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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
- 6
- 7
- 8
Cave

Now that Jack had time to take stock of his new accommodations, he was forced to admit that they were far more in keeping with what he would expect for someone who had been swallowed down and recently regurgitated by a sea monster.
As his eyes adjusted to the change from dazzling sunlight to subterranean cave, he saw that the shingle shore upon which he had landed was peppered with fragments of human bones, and what seemed at first to be a small fissure in the rocky coastline was actually a massive cavern extending into the cliff side far beyond where the feeble amount of daylight spilling in the cave mouth could penetrate.
He would truly have liked to examine his surroundings more closely but unfortunately he was not given the opportunity to do so. He was barely granted time to register his change of location, when suddenly every sensation that his body had been devoid of in his previous quarters was returned to him simultaneously, and the resultant pain was so overwhelming as to make movement impossible.
The restoration of feeling after such a long period of nothing in the desert place was crippling, and through the haze of pain he hoped that maybe it was only the resumption of physical awareness after its total absence which made him feel as weak as he did. He thought - or rather, hoped - that when his body accustomed itself to the returning feelings, it might be marginally more bearable than it was just now.
Jack slumped onto his side, wrapping his arms around his middle as he tried to filter out the worst of the various pains accosting his body. He had no idea how long he lay there on the edge of unconsciousness, but eventually the searing red fog of pain dulled to a more manageable throb, and rolling onto his back despite the sharp pointed edges of the shale upon which he lay, Jack began to try and separate each individual cut and scrape so that he could get a better idea of how bad the damage was.
It was an exercise in self-control to identify and catalogue each and every pain that he could feel, but eventually Jack had narrowed his most serious wound down to a deep, jagged gash on his left shoulder - most likely a bite mark - that had almost totally severed the sleeve from his jacket, and which was definitely infected, probably from whatever contagion the decomposing bodies of the Kraken�s previous victims - floating in the mixture of brine and bodily waste which lined the creature�s belly - had been putrid with.
Jack shrugged out of the coat, wincing in pain as a fiery hot streak of agony shot down his arm to the tips of his fingers. He then tried to tug the shredded linen of his shirt out of the festering wound, and almost passed out as another wave of pain accompanied the re-opening of the oozing scab which had begun to form over his torn shirt, sealing it into the cut.
When the nausea passed, Jack twisted his head to check the damage and nearly gagged again at the smell of the nasty yellow pus which was welling out of the bite-mark.
Alcohol might help to cleanse the wound, and Jack resolved to see if any of the other reluctant residents of this subterranean graveyard had been regurgitated with a hip flask intact. Just as soon as he felt capable of moving again.
His body was scattered with various other gashes and scrapes, but none as hazardous as the one on his shoulder. There was a long slash on his right leg which, had it been an inch or so to the right, might have severed an artery and finished him off long before any infection got the chance to take hold. Instead, the cut looked to be clean and was currently only bleeding very slowly, but if Jack was unable to perform some kind of sterilizing on his shoulder wound, it wouldn�t be long before blood poisoning set in, and even if �they� - who according to his father were on their way to find him - reached this place, he would be as good as dead anyway.
Frozen in the immeasurable instant spent in the desert place, Jack had no idea how long had passed in real time since he battled the Kraken aboard the Black Pearl, but he was fairly sure that while time stood still for him in his vast sand-locked prison, it had not done so here, in the world he departed. However, it appeared that now he was returned, his physical state would progress apace from the point where it had been disengaged to put him in that holding area.
Now, he was removed from that waiting place and returned to his former earthly plane, whereabouts the true manner of his actual demise should have dispatched him - and all this instigated if his dear departed father were to be believed, by Tia Dalma meddling in the afterlife and sending - people (at this time Jack didn�t even begin to let himself speculate on who these �people� might be) to try and interfere with the outcome of Davy Jones� retribution.
Jack wasn�t sure, but he thought that maybe a couple of hours - half a day at most - had passed since he was sent back before he found himself able to struggle to his feet. The shingle beach rattled beneath him, and he cast a concerned glance to the mouth of the cave, but the doorkeeper paid no attention whatsoever to what was happening behind it, just floating lethargically on the swells of incoming waves.
He staggered to his feet, determined to see if there was anything he could do from here to assist whoever was on their way. He kept a firm grip on his sword, but his pistol was likely useless, filled with seawater and probably rusting. Progress was slow and painful; he stopped to check if the gash on his leg had opened up again, but it seemed to be withstanding the exercise.
Jack limped as far to the back of the cavern as he could see in the distant light of the entrance, without encountering any more human remains than the picked-clean bones he had recognised at first. He was leaning against the cave wall fighting a pounding headache and the fever-hot burning in his shoulder, trying to get his breath back when there was a sudden disturbance and the creature at the cave mouth suddenly uncoiled itself, momentarily blocking all light from the cavern, and then quickly swam away from its post.
�Ah, the rituals must be starting then,� said a voice in Jack�s ear, and he was startled to find his father once again standing beside him. He was feeling so horrible that he greeted this appearance with less hostility than before. There was obviously something far more complicated than he was able to grasp in his current state of health going on here, so he decided to simply let it wash over him. He was clearly a pawn in someone else�s game, so he might as well save his energy until it would best serve his own interests.
�Ah,� he muttered, sinking down the wall to sit on the ground. �Father dearest - again. Is there any chance at all that you�ve come to tell me what�s going on now? I don�t suppose you have any rum on you, do you? Purely for medicinal purposes, you understand? I would like to clean out this bite mark or it just might finish me off completely before the rescue team gets here - and that would be rather a waste of effort, don�t you think?�
�No, I don�t have rum, and if you can�t manage to work out that I�m not really here at all, then you are even dafter than any of your erstwhile friends out there ever thought you.� His father replied sharply.
�Bloody typical,� Jack muttered and shut his eyes. �I can�t even hallucinate something useful.�
Sparrow looked as if he would have liked to clip Jack around the ear as he had in the desert, but lacking a physical presence in this reality, he had to content himself with sarcasm. �Stop feeling sorry for yourself,� he snapped. �I am actually here to help you in as much as I can. However, I obviously cannot intercede bodily, so why don�t we try to focus on what we can do, instead of what we can�t.�
Jack sighed heavily, �Well, can we actually tell someone what is really going on here, instead of leaving said someone fumbling around in the dark because he can�t possibly begin to see what the point of all this is?� By the time he had finished Jack was practically yelling, although the effect was somewhat ruined by his having to gasp for breath as a new pain in his chest area made him suspect he had also broken a rib or two.
�You need some light?� Sparrow asked thoughtfully. �Why didn�t you say so? That is definitely in the can do column.� Jack would have dearly loved the energy to leap up and strangle his increasingly infuriating father, insubstantial shade or not, but satisfied himself with growling in frustration, until he realised that Sparrow really was intending to illuminate the cave. The older man turned away and Jack heard some rustling noises followed by the sound of a tinderbox and when Sparrow faced back to him, he had fashioned a torch out of some old rags wound around something which looked suspiciously like a human leg bone. Jack didn�t ask. It wasn�t as if he had never taken creative license with convenient body parts himself.
Sparrow looked thoughtfully at his son. The person before him appeared nothing like the man he had seen in the desert. This Captain Sparrow was a far sorrier version; his ripped clothes were stained and stiffened by Kraken bile, his weather-tanned face waxy and pale. There was a cut slicing through one eyebrow and the red bandana was torn almost in two and hanging off his right ear. One of his dreadlocks had been sliced in half, and the rest of his hair was clogged with the residue of the beast�s initial discharge on the deck of the Pearl.
Sparrow shook his head. �This cave is fed by an underground river. It�s clean fresh water, if we head far enough upstream you will at least be able to wash some of that stuff off you and maybe clean out the wound. Follow me.� He said and turned abruptly, casting the light ahead of him and leaving Jack to stumble along behind as best he could.
It seemed to take for ever until Jack heard the rushing sound of running water; every step he took had become a triumph of mind over body. He was so close to just giving in and collapsing in a heap on the rocky ground, that he barely recognised the splashing sound for what it was. It was so stygian dark here that beyond the feeble orange glow of his father�s torch it seemed blacker than the void of hell.
�It�s shallow here,� his father�s voice came, �but no salt water this far upstream.�
Jack willed his body to carry him the last few feet to the river�s edge, and when he finally reached where Sparrow was holding the torch aloft to illuminate the stream, he simply tugged his shredded shirtsleeve down his arm and stepped into the flowing water before collapsing onto his back and letting the river run over him. The water was sufficiently cold to prevent him from passing out, and even revive him a little, so that he found the energy to tilt sideways enough to place his shoulder wound in the direct flow of the stream.
In the light of his father�s torch, he watched blood and dirt washing out of the wound and mingling with the current as it rushed away to the ocean. He tried scrubbing it with his fingers, but the pain was too much and the encroaching blackness on the edge of his consciousness forced him to stop. The cut had turned cankerous, no doubt about it.
He was simply laying there in the stream feeling the slime being rinsed out of his hair when another, totally new pain hit him, originating not from any of the Kraken�s gifts to him, but instead one of the few uninjured spots on his body. The sensation was so sudden and intense that despite all his aches he shot upright in the stream, clutching hold of his chest over his heart, but was forced to let go immediately for the skin was burning unnaturally hot to the touch, and not in the way of any fever.
The only other time he had felt such a singularly concentrated burning was when Cutler Beckett had branded the symbol of his offense into his arm. He stared wide-eyed at the origin of this newest torture; a black runic symbol which Tia Dalma had tattooed onto his chest directly over his heart during a self-pitying drunken visit years ago, shortly after he had lost the Black Pearl to Barbossa. At the time she had told him it was a symbol of his love, and since then he had always fancied that it represented the Pearl. His pain-hazed mind barely had time to form any kind of thought as to why it was burning him now, when he saw his father leaning over to get a closer look.
�Not good.� Said Sparrow senior.
An onslaught of pain forced Jack�s eyes closed, and when he managed to prise them open again, Sparrow had apparently vanished, and standing where he had been was a woman with long black hair, in a shimmery green dress who was wearing a somewhat guilty expression on her face.
More waves of pain washed over him, making it impossible to care what had happened to his erstwhile father, or where this woman had come from. He counted to twenty, trying to employ a technique he had learned in Singapore from an ancient, wizened Chinaman, which was supposed to take pain and shut it in a closed room in his mind behind a symbolic locked door so that he could set it aside to concentrate on other things. It really wasn�t working today.
Jack was suddenly drawn out of his tantric exercise by a sudden increase in the brightness of the surrounding area. Something had appeared which far surpassed the weak illumination of his father�s hand-made torch. He twisted his head slowly to the source of the light and squinted against the sudden intensity on his eyes. When his gaze had adjusted, he found that the woman had been joined by - for want of a more accurate description - a half-dressed man.
This man also bore the evidence of an aquatic life, but in far more subtle ways than Jones. His fingers, which were curled around a long staff fashioned of coral and topped with a trident-shaped fork which was apparently the source of the new light, were webbed to the first joint. Greenish-gold scales seemed to flicker and writhe insubstantially over his shoulders and the tops of his arms. His legs were encased fully in a darker and more solid version of the same iridescent scales, giving the illusion that he was clothed in conventional trousers. His hair was long and silver, and threaded through with green sea-grass, as was his beard.
He had no idea who this man was, but even in his bedraggled state Jack could sense his immense power. It radiated off him in waves, leaving Jack in no doubt that here was one of those Higher Powers to whom his father had referred during their conversation in the desert. Apparently he was the custodian of this place where the Kraken had spat Jack out.
He was also obviously furious with someone; Jack sincerely hoped it was the woman. He really didn�t think he could acquit himself well in his current woozy state of health.
For once, it seemed that circumstances were favoring him, for with the most minimal of glances towards Jack, the man turned and addressed his companion. �Just what exactly are you doing?� He asked in arctic tones. �Why is he here? It�s weeks before he is scheduled to be assessed. You aren�t doing him any service by upsetting my schedule, as I am quite sure you know. So kindly explain this!� He emphasized his demand with a careless wave of his trident in Jack�s direction.
Jack was actually quite eager to discover what was happening himself. If he could only maintain his tenuous hold on consciousness for long enough to hear it. As it was, their words were fading alarmingly in and out of clarity. The woman was saying something about a rescue party, but he already knew that bit. His father had told him�.and then he thought he heard the Guardian say that they would have to take a place in line. �She presumes too much based upon alliances long past!� He declared flatly, which Jack thought as he grappled against the pain in his chest sounded, as his �father� had declared, decidedly not good for him.

**************
After spending a week trying to find the last section of this chapter, and deciding finally that the only place I had ever written it was in my head, (LJ users can see previous entry) I bring you the next part.
The Pearl is getting closer - soon be time for a reunion, methinks? Provided no more bits of the mega-chapter turn up missing. This is obviously the drawback of writing one huge great long chapter for editing later. You get confused about what belongs where, or if you ever really wrote it at all!
- 6
- 7
- 8
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Deliverance