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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
- 3
- 4
- 5
Chapter Three

There was sand. Lots of sand. Lots and lots of sand, and pretty much nothing else.
It seemed like an awful waste of sand, in Jack�s considered opinion. A nice sweeping expanse of sand should end by the gently lapping shallows of a beckoning ocean, with a ship (preferably the Black Pearl) floating gently at anchor just offshore where the deeper waters started.
Oh, he had read about places like these, heard tales in the bars and tavernas of the Mediterranean ports, but he had never been tempted to see for himself. To Jack, any extended time spent on land soon became a chore and the ocean was always whispering in his ear, distracting him - calling for his return. So although he found the idea of sand without a shore intriguing and astonishing, he had never imagined he would experience it for himself.
Which was probably why he was here now. If a place would ever have been envisioned as his own personal Hell, then this was it, and whoever designed it had done a slap-up job of getting it right. All this sand; all these thousands of square miles of beach and no ocean in sight - surely this was meant to be Hell, even if it wasn�t quite succeeding.
Jack sat cross-legged in the vast arena of his sand-locked prison and waited. Time had no meaning here, and sensation was denied him. He was neither hot nor cold; he didn�t feel hungry or thirsty, and although he remembered rum, he could not call to mind the flavour of it, which he found very sad as he also clearly recalled how much he had enjoyed drinking it when he was - alive? Well - somewhere that was not here, anyway.

There was absolutely nothing to do except think, and with all other pastimes denied to him, Jack had been doing plenty of that. He had no idea how long he had been here - the landscape was unchanging; day after day of relentless blue sky and fine golden sand were almost enough to drive a man insane, but Jack had a niggling feeling at the back of his mind that something was wrong about this place, and it was enough to keep him from sinking into dementia.
If one wanted to stay in keeping with the omnipresent motif; it rubbed in the back of his mind like a grain of sand in an oyster shell, and he could only hope that eventually it would produce a pearl. A really big one, with black sails, might be nice.
Jack turned around and faced in the opposite direction; the view was exactly the same, but it made him feel like he was doing something. When he first awakened here, he had done a lot of yelling and threatening and demanding to be told what was happening. Since the sun never set, and oddly Jack never really felt the need to sleep, he couldn�t tell how long he had shouted himself hoarse before he accepted that no one was going to answer.
Next, he tried to walk out of wherever here was. After several more eternities of unending golden dunes stretched out as far as the eye could see in every direction, he stopped walking and sat down. Being stripped of everything but his own mind, he decided to find a reason for all this.
It had been a long time since he was a small boy being taken to church on Sundays by his ayah, but he was fairly sure the bible didn�t talk of consigning Hell-bound sinners to solitary reflection in barren deserts as punishment; there was typically far more fire and brimstone involved. He was also pretty sure that only a few sand dwelling insects could possibly regard this place as Heaven, so he had to conclude that he had ended up someplace else entirely.
The question was where and why, and it was certainly good for a great deal of contemplation, and since Jack currently found he had a lot of spare time on his hands, he dedicated himself to this problem with alacrity.
He had emerged from his ordeal in the Kraken�s belly into this bright sandy place, remarkably unscathed physically. Looking at himself now, he was cleaner and tidier than he could remember being for several years past. This was evidently a product of his environment, because he could recall quite clearly the rancid stench of the creature�s digestive tract, and the feeling of his boots filling up with hot, sour stomach acid as he battled deeper down the Kraken�s throat, determined to cause as much discomfort as possible before he expired from either the smell or the lack of oxygen.
It was quite the biblical experience, being swallowed whole - and whilst he had certainly not been expecting the experience to end in quite this manner, it did seem far less final than he had anticipated when he leapt into the gaping maw of the beast.
Jack had no idea how he had made the transition from sea creature�s belly to burning desert. Something had obviously intervened at some point between his last conscious memory of battling the Kraken, and his first experience of here, when he had woken to find himself face down with a mouth full of sand.
He supposed he had died of suffocation - either that or he had drowned in Kraken sewage. He certainly hadn�t been torn limb from limb as he might have anticipated given the extraordinarily large quantity of long and sharply pointed teeth that the Kraken possessed. But in truth he didn�t feel particularly dead either; he seemed to have a real physical presence, he was still solid and his feet left prints in the endless sand when he walked, so he appeared to be more substantial than some mere spirit or a shade of his former self.
He reflected frequently on how wretchedly disappointed Davy Jones would be, if he knew how little actual pain and suffering Jack had undergone as it transpired. Quite probably an eternity of sitting around this place with nothing but your thoughts for company might eventually drive one insane, but that still remained to be seen, and Jack rather thought that Davy Jones was the type that favored a more bloody and painful dismembering kind of termination for his enemies.
For the present moment however, Jack was restricted to a regime of wait and see; his years of surviving on the very edge of the law and the hangman�s noose had honed his sense of self preservation to a fine art - and despite a major oversight in the shape of a tentacled sea-beast - had served him well thus far; and it was this highly cultivated sixth sense that kept insisting there was something which didn�t fit here, and made him feel as if there was unfinished business still to be dealt with.
He lay back on the sand and rested one arm over his face to shade his eyes. The sun always seemed to be directly overhead in a perpetual midday, and even beneath his kohl-darkened lids, his eyes ached from the relentless glare.
When he had spent his requisite daily quota of time ruminating on the encounter with the Kraken, Jack�s thoughts turned as usual to another sharp-toothed beastie, equally as deadly but much better smelling and the author of his current predicament; that undeniably self-serving pirate lass, Lizzie Swann. Even now, despite all the time he had been given to speculate on the matter, he was still unsure whether he would have gone down with the Black Pearl if she had not forced the issue.
His one thought in taking the longboat in the first place had been to get after bloody ex- Commodore James bloody Norrington and retrieve Jones� damned heart from him, the sneaky, thieving double-crosser. He had been absolutely furious with himself; he couldn�t believe he had underestimated the former naval officer so completely that he had not seen this coming! Halfway back to Isla Cruces, he paused to wonder if it wasn�t a bit reckless to leap back into the fray against Norrington and Davy Jones� crew without any back up. Hadn�t they just fled this party? Maybe he should have brought some of the crew with him; and guns - lots of those.
The sudden loss of his single-minded focus had opened his eyes to how badly the Black Pearl and those on board were faring against the Kraken, and the realisation that he was going to lose everything that mattered to him. Something hard and painful knotted up inside him; it was a sensation previously unknown to him, and even before he was aware of thinking it, a voice in the back of his head was yelling at him - You�re going to lose her, and this time you�ll never get her back.

He stared for an endless moment at the injured Black Pearl before snatching out his compass; for the first time in months the wretched instrument did not waver or spin, but was pointing remorselessly back the way he had come before he even had the lid fully open. He turned the boat around and frantically began rowing back to his ship muttering to himself as he pushed faster, I�m coming, hold on - hold on - just wait for me, don�t you sink on me before I get there, darlin�.

Despite all his teasing, insinuation and implication, he had been genuinely surprised by Elizabeth�s embracing of her pirate side. Although he legitimately believed her to be truly suited to the buccaneer life, he had always suspected that the burden of her upbringing would eventually defeat her true inclinations. That his vindication should come at such an inopportune moment, when he had but minutes to enjoy it, was surely the greatest irony in his life.
However, he could not regret the memory of her silky hot tongue thrusting into his mouth and her small hands grasping his hair as they pressed closer and closer together, until her thumbs were massaging his cheek, and every thought had vanished from his head but for the reality of her - them. There hadn�t even been time to hold her to him; his arms hung uselessly by his sides as he had tried to comprehend what was happening between them.
Isolated from the desperate race to save their lives which was going on around them, he and Elizabeth were frozen in a moment stolen from time, as they finally gave in to the yearning which they had both been denying; she likely more so than him - probably from as far back as the very instant that he hauled her out of Port Royal bay, dripping wet and half naked, and they locked eyes for the first time. Jack knew that he had definitely woken hard and unsatisfied from more than one dream featuring a naked and willing Miss Swann in the starring role. And to find that the reality of her adventurous tongue curling around his, her slender body pressed against him, even fully dressed - so far exceeded his imagination, was an unbearably cruel irony that he never failed to appreciate.
It wasn�t until he had been in this barren place for some time that Jack had finally recognised where his head and heart had been fixed as he raced back towards the Black Pearl, and it had not been with the majestic ship at all, but that wretched, infuriating, bewitching slip of a she-pirate instead.
And he truly couldn�t fault her for her actions; not when they so closely mirrored too many of his own past decisions. She had done what was necessary for herself and those she had a responsibility to. She had acted for the good of the many over the good of the one, even though Jack could see with the benefit of all this wonderful hindsight, that despite her harsh words, the decision had nearly broken her.
No, she wasn�t sorry - she was absolutely devastated. Her actions had forced her to look inside herself and find that she was someone she didn�t even recognise any more - much as he had been forced to examine his own motivations since he got to this place, and discover that he too had been fundamentally altered by the experience.
�Oh, bugger,� he muttered into his sleeve, �I�m in love with her, aren�t I?� He smacked himself on the forehead with his palm. �You are an idiot, Jack Sparrow,� he muttered, then, �bloody hell, I really need to get out of this place.�
�Yes, I would imagine you do!� Said an irritated voice from his elbow, and Jack was not ashamed to admit that he yelped from the shock and nearly jumped out of his skin. �Good thing they�re ahead of schedule. Now we can get started. At last!�
Jack leapt to his feet, instinctively reaching for his sword and pistol - neither of which was there of course, nor had they been since he got to this barren place. After the countless days of solitude, the spontaneous appearance of another human being was almost enough to send him over the edge. Finding himself unarmed, Jack resorted to kicking sand in the face of the intruder, momentarily forgetting that since he had been alone for however long, the presence of another person to talk to might not necessarily be a bad thing.
Shaking his head to clear away the grains, Jack�s visitor rose to his feet and glared at the pirate. �Jonathan David Sparrow - that is no way to greet your father after fifteen years of separation.� He scolded, taking off his coat to shake the sand out of it.
�Bloody, buggering Hell,� Jack muttered, struck dumb as much by the older man�s words, as by the vibrant, curling tattoo of a mermaid which wound up his arm from his open shirt cuff and confirmed that this was indeed, Sparrow senior.
�Hmm,� Jack�s father continued when he was satisfied that he had removed all clinging traces of sand from his clothes. �Just as I remember you - childish and unfocused. What on earth were you thinking to allow yourself to get stuck in a place like this? That any child of my loins should have sunk to such a state! Entering into a bargain with Davy Jones of all people! If it was up to me, I would let you rot here for Eternity after all! Did nothing I taught you about the value of back-up plans sink into that rum-sozzled brain of yours? Sadly, it is now no longer my decision to make any more. Seems like you have caught the attention of the Higher-Ups.� The tone which he employed made it clear that this was not necessarily a Good Thing at all.
�Didn�t I warn you about getting mixed up with that voodoo woman? And did you listen? Back to that damned swamp time and again, bartering bits of shine for bits of magic. And now she�s poking around - here - casting her spells and scribing her runes. You can�t just ignore that kind of magic, m�boy. It calls to you, and you will have to answer!�
Jack was finally regaining his balance at the sight of his long-lost, little lamented paternal figure, and ignoring practically all of the older man�s diatribe, he asked disbelievingly, �Is that really you? Or am I having a hallucination - that�s probably actually quite likely, given the heat and isolation.� He answered himself. �But why did I have to hallucinate you - you�re ugly and you nag!�
The next thing Jack was aware of was his head spinning sideways as his father delivered a cuff to his ear so reminiscent of his youth that he could no longer deny this was the genuine article. �Bloody Hell! What did you do that for? Aren�t I being punished enough?� He grumbled petulantly, massaging the sore area.
�Oh, stop whining and act like the Scourge of the Seven Seas you�re so fond of telling people you are!� Sparrow Senior said unsympathetically. �Now, where�s that damned compass of yours?�
Jack puffed. �It doesn�t work,� he said flatly, �and no, I�m not in denial, or confused. It�s just simply broken, must�ve got smashed when I was fighting the beastie. Needle is stuck in one spot and never moves no matter what direction I turn in.�
�Let me see it anyway,� his father demanded, and Jack passed the compass over. He clicked open the lid and screwed his face up unattractively as he examined the instrument. �Did it ever just occur to you that there is only one way out of this place, and that�s where it�s pointing? Direction is subjective - leaving here isn�t about North or South, it�s not about where, it�s about how.�
�What�s that supposed to mean?� Jack demanded. �You�re talking in riddles. You sound like me.�
�No time for that,� said his father. �Your time here is almost up - But I�m afraid that means no more peaceful sandy dunes. If you�re going back, it has to be as you left. I�m sorry my boy - but they�re getting nearer now. You need to be ready.�
�What -� Jack got no further, for as suddenly as he had appeared his father was gone, and with him the desert, the sand, the sun and the endless blue sky. Jack collapsed to his knees, suddenly inundated by a myriad of aches and pains in his now bruised and bleeding body, and choking on the overwhelming stink that clung to his ripped and stained clothes. He appeared to have been transported to a small, dank tidal cave set in a jagged shoreline and was currently collapsed on a rough shingle beach.
However, his sword was now clutched in his hand and his pistol tucked in his belt, although Jack wasn�t quite sure how much use they would be given how battered and exhausted his body was, and the very minor fact that one of the Kraken�s uglier, bigger cousins seemed to be sunning itself in the mouth of the cave.
*************
Thanks to everyone who has reviewed. I�m not keen on taking up a chapter to reply to comments; I hate thinking a story has been updated myself and then finding it�s only an author note, so disappointing! If you need an answer on anything, nip over to my LJ and ask me there; I�m more than happy to gossip all day!
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Deliverance