. He studied her suspiciously. "You just might burn the rum stores again in some mad homesick effort of returning to your Will and Commodore."
Elizabeth simply glared at Sparrow, pursing her lips and fidgeting with a lace handkerchief in her hands.
"Is it marital troubles, then?" he resigned.
"That is too bold."
"Oh, come off your throne princess. If you're aiming to be a pirate, you'll have to be able to withstand a lot more than bold words, rum, and scurvy scoundrels like Captain Jack Sparrow."
"Yes I know. I've left Will, and I am not marrying the Commodore," she added when she saw the interested glint of hope in Jack's eyes. "Will refuses to leave his smithy to become a pirate with me, so I've taken matters in my own hands." She watched as Sparrow downed the rest of his drink and hers within a couple of seconds. "And I've always," she pressed her advantage, leaning across the table towards him, smiling, "found you rather attractive in your own...charmingly mad way."
"Have you, love?" His eyes glinted as he considered her compliment for a moment. "I don't trust you either, Mrs. Turner - no? - Miss Swann, then." He stood. "Have a good day. Very best of luck to you. I've a crew I ought to be getting back to."
She was in his face again, angry and stubborn. "You can't just leave me here. I haven't a ride back to Port Royal or anywhere."
"Not a blemish on my conscious. I'm sure you can barter your passage onto a respectable ship." He eyed her long dress that had enough bead and pearl work to buy ten large hens with money left to spare. He made a broad gesture with his hands. "The world is your oyster. You supply the hot sauce. Now excuse me --"
"-- No Jack! You will take me to the Black Pearl or I'll --"
"You'll what?" A seedy grin. "Have me arrested and hanged for treason for not complying to the Governor's daughter's wishes?"
"Captain Jack Sparrow," said a voice that was disagreeably familiar to Jack.
Sparrow turned around to see the stiff Commodore Norrington staring sternly back at him. "Commodore, my respects." He smiled apologetically.
"You will escort the lovely Miss Swann to wherever her heart desires on the Black Pearl or else I will see to it that you are strung like a dead and dry fish by dawn."
"Always well-connected aren't you Miss Swann?" Sparrow shot a sour glance at Elizabeth. Returning his attention to the Commodore, he said, "It would be my one true pleasure to allow the lady onto my ship and take her even to the South Pole if her heart desires it so."
"And if you so much as --" Norrington began.
"-- as harm the little blonde curls on her head, make her hands calloused from pulling the ropes or have her thrown into the warm seas to be eaten by the sharks -- I'd shoot myself first before any of that happens to your sweet muffin miss."
"Very well. Take care Miss Swann."
"Thank you Commodore, I will. And if I have any troubles, I would not hesitate to write to you."
Norrington stayed behind in the tavern and was strategically stalked by a plump wench with too much rouge and too thin of a dress. He never stood a chance.
In the meanwhile, Sparrow and Elizabeth left the tavern with a grouchy Sparrow muttering a flourish of epithets and occasionally stumbling on a collapsed body on the ground. Elizabeth, on the other hand, held her poise and made him carry her heavy bags of luggage.
She only smiled broadly when she heard Jack curse, "God damn all the manipulating women in the world, and the lovers, oh yes, especially the lovers, strung along like dumb, blind, mute, faithful puppies! If only I were born a eunuch like the French…or the Governor’s daughter.”
Elizabeth sang happily, “Drink up me hearties, yo ho.” It was going to be a very good day for her.
“Dan, dan dan, dan, yo ho! And really bad eggs,” Sparrow joined in, unable to help himself. It was, after all, his favorite song in the world. When he saw an infuriatingly amused expression dancing on her face, he grumbled, “The crew will never take me seriously again.”
“Oh cheer up Jack. I do actually think you’re charmingly attractive.”
“Any man that’s mad enough to save your life, even if he’s a three-legged hunchback, is going to be attractive in your eyes. You, Elizabeth, are danger on two feet! And I - Captain Jack Sparrow of the Black Pearl - have finally gone mad and will never, ever be known as the most fearsome pirate of the Caribbeans.”
“You never were known as the most fearsome pirate of the Caribbeans.”
“That’s not the point, love! The point is that, you have…” He swayed slightly, thinking very carefully about the choice of words. “A dreadful condition.”
“What are you talking about?” She looked slightly concerned for his sanity and her safety, gripping her fan tightly as if it were a knife.
“You, m’dear lady, have your head and your nose stuck so highly in the clouds that -”
THWACK! “Are you implying that I’m a snob Mr. Sparrow?”
That hurt much more than regular slaps. He eyed the fan warily. “No, no, no, not at all, Miss Elizabeth. Just a tad…violent, mayhaps? Are you sure you’re not Bootstrap’s child? You act more like a pirate than that Will Turner ever does.”
“Thank you. And that is precisely the reason why I left Will.”
“For me?”
“Yes. I left Will and the Commodore, in search for you because you are a pirate.”
“But why me, specifically, love? There are many, many other pirate captains in the world.” He paused, counting the number on his fingers. “Never mind, there are only a dozen or so left, but surely you didn’t write love letters to all of them, and they all turned such a…lovely lass like you down.”
“Because,” she looked thoughtful, “you are Captain Jack Sparrow and a good man.” She took pity on the poor man and pulled one of the bags away from his hands and carried it by herself, obviously capable of manual labor.
“You know, that ‘good man’ part in the title is starting to ruin my reputation. A couple of sailors on the last merchant ship heard my name and started bawling their eyes out in laughter. And you certainly won’t help it. Two women on me ship! Gibbs would never let me hear the end of it.”
“Where are we going, Jack?”
“I don’t know. Where do you want to go? My ship’s your carriage, as the Commodore delicately put it. I hear that the South Pole is really quite lovely this time of the year.”
“Seriously Jack. What’s our next adventure?”
“Our next adventure involves sitting around the docks waiting for the Black Pearl to be finished with her repairs. And then, it’s off to Isla de Muerto again to fill our pockets with so much gold we sink into the ground.”
“What?” This certainly wasn’t what she had bargained for when she decided to join with him.
Catching her disappointed stare, he quickly explained, “Well, we can’t let all that gold go to waste, now can we?”
A stony glare. She tapped the slats of the fan against the palm of her hand.
“Alright, how about this. If you can manage to convince the crew to abandon that big cave of gold and glitter to go gallivanting off to terrorize a few merchant ships with all the dangers and risks of losing limbs and lives, I’ll follow your orders silently for the rest of the trip.”
“Good. I hope you can take orders from a woman better than Will does or I’ll have you marooned on that little island,” she said briskly, taking in the sights of the harbor at night.
“Not funny,” Sparrow answered, but he was too distracted by the arrival at the beach that he dumped the rest of her luggage, much to her protests, and ran off very quickly toward the black ocean waters. The surf crashed against his legs, and the slippery cool water felt so nice against his skin.
“Jack Sparrow! Come back here this instant! Don’t you dare swim away from me!” Elizabeth screamed, running after the mad pirate captain.
“Never in a million years, love,” he yelled. “I’m free!” He smiled to no one in particular with the satisfaction of getting out of a particularly sticky situation before diving beneath the water. She would never catch up with all her silly petticoats, layers and corset. He could see the little lantern lights of the Black Pearl glistening in the distance, and his heart swelled. Yes, the Black Pearl was freedom, freedom from responsibilities, from the law, and from wannabe frothing and rabid pirate fan girls.
When Sparrow reached his ship, he was stunned. Elizabeth was there, dry and still graceful as if she had only went for a stroll in the park, playing a game of cards with Anamaria, Gibbs and Mr. Cotton. By the large stack of gold bits and pieces on Elizabeth’s end of the table, Jack could tell she was winning too.
“It’s not possible,” he sputtered, taking an unsteady step towards her, poking her in the arm just to make sure he hadn’t truly gone mad. No one swims faster than Jack Sparrow, and nobody beats a pirate at a game of cards.
“Not probable. Would you like a bottle of rum to drink?” she asked, smiling in her faux-innocence, raising a bottle of amber rum at him.
“Never again,” he swore to himself, “will I drink rum with a woman." He gripped the railings and stroked the wood. "At least I have you my darling Black Pearl. You'll always be mine, won't you?"
"Jack?"
No, not that blasted woman again.
“The crew and I have agreed to not go to the Isla de Muerto and instead go -”
“No!” he cried furiously, kicking the side of the ship. “You’re supposed to be on my side, remember?” He stalked off to somewhere below deck, wailing like a banshee a thousand more curses. It was turning into a very bad day for Captain Sparrow.
“Well,” Elizabeth announced to Anamaria and Gibbs, “you’ll always remember this day as the day that the charmingly attractive Captain Jack Sparrow went mad, quit drinking, and voluntarily turned himself into a eunuch.”
“Wind in the sails. Wind in the sails,” said Mr. Cottons’ parrot.
“Amen,” answered Gibbs.
“Should’ve been castrated long ago,” said Anamaria. “Welcome aboard, Miss Swann. I propose a drinking song!”
And all was right with the world… except for a few minor technicalities with a Will who couldn’t seem to find the bottom of a rum bottle, a Norrington who was finally expressing more emotion than the stiff upper lip of a coconut tree and was moaning quite loudly in sweet defeat, and a Jack Sparrow who just locked himself in his rooms and promptly went mad with hatred for that damnable Barbossa’s successor, the Bloody Pirate Miss Elizabeth Swann.
"Compass, compass, who's the fairest one of all?" Sparrow said, whirling around the room with his compass in hand. He stopped, still a bit wobbly, and looked down for the answer. "I never liked you much anyway," he snapped the lid shut and tossed it onto his bed.
He heard a strange clanking of metal that seemed to claw up the side of the ship. Curious, he walked towards the sound, sword drawn. And there was the face of Bootstrap Bill Turner peering into porthole of his cabin. "Ahoy! I finally found you, Jack Sparrow."
Sparrow immediately collapsed neatly onto the disarray of stuff on his bed. The last few thoughts that drifted to his mind before proceeding to black out was, "I should've been born a Norrington. A good, law-abiding Norrington. Damnit. The gossipers were right all along. I’ve gone bloody mad…."
And thus ended a spectacularly bad day for the now mad Captain Jack Sparrow.
Balance and order were restored to the world. And somewhere in the heavens was a sadistic goddess who simply smiled an amused smile and then went to sleep.