Fic: The Moral Advantage: 'Saved' and 'Rough Weather' (4/? - J/E - PG-13)
More of that 'same story different version' I began last fall. I've been working on writing a fourth part of 'The Moral Advantage' for some time, and this week's drabble challenge prompt, 'Dive' and our favorite Royal Marines-turned-Pirates, Murtogg and Mullroy, allowed me to bring it to a conclusion. Many thanks to my dear hereswith for the beta help.
It's been a long time, but hopefully this part is fairly self-explanatory. But just in case...
Part One: Prequel
Part Two: The Moral Advantage
Part Three: Petits Oiseaux
The Moral Advantage, Part Four
~ Saved ~
Among the crew members that greeted Elizabeth on her return to the Black Pearl were the two former Royal Marines, Murtogg and Mullroy.
“We knew the captain would save you again, Miss Elizabeth,” said Murtogg with a broad smile.
“She’s a missus, now!” Mullroy reminded his colleague pointedly.
“Oh. Right. And the Pirate King as well.” Murtogg looked distressed.
Mullroy bowed to Elizabeth. “May we offer our felicitations, ma’am.”
Elizabeth’s brows had risen at the implication that she’d been “saved” from returning to England to give birth and raise her child in the peaceful countryside where her cousins lived, but she only said, “Thank you. You were both there when Jack rescued me from drowning at Port Royal, weren’t you? It seems like ages ago.”
Murtogg brightened. “Wish you’d been there, ma’am. That was a sight!”
“She was there!” Mullroy said, severely.
“True. Save that I was out of my senses,” Elizabeth said, blandly.
“Aye,” agreed Murtogg. “The captain, he was telling us that story about how those cannibals made him their chief when we all heard your splash, and the commodore, God rest him, shouted your name from up there on the battlements. The captain shed his effects and made the prettiest dive you ever saw, cut the water clean as a whistle, and all in an instant. Had you back on the dock in a flea’s wink.”
“Though it seemed a bit longer than that at the time,” Mullroy added.
“Wasn’t, though,” Murtogg asserted, “else she’d be dead now, wouldn’t she? Begging your pardon, ma’am.”
“Not at all.” Elizabeth smiled. “The captain does seem to make a habit of saving me.”
“And now you can return the favor,” said Murtogg.
“Save him, you mean?” Elizabeth looked up at the quarterdeck where Jack was manning the helm, apparently not trusting anyone else to ease his Pearl away from Chevalle’s Fancy. “Does he need saving?”
“Oh, yes!” Murtogg nodded, and tapped his head surreptitiously with a forefinger. “Vexed, they say. And that compass of his-“
But Mullroy elbowed Murtogg rather violently at this. Mr. Gibbs was approaching from aft.
“Begging your pardon, but we’d best get to work,” said Mullroy.
“Right,” said Murtogg, again. But before following his friend, he leaned close to Elizabeth and whispered, “That compass doesn’t lie!”
~.~
~ Rough Weather ~
“Lay aloft and make all sail,” Jack roared from the quarterdeck, handing over the helm to the capable Mr. Cotton. “We’re headed home - or to the Cove, at any rate.”
“Aye, Captain!” Gibbs replied cheerily, and began issuing more specific orders to those who’d been lingering to greet Elizabeth, setting them hurrying to their appointed tasks.
Elizabeth shook her head at Jack as he trotted down the companion ladder to her, trying not to smile.
“What?” he demanded, widening his eyes.
“Jack, are you sure about this?”
“Are you?”
“No. I-”
“Good,” said Jack, taking her elbow and escorting her toward the great cabin. “Then we have an accord.”
“What sort of accord is that? Jack, we need to talk about this. About… about what I’m going to do. And what you’re going to do!”
“God’s teeth, that’s a woman for you. All right, we can talk - over breakfast. I’ll go give the order to the cook. You can start stowing your things in the meantime; they’re in my cabin. Our cabin.”
He’d opened the door and they’d taken a step inside, but now she dug in her heels and turned to him, aware that she was flushing and hoping he couldn’t see it in the dim light. “You’re making some serious assumptions here, Captain Sparrow.”
He gave her a straight look, one brow rising. “So I am,” he said, and kissed her, a swift, possessive brush of his lips against hers.
And then, as she stood there blinking, he went out again and shut the door.
*
She did not stow her things. Instead she went to sit on a sea chest topped with a blue velvet cushion that had been placed by the wide windows of the stern gallery. She looked out at the ocean and sky, and tried to make sense of her feelings. These seemed to be as unsteady as the Pearl’s decks in a tempest. The calm, mature resignation she’d felt since setting her course for England had been stolen away entirely.
“Jack, you bloody pirate!” she said aloud.
And yet her curiosity and an irrational, welling joy could not seem to be contained.
That compass doesn’t lie! Did Murtogg’s words mean what he’d seemed to imply?
She tried to keep her emotions at bay, but her careful decisions, her reasoned plans were turned upside down. Jack wanted her. He’d wanted to be with her enough to come for her even knowing she was carrying Will’s child.
And Will, dear Will who was now lost to her save for that one day in ten years, had sent Jack to her.
Perhaps they both needed saving.
She raised a hand, touched her fingers to her lips, the ghost of Jack’s kiss lingering.
What would he want of her? What would he do with her?
She swallowed hard. If he could overwhelm her so with only a kiss - and he’d demonstrated as much twice just in the last hour - what would happen to her if - when - he took her to his bed?
She was no maiden. She was a pirate herself, ruthless at need, a killer. By the time Will had laid her down on that blanket on the sand she’d been honed hard, sharp and slender as any of his blades. It was a day of blood and victory and terrible loss, and she’d been forged anew in his fire, remade into something that held no hint of childhood.
It had not really surprised her a month later, when she realized that Will’s seed had found fertile ground. Or that she was ready for it.
But Jack. The pirate she’d read about, dreamed of when she was a girl. In spite of all their shared history - and perhaps because of it - he wanted her. And for the first time in months - maybe years, for what she’d had with Will was very different - she felt the heady combination of exhilaration, longing, and apprehension that was the lot of a maid with a man.
“Oh!” she breathed, and bent her head, and placed her hand over the place where her child lay.
*
Having set the cook and his minions scurrying, Jack made his way back to his cabin with a light step. The Pearl’s course was set and the ship was making five knots - plenty fast, no need to hurry now that he had what he’d come after.
At the cabin door he hesitated as he placed his hand on the latch, wondering at himself. Gave himself a shake. Opened the door and walked in.
Her trunk and bags were untouched in the middle of the floor and she was sitting at the window, one hand set over her lower abdomen.
“What’s wrong?” he demanded sharply, shutting the door behind him and crossing swiftly.
She stood as he approached. “Nothing! I’m fine.”
She straightened, raising her chin, trying to look severe, but he’d seen the uncertainty on her face and he scowled right back at her, and set his hands at her waist. “Elizabeth-”
“Jack, we have to talk.”
“No, we don’t.”
“We do!” she insisted, and she pushed his hands away and took a step back.
Bloody hell. “Look here,” he said, resigned. Ignoring the strong protestations of his inner pirate, he took up his compass, opened it, and showed her.
The needle swung around to point straight at her.
She stared at it, then at him. “That’s why it wouldn’t work before…. before…”
“Before the Kraken? And the shackles? And that first kiss?” Her look of dawning joy faded and he almost regretted his flippant tone. “As I told you, my compass works fine. Always has.”
Her eyes glistened suddenly, and she whispered, “Oh, Jack!”
“Oh, Lizzie!” he mocked. This had to be the baby talking, or weeping, as it were, but he took her in his arms and felt her trembling as he held her close. Flashes of the past intruded: her expression when he’d named her Pirate; the way she’d changed, her hopeful vulnerability and disappointment when they’d met in the Locker; and then, soon after, her despair over her father’s demise.
She was all too human. But she was like one of Will’s tempered swords: strong, beautiful, deadly, and though she might bend, she would not easily break.
She was like him in that.
She made an effort to compose herself, snuffling. “I don’t suppose you have a handkerchief?” she asked and he almost laughed.
“Happens I do,” he said, taking it from his pocket and handing it to her. As she half turned from him to wipe her eyes and blow her nose, he warned her: “Don’t be thinking this gives you some sort of leeway.”
She cut him a sidelong glance, and said, wryly, “You know, I’m quite well aware of that. When I had the compass, it insisted on pointing to you much of the time, and look how that ended.”
He stared, and then said, slowly, “You….”
“Pirate?” She firmly tucked the damp handkerchief back into his pocket, then placed her hands on either side of his face, and kissed him.
*
He seemed to be stunned for the fraction of a second, then drew her hard against him, and Elizabeth put her arms around him. Again she delighted in the animal feel of him, no dream this! She gave herself up to him, to the increasing intimacy of the moment. When he lifted his mouth from hers a fraction of an inch (his embrace strong as ever, however), she said, in spite of her breathless state and pounding heart, “You’ve not been drinking rum already this morning?”
“You’re not going to start in on that, are you?”
“I might.”
“I had some in my coffee earlier, before we caught up with you. Dutch courage, you might say.”
Dutch courage! She kissed him again.
There was a rap on the cabin door.
“That’ll be breakfast,” he said, his breath cooling her lips. He hugged her, and placed a series of kisses from the corner of her mouth, up her cheek, to whisper in her ear, “I could send ‘em away.”
“But I’m famished,” she said, sounding dazed even to herself. There was a certain glow within showing signs of increasing to a disturbingly familiar ache. She wondered if he could hear her heart beat.
From his wicked smile, it was apparent he could. “I’m famished, too,” he purred. But then he loosened his embrace and let her go. “Cook would have a fit, however, and though this may be the place, it’s not the time. There’s something of a storm brewing, the glass has been dropping all morning. I expect I’ll have to be on deck within the next hour or two.”
A storm brewing. Elizabeth felt that more appropriate words had rarely been spoken. “Not enough time?”
“Not nearly enough, in my opinion.”
“Breakfast then, by all means,” she said, her mind awhirl.
To her surprise he picked up her hand and kissed it. “No worries, love. We’ve seen plenty of storms, you and I. I daresay we’ll get through this one, too. Steady as she goes, eh?” And he winked at her, and turned to go open the door.
Elizabeth’s hands felt cool as she pressed them to her cheeks.
*
There were mild squalls at breakfast.
“I don’t know that I want to live at the Cove, Jack,” she told him, buttering her second slice of soft tack.
“Well, you surely didn’t want to live in England!” he retorted. “You were just running away.”
“I was not! It was a perfectly reasonable plan to return there to raise my child.”
“Reasonable,” he scoffed. “Reasonable if one’s not a pirate. And let’s have no argument on that score.”
“Sacrifices must be made, if one is having a child. Women make them all the time.”
“So they do, but you’re hardly just any woman.”
“I want to be a good mother.”
“And who says you can’t be one at the Cove? I turned out all right.”
Elizabeth sniffed. “You weren’t raised at the Cove. Teague told me how it was, how happy the three of you were until your mother died.”
“Meddling bastard,” Jack said under his breath.
“What?”
“Nothing. I lived at the Cove for several of my formative years. The old git wouldn’t let me back on a ship until I was forced to take matters into my own hands. But not before he’d had me ‘prenticed for two years in my uncle’s shop in Bristol. Did he tell you about that? Virtual slavery, give you me word.”
“Oh, dear. No, he didn’t tell me that. But you learned cartography.”
“Aye.”
“Well there, you see? Your father tried to keep you safe, and see that you learned important skills.”
“Lizzie,” Jack said, trying for patience, “the really important skills are learned from seamen, and from working a ship.”
“The Cove isn’t a ship-“
“It’s the next thing to one!”
“-and I don’t see why we have to stay there.”
“Who said anything of the kind?”
“You did!”
“Did not! They’ve a couple of good midwives there, and we might want to stay until you’re… er… on your feet again. After. And we might want to return occasionally, seeing you are the Pirate King. But we don’t have to stay. Bloody hell, didn’t I teach you anything? The Black Pearl is-“
“-freedom.” Elizabeth smiled.
Jack’s heart warmed. “You did remember.”
~.~
Part Five: Pillow Talk
It's been a long time, but hopefully this part is fairly self-explanatory. But just in case...
Part One: Prequel
Part Two: The Moral Advantage
Part Three: Petits Oiseaux
The Moral Advantage, Part Four
~ Saved ~
Among the crew members that greeted Elizabeth on her return to the Black Pearl were the two former Royal Marines, Murtogg and Mullroy.
“We knew the captain would save you again, Miss Elizabeth,” said Murtogg with a broad smile.
“She’s a missus, now!” Mullroy reminded his colleague pointedly.
“Oh. Right. And the Pirate King as well.” Murtogg looked distressed.
Mullroy bowed to Elizabeth. “May we offer our felicitations, ma’am.”
Elizabeth’s brows had risen at the implication that she’d been “saved” from returning to England to give birth and raise her child in the peaceful countryside where her cousins lived, but she only said, “Thank you. You were both there when Jack rescued me from drowning at Port Royal, weren’t you? It seems like ages ago.”
Murtogg brightened. “Wish you’d been there, ma’am. That was a sight!”
“She was there!” Mullroy said, severely.
“True. Save that I was out of my senses,” Elizabeth said, blandly.
“Aye,” agreed Murtogg. “The captain, he was telling us that story about how those cannibals made him their chief when we all heard your splash, and the commodore, God rest him, shouted your name from up there on the battlements. The captain shed his effects and made the prettiest dive you ever saw, cut the water clean as a whistle, and all in an instant. Had you back on the dock in a flea’s wink.”
“Though it seemed a bit longer than that at the time,” Mullroy added.
“Wasn’t, though,” Murtogg asserted, “else she’d be dead now, wouldn’t she? Begging your pardon, ma’am.”
“Not at all.” Elizabeth smiled. “The captain does seem to make a habit of saving me.”
“And now you can return the favor,” said Murtogg.
“Save him, you mean?” Elizabeth looked up at the quarterdeck where Jack was manning the helm, apparently not trusting anyone else to ease his Pearl away from Chevalle’s Fancy. “Does he need saving?”
“Oh, yes!” Murtogg nodded, and tapped his head surreptitiously with a forefinger. “Vexed, they say. And that compass of his-“
But Mullroy elbowed Murtogg rather violently at this. Mr. Gibbs was approaching from aft.
“Begging your pardon, but we’d best get to work,” said Mullroy.
“Right,” said Murtogg, again. But before following his friend, he leaned close to Elizabeth and whispered, “That compass doesn’t lie!”
~.~
~ Rough Weather ~
“Lay aloft and make all sail,” Jack roared from the quarterdeck, handing over the helm to the capable Mr. Cotton. “We’re headed home - or to the Cove, at any rate.”
“Aye, Captain!” Gibbs replied cheerily, and began issuing more specific orders to those who’d been lingering to greet Elizabeth, setting them hurrying to their appointed tasks.
Elizabeth shook her head at Jack as he trotted down the companion ladder to her, trying not to smile.
“What?” he demanded, widening his eyes.
“Jack, are you sure about this?”
“Are you?”
“No. I-”
“Good,” said Jack, taking her elbow and escorting her toward the great cabin. “Then we have an accord.”
“What sort of accord is that? Jack, we need to talk about this. About… about what I’m going to do. And what you’re going to do!”
“God’s teeth, that’s a woman for you. All right, we can talk - over breakfast. I’ll go give the order to the cook. You can start stowing your things in the meantime; they’re in my cabin. Our cabin.”
He’d opened the door and they’d taken a step inside, but now she dug in her heels and turned to him, aware that she was flushing and hoping he couldn’t see it in the dim light. “You’re making some serious assumptions here, Captain Sparrow.”
He gave her a straight look, one brow rising. “So I am,” he said, and kissed her, a swift, possessive brush of his lips against hers.
And then, as she stood there blinking, he went out again and shut the door.
*
She did not stow her things. Instead she went to sit on a sea chest topped with a blue velvet cushion that had been placed by the wide windows of the stern gallery. She looked out at the ocean and sky, and tried to make sense of her feelings. These seemed to be as unsteady as the Pearl’s decks in a tempest. The calm, mature resignation she’d felt since setting her course for England had been stolen away entirely.
“Jack, you bloody pirate!” she said aloud.
And yet her curiosity and an irrational, welling joy could not seem to be contained.
That compass doesn’t lie! Did Murtogg’s words mean what he’d seemed to imply?
She tried to keep her emotions at bay, but her careful decisions, her reasoned plans were turned upside down. Jack wanted her. He’d wanted to be with her enough to come for her even knowing she was carrying Will’s child.
And Will, dear Will who was now lost to her save for that one day in ten years, had sent Jack to her.
Perhaps they both needed saving.
She raised a hand, touched her fingers to her lips, the ghost of Jack’s kiss lingering.
What would he want of her? What would he do with her?
She swallowed hard. If he could overwhelm her so with only a kiss - and he’d demonstrated as much twice just in the last hour - what would happen to her if - when - he took her to his bed?
She was no maiden. She was a pirate herself, ruthless at need, a killer. By the time Will had laid her down on that blanket on the sand she’d been honed hard, sharp and slender as any of his blades. It was a day of blood and victory and terrible loss, and she’d been forged anew in his fire, remade into something that held no hint of childhood.
It had not really surprised her a month later, when she realized that Will’s seed had found fertile ground. Or that she was ready for it.
But Jack. The pirate she’d read about, dreamed of when she was a girl. In spite of all their shared history - and perhaps because of it - he wanted her. And for the first time in months - maybe years, for what she’d had with Will was very different - she felt the heady combination of exhilaration, longing, and apprehension that was the lot of a maid with a man.
“Oh!” she breathed, and bent her head, and placed her hand over the place where her child lay.
*
Having set the cook and his minions scurrying, Jack made his way back to his cabin with a light step. The Pearl’s course was set and the ship was making five knots - plenty fast, no need to hurry now that he had what he’d come after.
At the cabin door he hesitated as he placed his hand on the latch, wondering at himself. Gave himself a shake. Opened the door and walked in.
Her trunk and bags were untouched in the middle of the floor and she was sitting at the window, one hand set over her lower abdomen.
“What’s wrong?” he demanded sharply, shutting the door behind him and crossing swiftly.
She stood as he approached. “Nothing! I’m fine.”
She straightened, raising her chin, trying to look severe, but he’d seen the uncertainty on her face and he scowled right back at her, and set his hands at her waist. “Elizabeth-”
“Jack, we have to talk.”
“No, we don’t.”
“We do!” she insisted, and she pushed his hands away and took a step back.
Bloody hell. “Look here,” he said, resigned. Ignoring the strong protestations of his inner pirate, he took up his compass, opened it, and showed her.
The needle swung around to point straight at her.
She stared at it, then at him. “That’s why it wouldn’t work before…. before…”
“Before the Kraken? And the shackles? And that first kiss?” Her look of dawning joy faded and he almost regretted his flippant tone. “As I told you, my compass works fine. Always has.”
Her eyes glistened suddenly, and she whispered, “Oh, Jack!”
“Oh, Lizzie!” he mocked. This had to be the baby talking, or weeping, as it were, but he took her in his arms and felt her trembling as he held her close. Flashes of the past intruded: her expression when he’d named her Pirate; the way she’d changed, her hopeful vulnerability and disappointment when they’d met in the Locker; and then, soon after, her despair over her father’s demise.
She was all too human. But she was like one of Will’s tempered swords: strong, beautiful, deadly, and though she might bend, she would not easily break.
She was like him in that.
She made an effort to compose herself, snuffling. “I don’t suppose you have a handkerchief?” she asked and he almost laughed.
“Happens I do,” he said, taking it from his pocket and handing it to her. As she half turned from him to wipe her eyes and blow her nose, he warned her: “Don’t be thinking this gives you some sort of leeway.”
She cut him a sidelong glance, and said, wryly, “You know, I’m quite well aware of that. When I had the compass, it insisted on pointing to you much of the time, and look how that ended.”
He stared, and then said, slowly, “You….”
“Pirate?” She firmly tucked the damp handkerchief back into his pocket, then placed her hands on either side of his face, and kissed him.
*
He seemed to be stunned for the fraction of a second, then drew her hard against him, and Elizabeth put her arms around him. Again she delighted in the animal feel of him, no dream this! She gave herself up to him, to the increasing intimacy of the moment. When he lifted his mouth from hers a fraction of an inch (his embrace strong as ever, however), she said, in spite of her breathless state and pounding heart, “You’ve not been drinking rum already this morning?”
“You’re not going to start in on that, are you?”
“I might.”
“I had some in my coffee earlier, before we caught up with you. Dutch courage, you might say.”
Dutch courage! She kissed him again.
There was a rap on the cabin door.
“That’ll be breakfast,” he said, his breath cooling her lips. He hugged her, and placed a series of kisses from the corner of her mouth, up her cheek, to whisper in her ear, “I could send ‘em away.”
“But I’m famished,” she said, sounding dazed even to herself. There was a certain glow within showing signs of increasing to a disturbingly familiar ache. She wondered if he could hear her heart beat.
From his wicked smile, it was apparent he could. “I’m famished, too,” he purred. But then he loosened his embrace and let her go. “Cook would have a fit, however, and though this may be the place, it’s not the time. There’s something of a storm brewing, the glass has been dropping all morning. I expect I’ll have to be on deck within the next hour or two.”
A storm brewing. Elizabeth felt that more appropriate words had rarely been spoken. “Not enough time?”
“Not nearly enough, in my opinion.”
“Breakfast then, by all means,” she said, her mind awhirl.
To her surprise he picked up her hand and kissed it. “No worries, love. We’ve seen plenty of storms, you and I. I daresay we’ll get through this one, too. Steady as she goes, eh?” And he winked at her, and turned to go open the door.
Elizabeth’s hands felt cool as she pressed them to her cheeks.
*
There were mild squalls at breakfast.
“I don’t know that I want to live at the Cove, Jack,” she told him, buttering her second slice of soft tack.
“Well, you surely didn’t want to live in England!” he retorted. “You were just running away.”
“I was not! It was a perfectly reasonable plan to return there to raise my child.”
“Reasonable,” he scoffed. “Reasonable if one’s not a pirate. And let’s have no argument on that score.”
“Sacrifices must be made, if one is having a child. Women make them all the time.”
“So they do, but you’re hardly just any woman.”
“I want to be a good mother.”
“And who says you can’t be one at the Cove? I turned out all right.”
Elizabeth sniffed. “You weren’t raised at the Cove. Teague told me how it was, how happy the three of you were until your mother died.”
“Meddling bastard,” Jack said under his breath.
“What?”
“Nothing. I lived at the Cove for several of my formative years. The old git wouldn’t let me back on a ship until I was forced to take matters into my own hands. But not before he’d had me ‘prenticed for two years in my uncle’s shop in Bristol. Did he tell you about that? Virtual slavery, give you me word.”
“Oh, dear. No, he didn’t tell me that. But you learned cartography.”
“Aye.”
“Well there, you see? Your father tried to keep you safe, and see that you learned important skills.”
“Lizzie,” Jack said, trying for patience, “the really important skills are learned from seamen, and from working a ship.”
“The Cove isn’t a ship-“
“It’s the next thing to one!”
“-and I don’t see why we have to stay there.”
“Who said anything of the kind?”
“You did!”
“Did not! They’ve a couple of good midwives there, and we might want to stay until you’re… er… on your feet again. After. And we might want to return occasionally, seeing you are the Pirate King. But we don’t have to stay. Bloody hell, didn’t I teach you anything? The Black Pearl is-“
“-freedom.” Elizabeth smiled.
Jack’s heart warmed. “You did remember.”
~.~
Part Five: Pillow Talk