fic! ::bounces::
Okay, so this is the fourth part of Keeping Faith, which has been an abominably long time in coming. I've had it mostly written for a week, even, and didn't get it finished until just now. But look! Plot moves forward! Soon there will be Will!
Also, I would like to state for the record that I wrote a Jack/Elizabeth sex scene of my own free accord ::bows::
back to Part III
Keeping Faith (Part IV)
Elizabeth's dreams are rarely so clear or so easily corrupted; she comes awake at Billy's muttered "Kraken!" Disoriented in the once-familiar bunk, it takes her a moment to realize that she is clutching him tightly while he squirms; it must be her protective grip and Gibbs' wagging tongue that has caused him to dream of sea monsters. Silently vowing to have a word with GIbbs on the morrow, she lets her arms slacken with a twinge of guilt.
"Hush," she murmurs, stroking damp curls off of his neck. Sweat coats her own skin, leaving an unpleasant gummy taste in her mouth. Billy kicks out, shoving the coverlet away and grumbling himself awake.
"Mama...there was a kraken chasing the Pearl..."
"Only a dream, my love." The burden of memory presses down upon her afresh. All things considered, she'd prefer to dream of tentacles and teeth. But she has other tales for her son. "Has Mr. Gibbs told you how your father and I met?"
He turns in her arms, still half-asleep but curious. "No."
"Well, I suppose he was a bit preoccupied at the time," Elizabeth admits, sliding her head back to give him room on the pillow. "We were children - this was before Captain Jack got the Pearl back, you see, and Mr. Gibbs was a sailor on the ship that bore your grandfather to his post in Jamaica."
"Did you come...from England?" Billy asks, trying and failing to fight back a stubborn yawn.
She nods. Her father would have much better stories of England; she can barely recall anything concrete, tending to envision every soul she knew as a child as living in Port Royal, though they never set foot off their own shores. "We had a peaceful enough crossing for most of the way, but near the end of our journey we came upon the remains of your father's ship. He was the only survivor - come to look for his father."
"Grandfather Turner," Billy adds, helpfully and sleepily. Elizabeth's throat tightens. Will's boyhood mission seen through at last, and Bill Turner the only company he has now...
"Right," she continues, giving herself a mental shake. "The sailors brought him aboard, and my father put him in my charge. I suppose he meant to keep me out of the way." Even with his eyes closed, Billy gives her half a smirk. "He woke for a bit, long enough to tell me his name and to hear my promise to watch over him."
In that one sentence, Billy has slipped further into slumber. He doesn't stir as she touches his freckled cheek and says quietly, "I've done rather a poor job of it, haven't I?"
She rolls onto her back, free to dwell on her own nightmare now that she has banished Billy's imagined kraken. It must be the cabin that's brought the dream back when she hasn't suffered it in years. And so very tangibly - she shivers, feeling the rain lash her face, the fear and rage boiling in her gut, cringing at the cruel threats in Calypso's voice through the booming thunder. No one else heard her that night, not even Jack, and he knows well enough that a storm blown up that quickly is never natural.
Involuntarily her right hand presses against her abdomen - her body remembers the pain that doubled her over as she stood in the midst of the storm. Strange that there should be so much blood to bring life forth and so little to see it pass. The sheets didn't stain when she made it back to the cabin, though later she bundled her breeches up tight and threw them into the white froth of the Pearl's wake. But it was very early days, after all.
She can't be absolutely sure, but she doesn't believe Jack knew or guessed. He isn't as good at hiding himself as he likes to think. And she was angry at him for that - no matter that she never wanted the child, no matter that it was Calypso who stole it from her and not Jack, no matter that it was she herself who ranted in despair over her treacherous body and called divine wrath upon her shipmates and her family. For every moment she missed Jack Sparrow over the years, there were ten spent cursing his wretched name.
Lying in the same bunk where she rocked Billy to sleep, she is somewhat astonished to realize that she isn't angry any longer.
Billy turns onto his stomach when she eases out of bed, curling up in the warm hollow she has left in the bedclothes. She pads silently across the deck in her borrowed shirt, glad that she packed away her Chinese dress when they came aboard. The silk still bears Will's touch after all this time, and even she isn't so brazen as to go to Jack wearing it.
His cabin door is unlocked, though the hinges creak a bit when she opens it. Moonlight spills in through the porthole windows, casting shadows across Jack's form as he sits bolt upright and draws a pistol from beneath his mattress. For a moment they are frozen, she squarely in his sights, his every muscle tense.
Then Elizabeth rolls her eyes and exclaims, "Oh, for God's sake!"
Jack drops his arm with a shrug. She pulls the door shut, gazing soberly at him as he stows the weapon.
"Life hasn't gone easy on either of us, has it?"
"No," Jack replies lightly, leaning back and crossing his arms over his chest. She can see that he still sleeps bare, and he marks her notice with a grin. "But then, I never imagined it would."
She hoists herself onto the bunk. "I did, once."
"Elizabeth," he says, half a question, almost a warning. His eyes glint warily as she swings her legs over the shelf. "What the devil are you doing?"
"Making love to you." She bends over him, planting her fists on either side of his hips, and one eyebrow lifts. "Now do be quiet, as it has been awhile and I need to concentrate."
He fails to respond when she kisses him lightly, which is both maddening and gratifying as per usual. "And your faithful husband?"
Elizabeth sits back on her heels, folding his hand in her own. "I have to believe it, Jack." His jaw twitches at the catch in her voice. "Truly believe that I have done no betrayal. When all else is taken from me, I still have my love for Will -" Oh Will, Will, please forgive my heart, if she shouldn't... "- and that is where my faith must lie." She finishes with a wry twist of her mouth. "Else Calypso will see through it and we might all be lost."
Jack raises his chin, voice cool. "Is this a test of her, or of me?"
"I don't know," she cries, all her honest and dishonest intentions seized up by the sudden, paralyzing thought that he simply doesn't want her anymore, that he invited her aboard for his own peace of mind and not because she belongs here. She makes a move to go and he darts forward, catching her in his arms.
"Bess," he says roughly, "I din't mean - oh, bugger -"
His mouth falls upon hers, open and hungry. Elizabeth’s limbs go heavy with relief. The long lonely years fall away, the taste of rum, sea, and incorrigible Jack as heady as it ever was. But she’s done her growing now, free of the guilt which cut the sweetness of every kiss.
Jack has never been her partner in abstention, but she wouldn’t know it from the way he clutches at her. She pulls back for a breath, blinking beneath his glittering dark glaze. The scars on his wiry torso shimmer in the moonlight; he shudders as she runs her fingertips over them. Lifting her shirt over her head, he cups her breasts in his hands and rolls her onto her back. Elizabeth reaches for him but he slips away, tracing a path down her body.
She’s forgotten how the beard tickles. Jack shoots her a mock-wounded expression when she giggles, sweeping his lips across her belly. His hand between her legs drives all thoughts of mirth from her mind.
“Please,” she hears herself whispering, lifting her hips against the light pressure. Jack just rifles the curls, propped on an elbow, the very picture of nonchalance. Elizabeth growls and grabs his wrist. “You do not want to tease me, Jack Sparrow.”
He grins, teeth flashing in the dark, giving up the pretense to pay mind to her damp quim. It’s nothing like her own touch, and the rush of pleasure threatens to overwhelm her. But he’s talking again, the fool.
“Thought you were s’pposed to be makin’ love to me. Why should I have to do all the work, eh?” His thumb rubs counterpoint to his silken-voiced protest, his lips grazing the soft skin of her inner thigh.
Her own throat feels raw, as though she’s already been screaming - not that she plans to. It was he who always had to muffle hoarse cries against her skin.
“So far you haven’t done much of anything,” she sniffs, folding her arms behind her head and trying not to quake. It won’t take much at this point, if she’s honest with herself, but it’s the principle of the matter.
The challenge works, as she knew it would; Jack casts a disgruntled look up at her before putting his mouth to far better use. Elizabeth digs her nails into the pillow, not trusting herself to brush the wild tangle of his hair away without hurting him. Her back arches and her toes curl as she murmurs direction and encouragement, which he doesn’t much need but accepts with perfect equanimity. Jack remembers her body. She's not a conceited woman, but nonetheless she doubts he could ever forget, no more than she could forget the lithe grace of him.
She draws her knees up, feeling the tide build. Despite the ease with which she fell back into Jack’s bed, climax brings with it a tiny moment of panic. Eyes squeezed shut against the burst of white, she gropes for Jack’s hand, and he holds tight until the waves recede.
“Er, Elizabeth?” His voice, half agitation and half amusement, breaks through the gentle surf on which she floats. With slightly less polite restraint, his neglected erection nudges against her hip.
“Of course,” she says lazily, taking his cock in her hand. “How silly of me.”
“You are quite silly indeed, after,” Jack replies, then chokes out a curse as she strokes him harder. She always liked this, the weight and heat and the softness of the skin, the control she exerts with the slightest pressure of her fingers. The memory of touching Will for the first time is one she holds dear - the way his mouth fell open, his quiet wordless groan, how he went perfectly still and just gazed at her with half-lidded eyes, wondering.
Jack's far from still, now and always. He shifts restlessly, lips touching down at random upon her face and neck and breasts. "Fuck, Lizzie," he gasps as she rubs her thumb over the head and pinches a nipple with her free hand.
Not tonight, she thinks, dream still too close to the surface. Besides which, she isn't sure she'd be able to ask him to stop in time. Jack does not seem to be in a position to complain. She tugs at him harder and his hips jerk out of rhythm, his hand covering hers for the last few thrusts. He flops back like a caught fish. Wiping her hand on a corner of the sheet, Elizabeth stretches out beside him and listens to his heartbeat as it gradually evens out. There is no difference in the sound behind flesh and bone and the sound within a locked chest.
Jack's a patient man, he really is. Has to be, with the way people always insist upon ignoring his good sense and fouling up his clever plans. He makes allowances for most folk, and he allows extra for certain individuals who have to juggle an inquisitive son and a beloved-but-absent husband in addition to their own needs, not to mention Jack's needs.
But it's growing late, and the lad is finally asleep, and Jack is most definitely not tired.
"Elizabeth," he says to the beams above his head, "you've looked over that bloody chart a thousand times. 'S got nothing new on it, love. Come to bed."
"In a moment," she murmurs absently, turning the wheels with unfocused eyes. Jack has forgotten her old obsession with the chart. She used to pore over it for hours on end, until the light burned down and her vision blurred. Once she even spent a month drawing painstaking copies of every cohesive viewpoint and quite a few that were totally nonsensical. Jack studied it too, but he gave up finding a path to Will long before she did. He finds her fixation no less unsettling after all this time.
They never discussed the way she and Will and Barbossa had gone before, the reason they had sought the chart in the first place. Of course there was no proof that the Dutchman could be tracked from the Locker any easier than from here, but the fact that Elizabeth never raised the question, even in her darkest moments, was a blessing of a kind few people are willing to grant him.
Time is getting short, anyway - he supposes it must be simple force of habit that led her to draw out the worn old thing. And habit can be broken with spontaneity.
"What might I do to entice you into putting away that rotting scrap of useless information?" he wonders aloud, leaning forward to wink first one eye and then the other.
"To trade it for rotting, useless scraps of another variety?" she says, straight-faced.
Jack scowls and crosses his hand primly over the front of his breeches. "Honestly, I was only a-rot that one time, and it was all Barbossa's fault anyhow."
Elizabeth cracks a tiny smile that fades into a peevish expression as she brushes her fingertips over the Indies. "I don't know why I've such a sentimental attachment to this chart; it's only done us any good once."
"Quite a large good," Jack points out. "But the route to the famed Fountain leads only to a brackish puddle, and I'm fairly sure it's lying about Arcadia as well. Not that I'd be tempted to that end," he adds, wrinkling his nose. "I don't imagine nymphs drink a lot of rum."
"No, I should think they'd have wine," she agrees, rolling the chart back up. Despite his scorn, Jack starts at the ripping noise.
Covering her mouth and shooting him a guilty look, Elizabeth smoothes it out and examines the tear. "Damn, after it's lasted so..." Her voice trails off abruptly and she tilts her head almost level with the desk. With a rueful sigh, Jack levers himself off the bunk to look at the damage.
Elizabeth holds the torn edge between her forefiner and thumb. The exposed bambooo shines with whatever glue secured it previous to its present abuse. Jack shrugs; it's not exactly a wholesale destruction.
"Look at the other side," she urges, brown eyes wide. "There's something else drawn on it."
Carefully, delicately, she pries the chunk up a bit more, working her nail along the edge. It doesn't give easily, but with an inch or two more, it becomes obvious that the scene on the other side is entirely different from the one printed on the front. It seems to be part of Asia, but Jack can make out a few Greek-looking letters he's never gotten from the chart, no matter how many times he spun the wheels.
She doesn't dare speak hope aloud, though Jack can see it in the sudden tense line of her shoulders.
"Heat," he says, meeting her eyes. "Let's warm it up and see if it'll come up whole."
Their luck doesn't hold quite that far. Elizabeth quickly becomes adept at teasing the stubborn vellum up, inch by inch, but it's slow going to prevent further damage. Here and there the ink has left faint stains on the bamboo underneath, though the hidden picture hasn't suffered.
After a few hours Jack coaxes her into taking a rest, a bit alarmed by the feverish light in her eyes. She cracks her neck with a wince and curls up, watching him work over the desk. Within ten minutes her breathing deepens into a wretched snore. Jack hums along to the racket, ignoring the ache in his lower back and the stiffness in his fingers.
Elizabeth sleeps fitfully until morning, when she rouses Jack from where he's slumped over the half-done job. Jack collapses onto the bunk with relief, but Billy comes wandering in before he can get so much as a wink.
"What's that, Mother?" He peers at the chart and the peeled strips, laid out beneath a couple of books to flatten them. Elizabeth pauses.
"Map that needs a bit o' work," says Jack before she can answer, forcing himself out of bed. "Let's go see what Marty's got for breakfast, shall we?" Elizabeth shoots him a look of deepest gratitude. She's tired of lying about Will, he knows that well enough, but this - this is something of an unhatched egg, especially where the boy is concerned.
Billy wavers, suspicious of her silence, but is swayed by Jack's promise of the shockingly true tale of his brush with a selkie in Cardiff. A gunnery demonstration serves both his sluggish crew and Billy's excitable sensibilities, though Elizabeth does emerge from the cabin to shout at him for making her task more difficult. She takes a bite to eat at last, so Jack's not too bothered by the public dressing-down. As his offer to take a shift with the chart is rebuked, there's not much else to the afternoon but skylarking with Billy.
They're sitting peacable in the crow's nest, discussing gradually finer points of sailing, when Elizabeth hails him from the deck. Jack keeps an eye on Billy as he descends first. He's getting steadier, but the height still bothers him despite his manful efforts to hide it.
"I've finished," she announces before Jack's boots even hit the deck. Her face is alight with color, and she waves a large scrap in his face. "Look at this!"
Jack takes it from her, letting out a slow whistle.
"It's a ship in harbor," says Billy doubtfully, touching the black inked drawing. The label looks like an archaic form of German, but Jack can guess at its meaning well enough. And the shore is strange.
"Not just any ship, m'boy," he replies, smiling at the glint of triumph in Elizabeth's eyes. "That's the Flying Dutchman."
(On to Part V)
Also, I would like to state for the record that I wrote a Jack/Elizabeth sex scene of my own free accord ::bows::
back to Part III
Keeping Faith (Part IV)
Elizabeth's dreams are rarely so clear or so easily corrupted; she comes awake at Billy's muttered "Kraken!" Disoriented in the once-familiar bunk, it takes her a moment to realize that she is clutching him tightly while he squirms; it must be her protective grip and Gibbs' wagging tongue that has caused him to dream of sea monsters. Silently vowing to have a word with GIbbs on the morrow, she lets her arms slacken with a twinge of guilt.
"Hush," she murmurs, stroking damp curls off of his neck. Sweat coats her own skin, leaving an unpleasant gummy taste in her mouth. Billy kicks out, shoving the coverlet away and grumbling himself awake.
"Mama...there was a kraken chasing the Pearl..."
"Only a dream, my love." The burden of memory presses down upon her afresh. All things considered, she'd prefer to dream of tentacles and teeth. But she has other tales for her son. "Has Mr. Gibbs told you how your father and I met?"
He turns in her arms, still half-asleep but curious. "No."
"Well, I suppose he was a bit preoccupied at the time," Elizabeth admits, sliding her head back to give him room on the pillow. "We were children - this was before Captain Jack got the Pearl back, you see, and Mr. Gibbs was a sailor on the ship that bore your grandfather to his post in Jamaica."
"Did you come...from England?" Billy asks, trying and failing to fight back a stubborn yawn.
She nods. Her father would have much better stories of England; she can barely recall anything concrete, tending to envision every soul she knew as a child as living in Port Royal, though they never set foot off their own shores. "We had a peaceful enough crossing for most of the way, but near the end of our journey we came upon the remains of your father's ship. He was the only survivor - come to look for his father."
"Grandfather Turner," Billy adds, helpfully and sleepily. Elizabeth's throat tightens. Will's boyhood mission seen through at last, and Bill Turner the only company he has now...
"Right," she continues, giving herself a mental shake. "The sailors brought him aboard, and my father put him in my charge. I suppose he meant to keep me out of the way." Even with his eyes closed, Billy gives her half a smirk. "He woke for a bit, long enough to tell me his name and to hear my promise to watch over him."
In that one sentence, Billy has slipped further into slumber. He doesn't stir as she touches his freckled cheek and says quietly, "I've done rather a poor job of it, haven't I?"
She rolls onto her back, free to dwell on her own nightmare now that she has banished Billy's imagined kraken. It must be the cabin that's brought the dream back when she hasn't suffered it in years. And so very tangibly - she shivers, feeling the rain lash her face, the fear and rage boiling in her gut, cringing at the cruel threats in Calypso's voice through the booming thunder. No one else heard her that night, not even Jack, and he knows well enough that a storm blown up that quickly is never natural.
Involuntarily her right hand presses against her abdomen - her body remembers the pain that doubled her over as she stood in the midst of the storm. Strange that there should be so much blood to bring life forth and so little to see it pass. The sheets didn't stain when she made it back to the cabin, though later she bundled her breeches up tight and threw them into the white froth of the Pearl's wake. But it was very early days, after all.
She can't be absolutely sure, but she doesn't believe Jack knew or guessed. He isn't as good at hiding himself as he likes to think. And she was angry at him for that - no matter that she never wanted the child, no matter that it was Calypso who stole it from her and not Jack, no matter that it was she herself who ranted in despair over her treacherous body and called divine wrath upon her shipmates and her family. For every moment she missed Jack Sparrow over the years, there were ten spent cursing his wretched name.
Lying in the same bunk where she rocked Billy to sleep, she is somewhat astonished to realize that she isn't angry any longer.
Billy turns onto his stomach when she eases out of bed, curling up in the warm hollow she has left in the bedclothes. She pads silently across the deck in her borrowed shirt, glad that she packed away her Chinese dress when they came aboard. The silk still bears Will's touch after all this time, and even she isn't so brazen as to go to Jack wearing it.
His cabin door is unlocked, though the hinges creak a bit when she opens it. Moonlight spills in through the porthole windows, casting shadows across Jack's form as he sits bolt upright and draws a pistol from beneath his mattress. For a moment they are frozen, she squarely in his sights, his every muscle tense.
Then Elizabeth rolls her eyes and exclaims, "Oh, for God's sake!"
Jack drops his arm with a shrug. She pulls the door shut, gazing soberly at him as he stows the weapon.
"Life hasn't gone easy on either of us, has it?"
"No," Jack replies lightly, leaning back and crossing his arms over his chest. She can see that he still sleeps bare, and he marks her notice with a grin. "But then, I never imagined it would."
She hoists herself onto the bunk. "I did, once."
"Elizabeth," he says, half a question, almost a warning. His eyes glint warily as she swings her legs over the shelf. "What the devil are you doing?"
"Making love to you." She bends over him, planting her fists on either side of his hips, and one eyebrow lifts. "Now do be quiet, as it has been awhile and I need to concentrate."
He fails to respond when she kisses him lightly, which is both maddening and gratifying as per usual. "And your faithful husband?"
Elizabeth sits back on her heels, folding his hand in her own. "I have to believe it, Jack." His jaw twitches at the catch in her voice. "Truly believe that I have done no betrayal. When all else is taken from me, I still have my love for Will -" Oh Will, Will, please forgive my heart, if she shouldn't... "- and that is where my faith must lie." She finishes with a wry twist of her mouth. "Else Calypso will see through it and we might all be lost."
Jack raises his chin, voice cool. "Is this a test of her, or of me?"
"I don't know," she cries, all her honest and dishonest intentions seized up by the sudden, paralyzing thought that he simply doesn't want her anymore, that he invited her aboard for his own peace of mind and not because she belongs here. She makes a move to go and he darts forward, catching her in his arms.
"Bess," he says roughly, "I din't mean - oh, bugger -"
His mouth falls upon hers, open and hungry. Elizabeth’s limbs go heavy with relief. The long lonely years fall away, the taste of rum, sea, and incorrigible Jack as heady as it ever was. But she’s done her growing now, free of the guilt which cut the sweetness of every kiss.
Jack has never been her partner in abstention, but she wouldn’t know it from the way he clutches at her. She pulls back for a breath, blinking beneath his glittering dark glaze. The scars on his wiry torso shimmer in the moonlight; he shudders as she runs her fingertips over them. Lifting her shirt over her head, he cups her breasts in his hands and rolls her onto her back. Elizabeth reaches for him but he slips away, tracing a path down her body.
She’s forgotten how the beard tickles. Jack shoots her a mock-wounded expression when she giggles, sweeping his lips across her belly. His hand between her legs drives all thoughts of mirth from her mind.
“Please,” she hears herself whispering, lifting her hips against the light pressure. Jack just rifles the curls, propped on an elbow, the very picture of nonchalance. Elizabeth growls and grabs his wrist. “You do not want to tease me, Jack Sparrow.”
He grins, teeth flashing in the dark, giving up the pretense to pay mind to her damp quim. It’s nothing like her own touch, and the rush of pleasure threatens to overwhelm her. But he’s talking again, the fool.
“Thought you were s’pposed to be makin’ love to me. Why should I have to do all the work, eh?” His thumb rubs counterpoint to his silken-voiced protest, his lips grazing the soft skin of her inner thigh.
Her own throat feels raw, as though she’s already been screaming - not that she plans to. It was he who always had to muffle hoarse cries against her skin.
“So far you haven’t done much of anything,” she sniffs, folding her arms behind her head and trying not to quake. It won’t take much at this point, if she’s honest with herself, but it’s the principle of the matter.
The challenge works, as she knew it would; Jack casts a disgruntled look up at her before putting his mouth to far better use. Elizabeth digs her nails into the pillow, not trusting herself to brush the wild tangle of his hair away without hurting him. Her back arches and her toes curl as she murmurs direction and encouragement, which he doesn’t much need but accepts with perfect equanimity. Jack remembers her body. She's not a conceited woman, but nonetheless she doubts he could ever forget, no more than she could forget the lithe grace of him.
She draws her knees up, feeling the tide build. Despite the ease with which she fell back into Jack’s bed, climax brings with it a tiny moment of panic. Eyes squeezed shut against the burst of white, she gropes for Jack’s hand, and he holds tight until the waves recede.
“Er, Elizabeth?” His voice, half agitation and half amusement, breaks through the gentle surf on which she floats. With slightly less polite restraint, his neglected erection nudges against her hip.
“Of course,” she says lazily, taking his cock in her hand. “How silly of me.”
“You are quite silly indeed, after,” Jack replies, then chokes out a curse as she strokes him harder. She always liked this, the weight and heat and the softness of the skin, the control she exerts with the slightest pressure of her fingers. The memory of touching Will for the first time is one she holds dear - the way his mouth fell open, his quiet wordless groan, how he went perfectly still and just gazed at her with half-lidded eyes, wondering.
Jack's far from still, now and always. He shifts restlessly, lips touching down at random upon her face and neck and breasts. "Fuck, Lizzie," he gasps as she rubs her thumb over the head and pinches a nipple with her free hand.
Not tonight, she thinks, dream still too close to the surface. Besides which, she isn't sure she'd be able to ask him to stop in time. Jack does not seem to be in a position to complain. She tugs at him harder and his hips jerk out of rhythm, his hand covering hers for the last few thrusts. He flops back like a caught fish. Wiping her hand on a corner of the sheet, Elizabeth stretches out beside him and listens to his heartbeat as it gradually evens out. There is no difference in the sound behind flesh and bone and the sound within a locked chest.
Jack's a patient man, he really is. Has to be, with the way people always insist upon ignoring his good sense and fouling up his clever plans. He makes allowances for most folk, and he allows extra for certain individuals who have to juggle an inquisitive son and a beloved-but-absent husband in addition to their own needs, not to mention Jack's needs.
But it's growing late, and the lad is finally asleep, and Jack is most definitely not tired.
"Elizabeth," he says to the beams above his head, "you've looked over that bloody chart a thousand times. 'S got nothing new on it, love. Come to bed."
"In a moment," she murmurs absently, turning the wheels with unfocused eyes. Jack has forgotten her old obsession with the chart. She used to pore over it for hours on end, until the light burned down and her vision blurred. Once she even spent a month drawing painstaking copies of every cohesive viewpoint and quite a few that were totally nonsensical. Jack studied it too, but he gave up finding a path to Will long before she did. He finds her fixation no less unsettling after all this time.
They never discussed the way she and Will and Barbossa had gone before, the reason they had sought the chart in the first place. Of course there was no proof that the Dutchman could be tracked from the Locker any easier than from here, but the fact that Elizabeth never raised the question, even in her darkest moments, was a blessing of a kind few people are willing to grant him.
Time is getting short, anyway - he supposes it must be simple force of habit that led her to draw out the worn old thing. And habit can be broken with spontaneity.
"What might I do to entice you into putting away that rotting scrap of useless information?" he wonders aloud, leaning forward to wink first one eye and then the other.
"To trade it for rotting, useless scraps of another variety?" she says, straight-faced.
Jack scowls and crosses his hand primly over the front of his breeches. "Honestly, I was only a-rot that one time, and it was all Barbossa's fault anyhow."
Elizabeth cracks a tiny smile that fades into a peevish expression as she brushes her fingertips over the Indies. "I don't know why I've such a sentimental attachment to this chart; it's only done us any good once."
"Quite a large good," Jack points out. "But the route to the famed Fountain leads only to a brackish puddle, and I'm fairly sure it's lying about Arcadia as well. Not that I'd be tempted to that end," he adds, wrinkling his nose. "I don't imagine nymphs drink a lot of rum."
"No, I should think they'd have wine," she agrees, rolling the chart back up. Despite his scorn, Jack starts at the ripping noise.
Covering her mouth and shooting him a guilty look, Elizabeth smoothes it out and examines the tear. "Damn, after it's lasted so..." Her voice trails off abruptly and she tilts her head almost level with the desk. With a rueful sigh, Jack levers himself off the bunk to look at the damage.
Elizabeth holds the torn edge between her forefiner and thumb. The exposed bambooo shines with whatever glue secured it previous to its present abuse. Jack shrugs; it's not exactly a wholesale destruction.
"Look at the other side," she urges, brown eyes wide. "There's something else drawn on it."
Carefully, delicately, she pries the chunk up a bit more, working her nail along the edge. It doesn't give easily, but with an inch or two more, it becomes obvious that the scene on the other side is entirely different from the one printed on the front. It seems to be part of Asia, but Jack can make out a few Greek-looking letters he's never gotten from the chart, no matter how many times he spun the wheels.
She doesn't dare speak hope aloud, though Jack can see it in the sudden tense line of her shoulders.
"Heat," he says, meeting her eyes. "Let's warm it up and see if it'll come up whole."
Their luck doesn't hold quite that far. Elizabeth quickly becomes adept at teasing the stubborn vellum up, inch by inch, but it's slow going to prevent further damage. Here and there the ink has left faint stains on the bamboo underneath, though the hidden picture hasn't suffered.
After a few hours Jack coaxes her into taking a rest, a bit alarmed by the feverish light in her eyes. She cracks her neck with a wince and curls up, watching him work over the desk. Within ten minutes her breathing deepens into a wretched snore. Jack hums along to the racket, ignoring the ache in his lower back and the stiffness in his fingers.
Elizabeth sleeps fitfully until morning, when she rouses Jack from where he's slumped over the half-done job. Jack collapses onto the bunk with relief, but Billy comes wandering in before he can get so much as a wink.
"What's that, Mother?" He peers at the chart and the peeled strips, laid out beneath a couple of books to flatten them. Elizabeth pauses.
"Map that needs a bit o' work," says Jack before she can answer, forcing himself out of bed. "Let's go see what Marty's got for breakfast, shall we?" Elizabeth shoots him a look of deepest gratitude. She's tired of lying about Will, he knows that well enough, but this - this is something of an unhatched egg, especially where the boy is concerned.
Billy wavers, suspicious of her silence, but is swayed by Jack's promise of the shockingly true tale of his brush with a selkie in Cardiff. A gunnery demonstration serves both his sluggish crew and Billy's excitable sensibilities, though Elizabeth does emerge from the cabin to shout at him for making her task more difficult. She takes a bite to eat at last, so Jack's not too bothered by the public dressing-down. As his offer to take a shift with the chart is rebuked, there's not much else to the afternoon but skylarking with Billy.
They're sitting peacable in the crow's nest, discussing gradually finer points of sailing, when Elizabeth hails him from the deck. Jack keeps an eye on Billy as he descends first. He's getting steadier, but the height still bothers him despite his manful efforts to hide it.
"I've finished," she announces before Jack's boots even hit the deck. Her face is alight with color, and she waves a large scrap in his face. "Look at this!"
Jack takes it from her, letting out a slow whistle.
"It's a ship in harbor," says Billy doubtfully, touching the black inked drawing. The label looks like an archaic form of German, but Jack can guess at its meaning well enough. And the shore is strange.
"Not just any ship, m'boy," he replies, smiling at the glint of triumph in Elizabeth's eyes. "That's the Flying Dutchman."
(On to Part V)