DISCLAIMER: Pirates of the Caribbean is owned by Disney. If it were mine, do you really think we'd have gotten through the entire movie without ever seeing Jack shirtless?

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.

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 Eleven: In Which Elizabeth Goes for a Walk on the Strand.

 

As I was a walking down in Stokes Bay
I met a drowned sailor on the beach as he lay
And as I drew nigh him, it put me to a stand.,
When I knew it was my own true Love
By the marks upon his hand.

 

            The guns began firing early that morning, as Elizabeth, her father, and their guests sat down to breakfast.  The sound rumbled at the edge of her hearing like distant thunder, too sustained and fast to simply be some navy ship engaging in a bit of gunnery practice.  Fear seeped like ice water into her stomach as she strained her ears to catch the noise, knowing almost instinctively that it had to be a battle of some kind.  She fairly twitched with the desire to leap up from the table and run to one of the upstairs windows for a look at the harbour and the sea beyond. It was all she could do to smile pleasantly across the table at Colonel and Mrs. Jacobson and their daughter Julia, and she had a feeling that she would be less than successful at fulfilling her duties as hostess for the remainder of the meal. 

 

            The others all seemed to ignore the distant gunfire, save for a comment by the Colonel that one of the garrison's big men o' war must be exercising its guns, and would Mrs. Swann please pass the butter.  Mary Rose obliged, but her eyes held a distant, listening look, as if her mind, too, was out with those unseen battling ships.

 

            There was no reason why it had to be the Endeavour and the Pearl.  Perhaps the navy had caught some smuggler, or one of the garrison's other ships had squared off with some other pirate vessel, or the French or Spanish were attacking.  It could even be the Dutch, sailing north from Aruba to attack Port Royal.  Stranger things had happened.  If skeletons could walk, there was no reason why the Dutch couldn't be attacking Jamaica.

 

            Mary Rose caught Elizabeth's eyes over her untouched plate and seemed about to speak to her, but then turned and addressed Julia Jacobson instead.  Her cousin had avoided her assiduously ever since their encounter on the beach, and on the rare occasions when they had spoken, it had been of inconsequential things; the weather, dresses, the colour of embroidery floss, never any topic that might lead back to a mention of Robert, Jack, or Will.  Mary Rose seemed willing to pretend that the entire conversation on the beach had never taken place, and Elizabeth had pretended right alongside her.  Still, she had caught the other woman giving her hard, thoughtful glances when she thought herself unobserved.  She waited now for some comment about the distant artillery fire, some gentle suggestion that it might be the Endeavour, accompanied by a hopeful prediction of Norrington's victory, but none came.

 

            The end of the meal could not come soon enough.  The second the plates were cleared, she smiled a farewell at the Jacobsons, dodged a question from Mrs. Jacobson as to why on earth her husband wasn't back yet (scandalous, his going off and leaving her like that), and dredged up some sort of passable excuse to leave.  She wasn't exactly sure what she said, but it must have been acceptable, because no one objected or tried to follow her.

 

            By the time she reached her now-familiar observation point on the Palisadoes, the battle had been over for nearly an hour, and only a single ship remained out to the east, making slowly for the mouth of the harbour.  Slowly, because half her rigging appeared to have been shot away.  She was too far out, and too damaged, for Elizabeth to be certain of her identity, but at least she wasn't the Black Pearl.  That ship, Elizabeth would have known anywhere.

 

            Only one ship.  Where was the other?  Had she escaped, or been sunk?  She hadn't blown up--that would have left a cloud of smoke behind to trail over the water, not to mention that the sound of the explosion would have been clearly audible even from her father's house.

 

            Elizabeth's nervous pacing had carried her nearly to Gallows Point when she caught sight of something that brought both pacing and musings to an end.  Protruding from behind one of the rocks that littered this end of the strand was a human hand.

 

            It lay palm upright on the sand, completely motionless, and Elizabeth nearly screamed as she realized what it was.  There was a dead body behind that rock.  A dead, drowned body.  Either that, or the hand was unattached, which was somehow an even more disgusting thought.

 

            Though she was strongly tempted to simply run screaming back home and leave the corpse to someone else, morbid curiosity forced her closer.  It was probably some sailor off of one of the two fighting ships, which meant that it couldn't have been here long.  Hopefully, the crabs hadn't been at it yet.

 

            That thought almost made her turn back again--she had always had a horror of the big, pale land crabs that came scuttling down to the beaches at low tide--but by then she was close enough to see the hand clearly.  It was a big hand, with short, broken nails, and there was a perfectly straight, pink scar right across the middle of the palm.  Only two men in the Caribbean had scars like that.

 

            "Will!" she shrieked, her previous horror increasing tenfold.  She covered the rest of the distance to the rock at a dead run, and threw herself down in the sand on the other side of it.

 

            He lay face down in the sand, left arm outstretched in front of him, as if reaching for something.  His right arm was still clinging to the piece of wood that must have carried him ashore.  He was pale, his eyes closed, and his skin, when she touched it, was cold and wet.

 

            It didn't occur to Elizabeth to wonder what Will was doing washed ashore on the Palisadoes Straights.  The only thing that mattered was that he was here, and that he couldn't possibly be dead.  He couldn't be dead.  It wasn't fair.  God wouldn't do that to her.

 

            "Will."  She shook one bonelessly limp shoulder, getting her fingers wet and sandy in the process.  "Oh God, Will, don't be dead, don't be dead."  She bent over his motionless form, tears stinging in her eyes, and heard herself pleading with him to wake up, to be alive, telling him that she would never, ever forgive him for leaving her like this if he didn't wake up right now.

 

            She was completely unprepared for it when he actually did.

 

            The limp body that she was clutching to her chest shook with a sudden spasm of coughing, and she was so surprised that she almost let go.  Will pulled away from her to spit salt water into the sand, streams of it dripping from his nose and mouth, and then turned to look up at her, blinking in confusion.

 

            "Elizabeth?  What are you--"

 

            She didn't give him a chance to finish.  She flung both arms around him and buried her head in his shoulder, holding him as tightly as she could.  "I thought you were dead," she whispered, squeezing her eyes closed against more tears.  "I thought you were dead."

 

            Will's arms came up around her shoulders and he held onto her in return, one hand stroking her hair.  "I'm fine.  Really.  I promise."  Then he seemed to become aware of his surroundings for the first time, and asked, "Elizabeth, what am I doing here?"

 

            She opened her eyes again, caught off guard.  "Ah, I don't know," she admitted.  "I… I found you.  On the beach.  I thought you had drowned."  Her voice nearly broke again over the words.

 

            "I fell off the boat," Will said softly, remembering.  "There was an explosion, and everything shook, and I went overboard, so I…  I think I tried to swim for shore."  He pulled back from her slightly, eyes suddenly wide.  "My God, the Pearl."

 

            "She gone," Elizabeth answered.  "I think she might have escaped." She refused to consider any other possibilities.  The Black Pearl could not possibly have sunk.  "What happened?  Were you attacked?"  Guilt began to seep in around the edges of her relief.

 

            "A British ship of the line ambushed us yesterday," he told her.  "We got away, but they caught up to us again this morning.  We closed with her, and they tried to board us, and Jack and I got into a sword fight with some of her officers."  He looked away suddenly, down at the sand.  "I think I killed some of them.  I guess I really am a pirate now.  I'm sorry."

 

            "Don't be sorry.  It's… It's my fault.  If it weren't for Mary Rose and I, Norrington would never have known where you were."

 

            Will stared at her blankly.  "Who's Mary Rose?"

 

            It wasn't until then that she realized just how much of the recent events in Port Royal Will had missed.  He didn't know about the Golden Dolphin's arrival, or Robert's death, or Mary Rose's accusations.  He probably didn't even know that those pearl earrings had been stolen.  On the heels of that realization came one that the two of them were damp, bedraggled, and sitting on the sand while the tide crept slowly up the beach toward them.

 

            "We need to get inside somewhere," she said, instead of answering.  "You need dry clothes, and, and I don't know what else.  Are you hurt?"

 

            Will shook his head.  "I don't think so.  You're right," he added.  "We can't just sit here until somebody comes and finds us.  I'm supposed to be…  God, where am I supposed to be?"

 

            "I think I told father Barbados," she said, "or maybe Haiti.  Or both.  I can't remember."

 

            "Well, somewhere that's not here.  And once Norrington gets back to Port Royal, everyone will know I've been with Jack, been fighting the Royal Navy with Jack, and someone will probably come and arrest me."

 

            Elizabeth shook her head, almost angrily.  "No one is arresting you.  We won't tell anyone you're here.  We can…" she searched her memory for some out-of-the way place for him to hole up in, some place no one but the two of them would think of going.  "We can go to the forge.  Nobody's been by there in weeks, because they all know you're gone."

 

            Will didn't argue.  The mere thought of a fire and dry clothes was probably enough to outweigh any other concerns he had.  "We should probably stand up now," he suggested.

 

            It turned out to be a difficult task.  Will was lying halfway in her lap, her damp-and-getting damper skirts tangled about both of them, and the two of them had to untangle themselves before they could do anything else.  Elizabeth climbed to her feet, attempted, without much success, to shake some of the water and sand out of her skirts, and reached down to give Will a hand up.

 

            She had to pull harder than she expected to, and once on his feet, Will swayed slightly, grabbing onto her shoulder for balance.  "I'm fine.  I'm fine," he gasped, before she could say anything.  "Just give me a minute."

 

            She suppressed the desire to snap that he obviously wasn't fine--he'd practically drowned hadn't he?--and settled for leaning over to put an arm around him.

 

            The two of them made their way slowly back down the beach toward the town, and Elizabeth spent the entire time hoping desperately that no one would take note of them and fighting the desire to skulk in alleyways.  She felt as if a hundred pairs of eyes were boring into her, and expected any second to hear a voice calling her name.

 

            "Slow down," Will whispered.  "If we walk too fast, it will look suspicious."

 

            "We already look suspicious," she whispered back.  "We're both of us soaking wet!"

 

            "Maybe no one will notice," he suggested hopefully.

 

            It seemed to take hours for them to reach the smithy, though it couldn't have been more than twenty minutes altogether.  Elizabeth went limp with relief when the door finally closed behind them, and Will released her arm and sagged onto one of the benches.  He still looked rather pale, she noted worriedly.

 

            He tried a smile.  "It's funny.  Usually, I'm the one people cling onto for balance."  He stopped smiling, and stared down at his hands with a small frown.  "I hope Jack's alright."

 

            It was so close to what Elizabeth had been thinking that she couldn't help smiling ever so slightly, despite her fear and worry.  "He's probably halfway to Tortuga by now, safe on the Pearl.  'Those who fall behind, get left behind,' remember."  She crossed the room to the chest where Will stored his spare clothing--in an attempt to dodge the Governor's disapproval, he'd taken to changing his clothes before returning home from the forge--and pulled out a shirt and breeches.  "Here, get out of that wet stuff and put these on."  She pressed the dry clothes into his hands and surveyed her own damp and newly water-stained gown with resignation.  "I wish I could do the same.  I don't think this dress is ever going to recover."

 

            Will stripped out of his torn, damp shirt and pitched it into a corner.  The wet breeches followed, landing atop the shirt with surprising accuracy.  Elizabeth stepped forward to help him into the dry garments, more as an excuse to touch him than anything else.  She had so nearly lost him.  For a few horrible moments, she had thought that she had lost him. 

 

            Will's skin still felt chilled as she ran her fingers over it, the hard muscle beneath knotted tightly.  There were a scattering of bruises across his ribs and shoulders, and a long, straight burn on his right forearm.  She bent and kissed it before fastening the button at his cuff.

 

            "What's this from?"

 

            "I brushed my arm against one of the guns, sponging it out," Will half-explained.  He had abandoned any attempt to lace the front of his shirt and was now cupping her face with his free hand.  His fingers were cold, but Elizabeth didn't care; she leaned into his touch anyway. 

 

            "Elizabeth-" Will began.  He never got to finish the sentence.  No sooner had he started to speak than a single gunshot sounded from the fort.  A navy ship had come in.

            They broke apart.  "It must be the Endeavour," Elizabeth said, though it didn't really need pointing out.  “I should go down and see what's happened."

 

            Will looked about to protest for a moment, then nodded.  "Come right back as soon as you find out," he said instead.  His eyes found hers, and they held the same cold, frightened unease that lay in the bottom of her stomach.  "If he won… if he's taken any prisoners…"

 

            Elizabeth shook her head, not wanting to voice that fear aloud.  In the back of her mind hung Mary Rose's voice, saying, "He'll hang as a pirate when the Commodore catches him, him and all his crew.  Someday soon that is going to be Jack Sparrow, and serve him right!"

 

            The walk to the harbour seemed even longer than the walk to the forge had been.

 

^_~

 

Next up, Chapter Twelve: In Which Norrington Returns Triumphant, and Elizabeth and Will Face a Difficult Decision.

 

Obviously, Will isn't dead, though he was wet (and a braver, better author would have made use of that and delivered a nice het lemon somewhere in there).  Jack's fate, on the other hand, is still up in the air.  As is Jack, if his luck doesn’t change at some point in the near future.