DISCLAIMER: This story is based on characters and situations created and owned by Disney. No money is being made and no copyright or trademark infringement is intended. If it were mine it would be more historically accurate. And slashier.

Posted by: Elspeth (AKA Elspethdixon).

Author's Notes: Well, now I've seen PotC for a second time, so I can no longer blame any mistakes or poor characterization on lack familiarity. I'd still appreciate being told about any, though. Oh yes, and the quotes at the beginning of the chapters come from several old ballads about sailors & the sea.

Ships: Will/Elizabeth, Jack/Elizabeth, eventual Jack/Will, eventual Norrington/OC. Probably a bit of unrequited Norrington/Elizabeth as well.

Warning: This story contains killing, stealing, lots of angst, an OC, and a non-evil Norrington. Sadly, it probably will not contain any hot, steamy sex scenes.

Chapter Seven: In Which Elizabeth and Mary Rose Quarrel, and Elizabeth Comes to a Disconcerting Realization.

Oh captain, captain, tell me true,
Does my own Willie sail with you?
Tell me soon to give me joy.
None will I have but my sailor boy.

            Once Norrington had sailed out from Port Royal in the Endeavour, Elizabeth's anxiety grew with every passing day. Every morning she went straight to the window as soon as she woke, searching the horizon for any hint of a sail, hoping desperately that Jack and Will might have slipped past Norrington's patrolling ship of the line. Hoping to see the dark, wraithlike from of the Black Pearl rounding the headland, and praying not to see the Endeavour, returning victorious with Jack and his crew--and Will--in chains.

            Days passed, and the only sails she saw belonged to an East India Trading Company vessel out of the Bahamas. Her father, who was not a stupid man by any means, nor an unobservant one, had noticed her distraction, and began to ask after Will. Surely, he pressed, the boy's job in Barbados--or was it Port au Prince?--would be finished soon, he inquired, with a hint of disapproval in his voice for a man who insisted on pursuing a career as a tradesman after marrying into the upper class. She had managed to put him off, but she could not do so indefinitely.

            By the time a week had gone by, Elizabeth was half-crazed with worry, and her bedroom window was no longer a satisfactory vantage point. She took to walking on the Palisadoes every morning and evening, pacing back and forth in the sand while her eyes scanned the sea, finding it empty in every quarter. Why, she castigated herself as she watched, had she not kept silent when Norrington had questioned her? Why, oh why had she not kept calm, continued to play innocent? If Will was captured and hung, it would be entirely her fault, for she had given Norrington the final clue necessary for him to set his plan in motion.

            On her third walk, as she wandered up and down the sandy straight gazing eastward at the slowly purpling horizon, she met Mary Rose.

            The other woman was walking down the beach toward her, treading much higher up on the sand, where there was no danger of a wave wetting her shoes. She too was gazing seaward, as if watching for someone's return. When she saw Elizabeth, she paused momentarily, then began to move purposefully toward her.

            Elizabeth was strongly tempted to flee. She had purposefully avoided her cousin-in-law over the past week, knowing that Mary Rose must think the absolute worst of her, and wanting little to do with the other woman herself. It was not, she reflected, feeling a sudden burst of resentment at the sight of the other woman, entirely her fault that Norrington was sailing in pursuit of Jack. Mary Rose, after all, had set him on the pirate's trail, like a hunting dog running down a brace of rabbits.

            She had not returned the earrings, either, perhaps because to do so would have meant admitting once and for all that Jack had stolen them, and thus was truly her cousin's killer. The things lay hidden in the bottom of a drawer now, in the same spot where Will's cursed gold piece had once lain.

            "Mrs. Turner," Mary Rose said coolly, as she drew within speaking distance. Her delicate face was set in an expression of genteel contempt, lips slightly pursed. "Watching for someone?"

            There was little point in denying it, so Elizabeth didn't even try. Instead, she dodged the question completely, responding with, "I could ask the same of you. Most women would prefer other paths for an evening stroll."

            For a moment, she thought the other woman was not going to answer, and that their conversation would end there. Her hopes were disappointed. Mary Rose appeared to consider for a long moment, then spoke. "I am looking to see whether the Endeavour is approaching. The Commodore should be due in any day now, and I wish to greet him when he returns." She added, with a sort of quiet dignity, "He promised to bring Robert's killer back in irons, and I want to be there when he does. To thank him." Her eyes narrowed. "And you? I assume you are not eager to greet him."

            Elizabeth glared right back at her. "You can hardly expect me to be," she snapped.

            "I should think a respectable young lady such as yourself would be happy to see justice carried out," Mary Rose returned, laying a delicate emphasis on "respectable" and "lady." Her voice stretched tight as she continued, "My husband was your cousin. You should be happy to see him avenged. Unless you're too besotted with the gifts you get from that, from that…" she faltered a moment, apparently unable to come up with a suitable epithet to describe Jack. "From his murderer."

            "I-" Elizabeth jumped to defend herself, but stopped short. There was really nothing she could say to that. Mary Rose did not know that Will was sailing with Jack, and informing her of the fact, or protesting again that the earrings had been a wedding gift, would only earn her even more contempt. "I am sorry about your husband," she ventured, attempting to truly sound it. The fact was, she was growing steadily less sorry as the danger to Will weighed ever heavier on her mind. If it weren't for Robert and his blasted wife, Will and Jack wouldn't be in peril now, and if that resentment made her unnatural, as she guiltily suspected it did, so be it.

            "Sorry," Mary Rose snapped, sounding angry now. "Sorry. Give me my earrings back, if you're sorry. Give me my husband back, if you're sorry." Her voice caught on that last, and she blinked hard several times. "If you were sorry, you'd have gone to the Commodore yourself and told him where to find this 'Jack Sparrow.'" She almost spat the name.

            "I'd rather have my tongue torn out," Elizabeth spat back. She clenched a fist in the fabric of her skirts, feeling the weave of the muslin against her fingers. A rising tide of anger rose in her to meet Mary Rose's, and the sympathy she ought to have felt for the other woman was washed away in its wake.

            "I can't believe you'd defend him!" Mary Rose half-shouted. "He's a pirate. And he'll hang as a pirate when the Commodore catches him, him and all his crew. Someday soon that," she flung an arm up, the lace edging her sleeve fluttering in the evening breeze, to stab a finger in the direction of Gallows Point, "is going to be Jack Sparrow, and serve him right!"

            Elizabeth's eyes followed the line from Mary Rose's pointing finger to the wooden beam fixed permanently athwart the rocky arch that marked Gallows Point. From it dangled the remains of two pirates, probably the same two who had hung there when she had met Jack in this self-same spot. They had rotted away until they were naught but weathered bone, picked clean by seabirds, and the left-hand one was beginning to disintegrate, much of its arms and legs missing.

            For a moment, Elizabeth's vision wavered, and the right-hand skeleton seemed to sport a ragged red scarf about its bleached skull, the brittle remnants of matted black hair clinging to bone under it. White bone gleamed in the red light of the sunset, desiccated tendons stretching over it and flesh crumbling away. It was hideously, horribly familiar.

            "Oh God, no," she choked, taking an involuntary step backwards. The skeleton was just another skeleton now, faceless and anonymous in death, but her mind could fill in the necessary details easily. Scarves, beads, and boots, the tattered remains of shirts, black elf-locks on the one corpse, and brittle, shoulder-length brown tangles on the other… "Stop it," she half-shrieked. "Don't say that! You lost your husband, and now you want me to lose the men I-" she broke off, appalled, staring at Mary Rose's shocked face. The other woman looked stunned, pale lashed fluttering as her greyish-green eyes opened wide. Elizabeth very nearly clapped a hand over her mouth, glancing back at the skeletons, which seemed to mock her as they swung gently in the freshening wind. "The men I… I won't lose both of them. I won't." And to her horror, she started to cry.

            Mary Rose took a tentative step toward her, then stopped. She opened her mouth as if to speak, then closed it, apparently stunned silent by the violence of Elizabeth's reaction.

            Elizabeth turned away from her and fled, leaving the other woman standing alone on the sand, staring after her in astonishment. She had to get away, away from the skeletons, away from Mary Rose, from those pale-lashed eyes that watched her so accusingly, and the empty sockets that gazed blind and hollow at her.

            The image of Jack and Will's dead bodies pursued her, fleshed out--or, rather, grotesquely not fleshed out--by the unwelcome hand of memory. For some reason, the thought of a world without Jack Sparrow was nearly as cold and hollow as that of a world without Will Turner. Losing Will would be like having the very earth beneath her feet taken away, losing Jack like waking one morning to discover the sea flat and lifeless and the sun gone from the sky. The thought of losing both together sent a sharp stab of pain though her, as if someone had driven one of Will's red hot bars of iron into her gut and twisted it.

            Elizabeth ran halfway back to her father's house before lack of breath forced her to stagger to a slow walk. By that point, Mary Rose had been left far behind, not that she cared much about the other woman's whereabouts, at the moment, so long as she was out of sight. Perhaps the Palisadoes were not such a good place to watch from after all, with their gruesome reminders of the fate awaiting her husband and her… friend? Did one become horrified to the point of nausea at the thought of seeing the corpse of a friend?

            Maybe. But did the memory of a friend's touch make one half-blush and wish for more? Perhaps there was a reason beyond denial for keeping those earrings. Will had kissed her while taking them out, and made love to her after they were gone, and Jack had put them in for her, fingers warm against her ears and throat. And now it was entirely possible that she'd never see either of them alive again, that her last memory of each would be those two encounters.

            Damn Mary Rose for flinging it in her face. She didn't want to think about it. She wouldn't think about it. Wouldn't think about losing Will, or watching Jack hang.

            Because she was beginning to suspect, with an uncomfortable sense of misery, that she loved them both.

^_~

Athwart: Nautical slang for "across."

^_~

Next up, Chapter Eight, In Which the Gallant Ship Endeavour Engages the Black Pearl in Battle.

Will Norrington catch up with our heroes? Well, yes, that's what the title implies, but can he capture them? And is Will going to keep on blushing all the time? Stay tuned for warfare and mayhem on the high seas, and perhaps a bit of subtext.