Parlait

Again, I can't thank you enough for reading, and those of you who comment are really what drives this story! Thank you all more than I can put into words, and as always, I would love to hear from you all!

“But I was always part of the raiding party when I sailed with Jack!” Why was she bothering to argue this, or anything, with him? She must have looked ridiculous, demanding to go pirating with Captain Hector Barbossa, as she stood before him fuming, clad only in one of his clean white muslin shirts, with the laces at the chest and frills at the cuffs; cuffs that hung down well below her fingers, the hem at her knees. She’d borrowed a blue sash she’d located in his wardrobe as he’d gotten himself ready to work, and felt that with it tied around her waist she at least looked to be wearing some sort of…dress. And boots…she’d assumed the Captain only had one pair of boots, for she’d only ever seen one particular pair on his feet, but in his wardrobe were three pair; all different. She’d borrowed a black leather pair that came nearly to her thighs; they may not have been breeches, but at least they gave that appearance. She’d rolled up bits of the tattered shift she’d been wearing when first coming aboard The Reproach and stuffed it into the toes of the boots so that they fit her better and stopped sliding off her tiny feet when she walked. It had been easy to borrow clothes from Jack…but The Captain was so much taller and broader than her, or Jack.

“Elizabeth, y’not be sailin’ with Jack,” Barbossa reminded her, stringing another loaded pistol to the other three he was arranging on twine around his neck. He hadn’t really been watching her, was too busy preparing for the raid, although he noted with some amusement how Elizabeth plundered through his possessions, putting on whatever she thought to be useful. They’d tailed a heavy born merchant vessel for a day and half, the time to strike was drawing nearer and nearer, one more hour or two, and she’d be theirs. But Barbossa wouldn’t expose Elizabeth to that much danger.

“But why can’t I be part of the boarding party?” She grasped another folded pair of woolen breeches, held them up to have a look and sighed, flinging them back into the wardrobe. Goodness, she’d never known a man to have so many clothes, and all so very much too big for her!

“Because, Miss Swann,” Barbossa smirked looking up, but doing his best not let her know how funny she was to him. “This be one party for which y’ve nothin’ to wear.” In truth, she was the reason he’d set out after this particular vessel, Elizabeth needed clothes. The merchant was likely laden down with textiles and silks, ladies fashions and other feminine luxuries. Perhaps it was not traditional pirate quarry, but there would at least be wines, brandy, fine epicurean vittles, and his crew wouldn’t turn down such. But Elizabeth, he already knew she’d bellyache all evening if he didn’t at least attempt to put his foot down about it now…softly, anyway. Two days ago she’d told him she loved him, and already she got to him. If he wasn’t careful he’d end up as twisted around her little finger as she was around his heart, but he wouldn’t put her in danger, no matter how much she begged. “Yer forgettin’ y’still be a prisoner, Elizabeth. I’ve not as of yet released ye. Prisoner’s don’t raid ships attacked by their captors.”

But Elizabeth wasn’t listening, she was rifling through the wardrobe again, frantically…there had to be a small pair of breeches in there somewhere…he seemed to have everything else: boots, shirts, cloaks, brocade vests, leather jerkins, sashes, hat feathers, buckles and lots of other adornments. There was even a codpiece! Why not breeches that would fit a boy? What was that hanging in the back? She leaned in, nearly disappearing inside the wardrobe to grab it, finding it to be a deep blue tricorn hat with gold trim. Ah, a hat! She could borrow that as well! “There!” She said triumphantly, placing the hat on her head and leaning back out of the wardrobe, standing straight again and trying to lean the hat back on her head and stop it from slipping down over her ears and eyes. “I think that sets it pretty proper, don’t you?”

She stood awaiting him to inspect her, and so now he had to look up, vowed to himself to remain solemn, not laugh, and not let her accompany the crew. But one glance at her with the overly large floppy feet, the shirt that looked like something out of the temple of vestal virgins, and the hat which balanced precariously on the back of her head sent a loud laugh booming from his chest. She glared at him and crossed her arms, the hat immediately falling down over her eyes again, and he laughed some more.

“I fail to comprehend your hilarity, Captain!” She pushed the damned hat back again and pushed the hair from her eyes. Part of her wanted to blame Barbossa for being so damned big and tall, but in truth, she enjoyed that about his body too much to complain about it. Clearly, she had nothing to wear, despite her best efforts. And now the feeling of dread that had appeared in the pit of her stomach when Barbossa had first told of the raid returned. She was nervous.

“Aye,” Barbossa settled himself, cleared his throat. “I be truly sorry, girl. You have made quite an effort of…of…” he shouldn’t have looked back at her; his lips were pulling back into an involuntary grin. He’d seen a circus once; Elizabeth looked like part of it. “This.” He finally said with a gesture of his hand and then stood, quickly turning his back to her, pretending to need more light from the window, while he muffled his second fit of laughter.

He clearly didn’t understand her despondency, and it hadn’t been in Elizabeth’s plan to divulge it, but now it was looking like she had no other choice, even if he would likely think her sillier than she currently looked dressed in all his mammoth garments. “Please take me with you!” She begged, took a step forward to go and burry her head into his broad back, but there was a good five inches of boot sticking out in front her that did not contain her foot, and she tripped over the toe, nearly falling, would have had Barbossa not reached back to lend her his arm…as he laughed. She harrumphed, stood straight again and gave his hand a sharp yank. “Captain, would you please compose yourself and hear me out?”

Easier said than done, but Barbossa gave it his best effort, forcing himself to frown as he turned to face her. Elizabeth Swann, no matter her circumstances, no matter how preposterously she was garbed, she was always proud and demanding. No wonder he loved her, though that still remained his secret. “Y’were sayin’, Miss?”

“Take me with you! I’ll stay at your side; I know what I’m doing! I could be a second pair of eyes during the raid!” She’d promise anything, for indeed she did wish to stay with him.

Barbossa pursed his lips hard, another smirk battling to be born. “I’m certain y’would.” But he wasn’t strong enough, couldn’t resist it, and his hand came up and knocked the hat down over her eyes again with the gentlest of taps. “Til y’had to look down!” Again he laughed, unable to help it.

Since hearing of the raid Elizabeth had told herself she wasn’t worried, that it was silly to worry, that Barbossa had been pillaging coastal towns and raiding ships longer than she’d walked the earth, but now, with the fact that she wouldn’t be going with him firmly confirmed, the trepidation over ruled all other emotions, including the anger raised by his laughter. With a heavy sigh she removed the hat that teetered on her head and tossed the blue tricorn back into the wardrobe. She’d no choice but to tell him now. “I would just rather not have to lose sight of you.” The words managed their way out of her mouth without a shudder, but now tears welled unexpectedly in her eyes. Damned emotions! Damn this man, for suddenly meaning so much to her…she turned her back to the Captain. “Anything could happen, you know. Anything.”

“Elizabeth,” he’d sighed just as her back faced him. She couldn’t be saying what he thought she was saying. She wasn’t afraid that something might happen to him, was she? “Finish yer thought.”

She tried to be subtle about wiping the tear that slid down her cheek. He sounded concerned about her feelings; it surprised her, made her feel warm inside and more confident. But with that confidence returned her irritation. He thought her clothing situation keeping her from the raid was funny? Well, he ought to find her silence uproarious then! “No.”

He couldn’t remember the last time a woman cared enough to be worried for him. Barbossa removed the pistols around his neck and took a seat in the chair at his desk, curious, touched and feeling so very protective. He’d put to rest her fears, he thought he remembered how, it had gotten to be a ritual when first he was married, for marrying a sailor put Graciella to tears so many many times. But he’d only to kiss them away and hold her to him, and promise to come back to her. What were the words he used to say? Hmm…perhaps he’d now teach Elizabeth the words Graciella used to sing whenever he left port? “Eternal Father, strong to save, whose arm hath bound the restless wave, who bidd’st the mighty ocean deep, its own appointed limits keep, oh hear us when we cry to thee, for those in peril on the sea.” No, he wouldn’t bother with such; Elizabeth was not a Parson’s daughter, and Barbossa himself had become a major peril of the sea. Well, he had to do something to belay her fears. He sat back in the chair, feet flat on the floor and dusted off his knee as if it had been years since it had been called into such service, but then, it had been. “Come here, girl.”

She’d heard him sit down, and his voice was soft. If he expected her to come curl up in his lap, he was out of luck. “Just go!” She fiercely snapped, all at once feeling so very silly in the huge boots that met her buttocks at the back of her legs. She couldn’t even storm off into his bunk and pull the curtains round in these stupid things! “I’ll wait here!”

The ire in her tone was immediately noted and ruffled him a bit, but then he understood why she might be angry with him. “If I were to ask forgiveness for laughin’—“

“It would not be given until you apologized!” She held her position, back rigid, wouldn’t turn to look at him. She hoped he’d say he was sorry, she felt cold and alone, she wanted to be near him, she wanted him to tell her not to worry, she wanted him to make her stop thinking that he was about to be hurt, or captured, or worse. But she couldn’t run to him now, not like this!

“Ah,” Barbossa smiled, but didn’t dare laugh this time. She was nothing if not shrewd, this one. “Elizabeth,” he said her name in the most heavily shame encumbered sigh he could muster. “I apologize. Y’ve obviously concerns to voice and I—“

There, he’d said it! He apologized! “Pardoned!” She turned on the heels of his big boots and about skipped forward, stubbing the long toe that stuck out in front of her natural ones and stumbled forward, out of control, crashing down into his lap so forcefully that she, the chair and Barbossa all tumbled to the deck before he could even finish his apology.

He wrapped his strong arms around her and held her to him when he’d felt the chair tip back, taking the brunt of the fall and shielding her from it, but lying there now with her shocked and embarrassed expression staring down at him and sighed again. “Girl, I’ve set plenty a terms at sea, negotiated many a thing.” He said, then raised his head from the floor and looked at her. “I recommend y’work on holdin’ out longer.”

Laughter wrinkled the corners of her mouth until she couldn’t contain it any longer, though she wasn’t even sure if she should be laughing. “I’m so very sorry, Captain! Are you…I mean,” she was afraid to ask, though she couldn’t help her laughter. She moved off of him and passed her fingers over his broad chest in examination. “I didn’t hurt you, did I?”

“Only to the degree I deserved.” He answered, and got to his feet, once again surprised by how easily and fluidly his body rose from the floor, no stiffness in his back from the jolt, no arthritis flaring up in his joints; Calypso, he thanked her again. It was a good thing he’d laid the pistols on the table, could have been a dangerous fall otherwise. Elizabeth Swann, more a force of nature than a woman he thought and smiled, straightening his shirt, and suddenly reminded of their first meeting. “At least this time I’ve no scar to show for yer lungin’ at me.”

“I’m glad that you’re not—“ but then she realized what he’d said and was puzzled by it. “Scar?” When in the last few days had she lunged at him and left a mark she wondered. “What scar?”

Barbossa laughed. “Y’don’t even remember now, do ye?” He pulled his shirt down once again, looking at his chest until he located the slender little line, barely noticeable now, to the right of his heart. “Think back, Missy. Port Royal sacked, ‘parley’ granted, y’at me table…yer dainty hand ‘round a knife,” he could tell from the look on her face that she did well recall that night. “And y’sank said implement here.” He covered the spot with his finger.

“Where?” Elizabeth gasped; her blood racing as she struggled to get to her feet, but the stupid boots wouldn’t let her feet get properly under her and she fell back to one knee in her haste. She scrambled up again, that night had been a thrill, the fear once attached to it becoming some odd nostalgia; the Captain wore their history, their first meeting, on his chest! “Let me see! Let me see!”

She was like an excited child, Barbossa took her hand and lifted her from the floor, she fell against him practically in her strange enthusiasm, prying his finger from the point it covered. He was still, but felt how she shuddered as she touched him, the pressure neither malicious nor apologetic. Had he not known better he would have sworn she was proud, and if she was, then she had every right to be. But there was something else, something he couldn’t label, something not typical enough to even be fully understood, but it was there, lacing around the two of them and drawing tighter and tighter, its air dim, but not wholly unpleasant.

“I see it!” Elizabeth’s eyes were alight as her finger traced the faint white line; she’d stabbed him, had he not been undead, she’d have made him dead. She looked up at Barbossa, her eyes catching his and locking, some force enveloping them, an indescribable sensation of arousal pouring over her from the inside, all at once she realized how closely she’d come to possessing him, the way she’d possessed Jack, the way she’d set total and unremitting dominance over him. To have Captain Hector Barbossa like that, to have come so close to making him hers in that way, and yet to have failed…trying again was so seductive, though she meant him no intentional harm. Want of him surged through her, the want to have him, as part of her, the want to love him so completely that he was absorbed within her and under her absolute influence.

Images of their first encounter shuffled through her mind like a deck of cards until the last of them flickered before her; the barrel of a gun. She was not the only one to have so nearly inflicted such domination. “If Jack hadn’t shot you,” neither she nor the Captain breathed, eyes glowing with a raw, mutant, esoteric rapaciousness natural only to the two of them. “You would have killed me.”

The shot would have been straight and true, laying a claim to her heart. “I would have killed ye, and Jack would’ve killed me.” Did her eyes burn like that when she’d shackled Jack to the mast? Were her lips as red? They had been that night he’d drawn his pistol on her, he remembered the shudder of her body, the way her lips parted, the shine of moonlight on her neck and chest, and the catch of breath in her throat. She would have been as captivating in that death as she was standing before him now, provoking a libidinous power within him to seduce away her last breath. “How much sooner the pair of us could’ve been joined!”

Something combusted, each saw a flash, and they hit the deck again, tangled together, a passionate and rough struggle to get inside the other. Hands tore at clothing, groped, squeezed and twisted in flesh, mouths crushed to the other’s, sucked hard, strayed away to bare teeth against taut, hot skin, drawing welts and blood. Fury drove them, some unrequited deal with death, the distant places each should have made the other occupy reaching out through her to him and him to her, interblending with a flux of eroticism, an inexorable dark urge to possess one another in life, if not in death.

Elizabeth yanked the shirt from his body, then grabbed a heavy handful of his hair, her teeth fast against his shoulder, tongue licking blood, nails of the other hand digging as claws, latched into the thickness of his twitching biceps. Barbossa clutched her whole breast in his big hand, squeezing with white knuckles, holding her down with all his weight, a pointed hardness between his legs like he’d never known, the annoyance of clothing all that kept Elizabeth from being spiked upon it as his free hand wrapped over her throat, and began to squeeze closed.

Barbossa felt her tremble through him, her nails, her teeth like hooks in his skin as she fought him, all at once trying to stop him and urge him on, pushing her neck into his clenching hand, struggling more, biting harder as his intensity grew. He opened his eyes, and immediately saw her looking back, but it wasn’t Elizabeth who stared him down. Graciella, she’d known what was coming, he’d tried to be clandestine, rehearsed it in his mind how she wouldn’t notice, gently put the muzzle to the back of her head, she’d merely be living one moment and dead the next, but she’d turned and looked at him, a split second before the gun in his hand went off.

His hand easily encompassed her throat, his strength enormous, Elizabeth could feel the air being choked out of her, felt herself unable to draw more in. She should stop him, she should rouse him from this thing that held them both and together they should flee its icy grasp. But she couldn’t move other than to reach for him, pull him closer, her legs spreading wide around him, wanting him closer and closer, more and more upon her, in her, as her nails tore through his skin and her teeth sank deeper. This was his to take, if he wanted it, she’d give it, and if he gave it of himself, she’d take it! He’d meant to kill her once, just as she’d meant to kill him; this was their bond, two treacherous, vicious things that could love nothing without this danger always present.

“Finish it!”

Somehow the words came to him, whether he or Elizabeth said them or perhaps even thought them. Barbossa snapped back to reality, a cold sweat clinging to him as the horrors washed over him. He let go of Elizabeth’s throat, his body aching with terror and desire, what had he done? Still ensnared in darkness, Elizabeth pushed up against him, moved her hands and found a new spot on his back to claw, her throat exposed, red with marks from his fingers, and awaiting his crushing hand. No! “Elizabeth!” He yelled, but it did nothing to awaken her. He gripped her shoulders and shook her, knocking her against the deck twice before her eyes finally opened, and she gasped for air, looking up at him with questioning, angry eyes. She still looked to try something, her nails burned like fire in his back, trying to provoke him, and Barbossa broke free of them, wrestling her hands to the deck and pinning them down, shaking her again until her head rolled against the floor enough to finally clear. She looked up at him again, both out of breath and bleeding in various places, but far from distrustful of one another, though they should have been. She reached out again, hands on his chest, stroking, her imploring eyes searching his. His instinct was to kiss her, but he fought it. “I don’t know where this leads,” Barbossa finally said through heavy breaths, keeping hold of her. “But I don’t think it be a good idea!”

Was that the Captain’s blood she felt pooling underneath her fingernails? Was it the taste of his blood in her mouth? “No! I…” But she didn’t know what to say. How had they gotten to this point? More importantly, why? What had happened? She’d been looking at the scar, and remembered a gun pointed at her…another bond had formed between them, but this one was volatile. She felt incomplete, denied some piece of him that she so desperately wanted, the complexion of the moment fading in predation, shifting now to some great need of sex and comfort. Her hands slowly smoothed across his chest, seeing for the first time where her teeth and nails left bleeding cleft marks in his skin. She wanted to make it up to him, apologize with love and pleasure as he met her own needs for such.

“Please don’t stop touching me,” her fingers traced the swell of his pectoral muscles, she felt how hard he was against her thigh, sharp almost with the stimulation that had so nearly released terror. She wanted to be close to him, wanted to feel him using her, hard. “I need to feel that you want me, that I belong to you. Now.”

“Elizabeth,” Barbossa sighed, holding himself rigid, afraid to move, still gasping for air. “I be in want of ye’ I do, but” he paused to take a breath, refused to let himself have a taste of her lips, refused to let himself bury the rock-like flesh at his groin against her warm body. She moved beneath him, shoved her hips against his waist, her head dropping back, throat exposed again, the angry marks left there from his hand plainly in sight. “This be where I am forced to play the gentleman, and go no farther.”

Incorrigible as ever, Elizabeth moved beneath him again, trying to align the mound of curls between her legs with the prominent bulge throbbing against her thigh, but the Captain had her pinned with all his strength. She raised one of her boot clad legs, her hot readiness trickling down her inner thigh as her foot wrapped over his back. She had no fear of him, just wanted him. Immediately Barbossa stiffened, reached back with his hand to push her leg from his body, and Elizabeth took the opportunity to sneak her hand between their bodies. His cock seemed to move into her hand on its own, so in need of attention as her hand closed around it through the fabric of his breeches, and Barbossa growled a dangerous warning to her, but drove himself into her touch. “Your need is too much, you can’t stop here,” she whispered to him, lightly squeezing his organ. “You can’t stop.”

She was right, and the more she stroked him, the closer she had him to giving in. He felt no urges to squeeze his hand around her neck, felt nothing threatening nor sinister with his arousal now, but Barbossa was wary. Until he understood better what had happened, he’d have rather not taken any chances of hurting her. But Elizabeth wasn’t so cautious, her hand finding enough of the buttons of his fly to open and put her hand through. Nothing separated her hand from his throbbing staff now, and her fingers climbed up and down his unyielding erection until his body shook too much for him to possibly keep control. Another thought of how she still wore his boots, up to her thighs made him growl sharply, and his hand suddenly met Elizabeth’s at his waist.

Elizabeth’s body shook with the anticipation, her channel dripping wet and quivering, expecting to feel Barbossa undoing the rest of the buttons and pushing his breeches aside to have her, he’d moved with that type of urgency, but instead she felt him reaching for something at his hip. Before she could look down, something was suddenly shoved into her hand, the Captain closing her fingers around it tightly. His dagger.

“Take it!” He tore open his fly, pushing his breeches down and gripping his pounding cock at the base to steady it as he pressed close to her. “I can make no promises as to me conduct,” he pushed her legs apart to his liking and in one motion thrust deeply in with a loud groan and heaving chest, Elizabeth recoiling in pleasure beneath him, her convulsions greeting him with a tight sweetness worth dying for. The heat of her, the fleshy velvet of her body, the dampness of her desire, all consumed him. He wanted her like she was the first woman he’d had after ten years of the curse, and he’d have her good and hard, but he wouldn’t leave her unprotected from whatever dark compulsions might come upon him. “Y’stabbed me once, girl. Don’t hesitate to defend yerself!”

He thrust so hard that Elizabeth’s hips were pushed up from the floor when he came forward, filling her with all of his cock, his balls pulsing against her buttock as Elizabeth fumbled with the dagger in her hand, wanting so desperately to wrap herself around him. She’d wanted him in her and now he was, the much longed for feeling racing through every vein and stealing her breath, reminding her of how she’d bitten him, how she’d clawed at him until he bled. The dagger, she couldn’t trust herself. “But what if I—“

“I’ll hafta trust ye,” he ground out, thrusting himself deeper and not caring any longer that he’d given her a blade, wouldn’t have cared if she’d had a gun to his head. His body was tight; the release of climax sought by every muscle fiber, his cock so swollen within her, and his balls so tight, they felt like ice. Furthermore he could feel her tightening around him, feel the tension in her thighs, feel her sheath becoming slicker and smoother. He thrust harder, faster, wanting to push her over the edge and have at her furiously as she came.

Her body was now at his mercy, his rhythm too rushed, frantic and harsh to keep up with, and so Elizabeth was forced to lay back and feel him fuck her as the climactic rage inside her climbed higher and higher. She reached out to lock her arms around him, dagger in hand, felt her fingers tighten around the handle, and immediately she threw it across the cabin. The plunk of it against the hull made Barbossa look sharply down at her as he thrust forward roughly, but Elizabeth only bucked against him and smiled. “I’ll have to trust you too!”

As if to punish her, Barbossa lunged down and kissed her with near bruising force, but Elizabeth met his passionate chiding eagerly, swallowing his tongue as it submerged within her mouth and sucking it. Her arms wrapped around his broad back, her legs around his waist, ankles crossed one over the other, digging the heels of his boots into his skin, struggled to keep hold of him as he moved, harder and harder, faster and faster, the head of his cock pounding deep against the hilt of her. She moaned, the sensations traveling through her delicious, the sharp tingles released whenever he sank deep and nudged the limits of her sheath making her stomach tremble, until eventually her entire body trembled, arms and legs convulsing around him as he fucked her. She couldn’t have been wound any tighter, muscles locked, she burned hot, her skin felt dangerous enough to scald his, her hunger intensified. She moved against him the little she could, dug the heels of the boots more into the muscles that drove him deep, hard and fast, and with a shriek she felt herself die, her body not her own, contracting, wincing, dancing beneath the Captains in response to his erratic and desperate thrusts. “Cum!” She was begging of him, her body ravaged by her orgasm and Barbossa’s struggle with his own. She wanted to feel him spurting off inside her, wanted to feel his body react in the grasp of ultimate pleasure. “Please, cum!”

There was nothing else in the world but this tightness that threatened to strangle him, a tension he wrestled with that sank lower and lower like the sunset. Elizabeth moving against him and begging him to reach his point, begging him to fill her with his seed, begging him to die with her, sent the tension swirling out of control, the head of his cock contracting, his balls shuddering and his cock fired forth a long hot dart of semen, like pulling the trigger of a rifle. The body beneath him fell limp as his seed overflowed her, and he collapsed above Elizabeth at his end.

It was sometime before they were able to move, just lying together catching their breath, letting the madness seep from their bodies as peace returned. Barbossa felt Elizabeth stroking his hair, the gentleness of her touch such contrast to what had been between them only moments ago. He sat up, taking her with him, leaning close and kissing her, feeling no murderous passions any longer.

His arms, his shoulders, and she gathered his back, were covered with her bite marks and scratches and Elizabeth touched them tenderly, was about to ask him to climb into the bunk while she saw to them with a rag and some clean water. But Barbossa kissed her once more, softly, pulling his breeches back up as he did, and she remembered the raid. She wished he could stay, wanted to talk, wanted to apologize, but he was getting his feet, helping her to hers.

She looked confused and sheepish now as he brushed the hair out of her eyes, noticing that her neck wasn’t as flushed as it had been; no bruises apparent, her breathing perfect. She clasped his hand in both of hers, eyes wide, expression unsure. He knew that look by now, Elizabeth wanted to talk. It would have to be quick; there was a fat merchant vessel to be taken. “If’n I hurt y’girl, I be—“

Elizabeth shook her head, laying a hand on his chest, surveying the marks she’d left upon him and then looked up at him with a tear shimmering in her eye. How could she have done this? To him? What kind of beast was she? What kind of horrid things were they? She opened her mouth to speak, to plead that he let her tend to these wounds, or to beg retribution from him in the form of the back of his hand, but one look at the blood beneath her nails and the tiny slashes in his skin stole the words from her lips. The tear escaped, rolled down her cheek. But she owed him words at least, wiped away the tear and stood firmly, demanded that she speak to him. “What…I don’t understand…” she stammered, having to push the words out, not even sure what she was about to say, and then something slipped from her heart and out through her lips. “I love you!”

There was nothing better to soothe or heal all the bleeding marks on his skin. Barbossa closed his eyes and drew her close, kissing her forehead as Elizabeth molded herself to him and wept. She loved him, he loved her, but they had at one time both tried to take the other’s life; their bond would always be that of love and death, as though one gave rise to the other. But there had been a willingness to it all, Elizabeth refusing to stop, he having given her his dagger, only to have her discard it; there was trust, which made this love deep, and valuable enough to suffer any hell for. When it came to each other, there was no fear too great to face, nothing to precious to be lost if it meant the love that bound them. Barbossa smiled, held Elizabeth a bit tighter. “No shame be had, girl. Stop yer cryin’.”

She raised her head from his chest, happy to hear the commanding tone of his voice; she needed the security of his Captain’s demeanor. But she couldn’t lose the shame, the guilt. How long would it be until she shackled the Captain to a mast as the ship sank around him? “How do you arrive at such a thing?“ She wiped at another tear, his hand joining hers at the corner of her eye, his touch gentle on her skin.

“Because,” Barbossa smiled, realizing that he and Elizabeth Swann had reached an elevation most lovers would gladly claim to have reached, but were seldom pushed to test. He took her face in both his hands and tilted her head up so she had to look into his eyes as he looked into hers, a spark of fire still visible even through her tears. She was like no other, and he loved her like no other. “Yer as willin’ to die for me as I be willin’ to die for ye.” He stroked her cheek with his thumb, watching as his words sank in and dried up the tears lingering in her eyes. “That be what we just ventured so bravely to do.”