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Deliverance	By : Bluemidget57 Category: Pirates of the Caribbean (All) > Het - Male/Female > Jack/Elizabeth Views: 7843 -:- Recommendations : 0 -:- Currently Reading : 0
Disclaimer: I do not own the Pirates of the Caribbean movie series, nor any of the characters from it. I do not make any money from the writing of this story.

Chapter List
- 1-Deliverance
- 2-Elizabeth
- 3-will
- 4-Sand
- 5-Pearl
- 6-Journey
- 7-Cave
- 8-Ritual
- 9-Calypso
- 10-Return
- 11-Awake
- 12-Asleep
- 13-Reunion
- 14-Avoidance
- 15-Cabin
- 16-Jones
- 17-Tattoo
- 18-Irrevocable
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�Will, Will,� the recently absent sound of his fianc�s excited voice calling from the main deck dragged Will, Gibbs and the rest of the crew above to see what had wrought this change in their lately disconsolate crewmate.
As soon as they emerged, Barbossa was yelling commands at them, which they obeyed for once without grumbling, so surprised were they to be informed by their unwelcome Captain that their destination approached; more than one amongst them had doubted this expedition would attain any true success. For most it had been regarded as some kind of pilgrimage to give them closure for the loss of their Captain, and there had really been little expectation to actually find said Captain again.
The horizon ahead did not look much different at first glance, and Will wondered if Barbossa had sensed the crew�s disquiet and was creating a diversion, but when he concentrated he could see that a strange yellowish fog hovered on the line where sky met sea.
Their progress had been so slow up to this point, that Will somehow imagined it would take several more days to come upon the mist, but despite its apparent distance at first sight, the Dragonfly suddenly seemed to be racing towards the strange phenomenon at a breakneck speed. Or maybe it was the mist hurtling towards them.
The closer they drew to the vaporous haze, the more unsettled he became, and looking quickly at his crewmates, Will noticed that it was not just he who was feeling uneasy. He caught Gibbs crossing himself furtively, and Ragetti was muttering rosaries under his breath. Pintel had his hand on his pistol, and even Cotton�s parrot had no pithy comment to offer. The native sailors simply fled below decks at first sight of the strange fog.
Will looked back at Barbossa, their guide for this venture; if they were to take their lead from anyone he supposed it should be the man who had allegedly been here before. The Captain was staring intently ahead, seeming to search for something within the oddly swirling depths of the fog; he had let go of the wheel of the Dragonfly and was apparently allowing the ship to drift forwards as though summoned by the miasma itself.
They bore down on the thickening yellow fog, and a rush of inexplicable cold swept over Will. Every nerve screamed at him to turn around and flee this place; he had to grip tightly onto the rail to prevent from running below decks himself to hide from the oppressive chill. The other men all seemed to be experiencing the same trepidation to some degree or another.
The bow of the Dragonfly ultimately penetrated into the roiling fog no more than fifteen minutes after they had first sighted it, and the small vessel quickly became mired in the cold, dense air. Will shivered; he could hardly believe that less than an hour ago they had all been sweltering in the midday heat. There was something profoundly unnatural in this haze, and he wondered why such things constantly managed to surprise him. He had experienced undead pirates, cursed treasure, Davy Jones� semi-piscine crew and a still-beating severed heart. By now he should have accepted that there were more things in Heaven and earth than could be explained away by the new sciences, yet still he continued to disbelieve until he saw evidence.
Barbossa tied off the wheel and left the helm, ignoring the crew huddled by the side of the rail in varying stages of unease, and walked up behind Elizabeth. �Miss Turner,� he said formally and despite his apprehension, Will felt the customary twinge of pleasure that always ran through him when Barbossa referred to Elizabeth by his name. It temporarily relieved the dreadful fear which preyed on him lately that she was lost to him forever. He quickly noticed however, that neither Elizabeth nor Barbossa seemed to be unnerved by the mist in the same way that he and the crew were.
�Is it time now?� Elizabeth asked Barbossa calmly, and Will had a sudden nasty feeling that Tia Dalma had disclosed several things to them which she had then omitted to tell the rest of the crew.
�Very soon,� Barbossa replied. �We will be upon the Graveyard of Ships before long; I must prepare. See to it that I am not disturbed until I come back on deck.� He turned suddenly and graced the rest of the crew with a glare that Pintel, Ragetti and even Will remembered uncomfortably from their time serving under his command as Captain of the Black Pearl. �The rest of you scurvy idiots, stay exactly where you are. Do not interrupt me no matter what you hear or see. You go overboard in this fog, you�ll be lost for ever.�
Elizabeth nodded to him, and went back to staring out into the impenetrable fog. Will glanced around at the crew, but no one seemed the slightest bit inclined to disobey Barbossa�s command. They were being forced to face the reality that this expedition was beginning to look a lot more risky than a long voyage on a calm ocean.
Will moved away from the others and approached Elizabeth. �Do you know what he�s going to do?� He asked as she turned impatiently to see who had disturbed her. She made an obvious effort to school her face into a neutral expression as she answered.
�Not exactly; he was Captain of the Black Pearl for several years, their destinies have touched, become entwined - he is endeavoring to find her for us.�
�And if he finds her, then what?� Will asked with some trepidation; he did not like the direction his thoughts were taking him, but seemed unable to prevent their course.
�I really don�t know,� Elizabeth replied, turning back to squint through the mire, and Will accepted that he would get no further with this line of questioning. �We�ll have to face that when we come to it,� she added less harshly, as if in apology for her curtness. Will leant his arms on the rail beside her; he was loath to leave her alone in spite of her obvious wish to be so. His head and heart were in a swirling confusion of uncertainty about his fiancée. She had been so distant from him - from all of them, really - since the sinking of the Black Pearl and the loss of Jack, that he wasn�t even sure she still regarded them as a couple any more.
During the long sweltering days aboard the Dragonfly, Will had found plenty of time to analyse and dissect the devastating last moment in which he had laid eyes on the pirate, and how the older man had been occupied. He had since considered and rejected a thousand different reasons for that brief and shocking glimpse he caught of his fiancée and Jack Sparrow before Gibbs had blocked his sight, shouting directions and chiding Will for delaying; none had been sufficient to understand what was actually happening, or why.
The single conclusion he found himself able to draw was that he would only know the truth if he asked her outright; something he had not yet dared to do because he didn�t know if he was brave enough to hear the answer.
Elizabeth had descended into the longboat barely moments after they all settled themselves, and for a second Will could have almost thought his eyes had been playing tricks on him, except that her face was stony and resolute but desperately sad, and tears were tracking down her smoke-blackened cheeks even as she harshly ordered them to leave, whilst fabricating a colossal lie to conceal��.what?

Will had invented many fantastic and opposing theories concerning the cause of Elizabeth�s melancholy, but he could not differentiate the truth from wild conjecture. One thing he was sure of however, was that despite Jack�s seeming self-absorption and narcissistic tendencies, unlike himself the older man rarely acted on impulse, even if his purpose was not immediately apparent - buried beneath layer upon layer of subterfuge and misdirection - although he was certainly capable of reacting in a second, should it prove necessary.
Captain Jack Sparrow was an opportunist of the greatest magnitude, but in spite of his lazy, dissolute manner and drunken behaviour, the pirate possessed probably the sharpest and most intelligent mind Will had ever encountered. Behind those deceptively sleepy dark eyes dwelt a genius that never stopped plotting, scheming and calculating - Jack Sparrow was constantly anticipating a multitude of different outcomes to any situation and preparing a response to each.
Will had watched him confuse and disorient his challengers with little more than the convolutions of his erratic speech; he had the ability to turn a man�s words inside out, upside down and then back upon themselves so that his adversaries were left wondering what had happened. People invariably underestimated Jack, not bothering to look beyond his overt gaudiness and theatrical mannerisms - often to their later detriment; Will knew quite well that Jack cultivated this image, and reveled in his misdirections.
Although his vanity and arrogance were boundless, the self-mocking humour with which Jack proclaimed himself Captain Jack Sparrow, mate! made him seem more amiable than abhorrent. Apart of course, from that unfortunate I�ve got a jar of dirt! ditty he had chanted at Davy Jones, Will amended silently. Even for Jack, that had been not been one of his shining moments.
And that was the crux of it; Will could simply not reconcile what he knew and grudgingly admired of Jack Sparrow - wily manipulator and cunning exploiter, with the sudden, inexplicable decision to deny his very nature and simply surrender. By all logic Jack should have been the first person on board the longboat, heckling them to row faster whilst windmilling frantically with his arms to demonstrate how.
What Will absolutely could not figure out was the part Elizabeth played in Jack�s absence from the longboat, and why she had been unable to prevail upon him to abandon the Black Pearl, whilst they had been��on deck together. Jack�s decision to stay behind had certainly affected Elizabeth more severely than he could ever have expected it to.
Will had never really taken Jack�s flirtatious words to Elizabeth seriously. Had he been pressed for an opinion, he would have judged Captain Sparrow as the kind of man who was inherently allergic to romantic entanglements of any kind, and therefore terminally unable to help flirting with every woman he encountered, just to be sure that none ever took him seriously. Oddly enough, despite his poor opinion of piracy in general, and Jack�s elastic morals in particular, Will never once doubted that the other man had behaved as anything less than a perfect gentleman on those occasions when he had found himself alone with Elizabeth.
In fact, Will had been quite sure that Elizabeth was not especially impressed with the infamous Jack Sparrow, having found her childhood idol to have feet of clay - something which no doubt stemmed from being used as a hostage after she had generously interceded with the newly minted Commodore Norrington on his behalf. Certainly, she had spoken few kind words about him until shortly after the aborted hanging in Port Royal.
Whatever had passed between Jack and Elizabeth after she had fled Jamaica on the Edinburgh Trader disguised as a boy, and the moment Will reunited with her on Isla Cruces, in the previously inconceivable company of her now dissolute former fiancé and the man who had ultimately destroyed his career, Will would not ask; but it had obviously been redefining if it could compel Elizabeth into the pirate�s arms with her current fiancé only yards away, and condemn her to this forlorn state in the face of his passing.
Will steeled himself to ask The Question; it seemed that they were close to attaining their goal - maybe it would be sensible if he prepared himself for whatever exposition would come with the reappearance of Captain Jack Sparrow. He had just opened his mouth when the Dragonfly gave an enormous lurch sending Elizabeth toppling into him, and the other members of the crew tumbling to the deck. Elizabeth struggled to her feet not even waiting for his assistance, and leaned dangerously far out over the rail in an attempt to see if they had hit something.
Apparently, they had not; the lurch was followed by a booming noise which Will recognised as an explosion of gunpowder, and almost immediately thick black smoke began billowing up from the hatch. Gibbs and Cotton staggered towards the stairs, to be halted by Elizabeth�s voice, raised to a commanding bellow.
�Don�t even consider it!� She yelled. �Stay exactly where you are and leave him to do what he has to.� Both men jerked to a halt, bemused by her ferocity, and then fell back to cling onto the rail again.
The Dragonfly bucked a few more times, each one less violently than the last, until she settled to a steady rocking once again. Smoke was still roiling out of the hatch, but now it was joined by rising tendrils of bluish steam which seemed to be emanating from the gun ports along the starboard side of the ship. The two vapors met and coagulated a few feet away from the side of the ship, and a strange phenomenon began to occur; the resultant gasses from the explosion started to push the unnatural yellow fog apart, making a clear path forwards, almost like a tunnel through the haze.
Barbossa appeared from below at this moment, yelling at the crew to take their places, which they did speedily without pausing to make comment on how black the Captain�s face looked, or how singed the feather in his hat was. A breeze had sprung up seemingly from nowhere, and it filled the Dragonfly�s sails as she surged forward into the channel.
Gibbs was the first to see it. �Mother of God, what is that?� He moaned, as he caught a glimpse of a hulking dark shadow materialize in the fog which was rapidly closing the passageway behind them as they passed. It�s bulk was almost twice that of the Dragonfly and it was catching up with them rapidly, creaking and groaning as it drew nearer.
�Don�t look back!� Barbossa snapped, and Gibbs quickly took up the slack he had allowed on the rope, resolutely staring away from their pursuer. �Just concentrate on getting us out the other side before the Essence dissipates. We must be through the fog and out of the Graveyard before it�s done!�
It was another five of the most nerve-wracking, traumatic minutes that they had ever experienced before the fog seemed to start thinning ahead of them, giving just enough inducement to squeeze the last burst of speed from the small ship, and finally they could begin to see the horizon in front of them again, the rolling of small swells on the water�s surface, the unrelenting blue of the sky above.
Will was the first to dare a quick glance backwards in the hope that their dark pursuer had fallen behind, but as soon as his gaze lit upon the object in question, the rope he was holding dropped from his hands and jerked Gibbs sideways with the sudden increased tension; the other man turned to berate him, and found himself mesmerized by the same sight that had rendered Will speechless.
The Dragonfly ploughed on into the clear waters on the other side of the fog, as the phantom trailing in her wake began to emerge from the shrouding thickness of the distorting yellow fog.
�Further! Faster!,� Barbossa yelled, seeing that he had already lost the attention of two of his crew to the miracle following behind them. �We must get clear!�
He was fighting a loosing battle against a foe who conquered with a single sight; bereft of any action by her crew, the Dragonfly began to slow until she was drifting languorously forwards whilst every man on board stared behind her at the ghost which had shadowed them out of the bleak fog.
�God in Heaven, it�s really her,� Gibbs muttered finally, the first to find his tongue. �What kind of voodoo has the power to raise a ship from the depths?� He crossed himself, and Ragetti quickly followed suit.
They continued to stare, unable to comprehend the enormity of what Barbossa had achieved, until Will managed to shake off the spell which was enslaving them all. He looked around for Elizabeth and found her hanging on to the banister rail up to the steering deck. She was a white as a sheet, and he had no doubt that whatever magic Tia Dalma and Barbossa had concocted to raise the Black Pearl from the depths, she had not been privy to it.
The rest of the crew were finally finding their voices, and the hum of excited disbelief surged around them until Pintel�s voice rose above the others as he exclaimed: �Look - there ain�t a mark on �er! It�s just like she weren�t never even attacked by the Kraken!�
�Oh!� Will heard Elizabeth�s indrawn gasp of breath as she realised the truth of Pintel�s words, and he took an involuntary step towards her for she looked truly dreadful, as if she were about to pass out, but before he could reach her she clamped a hand over her mouth, staggered inelegantly to the rail and vomited wretchedly over the side.
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Deliverance