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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
- 4
- 5
- 6
Chapter Five

They climbed aboard the Black Pearl with Will in the lead. No one spoke; it was as though they dared not disturb the funereal quiet of the newly risen ship. Although there had been talk of finding Jack aboard, both during the long weeks of their journey - and more excitedly since the Black Pearl had materialized behind them, Elizabeth had never really believed it would be that simple. The ship had been attacked, crippled and sunk, but Davy Jones had wanted Jack - the Kraken had no doubt separated him from the broken Pearl long before she descended to her watery grave, bound for a fate far worse than simply drowning.
The moment Elizabeth set foot on the soaked deck of the salvaged Pearl she knew Jack was not there, but she made no assertion to the crew as they scurried off in different directions to scour every inch of the ship under the direction of Mr Gibbs.
Will stared at her for a long moment as she stood frozen in the spot where she had ascended the ladder, her head down studying the toes of her boots, before he too moved below decks to conduct his own search.
Elizabeth found herself momentarily alone with her demons, until the nudge of Barbossa�s shoulder as he climbed aboard behind her - the last man to cross over from the Dragonfly - brought her out of her reverie.
�He�s not here,� Barbossa said, giving voice to her thoughts. �It wouldn�t be this easy.�
Elizabeth merely inclined her head in acknowledgement, and Barbossa strode past her towards what had formerly been his cabin, where he�d once plied her with food and wine and told her ghost stories she hadn�t believed.
Alone at last, Elizabeth turned to face the scene of her crime, and immediately her eyes fell upon Jack�s last known location, she felt a fracture in the awful emptiness which had numbed her heart since the moment she had turned away from Jack Sparrow and fled from this very deck into the longboat. It took mere seconds for the crack to rupture, and hopeless, unrelenting pain rushed in to fill every corner and space in her heart.

She moved without conscious direction, her fingers trailing along the timbers in a subtle echo of Jack�s own final farewell to the Black Pearl; her eyes sought out the shackles she had used upon him, still hanging exactly where she had found them. Everything was restored precisely as it had been before the Kraken�s attack; it was as if she had stepped backwards in time, and none of the past two months had occurred. Everything that is, except for Elizabeth herself, and if they didn�t find Jack, she truly doubted she would ever be restored.
Unable to bear the accusing reality of cold metal, she leaned her forehead against the mast and her eyes fell shut, silent tears welling out of the corners and tracking through the dirt on her face. With her eyes closed the images were even worse; instead of the harsh reality of the undamaged ship, behind her eyelids, Jack was there - and instead of rope and timber, she was pressed against his warm, hard chest - doomed to re-enact her betrayal for all eternity.
Elizabeth wrapped her arms around the trunk of the mast as if she were embracing Jack himself and laid her cheek against the blackened timber. If only, she thought, there could have been another kiss for her to remember; another one - not borne of betrayal and deception - for him to remember, as she abandoned him to reap the consequences of her distraction.
There had been so many opportunities lost, she thought wretchedly. Even as far back as their time marooned by Barbossa on that Godforsaken spit of land, she was sure Jack would have been amenable had she given the slightest indication that she might welcome his attentions; but she had been so intent on the make-believe pirate she had created out of William Turner, that she had totally missed the real thing standing right in front of her. Fool girl.
Her father had given Will to her on the crossing from England, and she was determined to keep him, never mind the rush of excitement which had flowed through her body when she revived on the docks in Port Royal to find the most exotically beautiful man she had ever seen hovering over her, his dark eyes seeming to penetrate straight to the centre of her being.
Maybe that was why she had clung so fervently to her mirage of Will, and used Jack�s subsequent seizing of her as a reason to disdain him; because she had known from the moment she locked eyes with him for the very first time, that he would be the one with the power to turn her inside out and make her face up to who she really was, what she wanted - and that it was never going to be Will.
She had spent the eight months leading up to her aborted marriage in a state of blithe denial. She was doing the right thing; there was no doubt of it in her mind. Yet after the fiasco of her wedding day, more and more people had cast hints that they were not surprised at its disintegration.
Determined to prove all the nay-Sayers wrong, she set off to follow Will on his naively honourable quest, and if the greatest part of her excitement in the new adventure stemmed from the knowledge that she would incidentally get to see Jack Sparrow again, she absolutely refused to acknowledge it.
She was thrown off balance when Jack immediately turned the full force of his suggestive words onto her after she tracked him down to the Black Pearl�s berth in Tortuga, with a sotted James Norrington in tow. Previously he had only skated on the fringes of outright flirtation with her, and to hear him insinuate in that sultry, provocative voice of his that he wanted to see her naked, flustered and enticed her so much that he had been able to inveigle her into his latest mad scheme with barely any protest. Even James, drunk and disheveled as he was, had retained more natural misgiving than she.
By the time she had straightened her head out they were already at sea, and Jack was turning up the heat on his subtle seduction to a level that someone as relatively inexperienced as Elizabeth could hardly hope to resist. The damage had been done in those first moments of reunion, and once planted in her mind, the notion of wearing nothing in Jack�s cabin soon grew to dominate her thoughts.
Elizabeth was sure it was this insidious, uninvited - but now irrevocably planted suggestion - which was responsible for her uncontrollable impulse to respond in kind when Jack next flirted with her. And even though immediately the coy words left her mouth, she had known she was in trouble - that this was a battle of wits she could never hope to win - she found herself unable to stop, incapable of heeding that warning voice which told her to run as fast as she possibly could in the opposite direction. Not even the triumphant gleam in Jack�s eyes as he pranced off with those infernal Letters of Marque, which she had obtained at gunpoint and great personal risk, was sufficient to restore her senses.
And after that moment every encounter, every word, every heated glance and subtle brush of his arm against hers as he passed by a fraction closer than required - every time their eyes met and lingered for an instant longer than necessary before his slid teasingly down to trace the lines of her body which were exposed by her boy�s garb - only served to inflame the roiling fires of awareness that had every nerve ending beneath her skin screaming with the anticipation of actual contact.
It had so nearly happened a few days later; after another unsettling consultation with the dread compass, she had been brooding on the stairs up to the wheel deck, and he appeared as if summoned by her subconscious desire, rolling towards her with his distinctive gait and settling himself a step below her, his chest pressed against her thigh causing the majority of her concentration to be focused on not leaning closer to him.
She accepted the proffered bottle of rum, hoping that the fiery spirit would distract her from the other heat burning in the pit of her stomach - and lower even, despite the minimal contact. The unmentionable parts of her body had never reacted like this before - not even on those few occasions when she and Will managed to escape the chaperones Governor Swann had set upon them, to find momentary privacy and indulge in furtive caresses which always left Will flushed, short of breath and beaming with dazed happiness, and herself vaguely wondering what Estrella had been giggling about all this time.
She had not immediately absorbed Jack�s words; the unfamiliar throbbing between her thighs was too intense and she was considering rubbing them together in an effort to relieve the ache when she realised he was talking about marriage - in his own convoluted fashion. Elizabeth was ashamed to admit that her heart actually stopped beating for a moment, before racing away at twice the normal rate when it occurred to her that he might be proposing, until she filtered his words and realised he could hardly offer to perform the ceremony in his capacity as Captain, and also be one of the participants.

The abject disappointment that this realisation caused in her breast gave her the resolve to leap up and start her diatribe on how different they were from each other, even while she knew every word was a lie. But Jack was relentless, following her, taunting her, seeing inside her soul, and she had to deflect his attention from her weakness before he recognised it for what it was and pounced. She had tried to turn the tables on him - use his own words against him, but still he had disarmed her by making the admission she was too scared to make herself.
Stalking her, he had admitted that he did want to know, and he was far bolder than she as he trapped her between his hard body and one of the Pearl�s canons, leaning ever closer and brushing the backs of his dirty fingers so tenderly over the curve of her jaw. At this juncture Elizabeth�s common sense rolled over and waved a flag of surrender, as she began the journey to meet him half way. Even though her lips were still spouting words of denial, her eyes were half closed in expectation, her gaze fixed on that sinfully luscious mouth, quivering in anticipation of it�s joining with her own.

Oh God! Jack Sparrow was going to kiss her and she wasn�t going to stop him! In fact she was not only going to let him, but worse - she wanted it with a desperation she would never have believed herself capable of. Her lips were already imagining the pressure of his, tingling from the rum-sweetened heat of his breath, and the feather-light brush of his braided hair against her bare neck was sending shivers of delight along every nerve in her body. Through desire-laden eyes she watched his mouth opening slightly as it approached, his tongue skimming his bottom lip ready to plunder hers.
And then - nothing! Jack was staring over her right shoulder, fists clenched, eyes wide with shock, and he was once again at a respectable distance from her mouth. She had been wound up so tight with expectation that she could hardly breathe. Her voice came out as little better than a strangled, breathless squeak when she tried to cover her acute frustration with some crock of nonsense about being proud of Jack for behaving like a gentleman.
Of course, as it turned out, that had been the last opportunity for either of them to capitulate to the inevitable. Fate, in the form of Davy Jones was catching up with Jack, and little though Elizabeth could have known it, the next time she was to be that close to him, her fiancé would have been restored to her, her supposed mission fulfilled, and she would be in the process of consigning Jack Sparrow to the Kraken, and herself to wretchedness for the safety of six other men.
With the benefit of hindsight, and the sure knowledge of how this world felt without Jack in it, she knew that instead of fleeing when someone - possibly Mr Gibbs - had sighted land, she should have grabbed onto Jack, pinned him against the rail and taken what she wanted, as he had been taunting her to do. Then he might have known that what she wanted wasn�t to be a pirate after all, but something more tangible, more real - just a man, in fact. If she had kissed him then, how differently might the events on Isla Cruces, and everything that followed after have ultimately played out?
Elizabeth slipped her hand down the mast until her fingers came in contact with the manacles she had used on Jack. She slipped her right wrist into the cold metal; her hand passed easily into the loop for she was fine-boned and lean from the weeks of melancholy. Jack�s hand would not have slid so easily out of its imprisonment. She had wanted to know what it felt like for him in his last moments - to be shackled and sent to your death this way, but she couldn�t even share that with him.
Fat tears welled up in her eyes and escaped down her face. She barely noticed them, pressing herself closer to the mast as if she could recreate her last moments with Jack, the way the Pearl had restored itself.
�It was a lie - I�m sorry - I am sorry. I am. You have to forgive me,� she whispered, hoping somehow that Jack could hear her through the separation of the afterlife. �I am so sorry. Please, please forgive me�.�
�Don�t cry, Elizabeth,� a voice said sadly from behind, and a hand descended on her shoulder. �Of course I forgive you. I love you, you know I do.� Apparently he was under the misapprehension that she could be aware of something other than her own anguish, and had heard his approach.
Elizabeth tensed under his touch for a moment without turning to look at him. �It�s not your forgiveness I need, and that is not what I am sorry for,� she replied harshly. She hadn�t the heart for artifice - not here, not in the place where she had carried out the ultimate betrayal, and if it exposed her true feelings to Will, then so be it.
�Elizabeth -?� Will muttered, reaching for her hand and steeling himself to finally broach the forbidden subject; it seemed a fitting time to do so, standing as they were in the shadow of the place where it had occurred. �I saw you both. I know you ki -� he stopped suddenly as his fingers encountered the shackles around Elizabeth�s wrist. He lifted her hand up as far as the chains would stretch from the hook in the mast, and gave her a baffled look. �Elizabeth - what -?� he asked in confusion.
Elizabeth turned and glared at him before tugging her wrist away from him and closing her other hand protectively around the cold metal. A diplomatic man might have chosen this moment to retreat, but Will was ever reckless and impulsive. A shocking and surely incomprehensible idea was starting to take root in his head, which shed disturbing light on Elizabeth�s erratic mood swings and unwarranted misery these past weeks.
Everything which he had found baffling about Jack�s valiant sacrifice suddenly began to make a dreadful kind of sense in the wake of the horrific suspicions which were forming in Will�s mind. Unfortunately, confirming his assessment of Jack�s character in this instance brought with it the assassination of Elizabeth�s own. If he shut his eyes, Will could even picture Jack tugging on the manacles and bouncing in frustration when he couldn�t release himself, much as he had in Brown�s smithy on the day they all first met, when Will barricaded the door to him with his sword through the latch.
Yet how could Elizabeth have done such a thing to him? How could the woman Will loved and wanted to marry even be capable of the terrible things he was imagining?
Now, Jack was no stranger to them, not just some criminal on the run from the law - they knew him, they had fought with him and for him - sailed on his ship, he had become a part of their lives however unintentionally. It was Jack - spoiled, daft, drunken Jack with all his wild idiosyncrasies and skewed sense of morality, who had manipulated and hoodwinked and lied to them time and again, yet still saved their lives - not exactly a friend, but no longer simply the legendary pirate who had rescued a young girl from drowning and then used her as a hostage to preserve his own dissolute hide.
Will stared at his fiancée as if he had never seen her before.
�Elizabeth! No! Tell me you didn�t do this!� he groaned, feeling sick. �You never gave him the chance, did you? Never gave him the opportunity to choose whether to stay behind and face the Kraken or leave with us. No wonder you can�t live with yourself any more.� Will felt as if the very foundation his world was built upon had crumbled beneath his feet. He closed his eyes and braced himself for what he was about to say next. �I only hope he can give you the absolution you need if we find him again. If he does, he�s a far better man than I ever gave him credit for. I don�t know if I could.� He bowed his head and left her there, ostensibly tied to the mast and her last memory of Jack Sparrow.
Will�s harsh words, bluntly confirming all her worst fears for Jack�s return, seemed to release in Elizabeth something that had been locked down ever since they fled the decks of this ship months before. Indeed, even though she had shed many tears over Jack, all had been silent testimonies to her guilt and anguish. She had never broken down and simply cried, but she did so now. Sliding down the mast until she was crumpled in a ball at the bottom of it, her right hand still dangling through the shackles, she burst into tears; huge wrenching sobs tore through her until her whole body was shaking with the force of her weeping. She curled her knees up to her chest and wrapped her free arm around them, rocking back and forth, as the storm of grief coursed through her.
Disturbed by the sudden sobbing, Barbossa abandoned his search of the Captain�s cabin and emerged on deck to chastise whoever was creating the God-awful noise, but he halted in his tracks at seeing the girl he had come to regard as a worthy sailor crumpled into a miserable ball at his feet. Like Will, it didn�t take Barbossa long to perceive Elizabeth�s hand caught in the shackle and put together the sequence of events which had brought her to this anguished state. Obviously returning to the scene of the crime, as it were, had been too much for her thinly stretched control.
Unlike Will however, Barbossa was pleased with the conclusions he had drawn. It meant that Tia Dalma had not been playing them a false line after all. His duty was done; he had taken the Pearl from Jack, and had brought it back. This slip of a girl had taken his life, and it would be up to her to restore it.
�So, Miss Turner, we finally discover your qualifications for the task ahead.� He said briskly with no trace of sympathy, moving to stand beside her. �Get up and make yourself presentable. You have work to do; and no time to lose. I assume that the witch gave you instructions - just as she gave me mine.�

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Many thanks to all reviewers. The next chapter of this story currently stands at 19,000 words, and will need a lot of editing into smaller segments before it gets posted. But - on the plus side, there are 19,000 words written, so you know there will be more soon!
Thanks for your support. There are many more wonderful J/E stories (and discussion and art etc) on the Sparrabeth Live Journal site, where this story is also posted. If you have never discovered the joys of this site, I urge you to take a look.
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Deliverance