DISCLAIMER: Pirates of the Caribbean is owned by Disney. Come on, if it were mine, do you honestly think we would have gotten all the way through the movie without ever seeing Jack shirtless?
Title: A Pirate’s Life 14/15
Posted By: Elspeth, AKA Elspethdixon
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 Fourteen: In Which Elizabeth Acts Most Unladylike.

 

With her pistols loaded she went aboard.
And by her side hung a glittering sword,
In her belt two daggers; well armed for war
Was this female smuggler,
Was this female smuggler, who never feared a scar.

 

            Elizabeth eased the door to her room open with painstaking slowness, intent on making sure that the hinges did not squeak.  She shut it behind her with equal care, the soft sound caused by its closing seeming loud enough to wake the entire house.  When she turned around afterward to find herself face to face with a silent, watchful Mary Rose, her heart nearly stopped.

 

            Quicker than thought, one hand darted up to pull the silk shawl tighter across her chest, while the other held the bundle of clothing she was carrying—the breeches and coat borrowed months ago from some marine on the Dauntless and never returned—behind her back.

 

            “Mary Rose!” she blurted out in startled dismay.  “What are you doing here?”

            “I couldn’t sleep.”  The other woman was eyeing her with open suspicion, taking in her daytime attire and shod feet, completely out of place for this time of night, especially in contrast with Mary Rose’s linen nightgown.  Hopefully, the dim light and the shawl over her shoulders concealed the deeply immodest neckline of her dress from Mary Rose’s sharp gaze. 

 

            “I see you couldn’t find slumber either,” Mary Rose continued, blonde eyebrows raised slightly.

 

            “I was merely,” Elizabeth began, and then she sighed, giving up attempts at denial and squaring her shoulders for battle.  There was no use pretending that she wasn’t sneaking out, and the guiltier she acted, the more suspicious Mary Rose would be.  Jack’s voice whispered in the corners of her memory.  ‘The easiest way to take somethin’ is to act like you have a perfect right to it.’

 

            “I need to say goodbye,” she said bluntly, staring straight down into Mary Rose’s pale eyes.  “And if you tell anyone about this, if you try to stop me, I’ll never get to.”  She seized on the faint trace of sympathy she thought she saw in the other woman’s face and went on, “I know it’s not right, but I have to.”  Then, rushing on headlong before Mary Rose could stop her, she ruthlessly shoved aside any feelings of guilt and played the ultimate card.  “I love him, Mary Rose, the way he laughs, that smug grin of his, the way he saunters about like the entire world is the deck of a ship and he’s the captain of it.  I love him, and I can’t, I can’t not see him one last time.  Wouldn’t you have given anything for a chance to say goodbye to Robert?”  She felt absolutely evil at the sudden grief in Mary Rose’s face, the sad lines that appeared in that moment around her eyes and the tight, painful set of her mouth.  Lies and manipulation were not her strong point, anymore than they were Will’s, and using Mary Rose’s grief over her husband to play for sympathy was unconscionable.  Still, Mary Rose’s feelings were a small and unimportant thing when balanced against Jack’s life, and a Mary Rose distracted by emotion was less likely to figure out that a woman going to bid farewell to a jailed lover could just as easily be going to try and set him free.

 

            “He’s the one who killed Robert,” Mary Rose said flatly.  Her voice was as hushed as Elizabeth’s, both of them speaking in near whispers, Elizabeth out of the need for secrecy and Mary Rose presumably simply due to the atmosphere, or a conscientious desire not to wake anyone else.

 

            “Yes,” Elizabeth said, equally blunt, “and he’s going to die for it tomorrow.”  Just saying the words made her feel queasy and hollow inside, even though she knew that Will was down in the forge even now, waiting for her arrival so that they could set about securing escape for the three of them.

 

            Mary Rose sighed, a short, disapproving exhalation, but something in her very anger let Elizabeth know that she had won.  “You’re married,” Mary Rose reminded her harshly, “even if your husband has run off and left you.”  There was disgust in her voice, but also a sort of grudging sympathy, as if part of her understood Elizabeth’s plight, albeit unwillingly.

 

            Elizabeth offered up a sad smile, trying for fatalism in her voice and face as she responded, “After tomorrow, none of it will matter anymore, will it?”  She gave Mary Rose a steady look, studying the other woman’s fine-boned face for understanding.  “He’ll be gone, the way Will already is, only Will’s alive out there somewhere, and he won’t be.”  She did not say Jack’s name, afraid mention of it would remind Mary Rose of precisely who it was she was so desperate to “say goodbye to,” and awaken the resentment and anger Mary Rose felt toward the pirate.

 

            “I don’t understand any of this,” Mary Rose said softly, her voice so plaintive that the faint words were almost a wail.  “You, and that pirate, and the Commodore, and your husband…” she shook her head, looking bewildered.  “There are secrets everywhere on this island.”

 

            “One woman, two men,” Elizabeth told her.  “It’s not very complicated.”  Which was a lie, of course, but explanations would have taken too long.  ‘Let’s rescue Jack first and then decide which one of us is going to elope with him later,’ Will had said.  Right.  Getting Jack out of jail came first; resolving romantic entanglements could wait.  Now, she had to sway Mary Rose. 

 

She would have placed a pleading hand on the other woman’s arm, but both of them were occupied.  “Please, don’t wake anyone else up,” she said, looking straight into Mary Rose’s eyes and praying with all her soul that the sympathy she thought she saw there was real.  “Don’t tell anyone where I’ve gone.”

 

            Mary Rose shook her head, looking down at the floor.  “I shouldn’t be doing this.  I shouldn’t—oh, all right.  Go now before I change my mind.”

 

            “Thank you,” Elizabeth said, offering a slight smile—possibly the first she given Mary Rose since the dreadful day of Robert’s funeral when the other woman had set Norrington on Jack and Will.  Then she left, hurrying down the hallway at a pace that wasn’t quite a run, but wasn’t far from it, either.  At every step, she half expected to hear Mary Rose’s voice behind her, calling out and waking the house in a well meaning attempt to preserve Elizabeth’s virtue—or a spiteful effort to deny her the goodbyes that Mary Rose had never gotten to say.  It never came.  Mary Rose stood silently in the hallway and watched her go.  When Elizabeth looked back once, at the head of the stairs, she saw the other woman regarding her with an expression that was almost pitying, an upright woman looking at another who was about to fall from grace.

 

            It might have made her feel guilty over what she was about to do, but knowing that the servants would find the note and the earrings on her bed in the morning and deliver them to her father and Mary Rose assuaged her conscience.  Her father would understand then.  He had too.

 

            The familiar path to Will’s forge seemed much shorter this time, without the constant worry of prying eyes.  This late at night, the streets were empty, and most of the windows were dark and shuttered in a futile effort to keep out mosquitoes.  It never worked, of course.  They were everywhere.  She could hear one of the nasty little insects whining about her head as she knocked lightly on Will’s door, and resisted the urge to swat at it.

 

            “Will,” she hissed, knocking harder.

 

            The door swung open suddenly beneath her knuckles, and she just barely managed to stop herself from delivering the final rap on Will’s chest.

 

            “Elizabeth.”  He pulled her inside and kicked the door shut behind her.  “Does anyone know you’re gone?”

 

            “No,” she lied.  Mary Rose wouldn’t tell.  She mustn’t.  Oh please, God, don’t let her tell.  “The whole town is quiet.”

 

            “Good.”  He nodded, his brows drawn together the way they did when he was worried or thinking hard.  “You go and get the boat ready.  There shouldn’t be anyone watching it; I checked earlier.  I’ll got and get Jack.”

 

            Elizabeth shook her head, and drew a deep breath to prepare herself for the argument they were about to have.  “No, I’m going to go get Jack.”  She placed one hand over Will’s mouth before he could speak, cutting off any protests.  “I am currently the only one of us without a price on my head.  You’ll be seized the moment you try to go near the jail.  I might be able to talk my way in.”  She nodded down at the neckline of her bodice, exposed now that she had abandoned her grip on the shawl.

 

            Will’s eyes widened and he gently reached up to pull her hand away from his lips.  “Elizabeth-“ he began.  She could see the rest of the sentence in his eyes.  ‘No wife of mine is going to walk up to some strange soldier dressed like that.’ Being Will, however, he didn’t say it.  Instead, he broke off for a moment and then continued in a milder tone, “It’s too dangerous.”

 

            “Will, I’ve never sailed a ship before in my life,” she hissed.  “I don’t know how to get Kennedy’s sloop ready to sail.  And giving me instructions won’t be good enough,” she added, anticipating what would come next.

 

            Will nodded slowly, clearly not liking this, but recognizing that he didn’t have much of a choice.  “All right.  What are you going to do?”

 

            Elizabeth smiled, trying not to let her nervousness show through.  “What else?”  She waved her free hand toward the front of her bodice, and the substantial amount of cleavage on display there.  “Distract the guard.”

 

            Will’s lips quirked in an unwilling smile.  “He’ll be very distracted, I promise.”  He took the bundle of clothing from her and set it down on the floor, next to his own sack of spare shirts and the like.  “You should take a weapon.”

 

            Elizabeth crossed the little room to stand by Will’s anvil, picking up a long bar of pig iron that lay across it, waiting to be forged into some kind of tool.  “You mean, something like this?”  It was a heavy weight in her hand; it’s solid heft almost comforting.

 

            “Aye, something like that.”  Will smiled again, and then he was embracing her, holding her to his chest in a grip so tight it was almost crushing.  “Be careful, Lizzie,” he whispered.  “I will not trade you for Jack.”

 

            Elizabeth closed her eyes for a moment, feeling the coarse linen of Will’s shirt pressing against her cheek.  She hugged him back, one armed, since her right hand still retained the grip on the iron bar.  “I’ll be careful,” she promised.  She tipped her face upward and pressed a kiss against Will’s lips, his moustache tickling her cheeks.  It sent a shiver through her insides, but now was not the time for that sort of thing.  “Now go and steal us a boat.”

 

            “Commandeer,” he corrected gently.  “I’m commandeering a boat.  It’s a nautical term.”  He drew back and looked at her for a long moment, as if he were memorizing the shape of her face.  “The cells are down the stairs and to the left,” he told her.  “Each cell door uses a different key, so you’ll need to take the whole ring.”

 

            She nodded silently, and left, makeshift club hidden within a fold of her skirts and shawl clutched tightly around her.

 

            The walk to the jail, unlike the walk to Will’s forge, seemed very long.

            There was only one guard, she noted with relief as she peered around the corner of the street at the solidly built little jailhouse.  A Royal Marine, intimidatingly tall and imposing in his red uniform, was standing at attention in the doorway with a bored look on his face.

 

            Elizabeth drew a deep breath, then stepped around the warehouse and started down the street toward him.  “Sir?” she asked, as she dew nearer.  “Are you the one in charge here?”

 

            “Yes, miss,” he nodded, looking highly surprised to be accosted by anyone so late at night.  “You should go home, miss.  This is no place for a woman, especially not at this time of night.”

 

            “But, Lieutenant”—he was clearly a corporal, but a little flattery couldn’t hurt—“I came before, this morning, and they told me to come back later.”  She gazed up at him with wide eyes, trying to look innocent, but not too innocent.  He didn’t look familiar, and apparently hadn’t recognized her as the Governor’s daughter, or he would be calling her ‘Mrs. Turner’ instead of ‘miss.’  “I need to, that is, you have my, ah, my cousin, locked up in there, and I was wondering if I could perhaps go in and see him?”

She leaned forward slightly as she asked the question, letting her shawl slip down her shoulders as if by accident, exposing bare skin, and breasts forced upward by the bloody uncomfortable tight corset into an indecently bountiful display.  The man’s eyes dropped downward, pulled to them like a compass needle being drawn toward magnetic north. 

 

            Elizabeth withdrew the bar of pig iron from the folds of her skirts and hit him over the head with it.

 

            He fell heavily to the ground, and lay so still that for a horrified moment, she thought she had killed him.  When she saw that he still breathed, relief made her knees feel weak.  Only unconscious.

 

            Stifling her lingering feelings of guilt, she pulled him up into a sitting position against the wall, so that it would be less obvious that he had been knocked out.  She left him propped up like that and bent to lift the bar across the door, gritting her teeth as the corset stays pinched her ribs.  It was heavy enough to make her fingers ache, and the door itself was even heavier, so solid that she had to throw her weight against it in order to pull it open.  Once through, she eased it closed behind her with even more care than she had used back at her father’s house, sure that if she simply let it swing shut, the resulting bang would wake up half of Port Royal.  The sound of the hinges creaking and the bottom of the wooden door scraping against the stone of the stoop already sounded loud enough to alert the entire street.

 

            Down the steps and to the left, Will had said.  She went down the steps as quietly as she could, feeling her way in the dark, one hand trailing along the wall.  The only prison she had ever been in before had been the brig on the Black Pearl, and part of her mind almost expected to find rusting iron bars and pools of greasy overflow from the bilges at the bottom of the stairs, even though she knew the very concept was ridiculous.  What she found instead was a neat row of cells, relatively clean and barred with new and sturdy-looking ironwork that made her very glad she possessed that ring of keys.

 

            Jack was in the cell farthest from the stairs, leaning against one corner of the wall with his knees drawn up and his head resting back against the stones behind him, eyes fixed firmly on the narrow shaft of moonlight filtering through the small window.  He didn’t even turn his head when she entered.

 

            “Back with me rum, are you, Corporal?” he asked the empty air in front of him.  “You certainly took your time about it.  I shall be sure to complain to your superiors.”

 

            “I would have been here earlier,” Elizabeth heard herself saying, “but the guard and I had a slight disagreement over the keys.”

 

            Jack’s head snapped around, and he rolled to his feet in a single, smooth movement, fast as a striking snake.  Once upright, he spoiled the effect slightly by swaying sideways against the wall for a moment, one hand spread flat against the stones for balance.

 

            “I won,” Elizabeth continued, holding the ring of keys up to clink softly and catch the dim light.

 

            “Elizabeth!”  Jack’s eyes were fixed on the keys, wide and surprised and, under that, almost approving.  “Have I ever told you how much I love you?”

 

            “Only when you want something,” she said, unable to keep the smile off her face as she thrust the first of the keys into the lock.  Jack was on his feet and being smarmy, which meant that he couldn’t be that badly hurt despite the bruises the moonlight just barely illuminated on his face.  Which meant that they were going to get away with this, and everything was going to be all right. 

 

            The first key didn’t work, so she yanked it out and tried the second, feeling a surge of minor triumph when it turned and she heard the tumblers inside the lock grinding.  Jack had the cell door open and himself on the other side of it in seconds, and Elizabeth, relief singing a jubilant song inside her, flung her arms around him.

 

            Every since she had seen Jack standing on the dock in chains, there had lurked somewhere deep in her insides the insidious fear that she would never see him alive and free again, that she and Will would fail to rescue him and she would have to watch him jerk and twitch in agony on the end of a rope, those expressive hands flying to his throat for one last struggle before going still forever.  Now he was here, right in front of her and alive, and so she wrapped her arms tight around him and held on hard, just as she had with Will that morning.

 

            Jack took one startled step back when her weight hit him, and then his arms came up around her in turn, not quite as tight, but still there.  He smelled like dried blood and vomit, the smells overlaying the usual sweat and saltwater odour of his skin and clothing, and the fabric of his right sleeve was so saturated in gore that it had dried stiff and tacky.  A thread of something cold and frightened ran through Elizabeth’s stomach.

 

            “You’re covered in blood,” she said, releasing him and running horrified hands over his arm in search of a wound. 

 

            “Yes, I’ve been tryin’ to forget that,” Jack muttered.  He intercepted her hands almost irritably, batting them away, before her concern seemed to penetrate.  “It’s not mine,” he said, obviously trying to be reassuring, but not succeeding very well.  This close, Elizabeth could see the bruise on his forehead clearly, a swollen patch of black and purple that had spread downward to blacken his left eye.  It was his only visible injury, but all of that blood…  God, how could she not have noticed the blood this morning on the dock?

 

            “It’s not mine,” Jack repeated.  “Elizabeth, love, breathe.”  He gave her a little shake, and then his gaze dropped downward and focused on the neckline of her bodice.  Or rather, its lack of a neckline.  His eyes, one surrounded by bruising, the other by smeared paint that almost made it appeared bruised as well, widened, but he said nothing.  He didn’t even leer at her, or smirk, or even smile, which, considering the fact that he was currently being treated to a view most men probably only got in brothels, was decidedly out of character.  “Love,” he let go of her shoulders and took a step back, “there’s somethin’ I need to tell you-“

 

            “Later,” she interrupted, realizing suddenly just how long the two of them had been standing there.  Only minutes, true, but they didn’t have minutes.  Someone could come in at any time and find them.  “We need to get out of here before the guard wakes up again.”

 

            “Didn’t you tie him up?” Jack demanded.  His eyes were darting around the room—looking for his weapons, Elizabeth realized.

 

            “Ah, no,” she admitted.  “Should I have?”

 

            Jack shook his head slowly and spread his hands.  “You always tie them up,” he explained, with a flash of that all-knowing-pirate-imparts-wisdom-to-his-naïve-apprentice attitude that Will seemed to find so irritating.  “If a man doesn’t have a rope around his wrists or a slit throat, he’s got a nasty habit of getting’ up and comin’ after you, savvy?  An’ sometimes even bein’ dead doesn’t stop him, like in those dreams where Barbossa still isn’t finished and comes crawlin’ up the side of your ship in the dead of night so his nasty little monkey can strangle you in your sleep.”  He crossed to the wall by the stairs in three strides and began sorting through the collection of odds and ends hanging from the pegs there.  “Sword belt,” he muttered to himself as he took inventory, “cutlass—not mine but it’ll do, pistol—which is not loaded, of course.  Damn.  Compass…”  As he spoke, he buckled on the sword belt and began distributing the items—some of which Elizabeth was sure had not originally belonged to him—about his person.  He flipped open the lid of the compass and checked the bearing for a moment, then closed it and stowed it carefully away inside his coat.  “Now, what did these idiots do with my hat?”

 

            “Forget the hat, Jack,” Elizabeth finally exploded.  “You can steal a new hat.  Let’s just leave.”  What was wrong with the man?  Save for that first moment, she realized, he hadn’t met her eyes once.  That, added to the completely pointless babbling about Barbossa’s monkey—why did he have to mention that horrid thing?  She’d never had nightmares about being strangled by it before, but she certainly was going to now—meant that he was upset about something.  Jack, she had noticed, tended to babble when under stress, as if by piling enough words on top of a problem or potential threat he could intimidate it into going away.  Was this about Robert?  Was that why he didn’t want to look her in the eyes, because he knew he had killed a man who was kin to her?

 

            “Excellent suggestion, love.”  Jack seized hold of her arm and started for the stairs, swaying against her slightly as they began to ascend the stone steps.  Elizabeth would have complained that he was taking liberties, or gently but firmly moved his hand away, but she wasn’t sure whether this was normal Jack swaying, or ‘I have a serious head injury’ swaying.  If she called him on it, he’d probably claim the second.  And there was something… comforting, about the touch of his fingers on her arm.  Like Will’s touch earlier, it seemed to tingle against her skin, but more than that, it made her feel safer somehow.  Which was ridiculous, because Jack’s company almost always brought some sort of mayhem with it.

 

            Still, impending mayhem or not, Elizabeth felt a weight lift from her shoulders as the two of them reached the entrance to the jail.

 

^_~

 

This somewhat overdue instalment of aggressive coolness on the part of Elizabeth was brought to you by Vick’s cold medication, curry flavoured ramen, peanut soup, and, as ever, the UCC computer lab.

 

Coming up next, Chapter Fifteen: In Which Our Heroes are Reunited.

                                                  

Will Mary Rose reveal Elizabeth’s departure prematurely?  What will Jack’s reaction be when he discovers that Will is still alive?  And, most important of all, once Will & Elizabeth finish rescuing Jack, which one of them will get to elope with him?  Find the answers to these and other exciting questions, next time on, “As the Caribbean Turns.”  Same pirate time, same pirate channel.