Oedipus Jack - -Final Chapters
Title: Oedipus Jack
Author: Tiamary
Pairing/characters: J/E
Rating: These last two chapters are PG13
Summary: Jack and Elizabeth cope with the revelation that she married Jack’s father.
Disclaimer: The characters belong to Disney, and I am making no $ from this fic.
Warnings: Extreme!Sparrabeth, language, violence
Author's notes: PoTCfest challenge: From round one, #7: Jack and Elizabeth, knowingly adulterous, dirty talk
First, a comment on Chapter 6: I noticed this evening that the paragraphs got messed up on that chapter as well, when I was posting. Apologies again. It's been fixed, and if the readers of this tale should want to go back and check it out, I would love that. Now, on to the final chapters:
Summary of Chapter 8: A swordfight, a revelation and a character death.
Summary of Chapter 9: Is the relationship dead? Or is it full speed ahead? Are they just a bit miffed...or is it a permanent rift? Will their new love bloom? Or does the ending spell doom? OK, I'll stop with the corny rhymes now.
Chapter 8
“Would you really slay yer own husband, Betsy? Oh, I forgot. You kill all of your men, don’t you?” His night vision was better than hers and he managed to disarm her, but Jack engaged him while Elizabeth recovered her weapon.
“And she’ll go on killing her men as long as we keep giving her good reason,” Jack countered.
“And what reasons did you give her, Jackie?”
“Deception.” Clink. “Desertion.” Clink. “Betrayal.”
“You forgot -- putting our lives in danger.” Clink.
“Thanks, Lizzie. That, too.”
“Can’t say any of that rot about me.”
“Blackmail. Threats. Those will do,” Elizabeth added as she thrust at Teague. He blocked her. “Never got those from Jack.”
“Threats. I prefer to think of them as promises. Shouldn’t the two of you have taken me down by now?”
“If you weren’t my father, you’d be dead already,” Jack said, holding his sword under his father’s chin.
“You never did have the stomach for killing, Jackie.”
“Listen to you,” Elizabeth scoffed as she back away from Teague then moved sideways toward Jack, readying herself to resume the fight. “As if not wanting to kill is a character flaw.”
“Not a flaw. A weakness. And not his only one. How was he, wife? Did he get his bittie cock up, then?”
Jack grinned. “That the best you can do, Da?”
“He didn’t inherit his father’s impotence, if that’s what you want to know, John.”
“Least I’ve had a child. Jack’s never knocked a girl up, not that I know of. You needed a dead man to get your whore here with child.” Teague curled his upper lip over his teeth as he pointed his sword at Elizabeth. “Maybe that’s why you ended up with a dead baby, aye?”
“Hah!” Jack scoffed as Elizabeth swung at Teague. He spun about, causing her to fall to the ground. Jack stepped between them, his sword ready. The older man was tired and frail despite the stimulant he’d taken, and now that he had gotten some of his anger out of his system, Jack was by no means eager to slay his own father. But he would if he had no choice.
“What’dye mean, ‘hah!’?” Teague was saying. Elizabeth’s stillborn child amusing to you, boy?” Jack glanced at Elizabeth, who was taking too long to get to her feet. Teague’s taunts about the baby had knocked the wind out of her as a physical blow could never do. Jack had meant to wait until he was sure the baby was safe before telling Elizabeth what he knew, but he could not let Teague take the fight out of her.
“I had a chat with the midwife yesterday, father dear.” Jack cross-stepped in an effort to lead him away from Elizabeth. Teague flinched. It was clear he had not seen this coming. “It seems the going rate for dead men’s babies these days is eighty-odd English pounds,” Jack went on. “Your husband gamble and visit the opium den more often after the birth, Elizabeth?”
Elizabeth’s eyes were on fire. Good. The fight was back. “Now that you mention it… yes.”
“What mad nonsense are you blathering now, boy?”
“The midwife told me Elizabeth’s baby is alive.” Elizabeth gasped and Teague rolled his eyes. “Aye, Elizabeth. She sold to your child to a wealthy Haitian family. Which, incidentally, is why I was off to Haiti. To fetch him back.”
“You’re just telling me this now, Jack?”
“Well…”
Elizabeth’s eyes shot to Teague. “Were you behind this?”
“I was not, Betsy. A disinterested observer, is all. Good job, selling him. I don’t fancy William Turner’s bastard interfering with me wedded bliss.”
Elizabeth screamed and attacked Teague with the fury of an avenging goddess. He wobbled, distracting her, and he took the opportunity to attempt a lethal thrust of his own. Jack blocked Teague’s sword with his own.
“Leave her be, Father,” Jack warned.
“Eh? Or what? You ain’t got the stomach to stop me.” Before Jack could respond, he noticed Teague’s left hand surreptitiously reaching for his pistol. Jack turned his back then spun round again with a flash of metal. Teague cried out in pain, and looking down to discover its cause, saw the tip of Jack’s sword jutting out from his gut. “Well done, Son.” He fell on his side and feebly attempted to pull the sword from his body. Elizabeth aimed her own gun at his head and fired. Jack gasped.
“It was the kind thing to do,” Elizabeth said. “Slow, painful death otherwise.”
“Should have been me done it,” Jack responded.
“No, better that ‘twas I who shot him. He wasn’t my father.”
Jack dropped his sword, knelt beside Teague and closed the dead man’s eyes. “Not your father. That was fortunate for you.”
“Yes.” There was nothing more for Elizabeth to say.
“Guess we should fetch the undertaker.” Jack’s voice was flat.
“Good thing this is a pirate city or we’d have some explaining to do.”
“Good thing my father publicly picked a fight with us earlier or we would have explaining to do, pirate city or not.”
“Why didn’t you tell me about my baby?”
“I was afraid to get your hopes up, Love. What if…” His voice trailed off.
“You should have told me.”
As Jack and Elizabeth left Teague behind, at least five feet of distance lay between them and neither said another word.
Chapter Nine.
“Brace the foreyard,” Jack ordered as he left the helm for Gibbs to take over.
“Brace the foreyard!” Gibbs shouted. His men hustled to obey. Jack surveyed the deck but did not see Elizabeth. He hadn’t seen her since he’d taken the helm. He ducked around various busy pirates as he perused the Pearl for a sign of her. As it turned out, she was looking out over the sea from the rail near the back of the ship. The wind was playing with her hair. It was darker than it had been due to spending months on land, a look that was even more becoming to her than the golden streaks he was accustomed to.
Bracing himself for the worst, he unbuckled and removed his swash and set it down with his pistol, then stepped up from behind her and put his arms around her waist, free to lean into her without his weapons pressing against her back.
“Are you still cross with me?” he murmured into her ear.
“I had rather thought you were cross with me.”
“No, no. You did the right thing.”
She was silent.
“I’m sorry I didn’t tell you sooner about your baby,” Jack said softly. “I couldn’t bear the thought of raising your hopes just to have them dashed again. And you know…I am the one who found out what happened. I was all set to go off on a mission to find the baby even when I thought you didn’t care about me. Pretty noble, that, you must admit.”
Elizabeth was still silent.
“But I should have told you,” Jack added hastily. “You had a right to know.”
“Yes, I did.”
Humility didn’t seem to be working. Perhaps chivalry would be more effective. “You can have the cabin, Love. It’s yours for the duration of the voyage. I’ll sleep on the deck. The Pearl’s not too shabby a bed for me.”
Elizabeth turned her head toward him. “Why would you do that?”
Jack pulled her a little closer. It was time to bring out the big guns. “I thought perhaps… you didn’t love me anymore.”
“Oh, no. You’re not getting off that easily.” Elizabeth turned and put her arms around his neck. “You think I’ll just banish you from my bed and my life and that will be the end of it?”
“Won’t it, though?”
“It won’t. I expect you to make this up to me, Jack, and you can’t very well do that while sleeping on the deck.”
Jack suppressed a smile as he leaned his forehead against hers. “Oh, no. I’m in for it now. What would you have me do?”
“Be strong. Be by my side. Be my man. Love me. Don’t give up on me. I know I’m difficult at times…”
“You? Never!”
“Jack…I’m sorry about your father. I just couldn’t let you issue the deathblow. It would haunt you all your life.”
“’Tisn’t your job to protect me.”
“Nor yours to protect me.”
“No?”
“No. It’s your job to pamper and adore me. Sometimes.”
“Of course.”
“We’re going to find him, aren’t we?”
“Yes. We’d better, or the Captain of the Flying Dutchman will be rather put out, I’d say.”
“Yes. Will. I was going to be faithful to him, I really was…”
“Thank God you changed your mind.”
“Will you be serious?”
“Sorry.”
“He isn’t part of our world anymore. It’s rather like loving someone who’d passed on or…God. Or the King. Someone you can picture in your mind but never touch. Or…”
“Or…?”
“Or maybe I’m trying to justify the fact that I prefer you to him. Does that make me a horrible person?”
Jack’s only answer was to wrap both arms around her and crush her to him. “Apparently not,” Elizabeth answered herself, getting a mouthful of rough, braided hair for her trouble.
Up in the crow’s nest, Cotton and Ragetti, who were nipping from a bottle of rum, spied the couple’s ardent embrace.
“Fornicate!” squawked Cotton’s parrot.
“’Tisn’t fornicating if it’s true love,” Ragetti sighed.
“Sappy sappy sappy” the parrot piped.
“Nuttin’ wrong wid’ that,” Ragetti said. He settled back for a nap while a grinning Cotton spied on Jack and Elizabeth until they headed, arms tight around each other, for the captain’s cabin.