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Time and Tide	By : Ladykohl Category: Pirates of the Caribbean (All) > Het - Male/Female > Jack/Elizabeth Views: 1085 -:- Recommendations : 0 -:- Currently Reading : 0
Disclaimer: I own nothing of Pirates of the Caribbean and am making no money from this story...

Chapter List
- 1-Chapter I
- 1
Title: Time and Tide: A sequel to “When the Rum Runs Out”

Author: Kohl Lined Eyes

Rating: NC-17

Chapter Rating: PG

Warnings: M/F, angst, dark themes

Disclaimer: You know I don’t own this, why do I even have to put a disclaimer?

Author’s Note: I’m not quite sure why I’m posting this after all this time… but here it is, the sequel to When The Rum Runs Out. It’s been a long time coming and I sincerely hope, even if only one person reads it, it lives up to the legacy of the original. Thanks in advance for finding my story and giving it a try!

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Time and Tide

Chapter One
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“What we call the beginning is often the end. And to make an end is to make a beginning. The end is where we start from.”
-T.S. Eliot
Elizabeth smiled as she leaned over the bow of The Pearl , watching the sun come up slowly over the water – her eyes sparkling a beautiful honey brown, her face awash with budding sunlight. Jack could hardly breathe as he beheld her and coming up behind her to wrap his arms around her shoulders was all he could do to keep from falling to his knees. He closed his eyes against the pain in his heart as he rested his face in her hair.
“I’m so close to finding you, love.” He whispered to her. Her hands came up to caress his forearms that encased her in his embrace.
“You can’t find me, Jack.” She responded. “I’m dead…”
“Red sky.” Gibbs said ominously as he stared off in to the distance – the sun just barely beginning to rise.
Captain Jack Sparrow looked up suddenly from the water and looked around him. He was not completely sure how long he had been standing silently in his reverie, but one look at the concerned expression on his first mate’s face as he looked off toward the horizon told him it had not been noticed. He knit his forehead in a worried frown.
“Bad sign, I take it?…” He responded only half warily as, after that particular painful daydream, he was only half hearted in an attempt to make Gibbs think he cared about what he had just said. In any case, the older man did not seem to realize it.
“’Red sky in the morning, sailor take warning…’” Gibbs recited as though telling a ghost story. Jack seemed to seriously contemplate these words for a few moments.
“We’re safe then.” He started, then turned pointedly toward the bumbling men on the deck of his ship. Raising his voice he continued, “Seeing as how there doesn’t appear to be a sailor among us!”
The morning air was cool – an autumn breeze roaming listlessly across the deck as Jack and his new crew prepared to set sail. The men shivered and complained audibly. None of them were very experienced it seemed as just preparing the rigging had taken the young lot the better part of the previous night.
“What can you expect from colonists?” Gibbs asked. Jack looked at him. “Perhaps if you kept a crew long enough to give them proper training, we wouldn’t have this problem quite so often.”
And, really, what could Jack say to that? It was true that he had replaced his crew almost every month or so for about a year now, but it was more out of necessity than desire to do so. He was no longer concerned with pirating and thieving these days which never quite seemed to sit right with groups of men who were not concerned with much else other than those two things. Unrest on his ship, he knew, was dangerous… and seeing as how he had no immediate inclination toward changing around his priorities, it was much easier to just systematically switch out his crew.
Save, Gibbs. Gibbs stayed… and Jack, though he appreciated the loyalty of his first mate, was beginning to sense the first stirrings of unrest within him as well.
“Tia Dalma can’t hide forever.” Jack said. But Calypso can, his mind traitorously added.
“Aye.” Was all Gibbs said, but did not pursue the subject further. He and Jack had had the conversation many times over at this point, and there no longer seemed meaning or reason behind it anymore. More and more the object of Jack’s mad pursuit seemed out of reach and both men knew it… but both men also knew that Jack had never been one to give up on something simply because the alternative was considered “mad”.
“Still though, Captain… the sight of red sky gives me a feeling of foreboding that I haven’t felt in me bones since—“
“Yesterday?” Jack interrupted. Gibbs shook his head.
“Fine thing when your own captain stops taking you seriously…” He muttered under his breath as he walked away. Maybe Jack laughed a bit, maybe it was more of a sigh… he couldn’t really tell much as of late. He looked back out at the water, remembering how Elizabeth had stood in the very spot he stood now. How much she had loved this view.
“I’m still coming, love.” He said to himself.
”You can’t find me Jack… I’m dead…
The words from his fantasy rose up briefly to torment his broken heart, but he quickly pushed them back down and as far away from his consciousness as he could manage – as was his habit. He knew that somewhere Elizabeth waited for him. He knew that it would be particularly cruel of the fates to give him such a small and unsatisfying taste of what it would be like to have the love of a woman like her if they had not intended him to have her. He believed it. He had to believe it.
He would find Tia Dalma, and he would find his way back to Elizabeth…

****

“Jack...”

Jack woke up suddenly - his heart pounding, his body drenched in sweat. One leg swung over the side of his bed, and the other followed.

“Elizabeth!” He let out in a harsh whisper - his voice rough after not using it through the night. He looked quickly around the dark room. His eyes scanned every corner and analyzed every shadow. It wasn’t for another few moments that he had finally convinced himself that, no, Elizabeth was not there. Jack took a deep breath and stood up. What was the point of trying to get back to sleep anyway?... Especially when there were far easier and more effective ways to put himself unconscious. Even more especially when one of those ways happened to be sitting conveniently on his table right this very moment.

“Hello, Beautiful.” He said as he popped the cork off the bottle of rum and fell ungracefully in to a chair near the window. “Miss me?”

The bottle, however, never failed not to answer him... though all was forgiven, of course, as the first swig of rum burned a path down his throat and the familiar numbing warmth spread through his body. He closed his eyes to the feeling and was content, for a moment, just to be on his way to not being sober or awake anymore. When the moment passed, Jack found himself staring out his window at the moonlit water just outside his ship. They had been sailing for about a week now in the direction of his compass, but had hit nothing of importance. A small boat of fishermen had given the men a little something to loot, but more than that it had given them the illusion of actually being pirates. It had seemed even to make Gibbs happy.

Jack swayed slightly as he continued to look out over the ocean. Hadn’t Elizabeth had always loved the water? Or... he assumed she had. Jack was always surprised when he realized again and again how very little he had actually ever known about the woman who had so mercilessly stolen his heart. Upon further reflection, though... he really was not that surprised.

He had never asked her about her. He had never asked her about her childhood. He had never asked her what it was like to grow up the privileged daughter of a wealthy aristocrat. He had never asked her if she had ever, in any way, been in love with James Norrington. He had not even known her favorite color. Jack had decided long ago that none of that mattered. He knew what he needed to know. She was different. She wanted what he wanted. She fought like he fought. She risked everything to be free just a little bit longer...

What more did a man need to fall in love?

“A challenge.” Jack answered his own question as he took a second gulp from his beautiful glass companion that never seemed to miss him. Yes, Lizzie had been a challenge. One that spoke to the truest part of his nature. Nothing worth having had ever been easy to acquire. Or keep for that matter.

Jack took a third and fourth swig. The lovely unconsciousness was well on it’s way now. Jack’s eyes slid closed.

“Jack...”

He creased his forehead. The voice that haunted Jack every day and every night for a year sounded so close. So… real.

“I’m here Jack.” The voice said. Jack’s eyes opened of their own accord, and if he ever looked back upon this moment he would most certainly marvel at the fact that his heart did not just stop beating.

“Elizabeth.” He said. She stood staring at him from behind a pair of knowing brown eyes. She was really there.

“I believe you’ve been looking for me.”

****
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Time and Tide